Portchester Castle the most complete Roman fort in Northern EuropeHGS Open Day in Horndean was a Successful Day for All: we really enjoyed a full-on day at the HGS Annual Open Day thanks to Sheila and everyone at HGS for making all so welcome. Well organised, great and easy venue, the rest was up to all of us exhibitors and attendees. It was a great environment to begin to demonstrate tools and approaches deployed in our new evolving Hampshire History Project, and to discuss with a wide range of people interested and often quite expert in researching and developing their Family History Projects.

It was a lively and busy day for all. Hampshire Genealogical Society is an active and well-organised society, yes we are members ourselves but it really shows what volunteers with a shared interest and passion can achieve. Competing with the success of the major commercial players like Ancestry, Find My Past with far less funding ,all the societies are working hard to keep the community learning, going forward, sharing and collaborating and that is not easy! Please if you have a family interest consider joining and supporting your local society and helping to shape it’s future.

Crowd-sourcing is a relatively new phenomenon technologically but from what we have seen, all the groups and societies need is the right technology platform and they can make it happen. They have been doing so for decades even before the internet, all they need is the right tools to share and collaborate online… The challenge for all societies is to keep that momentum going and mange the change needed to let others share and contribute who might not always be able to make the meetings! But more of that later…

Thanks to all who came along, sat down and had a chat, discussed the art of the possible and how we can all take the technology forward to empower projects we all love, for family, local, social, and economic history. We look forward to continuing the conversation over the coming months.

  • We were discussing with many interesting attendees their particular passions and interests and how they and we, might utilise technology capabilities freely available and emerging from projects that academic researchers have often been undertaking behind their own closed doors.
  • What we want to do, is help get those capabilities and resources out there and being used, enjoyed, ,shared explored and added to by us all.  The sharing of the knowledge and resources that are excellent but all too often still, only in the domain of the ivory towers ,out to those of us who actually fund them, the British Tax payer!
new online interactive Hampshire history project
Hampshire History new and evolving project for family, local, social and your connections to Hampshire

Aims of Hampshire History Project

The project is at an early and evolving stage, it will hopefully always be evolving. We wanted a tool that would take the principles of what we are using on our own One Name Study projects and apply them specifically to the history of Hampshire. We wanted something that can grow as we progress, learn, explore, collaborate with like-minded souls, find new resources and projects that others can benefit from. Partly an Ipad like app, partly a magazine, that is interactive, multimedia and of course has lots of intriguing maps, media, videos and resources. We are not trained historians and we don;t pretend to be. We are like most people interested and passionate about where we come from, who we are and how that knowledge can enlighten us and possibly future generations. This is not an academic project, it is a sharing and collaborative project, we hope you may find the time to take a look, and if you are interested take part…please pass on if you think it might be of interest to your family, friends and colleagues.

Bit of a hobby horse but the good news is there are some lights going on in some institutions and together we can look forward to a more open, shared and accessible attitude being an essential requirement for public sector projects! So please make sure YOUR SOCIETY takes part in that conversation!

Our approach started quite simply from our own Family History projects and desire for some better internet enabled tools for those projects. In time we hope and aim,with the merging of our interests and experience of technology, our life-long friendship, and a determination to have some fun and use the technology to map our history, build multimedia timelines, discover new connections, learn more about our history and dare we be so bold, to gain new insights into whatever our particular passion and interests are.

If you are interested in attending one of our workshops, or have a project you need to resource or would like to take forward for your group, society or own interests, please do Contact Us, we will be happy to discuss and see if we can help.

 

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