DMT Entered in Innovator Showdown @RootsTechConf - Tue, 27 Sep 2016

Lots has happened in the past few weeks. I’ve booked my flights, hotel and registered for RootsTech 2017 in Salt Lake City from Feb 8 to 11. I was there in 2012 and 2014 so its been a while and I’m looking forward to renewing some acquaintances and meeting other genealogy software developers, geneabloggers and twitterealogists in person for the first time.

My speaker topic on “Using NoSQL Databases in Genealogy Software” for the Innovator Summit day was turned down, but I’ve parlayed that into an entry of my Double Match Triangulator (DMT) program into the Innovator Showdown competition. I don’t recall them having a DNA analysis program entered before so I’ll be interested to see what they think of it, and I’ll be very happy if it’s selected as one of the 10 semi-finalists. I’ve already prepared my DMT page at the Devpost site for the contest and I have to add a 60 to 90 second video about it within the next two months. I haven’t created a video for any of my products yet, so that should be fun.

If you’re planning to go to RootsTech this year, book early. You’ll get a discount off the registration fee. Hotels fill up quickly, as do the labs. Much of the session schedule has been posted and I’ve already noted many of the talks I expect I’ll attend, as well as booked myself for two labs, one with John Woodbury on Chromosome Mapping, and the other by TapGenes on using their health site, which won the Innovator Showdown last year. I’ve also booked the MyHeritage sponsored lunch for Thursday. I’m hoping to join other Geneabloggers when they meet up, and I understand Jill Ball is having a Commonwealth get-together which I’d love to attend (as a Canada representative) and see many of my Unlock the Past cruise friends again.

DMT was in a pretty good state, and I felt good about entering it the way it was. But only a couple of weeks ago, Jim Bartlett, after several months of inactivity, started up his great segment-ology blog again. His latest post on The Attributes of a TG outlined in detail his steps to determine Triangulation Groups. I read that and I immediately thought: DMT should be able to do that! So, I’m now working to finish up a new version 1.2 of DMT which will do this grunt work for you. It should really add to the usefulness of the program which will help for the Showdown.

If you plan to be at RootsTech 2017, let me know and lets see if we can get together. I’ll be there from Tuesday night through Friday, but I have to leave Saturday morning. And if DMT makes it to the top 5, be sure to talk it up for me and vote for it in the final on Friday.