Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

Saturday is the most difficult day to have a #NotAtRootsTech day for me, because all of the family is home and I have to excuse myself upstairs to the office and mostly ignore them. But let’s continue.

1. First I tried to catch up on the #RootsTech twitter feeds and blogs which I found impossible to complete. Here’s an article in yesterday’s Deseret News about: “What Scott Hamilton told RootsTech about his family and how he inspired a fan during a battle with a tumor.”

2. Here’s Jill Ball’s 10 minute interview of RootsTech emcee Jason Hewlett (no relation to Hewlett-Packard) for a wonderful inside look behind the man and how the past two years hosting got him learn a bit about genealogy.  And here’s Jill’s 9 minute interview of Howard Hochhauser, CEO of Ancestry. And also Jill’s 9 minute interview with Jen Allen and Brandon Beckstead. Jen is Rootstech Director and Brandon is RootsTech Logistic Manager. They said they were truly afraid the fire inspector was going to close the Conference down on Wednesday because of the number of people in the hall without the Expo Hall being open.  
   
   Jason Hewlett, Howard Hochauser, Jen Allen, Brandon Beckstead
3. The Connect Belong video at the beginning of the Live Stream today was fun to watch. It asked people if they Connect or Belong. Great selection of people asked and great answers. I hope that gets posted somewhere. If so, I’ll add the link here.
4. The live stream had Jason Hewlett sitting with Natalia Lafourcade, who is the singer of “Remember Me” in the movie Coco and will be singing at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles tomorrow as it is up for best song. She sang 3 songs including Remember Me for the RootsTech audience.
   
   Natalie Lafourcade was very excited to find out that her father’s side came from France because. Earlier she had mentioned she thought it odd that she was Spanish from Mexico/Chile but had a French last name.
5. The magnificent Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the Keynote Speaker at the IAJGS Conference I attended last July in Florida, so I knew to expect the best. I’m a regular watcher of his Finding Your Roots series.
   
   “In social studies class, every child will have to do their family tree. Down the hall to the science class, every kid will spit in the test tube. … We’ll reignite the love of learning.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

   CeCe Moore followed Dr. Gates and told us how DNA is exploding.

6. “Advancing Your Genealogy Research With DNA” by Anna Swayne who works at Ancestry. She gave a really nice slide of the AncestryDNA Science Team:
   
7. Curt Witcher once again (lucky guy got to be involved in 3 live stream broadcasts during the Conference).  “More Web for your Genealogy”. As much data as Ancestry and Findmypast and MyHeritage have, it’s the “snowflake on top of the iceberg. … Think about it.” Search tools don’t index the web completely. So his successful surfing strategy is to visit the websites of local public libraries, state libraries, state archives, historical societies genealogical societies, and GenWeb. I downloaded his handout from the RootsTech app.
   
   Curt Witcher

The final day of RootsTech (or any conference) is always a downer for me. I find it so sad for it to be over. In my first year there, 2012, my flight home was Sunday morning, so I was able to enjoy a post-RootsTech event which was a Dick Eastman dinner for readers of his EOGN newsletters. That was a lot of fun. But after that RootsTech turned Saturday into Family Discovery Day which invited many thousands of younger people into the Convention Centre for free for inspirational stories. So in 2014 and 2017, I took the Saturday afternoon flight home, leaving while the action was still on and avoiding the end. However, I also missed Dick’s dinners and I’m so sad that I’ve never been able to attend a Dear Myrtle post RootsTech party which she hosts and sounds like so much fun.

This year, I see they’ve eliminated the Family Discovery Day and have a full slate of Genealogy topics all day Saturday which is great. Next time I’m at RootsTech (and there will be a next time), I’ll stay over until Sunday to catch some of the post-conference events, and I think I might even try to come the Sunday before to catch some of the pre-conference events. Being there the whole time might even give me a slight chance of being able to visit every booth in the Exhibit Hall.

#NotAtRootsTech 2018 was a lot of fun. Looking forward to 2019, whether I’m there or not.

Friday.

1. Caught up on my Twitter feed from last night. One tweet from Nicole Dyer led me to her blog post about Diana’s classes on Source Citations and Getting Organized. They made the presentation slides available so I took a look and also downloaded their great handouts from the RootsTech App.

   I do disagree with Diana’s very first step:  “Divide papers by families”, as I am of the philosophy that you should keep all source material by where you got it, which retains context and relatedness. Otherwise her presentations and ideas are excellent.

2. Turned on the RootsTech live stream.I liked how Jason Hewlett started off by highlighting the #NotAtRootsTech posters who sent a tweet of themselves watching RootsTech. This was the winner:
   

   #notatrootstech streaming live at home with my three month old! #Family #connectinggenerations #RootsTech2018 pic.twitter.com/M7ohPdRkpL

   — Kharyn Sommer (@kharynsommer) March 1, 2018

3. Ben Bennett of Findmypast: “We also believe that the benefits of a shared tree can be watered down if we have too many shared trees, and so we asked ourselves, what if we didn’t actually build another shared tree? Instead, what if we focused our efforts on contributing to a community that is already alive and progressing?” – So FamilySearch is partnering with Findmypast (just as they are doing with MyHeritage as announced a few days ago). Findmypast will be building a new suite of family tree products including their shared tree, reference tree, and updates to their private trees is still in development. But it appears to me that FamilySearch, with MyHeritage and Findmypast now aligning with them, is winning the battle of which shared tree will become THE shared tree. If that ends up happening and we end up with one shared tree for all, then the efforts that got the big companies to get together annually at RootsTech will have paid off the genealogical community big time! Congrats to all the big companies.

   The 5 big DNA companies got together on Day 1 of RootsTech. They will compete and cooperate with each other and maybe the ultimate result will be one big DNA tree integrated with the one big shared family tree. Wouldn’t that be something!

4. Watched Scott Hamilton. Wonderful. He made me cry.
5. Read Roberta Estes’ blog post on Day 2 which includes a detailed summary of Gilad Japhet’s MyHeritage lunch speech that includes MyHeritage’s new innovations and plans. It seems like the push is towards combining DNA, family trees and historical records seamlessly. Hooray!
6. Right after that, I received in my email a press release from MyHeritage DNA about their new changes. And these are monumental! You can now download your match list. They now have a 7 person chromosome browser. And the best part is that the chromosome browser will show triangulations and you can download the exact triangulation segments. Wow! This really changes everything. I immediately tweeted:
   

   NB: @MyHeritage DNA has added 7 person Chromosome Browser that shows triangulation (wonderful!) as well as download of matches. #RootsTech https://t.co/aRcVH65uI3

   — Louis Kessler (@louiskessler) March 2, 2018

   This of course distracted me from RootsTech for the rest of the afternoon as I tested out the new features. What I found will deserve a blog post on its own.

7. It was appropriate that while I was feeling out the new MyHeritage DNA downloads and triangulation features, that I could simultaneously watch Jim Brewster of Family Tree DNA giving the talk: “Finding the Right DNA Test for You”. He gave a nice intro which surprisingly was so different from Yaniv Erlich’s MyHeritage talk yesterday that they had hardly any overlap. It is worthwhile watching both talks.
   
   Jim Brewster of Family Tree DNA
8. 3 p.m. Mountain Time (4 p.m. in my Central Time) was Curt Witcher (my right-booted compatriot) and Amy Johnson Crow with “How Not to Leave Your Genealogy Behind”. I love librarians. My first part-time job after school was in our local library, and that’s likely where I got an interest in research.

   Best lines I’ve heard so far from the conference, by Amy: “You know what, I’m pretty good at guilting my kids. Guilt can be a good motivator.” And Curt responded: “I will haunt you from the grave.” And Amy said: “Yeah, I think I’ve actually used that line.” … Curt: “Guilt is only worth about one generation, at best.”

   ”Don’t forget about your genealogy software. … How do you expect others to get that out? … You’re asking them to be a genealogist. … That’s asking a lot.” – says Amy.
   
   Amy Johnson Crow and Curt Witcher.

9. Went to my in-laws for supper so I didn’t catch the last live stream “Finding Elusive Records at FamilySearch” with Robert Kehrer
10. Back home at 9 p.m. Central Time for this week’s Twitter #genchat session. Today’s topic is quite relevant. It’s: “RootsTech / Not At RootsTech (Will you survive it?)”. Below are the Q’s that I A’d to.

    Q1: Who went to #RootsTech? Who was #NotAtRootsTech?
    A1: I’m a #NotAtRootsTech this year. But I spent the whole time watching live stream, tweeting, facebooking, reading blogs - I’m just as exhausted as I was in past years at #RootsTech #genchat

    I counted about 30 people answered question 1 with about 6 at RootsTech and the others not.

Q3 Non-Attendees: Besides livestream, did you follow via other methods? #RootsTech #NotAtRootsTech #genchat
A3: Yes I followed #RootsTech every which way possible. And I blogged every day as if I was there. Posting for Day 3 right after #genchat ends and including #genchat highlights.

