David Pogue

If you only watch one online video from RootsTech than it should be the keynote by David Pogue. David is technology columnist for The New York Times and Scientific American. He is also an Emmy Award-winning tech correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the current host of NOVA ScienceNow, . Added to that is he is also a musician.

David says that we no longer are in the computer age but in the “mobile age.” That’s became young people are almost all accessing the internet on their smart phones. In order to attract the young people to genealogy internet firms need to make their web pages  easily viewed on all kinds of small handheld devices. He also showed some of the strange applications that are now available. David kept everybody laughing through his whole presentation. Then at the end he entertained us with a couple of tech parity songs.

The second keynote speaker was supposed to be Gilad Japhet who is the founder and CEO of MyHeritage. He had a family tragedy happen a couple of days before he was to speak and flew house to be with his family. instead of Mr. Japhet, Ori Soen, chief marketing officer from MyHeritage gave an overview of MtHeritage. He said that MyHeritage began 2005 and is now the 2nd largest genealogy company in the world. MyHeritige is available in 40 languages and is bringing family history to everyone.

Then Mr. Soen introduced James Tanner who is a blogger and MyHeritage user. James showed the record matching function to 1.5 billion trees plus matches to newspapers with 97% accuracy. MyHeritage will also do automatic searches of all the names you have and will continue to do those automatically and send you updated.

This a the link to the video of the keynote presentation.

Karen Clifford’s presentation was “Using Technology Effectively to Solve Research Problems.” Karen tells how various technologies (genealogy computer programs such as AncestralQuest, Legacy, and RootsMagic, research wiki’s, animated mapping programs, Adobe Photoshop, and Google’s University Search) can help to add stories of your family. She also tells how to discriminate between various levels of information (using original and compiled information). She has a well detailed outline to her presentation. It available as a DOC file and a PDF file.

This the video link to Ms. Clifford’s session.

In “Digital Storytelling: Beyond Bullet Points” Denice Olsen ells how to make presentations from your old family photos that will impress your family. She says that you can use PowerPoint or other similar programs that will add photos with borders, text, fancy backgrounds to make a great family presentation. There is also scrap-booking software that can do almost all the same functions as more powerful presentation software. And, these projects can be shared via email, carried with you on a tablet or smart phone, displayed on a digital frame and even viewed on your television screen. She has a nice outline that you can download as either a DOC file or PDF file.

This is link to to the video of this session.

I almost didn’t go to one of the last session but I’m glad I did. Only about 60 people showed up to hear Patricia Van Skaik, who is a librarian at the Cincinnati Public Library. Her talk was “Beyond Home Movies: YouTube Genealogy.” I knew that there were tutorials for genealogy on YouTune. I didn’t know of some of the videos would also act as both inspiration and entertainment. This video titled “Genealogy .. Fall in Love with Your Ancestors.” is a short video of inspiration. “Schnell Genealogy Birth Place/Date 3D Tour” is a video showing maps with birth dates and places of the Schnell family over the last 400 years. Patricia mentioned that on YouTube there are videos that you wouldn’t think of for genealogy. There are oral interviews, school projects, scrapbooks and even funeral services. She also notes that once you play a video, you should look at the suggestions to other similar videos.

That ends the sessions that I saw at the RootsTech conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn’t get to. That’s because at times they were running 14 sessions at a time. Still, a couple of sessions were full by the time that I got to them.

Jyl Pattee

Friday morning started with another keynote. This time there were two speakers. The first was Jyl Pattee from the Mom It Forward website. Jyl talked about what she called Wow Moments! Those are events in our life that add meaning to life. She said the steps are:

1. Create the Wow!
2.  Capture the Wow!
3.  Archive the Wow!
4.  Share the Wow! AKA social websites.

Jyl showed a multi-media presentation that she had created about a recipe for Banana cookies that was left to her by her grandmother. In that were audio recordings of her grandmother, old family photos and videos that Jyl and her sisters creating the cookies. It shows all the possibilities of using technology to create the “Wow!”

Tim Sullivan

The second keynote speaker was Tim Sullivan who is the President and CEO of Ancestry.com. He says that “it is a great time to be a family historian.” Tim says that collaboration is key to using Ancestry and that 2.7 million subscribers have uploaded 174 million photos and documents. New on Ancestry is iOS app version 4.1 for iPhone and iPad. Also Ancestry DNA now has 120,000 DNA samples. The biggest news was that over the next 5 years Ancestry will spend $100 million for new content including a collaboration with FamilySearch to add over 140 million US probate documents over next 3 years. That is one type of historic record that is currently under-represented on the internet.

