Introducing the Curator Team

Post deleted by Harald Alvestrand on Sep 16, 2010 at 8:56 AM

I'm also one of the new curators. I was born and still living in Finland (Newsweek contained recently a statement about this country :-), and belonging to the small swedishspeaking minority. I work in the telecoms area.

Have been working with genealogy only since 2008, when Geni triggered my interest. As there's paths from both my mother's and my father's side to ancient Scotland, that's where I've been working a lot, alongside with Finland. As a late addition I started working on the van Holland -area.

I speak fluently Swedish, Finnish and English. Trying also to remember something from my German studies from way back, as some of the sources are in German.

Lars

Post deleted by Harald Alvestrand on Sep 16, 2010 at 8:56 AM

My myopic hobby interests as a curator is the legendary Viking line running from Fornjot Fornjotur King of Kvenland to Ivar Halfdansson Ivar Halfdansson, Opplendingejarl, branching out into neighbouring areas as time and energy permit. My standard question when asked to do something is likely to be "Why do you think that?" - sources rule!

I live in Norway and work in Stockholm (which is NOT in Norway), speak Norwegian and English, can get by on text in the other Nordic languages (Swedish, Danish, Icelandic), understand some German, and fall back on Google Translate for most other languages.

Happy to help when needed, when I can!

I wanted to add that the families I am following in the migration into Appalachia are Salmons/Sammons, Slones, Mead/Meade, Preston, Frazier/Frasure, Martin, Hall, Newman, Akers, Justice, Jarrell, Caudill, Sizemore, Carter, Park, and DeBord/Deboard families.

The families I am following in the Gold Rush are Henderson, Snelling, Tandy and Burrus. Some of those branches have been traced back to the Norman invasion through the Clopton, Pecche and Quarles lines.

I am so happy to share information on my family. I always learn and get as much as I give.

Greetings! Thanks for the include on the curator team! I feel like an alcoholic accepting a drink! My addiction to this site just might get a whole lot worse if that is possible.: )
15 or so years ago I got tired of hearing all the family stories about who we are supposedly related to, so I started a hunt to either prove or disprove them and managed to disprove them all, but that lead to a lot more interesting discoveries, and I have been on a roll ever since.
My background is in construction/renovation, theater set building and props. I am a pretty good problem solver, ran a girls summer arts camp, owned a bookstore in the 70's, camp hiking trip leader, traveled and worked picking grapes in France and care taking a farm in Tuscana with 100 animals.
I am as interested in trees that I don't have a connection with as well as my own. It is all interesting and a great excuse to learn as much as possible about our history.
I know a bit of French, but on the whole my language skilled are abominable.
So glad to be participating and if I screw up don't hesitate to let me know!
Meg

So glad to have you on the team Margaret!

Welcome Harald and Lars! I haven't had the pleasure of 'working' with you before but I look forward to it!

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all the new additions to the Curating team. I feel somewhat ashamed of what I've achieved when I read all these introductions....What a great team! The Geni Tree should really start improving rapidly now.

Post deleted by Private User on Sep 22, 2010 at 8:50 AM

To all CURATORS:
I think you are doing a great job and so far I have learned a lot from your input.
Are you volunteers or paid people?
From one of the answers I got I know that you are also Geni users like I am.
Hopefully, by the end of this period of experimentation and discussion we can
have a more robust and intuitive Geni site.

Post deleted by Bjørn P. Brox on Sep 16, 2010 at 12:33 PM

Thank you, Daniel! We are all volunteers who are heavily involved as Geni users.

Bjorn,
your invisible post gave an interesting idea.
If there is an artist in the Geni family, let him/her make a collage of the curators' photos, all wearing Geni T-shirts.
You don't have to thank me for saying what is true.

kudos to all of you curators.

Post deleted by Bjørn P. Brox on Oct 21, 2010 at 10:36 AM

I want a t-shirt!!

Need any more curators?? I love playing hookey from writing my script.

Your distant cousin, Dez

I am so stoked! I just recieved in the mail today a family Bible from the late 1800's and about 40 pictures from that era. I will be posting them this weekend. This was recieved from someone I had never met, that was a girlfriend of a cousin of mine who recently died. She was in her 90's and wanted to preserve history. I do not know how she found me, but am glad to recieve this blessing!

I wonder what the criterias for beiing a curator were?

Many profiles owned?
Big activity in forums?
Big activity in discussions?
Been a PRO member for a long time?
Big merger?
Historical knowlegde?
Genealogical knowledge?

So what were the criterias to become a curator? How was the selection process?

Not that I'm complaining about the curators work, but I'm interested how the selection-process was.

Is the curator selection based on activity on forums/discussions/Geni or is it besed on genealogical/historical knowledge?

