Thursday, December 3, 2009

Yikes, long time no talk-ProGen work and NGS Lesson 3

So after a prolonged illness and then a medical issue in the family, I finally have a few minutes to get caught up here. I've been trying to play catch up with my ProGen work, as well as my NGS home course work. November's ProGen assignment was to write up a business plan. The reading assignment was "Structuring a Business" (chapter 9 of Professional Genealogy) and then we looked at template of a business plan located at http://web.sba.gov/sbtn/registration/index.cfm?CourseId=27. The template was part of a workshop created by the Small Business Administration and included a ton of helpful info on how to develop a business properly from the very beginning. Considering I am pretty clueless on the business side of things, I found this assignment, and the workshop, extremely helpful.

I was also working on Lesson 3 of the NGS home course which focused on contacting family members for information and utilizing queries. There were three parts: writing a letter, conducting an interview, and posting a query. One of the main tips I learned from this section was to remain focused in your queries, no matter what form they take. Once you choose to ask someone for information, stick with one subject rather than trying to ask them about every family member they may have met. I'm writing a letter to my maternal Great Uncle in the hopes that he might have some information to share for me on his father's family. He is one of my Grandpa's younger siblings, but he is also the last surviving member of that family so I would like to try and get some of his memories on paper. The interview will be with my Mom and the subject is my Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Taylor Ward (I've spoken about her in previous posts). The query will be posted on ancestry's community message board regarding the death date and possible burial site for Cassandra Bromagem (Lillian Bromagem's grandmother and my 4th Great Grandmother). Others have stated a death date for Cassandra, however when I was in the county she is believed to have been living in at the time of her death, no death info was found. So that's the plan for Lesson 3. I've gotten the first draft of the letter written, the interview is ready to go, and the query needs to be posted and then I'll send it all in and start working on Lesson 4.

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the business plan lesson as well. I used the detailed SBA template, which took more time but was worth it.

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  2. I did too, Amy. I thought the workshop available on their site was really useful in helping me understand exactly what was supposed to be included in each section. But it was a big project!

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