Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Dick Eastman is the Speaker at the 2010 PGS Seminar

The 2010 PGS Seminar will be held on 13 Feb at the Largo Public Library from 8 AM until 4 PM. I thought I would start giving you information now, even though the actual event is still months away. That way you can make your reservation decision early (this is going to be a popular event so getting a seat early in advised).

For beginners, let me tell you a bit about our primary speaker, Dick Eastman.

Dick is a noted genealogist and speaker who is best known for his online newsletter. We repeat many of his newsletter articles here in this Blog and in email hint-and-tips to our membership. He is also extremely well-versed in the electronic genealogy world; that is, the hardware and software that we use to research and manage our genealogy information.

Dick has been involved in genealogy for more than 30 years. He has worked in the computer industry for more than 40 years in hardware, software, and managerial positions. By the early 1970’s, Dick was already using a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards. He built his first home computer in 1980.

In the mid-1980s, Dick actually went knocking on the door of a rising online star called CompuServe to propose a genealogy forum: a move by which he built a community of family historians over the next 14 years. At the same time, he preached the benefits of technology to an even wider audience of genealogists, including national and international genealogical organizations, and of course, GENTECH, an organization that helped him to spread his message.

In late 1995, before most people had heard of the World Wide Web, Dick had a conversation with Pam Cerutti and expressed an interest in creating a weekly newsletter that he could e-mail to genealogists all over the world. Pam replied, "You'll need an editor." Dick agreed, and Pam instantly became that Editor.

On January 15, 1996, the two launched Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter as an e-mail publication and announced it to 100 surprised friends and acquaintances. The weekly newsletter has since grown into a daily publication, still available in e-mail but also now available on the World Wide Web. The present newsletter is read by more than 40,000 genealogists all over the world. Instead of all articles written by one person, the newsletter now features articles from George G. Morgan, Lloyd Bockstruck, and Michael John Neill, in addition to the many articles by founder Dick Eastman. Other guest authors occasionally publish articles in EOGN.com as well.

We are indeed fortunate to have Dick join us as our primary presenter.

In the future we will give you some more information in this Blog about the seminar to include directions, costs, Dick Eastman's presentation topics, and the topics of our 4 break-out speakers. If you want all of the information now, you can go to the PGS Website and find it there <http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flpgs/index.htm>. Fliers will also be available in the Genealogy Center of the Largo Public Library and at our monthly meetings at 11 am on the third Saturday of each month, also at the library.

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