Remi - based on geographical distribution, area of expertise, genealogical knowledge, willingness and ability to promote cooperation, ability to find and rely on sources.

not based on number of profiles, Pro status, length of membership, participation in discussions or forums.

Geni staff selected the first group, the first group selected the second, the second the third, etc.

Remi ... Good question, answer is that there was not any one particular criteria. It's important to point out that Geni insisted that the selections come from the group, not from Geni.

Those people that have been more active on discussions, have done a lot of good merging, and generally been helpful to others were on top of the list. From there we tried to balance languages, regions, and expertise areas as best we could.

We are up to 40 or so curators and I expect it will go higher as we work out the functional issues.

Adding some additional information about myself (the first part of this was in reply to a message from Noah telling me that I'd been nominated as a potential curator and asking if I would like to be one).

I'll add a few extra comments below as well:

Yes, I am interested. I'm very good in a number of areas although not in all. I've been tested by universities for matching abilities and score very high in that area and scored high as well in the areas of problem solving, critical thinking, etc. (all areas). I tend to jump around a lot since I'm interested in just about everything. I love history. My father was a museum curator for many years and was later an assistant director. My mother was an editor and also a librarian. Both of them influenced me.

I know my faults. I suppose that probably my worst fault is that I am sometimes hesitant to move forward because I want to explore all ideas and areas and sometimes feel as if nothing ever is (or perhaps should not be) finally done. I also want to be fair with all concerned.

I have been involved in many cooperative ventures as well as served on co-op boards. In many of the co-ops where I've been involved there was a consensus voting system and in some of those systems if even one person objected to a motion it could not be passed. There was, however. in that particular system a way for the rest of the people involved to overrule that one person in cases where a change was absolutely necessary. If two people objected there was no way to overrule them.

I currently am a co-owner of two cooperative business. My husband is the vice president of the board (as well as the head IT person) of one of the cooperative businesses. We discuss everything so basically I'm sort of on the board there too (haha). He has served on the board many different times over many years.

I've also worked (a little) in the field of conflict resolution and I believe that could be helpful working as a curator.

Lastly, I was involved many years ago in cooperative schools. I didn't finish my degree in early childhood education and psychology (because of a divorce and a move cross country) but in any case, I believe that my work with children has helped me to get along well with all people. My mother also started out teaching when I was young and she took me with her to her classes at the university of Illinois and so it was something I was already very familiar with.

Thank you for considering me for nomination as a curator.

I also sent the following P.S.

One thing i forgot. This is sort of funny.

I was the president of a co-op house consisting of 35 people (I've lived in several). But really I was a *puppet*. I didn't do anything except sign off on the yearly taxes. That was my sole duty as president.

Haha!

The Curator Team accepted me shortly after that and then I added my prior post here announcing that I was now a curator.

Here are a couple more things about me:

I'm a bit shy, although I speak up plenty when I feel comfortable and I feel very comfortable here. I'm very happy to be here working with all of you.

The reason I wrote a lot above about cooperative business is because Geni is about all of us cooperating and working together.

My language is English. I'm interested in all other languages and would love to learn as many other languages as possible. Someday perhaps I will learn a few more.

I know a lot of the history connected to many of the historical profiles.

I've been working on genealogy for about 30 years.

- Kim Odenweller

Feeling a bit jealous of the purple badge... Congratulations to the newest batch and thank you for all that you do!

Jenna

Hello
I would like to thank Noah and Geni for appointing me as a curator. I will try to live up to the role.
I have been Interested in genealogy and history since school days. For the last 5 years, as a hobby, I have also been researching the royal families and nobility of Europe.

I have a lot of knowledge of Jewish families, mainly from Germany, Poland and Holland.

My languages are Hebrew, English, and some German.

You are welcome to contact me along with the other curators with any question on the site, and I will do my best to solve what I can, with my fellow curators.

I look forward to working with you all.

Ofir

Congratulations on your appointment. You can thank the other curators -- they nominate and vote on new curators. You all are doing such an excellent job!

Thanks Michael, I've already did :-)

Hello, Ofir! Congratulations, and I'm so glad it is you, who is willing to help solve all our problems! I, too, look forward to working with you!
Kitty Milloy, San Diego, CA

I'm looking forward to working with all of the new curators in this continuing journey of realizing the dream of the "Big Tree"!

@FARKAS Mihaly Laszlo, correct me if I am not right. To the best of my understanding Hungarian and Finnish both derive from Mongol, since both countries were conquered by two Mongol brothers and ruled by them for many years, and not from Turkish, as mentioned in your brief profile.
On a personal level, my roots are similar to yours, and I am having a hard time
gathering information about many relatives from today's Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Ukraine. I wonder if you could assist me first with advise to how and where to look, and if that doesn't work maybe put me in touch with someone who could assist. Any help or advice is welcome and thanked in advance

@Daniel: Finno-Ugric languages have nothing to do with Mongols:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages