Live workshop presented June 2025

Want to make better use of AI for your family history writing—but not sure how to ask the right questions? This 1.5-hour hands-on workshop focuses specifically on prompting—how to start, guide, and refine a conversation with AI to get useful, relevant help at every stage of your writing process. You’ll learn how to:

• craft clear, targeted prompts to get stronger, more useful responses
• develop a conversational approach with AI that feels natural and gets results
• brainstorm fresh angles and story ideas
• turn scattered research notes into a practical structure for stories or reports
• write family stories, blog posts, or ancestor profiles with more focus and less frustration
• revise your writing to make it clearer, more engaging, and easier for readers to follow

We’ll also talk about that unmistakable “AI voice”—why it shows up, and how better prompts can help you avoid it so your writing still sounds like you. If you’ve ever struggled with how to begin, how to organize what you know, or how to make your research readable, this session is for you. You stay in control. AI just helps you get there faster.

Kimberly T. Powell, AG®, is a genealogical educator, researcher, and author with a passion for researching hard-to-find families in the Carolinas and Virginia and sharing her love of genealogy with others through teaching. Her journey includes early work in AI and cognitive science at Carnegie Mellon in the late 1980s. For sixteen years (2000–2016), she blogged about family history as the Genealogy Expert at About.com, developing her distinctive approach to genealogical writing. She is the Director of Education for the National Genealogical Society (NGS) and teaches at major genealogical institutes, including the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, and the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research. She specializes in teaching writing methodology for genealogists at Boston University’s Certificate in Genealogy program and through her Writing for Discovery course.