IIGS™ IRC Team
On 11 June 1997, the following press release was sent out:
"Announcing the IIGS™ IRC service, the IIGS™'s first tool for genealogists, hosted by Rootsweb. Set up exclusively for genealogy, the IIGS™ IRC is open 24 hours per day, so genealogists around the world can meet. Brand new, do not despair if there don't seem to be many people online, stay for a while, or try again later. To access this service, direct your IRC client to irc.IIGS.org, or irc.rootsweb.com, port 6667."
Within 2 weeks, we were holding three regular weekly general sessions. By the end of the month, we were advertising for people to run IIGS™ IRC themed meetings "IIGS™ IRC would like to host themed meetings for genealogists with specific interests. Themes could be anything from an interest in a particular family name, to topics such as the US Civil War, German nobility, Beginning UK genealogy, emigration. The IRC team will help you set up these meetings. We will help with technical problems, running the channel until you are confident, advertising the meeting and generally getting you going."
The first IRC Team Leaders, Graham Hart and Camilla von Massenbach started a channel for UKGenealogy. Others followed quickly #benelux, #genealogie.fr #US-mil, #SE-KY, #Ireland-gen, #Canadian-Gen, #Australia, #IIGS-UnivHelp , #KY-Estill, #Ont-Que, #Ger-Rus , #IIGS-htmlhelp, #cert.
As well as the direct genealogical use of the server, many of the IIGS™ teams found value in great brainstorming sessions. These could last for several hours - I recall sitting at my computer until 3 or 4 in the morning many times!. Use of the IIGS™ IRC server has grown steadily. Most evenings you can find a themed session or two, our regular #genealogy channel and other team meetings, hosted sessions and general chat channels.
You will meet MaMaT, Middleto, Graham, Genehunter, JohnD (our new IRC liaison), NavCom, besteper, hla, coast, Trevor, Ben, Jan, Dragonlord, Laura, Dorothy, Toon, Pecos, Paula, Bab, BarryB, forage, pizza, pj, jeanne, Crickett, honeydew, our most recent teamleaders Camilla, MC and Wildfire and many other IIGS™ members and visitors.
Maybe you have missed the reminders of the chats and haven't visited the team pages, or maybe you haven't tried out IRC yet. All the information you need is at http://www.IIGS.org/irc/ Join us, let us know which channels you'd like to see there, host one or two yourself, just socialise and have fun.
back to the May 1998 Birthday Newsletter Table of Contents