The power of community: Difference between revisions

= The Power of Community and the Web 2.0: Tools to Foster Collaboration and Community<br> =

Community, Wiki, Forums, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Crowd-sourcing, social networks. All are popular buzzwords in business today. What do they mean? Are there ways to apply these new tools and ideas to genealogy? This presentation will show how these new tools can make large projects, which were once impossible, possible. While technology is providing equal online access to vital data, new community tools allow us to use all of this data in an organized way. When you leave this presentation you should have a resolve to be a part of the online genealogical community, and take with you at least two or three new tools and techniques to try out to help you accomplish your genealogical goals.<br><br>'''COMMUNITY AND GENEALOGY '''<br>'''Accomplishing the Impossible<br>'''There have always been projects that were just too big to ever accomplish them, that is, until new tools and techniques were invented. Consider the engineering marvels that have come into being by perfecting manufacturing techniques and tools: the automobile, the airplane, the personal computer. Now consider the genealogical tasks that for centuries have been considered impossible, and think about the advances that can come simply by having equal and immediate access to all of the records ever kept. Obviously, this record utopia does not now exist, and in order to make it exist it will take countless hours of work. But that is precisely what a community is good at. The Egyptians discovered that a community of slaves could build pyramids of mind-boggling magnitude. We are now discovering that computerized tools can take the slavery out of modern monumental tasks and allow our current community to accomplish projects that dwarf the pyramids, all from the comfort of our own homes. The combining of powerful computers, new easy-to-use software tools, and hundreds of thousands of willing volunteers has made us realize that the once impossible is now very possible. This marriage of tools and humans is called the genealogical community, or for our purposes “The Community.” Here is what the power of the community can do:<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Index millions of rolls of microfilm with billions of pieces of information for easy, instantaneous retrieval, in just&nbsp;few&nbsp;years.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Allow new records to immediately be digitized and indexed for instantaneous search and retrieval.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Connect descendents to pictures of ancestors’ tombstones within hours without having to leave the house.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Build a family tree with billions of names that have been searched and connected from a vast database and verified with DNA as well as documented evidences.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;• Eliminate duplication and kill myths by exposing them to the bright light of original sources. After all, who will make an uneducated guess when concrete evidence is readily and easily seen?<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Have specific research questions become visible to millions of people instantaneously, ensuring that those with specific knowledge and resources can provide the best answers without waiting months or years.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; • Have the combined knowledge and experience of all of our brains able to be tapped easily and quickly.  

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