This is a link to the Friday keynote presentation.

I attended “Evaluating Databases and Overcoming Their Errors” by Kory Meyerink. He stated that there no new original sources for long deceased persons. These records already exist. What we see coming to the internet are newly compiled records from previous research by others, Family sources and old original records. You also need to evaluate the data for errors. Those errors can come from data entry and/or conversion and also from incorrect information in the original records. It also will be helpful to see if you can determine the origin of the data. Look for information about the records or do further research on the internet.

“Researching Ancestors Online for Beginners” by Laura Prescott explored important websites to use for beginning genealogists including some that may surprise you. She reviewed 11 websites that are all great for research and are free. She her outline (DOC file or PDF file) for details.

This is a link to Ms. Presott’s online video.

“Eleven Layers of Online Searches at FamilySearch.org” by Barbara Renick was about using various search techniques to find information on your family members. Start out with searching various spelling of a family name, then add event date (birth, residence, etc.). Try searching with no given name or if a rare given name then search without a surname. If all that fails try searching another family member. After that search for a known neighbor. For more detail on her techniques, use her outline (DOC file or PDF file).

These are some of the other sessions that I saw at the 2013 RootsTech conference on Thursday, 21 March The first three I watch online after I got home and the last 3 I attended in person.

“Tell It Again” by Kim Weitkamp who was also how telling stories of your family is a necessary ingredient of family history. She is a very good motivational speaker.

This is a link to the online video of her session.

“The Genealogist’s Gadget Bag” was a panel that was hosted by Jill Ball from Australia. Also on the panel were Marie Dougan from Scotland, Heather Rojo from New Hampshire and A C Ivory from from Salt Lake City, UT.  Each were asked questions about what gadgets they carry to various places. They suggested:

• For airline travel take battery backups, chargers and extension cords
• For cemeteries take digital camera, iPhone or other smart phone with GPS, cleaning tools including grass clippers
• For a family reunion take mobile scanner, digital voice recorder
• For library research take small computer, paper & pencil, USB drive

This is a link to the online video of this panel.

James Tanner

“Finding the Obscure and the Elusive: Geographic Information on the Web” by James Tanner who described how to find elusive places including some that or no longer in existence. He has a great outline that is very helpful. It comes in two formats; a DOC file and a PDF file.

This is the link to the online link of his session.

“Genealogy Industry Web 2.0 Report Card” by Tammy A. Hepps. She says that the web used to be a one way experience. Web 2.0 is for interactivity. The rise of mobile and social networks transformed the conversation and should be interactive. Genealogy websites are behind the rest of the internet and especially social sites like Facebook and Pinterest. They should be adding more interactivity to genealogy sites.

On session that I wanted to attend was full so instead I went to “Your Library in the Cloud” by Dave Obee and was quite impressed by the information on online libraries that he gave. He discussed, The Internet Archive, Open Library, Hathi Trust Library, JStor, Europeana and other websites. He also mentioned one of my local favorites, Fulton History but said that there were 20,000 newspaper pages online there. In fact Futon History has almost 22 million newspaper pages. Dave has his outline online and it has links that you can click on to go to each of the online libraries.

I attended “Content Planning for Genealogy Bloggers” by Tonia Kendrick. She went through how to how to plan, organize, and generate new ideas that hopefully I can use on this blog in the future.

Dennis Brimhall

The opening keynote session was packed. It looked as if everyone that had registered (6,700+) showed up. There were 3 featured speakers. The first was Dennis Brimhall who is the President of FamilySearch. He has only been working at FamilySearch for over a year but pointed out that he has learned a lot from the experience. Dennis pointed out that now that we have the technology, we should also maintain photos and stories of our family. That coincides with plans of additions that will be added to FamilySearch Family Tree in the next couple of months. Dennis added an intersting story of his father’s airplane being shot down during WWII and how there is a photo of that plane crashing.

The second speaker was Syd Lieberman. He is a former teacher that is a master story teller. I wish I could speak as well as Syd. He told many stories of his family that everyone in the session were effected by. He noted that by telling family stories we are with the family again.

Josh Taylor

The third speaker at the keynote was Josh Taylor. He is a Business Development Manager for Brightsolid, owner of FindMyPast.com. He told a story about his childhood experience researching at his local Courthouse. He thinks that in order to get younger people interested in genealogy that we have to make it more fun and interesting.

This is a link to a video of the opening keynote session. The keynote runs approx. 1½ hr.

