SOME
THINGS I LEARNED AT ROOTSTECH 2013
Salt Palace, Salt Lake City, Utah,
21-23 Mar 2013
by Donald
R. Snow
1.
ROOTSTECH 2013
There
were nearly 10,000 people that
attended RootsTech 2013 in the Salt
Palace, including many Family
History Consultants and 1500 youth
who attended a series of free
classes on Saturday. It was
the largest of the three RootsTech
conferences so far and this one had
lots of information geared to all
levels of family history and not
just for the highly technological,
though there was plenty for them
too. The keynote presentations
are posted online at http://rootstech.org/ and
are really worth watching.
They are entertaining, as well
as informative. The videos
from RootsTech 2012 last year are
also posted on the RootsTech website
by clicking on About (on the
left-hand side of the screen).
2.
ROOTSTECH 2013 CLASS
NOTES
The notes
for all of the classes were posted 2
or 3 months before the conference
for anyone to read, whether
registered for the conference or
not, and are still available.
To download any that you want,
just go to the RootsTech web
page, click on Schedule, and then
click on the title of any of the 150
classes that had notes. You
will see two links, one for the
notes in doc format and one for them
in pdf format. You can do
searches for any term in any of the
notes by using Google site searches.
For example, to find every
occurrence of the term Evernote in
all of the class notes do a Google
search for
"site:http://rootstech.org/schedule
evernote" (without the quotes).
The results will include all
occurrences where Evernote is in the
title or text of the file. To
download the Conference Guide and
the entire conference syllabus in
large compressed files, click on the
links at the bottom of the Schedule
page. The problem with the
syllabus file is that the notes for
each class are in a folder for that
class and are in two formats, doc
and pdf, so when you extract all the
files you have 150 folders each
containing two files and you can't
just do pdf searches of the entire
syllabus all at once. It would
have been very helpful if they had
put all the pdf's into
one file and
all the doc files into another and
then compressed those. At the
conference attendees could print out
the notes for any classes they
wanted at the FamilySearch section
of the Vendors area. Few
people seemed to know that there
were computer printers there for
them to use at no charge. They
could also get free soda pop there
and just relax for a few minutes on
the sofas and chairs provided.
Thanks, FamilySearch.
3.
ROOTSTECH VIEWED
REMOTELY AROUND THE WORLD
This year
RootsTech was viewed remotely in at
least 17 locations around the world.
Here's the list. Notice
that nearly half of these are
outside the U.S.
IN THE U.S.
OUT
OF THE U.S.
Ashburn Virginia
Stake
Bogota Colombia
Stake
Beaverton
Oregon West Stake
Calgary Alberta
West Stake
Kansas
City Stake
Guatemala City
Central Stake
Klein
Texas Stake
Lima Peru La
Molina Stake
Liberty
Missouri Stake
Makati Philippines Stake
Los
Angeles California Stake
Mexico
City Aragon Stake
Orlando
Florida South Stake
Nottingham England Stake
Powder
Springs Georgia Stake
Sao Paulo
Brazil Stake
Rio
Rancho New Mexico Stake
These
stakes could arrange their own
Family History "fair" and use the
streaming videos and programs from
RootsTech in Salt Lake City.
The Family History Dept is
evaluating how this went for
possible expansion to 600
stakes next year.
4.
ARTICLES AND BLOGS ABOUT
ROOTSTECH 2013
The
Church News ran several-page
articles about the conference on 31
Mar (5 pages) and 7 Apr 2013 (2
pages), and there were articles in
many other papers. Here are a
few links.
There
were several
"official bloggers" for the
conference and many unofficial ones
who reported it.
This is
only a smattering of the 20-30
official blogs about the conference
and there are just lots and lots of
good reviews, comments, photos,
interviews, and stories posted in
these and many others.
5.
EMPHASIS ON STORIES
The
emphasis at this RootsTech was on
stories and "current" family
history, not just the genealogy of
the individuals, and there were many
sponsors and sections devoted to
this. There were discussion of
how to get others involved in FH,
especially youth, and what we should
be doing to be sure our own family
history is preserved for later
generations. There were many
vendor booths relating to various
aspects of stories and recording and
presenting them and on Thursday
evening the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
put on a concert for the attendees
of the history of Irving Berlin, a
Jewish immigrant to the U.S.
who wrote God Bless America.
Information about the concert
is at http://www.lds.org/church/news/rootstech-irving-berlin-concert-highlights-need-to-index-immigration-records? lang = eng .
