Introducing the Curator Team

Sharon, did the Huguenots go to South Africa? Mine went to Virginia in the American Colonies.

Eldon if Sharon doesn't have a chance to answer because she's already on the road, I will give you the answer through this little table.

It's actually fascinating -- we were thinking about a "Huguenot diaspora" Master Project:

http://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/history.html

This map indicates the main routes used by Huguenot refugees, the countries to which they went and the numbers settling in each area.

Dutch Republic 50-60K
England 40-50K
Germany 25-30K
Switzerland 22K
Ireland 10K
Americas 10K
N.E. Europe 2K
Cape of Good Hope 400

Erica, thanks for the link. The project idea is great, I'll join. Actually a lot of them who went to the Dutch Republic and Ireland ended up in the American Colony's.

@Malka Mysels,
Thanks! I'll check out the discussion. I wish I could hear Jadra's talk.

Hmm, wonder if there should be an umbrella project of refugees covering Hugunots and Palatines. I've already got a project for the Palatines. Similar time (I believe) persecuted for their religion and looks like they took similar routes but out of Germany rather than France.

Mike, I think they should be separated but related. I prefer 1 goal projects if you know what i mean. To broad a scope could discourage people.

I'm excited to be designated geni.com's newest Curator.

I've been active in several projects including those involving everything from early USA settlement in Connecticut, to Mormon Pioneers, "Namesakes" and the geni programming API. I love the collaborative nature of family history research and enjoy helping others make new discoveries about their ancestors and documenting that information for others.

I have ongoing research interests in the following localities: California, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Eastern Canada, Southern England, Ireland and Norway.

My favorite area of geni.com is related to various "projects". Working on these has been, and will continue to be, a model of the success that can be found with collaborative family history. I'm also active in contributing updates to profile's "about me" section to help add historical context to each individual life history.

...well enough about me...there's work to do.

--Randy S.

Congratulations, Randy! I can attest to the creativity, dedication, and commitment you'll bring to the job. You've been a great help in my learning curve and I'm very appreciative!

Congratulations Randy, It's been great working with you on the Mormon projects and I look forward to working with you in the future.

Because of Geni, it turns out that Randy Stebbing and I are 11th cousins. I had no idea I was related to "prominent Puritans" and other American religious leaders.

Randy has been so helpful in fleshing out their profiles.

Like Randy I really enjoy Geni "projects." They are a way to focus and learn about the larger history our ancestors are involved in.

A locality basis turns out to be a very interesting way to understand a life story. I look forward to some gold rush projects for instance!

Welcome aboard, Randy!

Congrats Randy, all of you guys do a great job, Its also been fun seeing the connections we all have, Keep up the Great work!! Maybe one day I will figure all the computer stuff out and be able to contribute better.

Welcome Randy!

Congrats Randy! BTW, just saw that Randy Dean Stebbing is my 7th cousin twice removed.

Randy is my 9th cousin through Governor William Leete of Connecticut. He's a pleasure to work with on projects and researching genealogy and correcting profiles, so welcome Randy. His work on Original Proprietors of Hartford, Connecticut was excellent.

Welcome Randy!

Good to have you on board Randy - 13th cousin four times removed!

Hi Randy, welcome!

Randy...Congrats!!! I have admired your profile "fixing" skills...glad someone in the know did as well!!!

Randy, congrats, 11th cousin!

Welcome Randy

I have the pleasure to announce that Geni has appointed a Dutch curator. I am pleased to be that curator. Especially for persons who use the Dutch language operating on Geni can be more easy now.

I am doing genealogical research since about 1969.
Since then I've always been a helper to others in their research for their ancestors.
I had my first experience with a wiki-based global collaboration genealogy site on WeRelate.org (about 2 million profiles). WeRelate had big problems because of the many duplicates, caused by gedcom uploads. I was there one of the top 5 mergers to solve the problems.
I also had experience with a little similar site, Familypedia (about 100,000 profiles). Familypedia had not the problem of the many duplicates because they had no gedcom upload process. I learned there the wiki-techniques to present genealogies.
In the recent years I was an active administrator of the multilingual Rodovid genealogy site (about 500,000 profiles) in the Dutch and German location and a co-administrator in the English and general manager (engine) location. I stop now as administrator on Rodovid to give my attention to Geni. On Geni I started the 4th april 2009 with the gedcom upload of my pedigree, but caused by personal circumstances (severe illness of my spouse) I was inactive untill the 11th of aeptember 2011.
Geni is a big challenge because there are so many users and profiles, so we can really speak of a collaborative global genealogy.
That creates opportunities, not so much for me, but specially for Geni as a prominent leading collaboration site.
All users are for Geni equal. As curator, I am nothing more than other users, an ordinary user or a pro user. I only have easier access to data and I have many more tools, so I can help others.
As a curator I am here for all users, to make them have more fun and to give them more possibilities to work useful on and with Geni. Above that I try to help Geni to improve the site.
Geni still has much trouble caused by earlier mass upload of gedcom files with many duplicates, incorrect family relationships and wrong merges.
With all manpower Geni is working to overcome these problems by properly merging of the many duplicate profiles and correction of erroneous parents and partners. The software is constantly being improved by Geni, firstly to avoid futural false and erroneous merges, secondly to make it possible to undo wrong merges and relationships more easily. Geni is also working to improve the gedcom upload method to prevent many duplicates added in the future.

Still there is a lot of work to do and still there is to little manpower to manage the almost 100 million profiles perfectly, but Geni is continiously looking for expansion of the actual group of good curators and collaborators !

Do you have problems, suggestions or other matters, you can count on me !

Congratulations Fred

Congrats Fred!!!

Fred, I'm very happy to have you on board. You're a great addition to the team.

What a great introduction Fred! I look forward to you continuing your great support and contributions, with broader responsibilities. The Dutch are lucky :) I loved hearing your insights.

congratulations Fred :-)

Welcome Fred, glad to have you aboard.

Welcome Fred, congratulations!

Fred Bergman

What a wonderful and inspiring introduction Fred.

I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work with you. In fact I've been holding off on New Netherlands genealogy (now New York - and where I live) until the Dutch community was able to take itself to the next step.

I understand you've created a Portal for Netherlands users? Would you mind posting that link? I want to show it off to other countries.