Day 3 – #RootsTech – #NotAtRootsTech – #Genchat - Fri, 2 Mar 2018

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.