Tuesday’s Tip - Playing in our LVUG community sandbox.

Good morning and welcome to Tuesday’s Tip in the Legacy Virtual Users’ Group. Today I have a few tips and items of interest. Let’s get started.

Controlling Your Google+ Stream - There was a wonderful post about Etiquette on Facebook today and it applies equally well to Google+ and Communities. Know that you can control your Google+ communities - all to help you not get overwhelmed with posts (but I think we are pretty good here with the number and types of posts – so keep them coming).

Icons in Google+ Communities- You see that tile to the left (the one with our title – now take a look at the Notifications icon and the Settings icon (that gear that helps you make Google work the way you want it to). Use those icons, I do! 

I have turned Notifications OFF on most of my communities (I don’t need to know about posts immediately and I don’t need to get a notification on my mobile or in my email). The moderators of our LVUG Community share the workload. We each visit our LVUG Community regularly and Carol Stevens watches out for those posts that don’t belong here. 

I have my Settings to show More in my Google stream (you can choose how much you want to see More, Standard, or Fewer). That works for me AND I check in at the LVUG Community every other day. 

Want to invite others to our Community? Want to share our Community? Want to leave our Community (I hope not, but it is up to you)? The Settings Icon is where you need to go and just click what you are interested in. (Three slides walk you through what I am writing about!).

LVUG Hangouts in 2015 – we are in the planning stages (hey we are volunteers) and you will see some quick polls in the next few days that simply ask you to answer one quick question – please do so as your answers will help us make some decisions about our hangouts. 

If any of you are interested in helping out with a hangout – either a presentation or a co-host presentation (usually about 15-20 minutes), being part of a help session style hangout (working out how to do something in Legacy that has some of us stumped) or being in the room to discuss topics, or handle some of the technical aspects, let us know. We would be happy to have some more volunteers.

We are not having a January hangout – two of the three of us are pretty involved in FGS/RootsTech 2015 – and it is a month away with some meetings and due dates this week! – And we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off (okay so maybe only me). Once we get our planning done and work out the hangout schedule we will be positing it for the remainder of the year. No worries about how to spend your time this Thursday – if you are doing the Genealogy Do-Over or just Review-Over, I am sure you have plenty on your plate. Otherwise there are two Legacy webinars this week and a few recorded in 2014 that are available until the end of January.

Tuesday’s Tip - In December 2014 my project (I have one each month and that is how I work on my Legacy family files) was searching for my direct line folks who were deceased in the USA and then following that up with a FindAGrave event and going through each to make sure I had entered the event and the source correctly and consistently and getting to add some additional FaG finds. Working for 30 minutes each day (except holidays), I got that event cleaned up and I added a number of additional FaG entries.

For January/February 2015 I am working with the 1940 Census – I got all excited about it when it first came out, did some indexing and found some of my families in the census and then, something else must have come up. So again, I put together a search list and I am working my way through it. My tip for you this week is to take advantage of the search capability in Legacy to craft a project that you need to work on. And if you do it, why not share the search parameters with the rest of us. (I will make a short video to show you how I did that for my project). 

Why not share below, what project or research you are working on this month and how you use Legacy to help you “get it done.”

Take care, stay warm, and I don’t know about you – but I am feeling a little sad for my Oregon Ducks – it was a great year and I am very proud of the team, had hoped we would be national champions but we were not the best team on the field last night, although we gave it our all – so congratulations to Ohio State.