After the keynote, I attended “The Five Most Important Online Resources for Your U.S. Research” by Kory Meyerink. He had code names for the big five websites that he revealed after describing them.

1. Code name “Felicity” is actually the FamilySearch Library Catalog. It has references to both family records and research sources for over 100 countries.
2. Code name “Wilma” is actually WorldCat; a worldwide online library catalog that tells where books are located closest to you.
3. Code name “Percival” is actually PERSI. That is an index of genealogical publications that is done by the Allen County Public. This is a for fee index that is available online through both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest.
4. Code name “George” is actually Google. Mr. Meyerink points out that besides searching the internet that you can also search books on Google Book Search.
5. Code name”Lincoln” is actually Linkpendium. He says it is a significant website for genealogists researching US and Canada sites and surnames.

At the same time as the above session was “The Future of Genealogy,” a panel discussion that was hosted by Thomas MacEntee. He asked questions of his panelists; Lisa Louise Cooke, Daniel Horowitz, Dick Eastman, Alan Philips, Dear Myrtle and Josh Taylor. Tom asked each of the panelists to reply to each of these questions:

• What is the best thing to happen in genealogy in 2012?
• What is a typical genealogist?
• What are current causes for concern in genealogy?
• Describe 3 words of a future genealogy product.
• Five years from now how will we get new genealogists?
• What’s next for each panelist in the next year?

To hear the replies, use this link to the video of this session.

I attended the RootsTech Conference last week in Salt Lake City. I’ll be writing a bunch of postings this week about what I saw there. I must admit I was impressed at how well everything went and at how large it was. There were over 6,700 prepaid attendees. Some are saying that makes it the largest genealogy conference ever held in the US. It should be the largest held this year as the NGS conference (8–11 May) and FGS conference (21 – 24 August) will probably be smaller. Plus on Saturday there were separate sessions for almost 2,000 teenagers who had signed up to get their first taste of what genealogy could mean to them. I don’t know if RootsTech will be able to count the number of people that watched the 13 live online sessions over the 3 days.

The exhibit hall was over 50% larger than the 2012 conferences. There were over 100 vendors varying greatly in size. There were only a couple of vendors selling books. I saw 2 vendors selling fancy wall charts that come from data in your genealogy database. The exhibit hall also included a demonstration area with nice comfortable seats where vendors gave short (10 – 15 minute) presentations. I don’t know if it was the comfy seats or the demos but the seats where almost always filled. At an end of the the exhibit area was a “Cyber Cafe” where people could sit and plug in their computers to recharge and get internet access. Strangely, this area did not have wi-fi access but you had to plug in to a network connection. The classroom sessions did have wi-fi but I had a hard time maintaining a connection. Next to the “Cyber Cafe” was a Family History Library mini-lab with about 40 computers.

The exhibit hall had two places to get free scanning. FamilySearch would scan a book for free. It either had to be out of copyright or you had be the copyright owner or get permission from the copyright owner. I took a Rochester history book for them to scan. When I came back 22 hours later, they were just finishing up checking to make sure they had scanned all the pages. I’ll tell you what book they scanned in a future post. The other company that was doing free scanning was Macavo. They would scan original documents, family trees and other historical documents. I didn’t take anything to them so I don’t know haw many documents they would scan nor how long it would take.

The exhibit hall had a media hub. There was a booth for TV and bloggers to do video interviews. Over 200 of these videos are already on YouTube and expect more over the next couple of weeks. There was another booth for audio recordings. Most of the popular bloggers were there and a bunch of less popular bloggers like me. There was one blogger from Australia and one that writes posts in Norwegian.

I heard that at the 2012 conference each person received a USB drive with the session schedule, hand-outs, maps, etc. This year all that was in my registration package was a printed book. Those that pre-registered did receive a notice ahead of time of a link to apps that could be downloaded with all the conference information. Those apps were available for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows phone, Blackberry and PCs. Best of all, they had the most up to date information.

There were a few evening activities that I will post about ASAP.

The RootsTech Conference concludes on Saturday with 3 free online sessions. Again these are all about 1 hour in length.

These are the sessions for Saturday, March 23:

The RootsTech Conference continues on Friday with another 5 online sessions. Again these are live and for free. Each session is about an hour.

These are the sessions that will be online on Friday, March 22st:

This week is the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City (Thurs. – Sat.). They are offering some of their sessions online for free. If you have the time, I suggest watching as many of these sessions to aid you in your genealogical research. Each session is about an hour.

These are the sessions that will online on Thursday, March 21st: