Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

#cangensummit2017 – A couple of great days at the Great Canadian Genealogy Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Friday afternoon the started with Jan Raska from Pier 21, of the Canadian Museum of Immigration providing a very interesting keynote for the almost 60 attendees who arrived in time for his talk.

Saturday was a full slate of talks. There were 12 presentations in two tracks. I’d say attendance was about 100 split fairly evenly between the two rooms. Talking to different people, I think it’s possible we had at least 8 of Canada’s 10 provinces represented here, plus people from a number of States as well.

My talk on intro DNA went well with good response and questions. I had anticipated many of the questions. To my recommendation that adoptees test everywhere was a suggestion that one should test at AncestryDNA because it has the largest number of testers and then transfer to the others to save money. I responded that the viewpoint of CeCe Moore and others was to “fish in all ponds” to ensure full coverage, especially since 23andMe does not accept transfers.

At lunch I went across the street to Your Father’s Moustache with many of our group. It was a full lively pub and eatery with many entertaining stache-objects decorating the place: “I moustache you a question, but will shave it for later.” – “I’d love to stay but I really moustache.”

I had a very nice conversation between sessions with Fred Pafford who came in from Newfoundland. He’s got over 25,000 in his tree which he programmed and put in a FoxPro database two decades ago. Recently he’s added his tree to MyHeritage and has been getting into DNA in a big way to help solve his brick walls. We both chuckled that DNA always seems to add many more puzzles than it solves.

Following the last session of the day, I went into the Exhibition Hall, something you wouldn’t expect to see at a small conference like this one. There were 8 vendors and even a couple of vendor mini-presentations earlier in the day. I went to the FamilyTreeDNA table where Derrell Oakley Teat was representing the company. She flew up from her home in Florida and on Wednesday will be heading off for Dublin, Ireland which is where Derrell told me AncestryDNA sends their Canadian samples for analysis. I didn’t realize that.

One more day for the GCGS 2017.

I was thinking about my 1 year old grand-nephew this morning, and how he and I would look to be half-sharing about a quarter of our DNA in a chromosome browser.

Well that would make my grand-nephew the quarterback of my DNA Football team.

His father, my nephew, would be the halfback.

My daughters would be fullbacks.

My sister would be in the 3/4 back position:  the tailback.

My wife, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law would have to be the blockers on the line, since they’re neither here or there. Although you can make a good case for my wife being the coach.

And my 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins will be my receivers running out for 4, 16 and 64 yard receptions respectively. There’s a 1/4, 1/16 and 1/64 chance the ball will get to them.

There’s my DNA football team.

This Photo by Paul Gorbould is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

#cangensummit2017 - On Thursday, I’ll be flying 2,600 km (1,600 miles), but still be in Canada, as I travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the Great Canadian Genealogy Summit being held from October 13 to 15.

I’ll be one of 12 speakers, all of us Canadian, giving 18 talks on various subjects of genealogical interest. With the conference taking place in the Maritimes, there are many talks on Acadians, Loyalists, immigration and Scotland. I’ll be giving 3 talks on DNA, 2 of which will be on DNA basics for genealogists and one a little more advanced on autosomal DNA analysis.

I’m anxiously looking forward to the conference, meeting the other 11 speakers, and spending time with the genealogists in attendance. This will not be a large conference, so there should be lots of opportunity to get to know most of the people. There will also be a small Expo Hall and a few mini presentations in the Hall.

This year’s Summit was organized by Kathryn Lake Hogan and Christine Woodcock. This is their 2nd Summit. Their first was successfully held last year in Brampton, Ontario. I had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn and Christine at RootsTech 2017 in February. I look forward to talking with them again.

I’ve never been to Halifax and am excited to go. It is said to be a beautiful city, and the Fall colours should dazzle. The genealogical highlight for me will be to go to and tour Pier 21, the home of the Canadian Museum of Immigration, and the place where many of my ancestors arrived to Canada in the early 1900’s. Yes, I’ve got my research list ready in case the opportunity arises. The keynote speaker on Friday night will be Jan Raska from Pier 21 and he will be talking about what the immigration experience was like for our immigrant ancestors.

Interestingly, the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax (a landmark unto itself!) where we will be staying and the conference will be held, does not have a computer available for the speakers, just projectors. I, being a developer, rely on my HP Envy i7 desktop computer and two big monitors to do my programming. On the road, I have always simply used my Windows phone for everything I need, and usually just take my presentations on my phone, on a USB, and have it in the cloud so that I can put it on whatever presentation computer I’m given.

So I looked around for the cheapest most portable full Windows 10 laptop that can run Office with at least 4 GB RAM (minimum for good performance on Windows 10), and I ran into a refurbished Lenovo x131e with a nice small 11.6” screen at Best Buy for $206. It’s even got a few features you normally don’t find at this price, like a 320 GB hard drive and two USB 3.0 ports. I like the Lenovo (IBM) brand, as I used that brand laptop at work for my last 8 years. I ordered it late Tuesday night last week and they said 2 business days for shipping, so I thought I was okay. Once ordered, UPS said it would arrive “by end of day” on Wednesday … and I leave on Thursday, so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Followup:  My laptop arrived on Wednesday at 2 p.m. A nice little thing, just the perfect size for taking to conferences. I like feel of the keyboard and the touchpad works so nicely that I don’t think I’ll need a mouse. Cortana helped me through the Windows 10 setup it and I was impressed that it understood my answers without requiring voice training. It then went through some Windows updates that I expected via wifi would have taken hours. It finished in a couple of minutes and then rebooted.

After I activated the copy of Windows 10 from the product key that was listed on the computer, it asked me to sync my OneDrive files and then activate Microsoft Office which I have an Office 365 license for. Just 30 minutes after the laptop was delivered, I was able to open my Powerpoint presentations I created for the Conference this weekend that were up on OneDrive and were to my surprise already listed conveniently as recent files in the File Open menu.

I am very impressed with how smooth this procedure was and how short a time it took. Now to install a few programs I regularly use and I’m good to go.