Good times at the 2017 NGS conference

* Being present Friday when my friend and colleague Karen Stanbary was presented the award for outstanding article published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly in 2016: "Rafael Arriaga, a Mexican Father in Michigan: Autosomal DNA Helps Identify Paternity." Even readers not fluent in DNA will be able to glimpse the power in this technique.

* Hearing LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson's eloquent and nuanced talk at the BCG luncheon Thursday, "Condemnation of Memory: Recalling that African American Genealogy Is American Genealogy" -- which introduced me to some new tools as well.

* Hearing presentations by David Ouimette on Thursday ("Silent Border Crossings: Tracing the Elusive Immigrant Who Left Only Breadcrumbs for Clues") and Thomas W. Jones on Friday ("Converting a Bunch of Information into a Credible Conclusion"). Assemblage is a key intermediate stage between gathering evidence and writing it up. Sometimes we can do it in our heads, but in the more difficult cases we need to lay it all out in plain sight.

* Talking with genealogists, both vintage and new. It seems that is now the main thing I do at national conferences.

* Spending several days within a few blocks of the North Carolina State Archives . . . without ever actually getting there!

* Appreciating the ongoing work to establish good standards for the use of DNA in genealogy.

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Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy's new milestone

Last week's 2012 one-week session of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy saw the completion of the first iteration of a new kind of advanced genealogy education. Five top people in the field, all credentialed, each presented an unpublished problem that they had solved, provided some of the evidence, and challenged their students to piece together the same puzzle.

Faculty were Kory L. Meyerink, Thomas W. Jones, Karen Mauer Green, David Ouimette, and Jim Ison, with Angela McGhie coordinating. The problems were all over the map, including immigrants from Germany, France, and Quebec. Diehard Midwesterners were pleased to find that one ranged all over the heartland.

The methods involved were equally various and intricate; nowhere have I seen the details of the research process probed as thoroughly as here. The problems were hard and the time was short with a new problem given every day. I can't give particulars, as we were sworn to secrecy, but at least one of the five will soon be published.

Even though everyone agreed that it was more important to approach the problem right than to solve it, few of us could avoid wanting to work all hours and race to the finish . . . which is not a research strategy, or at least not a good one. Even those of us who suffered hours of frustration in the library and on the internet enjoyed the give-and-take in the classes afterwards, where we could discuss exactly what worked and what didn't.

The course will be offered again at SLIG 2013, with new problems. Anyone who has taken an advanced methods course, or has experienced the equivalent, should give it some thought -- and be sure to get plenty of sleep the week before! (And if you want a day-by-day story of such a course, check out Susan Farrell Bankhead's blog posts on Jones's advanced course this year.)