Today I have been at the christmas-meeting in the genelogical society for Englewood area. Lots of really nice people, food, music and some genealogy-speak.

The society has had a great year, with almost 30 new members since I joined in December last year. This tell us something about the huge interest for genealogy, the need of social contact and education. Lots of the members, both in our societies in Norway and this in Englewood are older than me, and that is understandable. Because genealogy takes up so much of your time, you don’t have time to do it as much as you want if you have to combine with work or kids. (or especially both!).

Many of the members in Englewood G.S.F live «up north» during the summer months, just like myself (I live where Santa lives, close to the North Pole according to friends «down here». This gives the same problems, or should we say, challenges as we have in DIS-Oslo/Akershus, lots of people are from other places than the local spot we are at! We therefore need to learn how to use the Internet, and how to communicate on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Blog and other social networks out there. I am really looking forward to the next meeting, «Social Networking for Genealogists» with Drew Smith. He has written a book about this, and I have borrowed it from Sue (thanks Sue) to read before the meeting. Really looking forward to it!!

This is Erik Elg (Moose). He came with us all the way from Norway. He is dressed up in a norway-sweater, with a Norway/USA friendship pin and a DISpin. All dressed up and no place to go?

This is Sue Davis and the moose (moose to the left) – Sue is the president of Englewood Genealogical Society, and it looks like she loves her job there!

This is Maren Thompson – Maren is a very norwegian name. And she has done a lot of work on her norwegian genealogy, but has some brickwalls. Looking forward to get her e-mail with her information, so I can help her with her Knutsons that came to Chicago.

Speaks for itself…