This year marks another milestone for the John Walker Family Organization. We embarked on a fundamental shift in the way we serve you and are excited to share our plans. First is our focus on original historic documentation. Second is our manner of communication, emphasizing social media. And third is publishing, both in traditional print and electronic formats, to provide you better access to information.

No one has felt the changing technology landscape more than we have. Family search, while no longer new to many of you, has fundamentally changed where we focus our efforts. Social media is changing how we communicate in a one-to-many fashion. And search optimization is helping more of you find us online, and more importantly finding relevant information you want online.

For the first 50 years of this organizations existence, work was done by a precious few visionaries like Elizabeth Jane Walker Piepgrass and Rodney Walker, who devoted unimaginable time and resources to publish books, newsletters, family histories, and genealogy records. At the turn of the century we began to feel our way into the online world. And now rather than a few individuals working on all of the genealogy, communicating by written letters, manuscripts, and personal interviews – we all are capable of contributing directly to a single source at familysearch.org. And notwithstanding some of the persistent technical challenges of this venue, the authoring of OUR family history is now exponentially larger.

Communication has made an equally impressive transformation through the use of social media. This is an area which holds great promise and one we intend to more fully implement in the coming year. The ability to reach out to an extensive network of cousins in both a more general (one to many) and more personal (one on one) manner is astounding. We encourage you to “friend” us on facebook. Just go to http://www.facebook.com/walkerfamily.org.

And finally, 2010 marked the family organizations entrance into the world of online publishing. You can do a search in the iBookstore for William Holmes Walker and find a delightful booklet published by Eldon Walker a few years ago. And our goal is to publish a number of our publications both online or in traditional print version. Watch for developments at our online publisher  www.lulu.com.

Traditionally, only a few individuals moved this work forward, slowly but surely. Today we hope the convenience and ease of access will encourage more of you to get involved. We have some great opportunities to volunteer, and in today’s job market – volunteering might be the resume entry that helps you find meaningful employment.

Thanks for stopping by.