Graham's Family History Technology Talks (2025)

Graham Walter is an IT manager with Renault in the UK and a professional member of the British Computer Society. 

He regularly gives talks for family history societies, has been an instructor at the  British Institute in Salt Lake City, has given talks at the Who Do You Think You Are? Shows and for the Society of Australian Genealogists.  

He is a regular tutor at the  Society of Genealogists, specialising in using technology in genealogy.  He volunteers with the Society’s Educational Outreach programme as one of the "Census Detectives" and a familiar face at many family history fairs and conferences. He is currently a trustee of the Society of Genealogists.

Graham is available for speaking engagements for Family History Societies and organisations, providing one hour talks or 2.5 hour tutorials. Pricing on application.

The Talks

5 Killer Apps for Genealogy on the Go

• • “Many of us have a smart phone with us when we are out doing our genealogy research. What are the apps that might best aid us in our pursuit?"

Cloud Computing

• • “Nowadays, we tend to have more than one computing device and we have other family members who would like to see our genealogy research. The Cloud offers us a way to share and transfer information with a far greater ease than ever before. In this talk, one family researcher explains how he makes use of Cloud tools in his family research."

Doing Family History on the Mac - One Researcher's methods for using Apple Computers

• • “A look at the different genealogy packages for Mac computers, along with a look at those ideally suited to sharing with others from the Windows world. This course will also cover elements of doing family history with non-family history tools (including Evernote and DropBox)."

Electronic Workflows for the Family Historian

• • "A workflow is just a set of steps performed to reach specific goal. Documenting your workflows helps you create a repeatable sequence to enhance research goals and to see where you may have gaps in your processes. We will look at some digital tools to both document and process workflows."

Evernote - 2 talks - can be presented individually or as a pair (possibly separated by a day/week or two)

Evernote - The Fundamentals

• • “Learn about this useful software and how you can best use it within your family history research. Gather files, notes and photos to keep the physical and digital details of your projects with you at all times for easier organisation.  Automatically sync across all of your devices. The basic version is free and very feature rich."

Evernote - Beyond Fundamentals

• • “Expand your knowledge of this useful tool as it pertains to family history research. Bring Evernote into your research workflows to assist you in the collection of the data that makes up your family history. Make use of templates for commonly generated notes; create individual research journals; checklists; digitise your documents to create your electronic research repository."

Genealogy Management Software for the Mac

• • “We will look at software specifically designed for storing your family history information. Using specialist software will makes it easier to organise the data and produce reports and charts to represent your family’s story. We will take a quick tour of the most popular packages - Reunion 11; MacFamily Tree 8; Heredis 2018 World and Family Tree Maker 2017"

Reunion for the Mac - 2 talks - can be presented individually or as a pair (possibly separated by a day/week or two)

Reunion for the Mac - The Fundamentals

• • • Since its first release 35 years ago Reunion has grown to be one of the preeminent family history management programmes for the Mac.
      This talk will go through the basics of Reunion's interface and present a number of the features that make this application a useful addition to the documenting of our family history research.
      The current version is version 13.

Reunion for the Mac - Beyond Fundamentals

• • • Building from the Fundamentals talk, we will take a more detailed look at some of the features of Reunion for the Mac.
      We will look at creating and modifying source templates - this allows us to have source citations that mirror the types of records we collect in our research efforts.
      We will also take a brief look at Reunion Touch - the companion app for iPhone and iPad.

• Staying Safe Online: Using Password Managers

  • Protecting yourself and your personal data in our online world is as important today as it ever was.  To provide that protection, you'll need to use unique passwords that are long, strong, and difficult for someone else to guess, yet still being accessible to you where and when you need them. We will look at some of the techniques to achieve a good amount of safety and look at some apps for use with phones & tablets as well our heftier computing devices.