Geni Pilipinas

Moving a message trail to a public discussion. Here's the summary from Erica Isabel Howton:

We've been talking about the "portal" projects for regional / international geni users.
Here's what we got so far:

- Mona Liza San Diego Magno, "the mistress of organization" has a beautiful array of Filipino genealogy projects going. What can / should we do to take them to the next level?

- Shmuel "Don Quixote" Kam is reporting on results of the recent Israeli outreach effort; part of how I saw this discussion was to think about "rolling out" a program, such as the mailing y'all did for Israel, to other regions. Any thoughts? Doable for P.I.?

- We all want to emulate / learn from the Estonian experience and frankly (at least I am) quite envious of the Estonia / Geni success story. Liivi and Lauri, is there any history you can tell us about?

Take aways so far:

-- Not necessary to translate the current Philippines projects into other P.I. languages as English is one of the two official languages

-- Do we "repurpose" the main genealogy current project, http://www.geni.com/projects/Families-of-the-Philippines? Or do we create a "gateway to the P.I." project that includes more technical assistance with the application?

-- Is it possible for Geni to somehow create a "welcome to Geni, New User from the Philippines, please go introduce yourself here" link? Can / should this be done for other countries and regions?

..... I am really getting into this idea! George, Grant -- your feedback please.

Everyone, feel free to add more people to this discussion. I have already learned quite a lot.

Adding:

FYI

Here's the Croatian Portal project:

http://www.geni.com/projects/Hrvatski-portal-Geni-Croatia

Notice the warm and personal "welcome" message:

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From October 2010, Geni has Croatian Curators, Jadranka, Natalija and Lara. We can help with genealogy of Makarska region and general questions on how to use Geni. You can leave your questions on discussion board for this project or contact us directly. We have created this portal to help you navigate this site and have included links to all of the pages related to projects on Croatian Genealogy on Geni.
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Jadranka Sunde, who was our first Croat curator (although she lives currently in Australia) mentioned recently:

"We are also putting together an email message that could possibly be sent for our (Croatian) Independence day."

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Is there an event coming up in the P.I. that would be a natural tie in for a Geni marketing effort?

Recipients of earlier trail: Private User, LipLip Macalam Bagundol, George Gearhart, Private User, Liivi ''GeniviiL'', Shmuel-Aharon "Don Quixote" Kam, Victar, Kenneth Kwame Welsh, Private User, Malka Mysels, Lauri Kreen, Ͼ, Private User

Did I miss anyone?

Several significant historical events are coming up.

June 12 marks 113 years of independence from Spain.

June 19 is marks 150 years since the birth of our national hero, Jose Rizal. A member of the National Commemoration Committee is a Geni member and one I collaborate on in one of the surname projects.

July 4, marks what is called Philippine-American Friendship Day. With Filipinos forming one of the largest migrant group to the United States, it would be a good opportunity to provide them some benefits to joining the Filipino family forest on Geni.

Reaching out to a sub-set of Geni users who to whom the above would be relevant sounds like an exciting opportunity!

Some people say many Estonians joined Geni after an article in a national daily newspaper. There's no "portal" as such - Geni became popular in Estonia before projects were introduced. For about a year now we've had a group in FB http://www.facebook.com/EestlasteGeniKogukond with over 4400 members at the moment.
There are a few active discussions and our own Collaboration Pool. With only a little over a million people in Estonia it's not that difficult to map almost everyone - having church records freely available online does help though (-;

There's actually quite a big Filipino community in Ireland and they even held a Mrs Philippines Ireland pageant of recent - search for it in youtube!

Next weekend is the 8th Filipino day in Ireland / 113th Independence day of Philippines / 150th Birthday of Dr Jose Rizal (his MP Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda), over 500 people have said they are attending http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175881015780624.

Liivi ''GeniviiL''

- So can you msg the FB group about this of this Project for 8th Filipino Day in Ireland? Sounds like a "marketing opp" to me! Also, just out of curiosity: the Filipino / Irish marriage event - red heads or not? (We really need to get that "Red Head" project going ....)

- George Gearhart & Grant - any possibility of Geni Swag? Geni contests? Filipino / Irish -- I mean, that's all kinds of awesome ... and genealogically interesting.

- Mona wrote:

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July 4, marks what is called Philippine-American Friendship Day. With Filipinos forming one of the largest migrant group to the United States, it would be a good opportunity to provide them some benefits to joining the Filipino family forest on Geni.

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YES what a great twist on 4th of July. I love it.

As you probably know, there's a substantial Filipino and Filipino - American community where I live, NYC area. MEZ (Maria Edmonds-Zediker) mentioned a number in her area in Northern California.

Here's a Wiki article on "Overseas Filipino"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Filipino

Beauty pageant -- haha. That sounds about right! :D

Filipino communities outside the Philippines are indeed very strong -- US, Europe, Middle East, Japan, HongKong, Singapore ... pretty much everywhere. Key cities mean more organized culture-centric celebrations.

Why are Filipinos so migratory these days? For those of us who are curious, I would love links to P.I. history and culture. I mean I see more Filipinos in NYC all the time and actually do wonder - is this an "economic" diaspora? Just adventurous, like the wandering Australians I meet all the time????