Learned that over 600 participants for 3-day conference. Tonight visit to local (St. Paul) research library. Then a Biergarten celebration and dinner. Tomorrow sessions begin.

If you team up with other genealogists who have expertise in an area you don’t, it may benefit you and the client. You never know who might refer you to other clients with your expertise. You can think of it as a strategic alliance. This adds continued value to the shared audience, and strategic alliances could produce potential referral business. 

This teaming up has so much potential for clients that wish to have DNA analysis done or interpreted. I would rather help a client to meet their objective then to inform them, “no I don’t do that.” Find ways to help the client by looking for those strategic alliances. I recently have had a formal alliance with another sole proprietor genealogist (like myself) who is helping with a current client. 

“Building Relationships” is key to fulfilling clients requests, when you know someone with a different skill can help.

https://familysearch.org/blog/en/tracing-immigrant-ancestors-record-trail/

This coming week, I will be attending the International Germanic Genealogy Conference in Minnesota.

Looking forward to 4 wonderful days of genealogy and participation with fellow Professional Genealogists.

Also visiting the GAI Institute in St. Paul. Biergarten on Thursday. http://www.gai-mn.org/

Since May 27, the local genealogy society (https://dcags.wildapricot.org/) talked with over 125 people at the Capital Square in Madison, WI, for the Dane County Farmer’s Market (http://dcfm.org). The Outreach Committee did a total of 7 Saturdays, about 21 hours, meeting people, providing brochures, discussing genealogy topics and events offered to those interested in family history. It was DCAGS first time being visible to such a large public event. Next year we will be back!

Explanation from FamilySearch

If your new to researching your ancestors in the 19th or 18th Century (and further back) you will quickly learn that as a country Germany was not unified until 1871. Part of that explanation is a decree that was made in 1356, at Nuremberg and Metz (Diet of Metz (1356/57)) headed by the Emperor Charles IV which fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, important aspects of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire. It was named the Golden Bull for the golden seal it carried.

The Golden Bull finalized the impact of how elections of leadership would be decided in the middle ages into the 19th century. It also has an impact on how we do research on our German-American ancestors. As a result many genealogy records are not located in one national archive. The electors who represented the city states, republics and noble families across the region of Germany held the power. Through the Golden Bull decree Germany for a few centuries was a dualistic state in which power was shared between the crown and the nobility, with the balance shifting in favor of the nobility or as some say tribal concerns for the local regions.

Reference
1) Wikipedia
2) Michael Hughes book, Early Modern GErmany, 1477-1806. Published 1992 by MacMillan Press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Bull_of_1356

Half way through ProGen Study Groups 2nd assignment. Doing or learning how to properly cite sources, write them down so others can properly find same record, artifact, or website. Good Genealogists are supposed to do this as professionals. Learning to make myself a better genealogy service for my clients as well as a good member of a discipline. I like learning.

Yesterday our society had a beautiful day giving a tour of Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, WI. We had nearly 20 attendees and saw some historic grave sites, time for group discussion on what we saw, including how to take care of tombstones, whether the markers on stones were new or not, sharing of knowledge about findagrave.com, and burial location of a local community member from 1960s who was known as Snowball on State Street. Who is on Find a Grave.

Various photos from the tour with Dane County Area Genealogical Society. As President of Society it was fun to be with group. Listed below are photos of areas we stopped to discuss.