Wholly Genes Software Conference is a Success

The 2008 Genealogy Conference and Cruise sponsored by Wholly Genes Software came to an end this morning in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Two hundred or more smiling genealogists joined the other passengers departing the Caribbean Princess cruise ship at the San Juan cruise ship terminal. All the genealogists that I talked with seemed to enjoy themselves.

The Caribbean Princess left New York City a week ago, on October 26. It seemed fitting that we weighed anchor and immediately steamed past the Statue of Liberty and also past Ellis Island, the focus of so many of our research efforts.

Well, not everyone has ancestors who passed through Ellis Island. For instance, I do not. Indeed, not all Americans have ancestors who passed through Ellis Island, although millions do. We can assume the same for many of the genealogists on board from Canada, England, Ireland, Belgium, and New Zealand. Indeed, this was an international group.

The first evening saw a welcome party hosted by Wholly Genes Software, followed by “One-on-One” sessions with the various presenters and others offering personalized assistance with various issues. In some cases, speakers offered suggestions in finding records about ancestors. Others offered help with The Master Genealogist software. Some of us, myself included, offered assistance with other software questions.

During the week, I offered one-on-one assistance to several Macintosh owners who use The Master Genealogist on their Macs. (Tip: It works well on a Mac.) In fact, I was surprised to see so many Mac users on a cruise sponsored by a company that produces software for Windows systems. Clearly, the choice of operating system is becoming less and less important these days.

The first three days of the cruise were spent at sea as the ship headed from the chilly waters of New York Harbor to the warm climate of the first stop in St. Kitts. Those three days were filled with genealogy presentations. It was similar to attending a three-day genealogy conference in most any American city except that the food was better. Lectures were presented by Bob Velke, John Titford (from England), Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Barbara Vines Little, John Grenham (from Ireland), John Cardinal, Craig Scott, Tony Burroughs, David Allen Lambert, and Cyndi Howells (of Cyndi's list fame).

On the fourth day, the ship stopped at its first port of call: St. Kitts. Many of the genealogists went on various adventures: photography tours, sightseeing, scuba diving, lying on a tropical beach, or simply shopping in the local town. The weather was perfect: mid-80s with a nice sea breeze blowing steadily. The ship weighed anchor about 6:00 PM and headed to Antigua, where the fifth day was spent in similar activities to the previous day.

On the sixth and last full day, the ship stopped in St. Thomas, which seems to be the shopping capitol of the Caribbean. A number of the genealogists participated in a special tour arranged at the Caribbean Genealogy Library in St. Thomas. This research facility is small but has a great collection of genealogy data about Caribbean residents through the years.

On the seventh day, the Caribbean Princess arrived at its final destination: San Juan, Puerto Rico. Many of the cruise participants headed straight for the airport while a few, myself included, checked into local hotels. I plan to do a bit more sightseeing.

Most everything on the cruise clicked like clockwork. If there were any problems with the genealogy-oriented activities, I didn't see them or hear about them.

I have to say “thank you” to Bob Velke, Cathy Velke, Barbara Grempler, and the other folks at Wholly Genes Software for their hosting of a great genealogy conference and cruise. I know they spent many hours preparing for this year's cruise, and they also worked hard during the week so that so many others could relax and enjoy themselves. The result was a first-class effort.

If you are thinking about taking a genealogy cruise next year, I can heartily endorse the idea. Several such cruises are available to choose from. Prices vary but are generally about the same or even cheaper than going to a 3 or 4-day genealogy conference in a distant city. In addition, the food and the accommodations are much better. Then there's the sightseeing...

Your family members who are not interested in genealogy will probably love to accompany you on a cruise to exotic ports of call, something that might not be true of a trip to a genealogy conference held in a downtown convention center at some distant city.

I suspect that announcements about 2009 cruises will be made in the next four to six months. Stay tuned.

Comments

[Elizabeth Samwel]

> During the week, I offered one-on-one assistance to several Macintosh owners who use The Master Genealogist on their Macs. (Hint: It works well on a Mac.)

So you discovered the ability to run virtual machines.
But WHY - other than following lectures - would you WANT to run TMG when you can run a so much better program like Reunion or MacFamilyTree?

[Graeme Simpson]

>But WHY - other than following lectures - would you WANT to run TMG when you can run a so much better program like Reunion or MacFamilyTree?

Maybe because it is MUCH cheaper to buy, or maybe they have other fellow researchers using TMG so it makes sense to use the same program, maybe they just like it as a program etc etc After all, choice of genealogy program is very much a personal one, often directed by what fellow researchers are using, availability of local support, desired features....

I think it is worth noting that TMG does work well on a MAC for those who want to use it in that way.This dosen't take away from the excellent Reunion program that most (down under at least) appear to use on their MACs.

[Jeri Steele]

TMG users tend to be people who seriously want to slice and dice their data as well as being able to customize how their data comes out in reports. Once I've invested the time in learning all the features of one program and writing custom reports, I'm not very motivated to change. Can Reunion output Excel spreadsheets of all information on sources, events, people, etc. with extensive filters so that I can print all events that happened in a county or show only my research to-dos for one repository? Even if they do how long is it going to take to learn it. Instead I've chosen to bring up parallels and run TMG on it. I'm a big fan of Mac and I choose to run just about everything else on the Mac side!

