Wordless Wednesday

Board of Directors Meeting

Wednesday, October 20, 2009

Photograph by Kathryn M. Doyle, Oakland, California.

Annual Breuner Building Food Drive

Carly Perez-Banuet, Operations Manager of Cushman & Wakefield of California, Inc., the management company of 2201 Broadway, sent this announcement about the Breuner Building Annual Food Drive:

It's time for our annual Holiday Food Drive! Last year we collected over 200 pounds of food for local families. Let hit 300 lbs this year! The barrel is already set up in the lobby. Attached is a list of their most needed foods. Let’s spread that holiday cheer!

The Alameda County Community Food Bank has been serving the community since 1985. As the county's clearinghouse for donated food, the Food Bank provides food assistance for 40,000 low-income Alameda County residents each week, which includes 14,000 children and 7, seniors. Most adults served are among the working poor. While the holidays are always a season of escalated demand for food, in 2009, the Food Bank is responding to unprecedented need in Alameda County.


* The following is a list of the most needed food items:

• Canned Fruit & Vegetables
• Canned Meats and Fish
• Peanut Butter
• Pasta
• Beans
• Rice
• Canned Soup
• Dry Cereal and Oatmeal
• Tomato Sauce
• Powdered Milk

The food bin will be located in the main lobby through Christmas week.

Piedmont Adult School Offers Genealogy Basics

CGS member Craig Siulinski will be the instructor of a new genealogy class offered for the first time through the Piedmont Adult School. The ten session course, Genealogy Basics, will meet on Wednesday evenings, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m., from January 6 through March 10, 2010. Class enrollment is limited to fifteen.

Students will learn specific strategies for uncovering information about their ancestors. Areas to include: key factors for beginners, importance of organization and documentation, conducting searches on free websites and selected reports to locate one's ancestors. Class includes one field trip to be announced.

Piedmont Adult School
800 Magnolia Ave, Piedmont, CA 94611
Phone: 510-594-2655

Happy (Belated) Second Blogiversary!

I'm a bit behind since the holiday and I haven't yet acknowledged last week's milestone. On November 28, 2007, the California Genealogical Society Board of Directors voted to approve the CGSL blog. It was a venture started rather hastily, with great enthusiasm but little planning. I admit to losing a few nights' sleep the first week wondering how I would ever sustain it. Now I can't believe it's been two years.

Since that time CGS and I have discovered a whole new Web 2.0 world of wikis and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter where I've made many new friends in the GeneaBlogger community. My colleagues are a prolific bunch who fill my blog reader with an endless stream of all things genealogical and who offer a font of inspirational ideas which I gladly co-opt for the benefit of CGS.

During this last year the CGSL blog has become a kind of internet centerpiece for the society. Blog articles link back and forth to the CGS website, to the eNews and to social networking sites and calendars where our events are posted.

Recently Amy Coffin of We Tree featured the CGSL blog in her article Should Your Genealogical Society Have a Blog? She summed up the blog-website relationship perfectly:

Blogs are websites. Websites aren't always blogs. A genealogy society's web page is like a store window. It highlights the group's value, hopefully enticing visitors to walk through the virtual door and explore the site. A blog is like a genealogy society's in-store sale circular. It is a good communication tool for the latest information and quickly changing details. A genealogy society's web page serves one purpose and a blog another.

Now that the whole blog-website-internet dynamic is working well for us, CGS is ready to pretty things up a little. Several members of the Pub/Mark and Website Committees have been working on the CGS "brand" and we will be rolling things out over the next couple of months.

Today Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings very graciously recommended the CGSL blog in his Follow Friday post. Nothing gets past Randy and he made note of the fact that this blog has a new URL: http://blog.californiaancestors.org/. This is the first peek into the branding project which will involve a major redecorating overhaul of the CGSL blog.

Stay tuned.

Wordless Wednesday

Working on the Judge Project

Photograph by Kathryn M. Doyle, October 5, 2009, Oakland, California.