Q5 Non-Attendees: Who were some of the folks who contributed to your virtual experience? #genchat #RootsTech #NotAtRootsTech
A5: The best people at #RootsTech for information about what’s going on are those on social media.  Randy Seaver is maintaining a compendium of blog posts. Several others are posting to YouTube, interviews, experiences, etc. And then there’s all the #RootTech tweets #genchat

Q7 Non-Attendees: What sessions would you like to have seen that you didn’t see? #NotAtRootsTech #genchat
A7: #RootsTech is as hard on attendees as non-attendees, since there’s 20 sessions on at a time and you can only pick one. But for those #NotAtRootsTech there’s no choice. :-( #genchat

Q8 What was your favourite moment?
A8: My favorite #RootsTech #NotAtRootsTech moment was the standing ovation given to Deborah Abbott after her Thursday afternoon talk about her stories #genchat

The other questions that I didn’t answer were:

Q2 Attendees: How did you spend your time? In session? Exhibit Hall? Networking?
Q4 Attendees: Did your sessions meet your skill level?
Q6 Attendees: How were the logistics? (Layout, distance from your hotel, meals)
Q9: Will you go next year?

10 p.m. #genchat over. That’s a wrap. To see all the answers everyone gave, select the latest tweets from a Twitter search of #genchat and roll back to the evening of March 3, 2018.

Here’s some photos of #genchat people at RootsTech.

Thursday.

1. Watched the Live Stream Keynote Speaker: Brandon Stanton. “I get to wake up in the morning and choose the work I want to do.” “Following your dreams, is nothing but hard work.”

2. Took a look at Randy Seaver’s Compendium for new posts I hadn’t seen.
3. Read Jill Ball’s post on Day 1 and watch Jill’s interview of Hannah Morden of Living DNA, who happens to be Australian.
4. Saw Blaine Bettinger’s post on Facebook about Jonny Perl’s win, which reminded me to join Jonny’s DNA Painter Facebook group. Once there, I watched a 5 minute video of Jonny’s presentation of DNA painter to the contest judges and a small crowd. If I can find a public link to that presentation, I’ll post it.
5. Watched a 6 minute video by Lara Diamond of an interview by several people of Brandon Stanton in the media hub, also on Facebook with no public link.
6. The great thing about the RootsTech Live Feed is that I can take a shower and then rewind the feed so that I don’t miss anything. That’s one advantage over being there in person. Of course, all the people at RootsTech can watch the live stuff from the feeds after they get home. But there’s nothing like the actual experience of being at RootsTech.
7. Read Thomas MacEntee’s article about Living DNA’s announcements. New to me were details of the Orion chip they use, that tests over 656,000 autosomal, 4,700 mitochondral and 22,000 Y-DNA SNPs.
8. Next was the live stream of Yaniv Erlich of MyHeritage DNA. It started with a very nice intro to DNA testing with a good description of how the chip determines each SNP using synthetic strings of DNA that finds the complementary strand of your DNA and joins with it. He explains the phasing they do and claims a 99% SNP accuracy. Then he explains imputation when comparing two individuals to fill in missing SNPs with “very good accuracy”. “You would not get bad results, but you would get better if they are from the same company.” They then “stitch” together identical sections that have a small split, e.g. due to an error in phasing.

   Very interesting and something I’ve never seen a DNA company explain before was how they do confidence classification, so as to include as many likely true matches as possible and exclude as many “child-only” matches as possible. This was a good DNA talk.

9. Read on the #RootsTech twitter feed that:
   
   

   Also, @MyHeritage announces that their 1-to-many chromosome browser will launch tomorrow! #rootstech #geneticgenealogy

   — Amy Johnson Crow (@AmyJohnsonCrow) March 1, 2018

10. Last year at RootsTech, my Fitbit told me I was averaging close to 14,000 steps per day. It’s 3 p.m. here in Winnipeg and I look and I’m at (ugh) only 1,400 steps. That means the #RootsTech is 10 times better than #NotAtRootsTech. I don’t use Google Photos and really don’t use Catholic Records, so the next two live streams were not of interest to me. What better time than to stretch my legs with a walk to Tim Hortons.
11. I always appreciate the sponsors of any conference. It’s amazing how many sponsors RootsTech has this year, including some interesting ones who you wouldn’t suspect, like WordPress and Dell EMC:
    

    

    

    

    

12. And Jason Hewlett tweeted his selfie from the screen cap that I made at the exact same time which I included in my blog post yesterday:
    
13. Read Carole Steer’s blog post about Brandon Stanton’s talk this morning.
14. Here’s Jill Ball’s 5 minute interview of Jonny Perl.
15. Finished off the day watching the final live stream by Deborah Abbott: “A Gift of Life. Who’s Writing YOUR Story?” She said: “The things that I’m going to talk about, you have to make it relate to you.” Here’s some of the things she told us to record: That first boyfriend. How was that kiss? Did they like their spouse right away when they met? What extraordinary things did they do?  “Before writing your ancestor’s story, write your own…. As you talk about yourself, you can pull those ancestors in. … Write your memoirs. Tell you descendants about things they know nothing about.”

    She said to record every bit of what you went through
    … and she told us her stories.
    
    Deborah Abbott received a standing ovation for her talk.

See today’s Live Stream here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnfpAwSNVJo&t=9s