[Elizabeth Samwel]

> Even if they do how long is it going to take to learn it.
You may be interested to know that most programs are not as ridiculously hard to use as TMG, most are quite intuitive. Give them a try, it will be real eye opener to you.

[BJ Lass]

TMG isn't all that hard to use "right out of the box". Stay in Beginner mode, leave the helpful "Cue Cards" turned on and follow the prompts to start a new project. Enter data for a couple generations and see how the program works. Keep this project as a test project to experiment with as you learn the flexibility of TMG. Custom sentences, custom tags (events), place styles, name styles, reports, etc., etc., etc. Now, import your data, and you'll feel much more comfortable with TMG.

TMG is only hard when you try to learn everything at the same time. Remember when you learned to drive -- you started on the small slow roads, you didn't start at 65 mph on the expressway.

[Cliff Venier]

Without getting into the controversy over softwares, I want to second Dick's assessment of the Wholly Genes Cruise. The choice of speakers seemed to be based on both their family history knowledge and on their presentation skills. Never a dull moment with lots of examples and "lessons".

[Dae Powell]

Most genealogy programs cannot do what TMG can do. I like to think of it as a KIT, from which you can make the program display your data exactly the way you wish. You can also control its behaviour, import ALL the data stored on other systems, and create an incredible variety of web sites using Second Site.

The learning curve was short for me, but your mileage may vary. I've used 5 other programs besides TMG and this was my THIRD cruise with Bob Velke and crew. So I guess I'm hooked, eh? By the end of the week I'll have MY review of the cruise on my web site.

Happy Dae, in Puerto Rico
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Marcella Brewer]

> Most genealogy programs cannot do what TMG can do... , import ALL the data stored on other systems,
LOL. Funny girl. It cannot even import my PAF data. The backwards program still doesn't support Unicode. How dumb is that.
It is an awful interface on top of a limited, inflexible program.
It cannot even make a web site - but you that right? That's why you mention Second SIte....

[Leon Salou]

Cliff Venier wrote

"Without getting into the controversy over softwares, I want to second Dick's assessment of the Wholly Genes Cruise."

Cliff, this is not an honest assessment, just an advertisement in exchange for a free ticket. The TMG ppl haven't figured out yet how many of us stopped trusting Dick years ago.

[BJ Lass]

Leon, Where did that comment that "The TMG ppl haven't figured out yet how many of us stopped trusting Dick years ago" come from? Dick was on the Legacy, Roots Magic and the Wholly Genes sponsored cruise. All Cliff was saying is that he enjoyed the conference and cruise, same as Dick. So are you saying that since you don't trust Dick, he must have hated the cruise?

Make constructive remarks, don't just dis software that you don't like.

[Randy Seaver]

I too was on the WG/TMG cruise, and have posted daily summaries of my observations during the Wholly Genes Conference and my own cruise activities on my blog at www.geneamusings.com. If you go to my blog, scroll back to October 26th to read from the start of the cruise.

It was great to meet several readers of EOGN and Genea-Musings on the cruise - and to be able to put faces and voices to some of the names I know from the genealogy world.

I greatly appreciate that Dick linked back to one of my Genea-Musings posts just before the cruise - several EOGN readers told me that they had read Genea-Musings for the first time due to Dick's link.

I'm still in Puerto Rico enjoying my vacation -- Randy

[George]

I wasn't on the cruise but I'll add my two cents worth. The only reason I run TMG on my Macintosh is because there is no native Macintosh genealogy program that comes close to TMG's power and flexibility. If I could find a Mac genealogy program that was as good as TMG, I would switch immediately. I have tried all the Mac genealogy programs. I even paid a lot of money for Reunion, then found it didn't do half of what TMG does.

[Cindy]

Is there anyway to run TMG without having to run Windows on your Mac? We just got an iMac and I love it, the only part I don't love is dealing with Windows in Parallels. I want to tell Windows to forget it at this point!

I know Linux has Wine, is there something similar for running TMG on a Mac?

[Kathy Moody]

I attended my first Genealogy Cruise (Wholly Genes); the experience exceeded my expectations and was exceptionally good.

The Speakers were "the cream of the crop"..I would recommend it to anyone.. well worth it. I came away with lots of wonderful ideas,new ways of approaching this work and reinforced enthusiasm. A Huge Thank you to Dick Eastman for his work in making me and others aware of this wonderful opportunity ( and the great resource his site is) and to Bob Velke and his staff (and the speakers )for an incredibly enjoyable and well put together program. I look forward to future trips.

[Dick Eastman]

---> Is there anyway to run TMG without having to run Windows on your Mac?

No.

There are three competitive products: Parallels, VMware, and virtualBox. However, all three require that you pay the "Microsoft tax" by loading a copy of Windows onto the Mac. I do not know of any solution for Macintosh that allows the running of Windows programs without Windows.

- Dick Eastman

[theKiwi]

CrossOver does allow you to avoid the Microsoft Tax by letting you run "some" Windows software on an Intel Mac without needing a copy of Windows.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

But the downside is that the number of supported applications is somewhat limited.

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name

Legacy is listed as "known not to work". TMG is "untested".

Just last week for a 24 hour period code weavers were giving away CrossOver Mac because the price of petrol in Milwaukee had fallen to a level that triggered the give away

http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20081027/

Cheers

Roger