The award to the wiki
The lights have been turned off, the booths dismantled, the speakers scattering to airports, highways and train stations to head home from the 40th annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies which has wrapped up in Springfield, Illinois.
The Legal Genealogist is en route home, sitting at O’Hare Airport in Chicago waiting for a connecting flight, and feeling really good about so much of what just transpired at this great conference.
And one of the things that warms my heart the most — one of the things that’s most important to all of us in the genetic genealogy community — is the fact that there was a very well-deserved award that was handed out at this conference that shouldn’t be allowed to go unnoticed and unheralded despite the hustle and bustle of the overall conference:
FGS presented its Technology Advances Award to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) Wiki in recognition for their impact on the genealogy community with their promotion and education of genetic genealogy and their advocacy for education of genetics as a tool for genealogical research.
The ISOGG Wiki is simply one of the best resources available to genetic genealogists to help us understand DNA testing and the proper uses and the limits of DNA tests in advancing our family history. It is where you can learn all about YDNA testing and autosomal DNA statistics and mitochondrial DNA tests.
It’s the go-to place for figuring out the pros and cons of all the different testing companies, and for understanding the very language of genetic genealogy with its genetics glossary, and it’s got lots of hand-holding even for those who need beginner’s guides to genetic genealogy.
The Wiki has three directors and administrators: Debbie Cruwys Kennett, who does most of the editing (and contributes amazingly to the content); Tom Hutchison, the technical guru who makes sure the wiki software works the way we need it to; and CeCe Moore, who approves new user accounts.
They’re not the only ones who contribute to the wiki, of course: what makes it a wiki is that any approved user can contribute and — thank heavens — so many people do contribute.
There are few awards that could be as well-deserved as this one. Congratulations to the ISOGG wiki, its directors, administrators and contributors for their impact on the genealogy community with their promotion and education of genetic genealogy and their advocacy for education of genetics as a tool for genealogical research.
Thank you, ISOGG! Well done!