The program was recorded and
rebroadcast Saturday morning to the
remote RootsTech locations mentioned
above. Elder Allen F. Packer
of the LDS Church's Quorum
of Seventy and Executive Director of
the Family History Department, spoke
and mentioned that research showed
that knowing more about their family
history was the single biggest
predictor of a child's emotional
well-being. Wow! Does
that make our family history
activities important! Since
the concert was recorded, I imagine
it will be available somewhere to
watch, either online or
on DVD. On Friday evening
they had a Story Telling evening
with several local and national
story tellers. We were aware
of some of these storytellers since
we had heard them before at
the Timpanogos Storytelling
Festival in Orem and we
knew they were good and would be fun
to hear and they were. It was
a very enjoyable evening in the
Little Theater in the LDS Conference
Center. Quotes I heard that
relate to stories are the following.
"There have been great
societies that never used the wheel,
but there have been no great
societies that did not tell
stories." That was a statement
from Ursula LeQuinn quoted
by someone demonstrating something
at the BackBlaze Theater
in the vendor area on Thursday, 21
Mar 2013, at 4 PM. Another
quote I heard two of three times
from one of the general authorities
of the LDS Church and from staff of
the Family History Department is,
"Genealogy changes charts; family
history changes hearts." The
difference between genealogy and
family history is that genealogy is
just the bare-bones of names, dates,
and places, whereas family history
brings in the stories and details of
our ancestors' lives and fills in
the "dash" between the birth and
death dates on their tombstones.
6.
THE FAMILY
HISTORY LIBRARY BOOK SCANNING
PROJECT
One
thing I learned at RootsTech
2013 was the process of the
Family History Library's book
scanning project. I made
an appointment in advance of
RootsTech to have them scan two
books of Snow biographies.
One was the Erastus Snow
biography and the other was the
Erastus Beman Snow biography,
his son and my grandfather.
The Snow family
commissioned Andrew Karl Larson,
History Professor at Dixie State
College (now Dixie State
University!) to write them many
years ago and the family has the
copyrights.
The FH Library
staff checked their system and
found that they have a copy of
the Erastus Snow biography on
their shelves, but not the
Erastus Beman Snow biography.
Since the Snow family
hadn't given them permission,
they couldn't post a scan of the
Erastus Snow biography online.
I had talked to other
members of the Snow family and
we had decided that since both
books had been published many
years ago and were now out of
print that we should give the FH
Library permission to scan and
post them online, so I signed
the copyright release forms.
The books were about 800
pages and 150 pages,
respectively. They scanned
them at the booth in the vendors
area of RootsTech that day and
gave them back to me that
evening. They also gave me
4 2-gig flash drives with all
950 scanned pages in tiff format
and said that when they get them
posted online in 2 or 3 weeks
that they will be
in searchable pdf format.
The Snow family is pleased
that both of these books will be
available online since they are
not in print now and many family
members would like copies.
Now they can get pdf
copies and they will be
every-word searchable.
When they are
posted online, to find them
just click on the Books button
on FamilySearch, or go to
that page directly at http://books.familysearch.org/ ,
or find them in the FamilySearch
Catalog and click on "To view a
digital version of this item
click here."
This project has been very
worthwhile and will be very
memorable of RootsTech 2013 for
us.
7.
OUR PRESENTATION ON
ORGANIZING AND PRESENTING YOUR
PHOTOS
My
daughter, Linda Snow Westover,
and I gave a presentation on about
using Picasa and
other freeware to organize
your digital photo collection.
It turned out to be very
popular and there were about 450
attendees in the class and many more
that couldn't get in. I guess
part of the interest is that
everyone has loads of photos and
they are looking for ways to
organize and show them.
Besides the 4-page syllabus
notes of our class we made a
one-page summary handout so people
would have something in hand during
the class. The notes are
available on the RootsTech website
(information in paragraph 1 above)
and also, along with the one-page
summary, are available on my Class
Notes web page at http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
We knew the class would be of
interest to many since Sue Maxwell
had done a survey on her Granite
Genealogy blog at http://granitegenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/02/and-rootstech-registration-winner-is.html
and our class came in as the most
popular in the Getting Started
track, but we still didn't expect
the enormous interest that was
shown. We were glad that our
notes and summary handout are all
posted online so people can have
access to them.
8.
TALK ON ERASTUS SNOW BY ELDER
STEVEN E. SNOW, LDS CHURCH HISTORIAN
I learned
from the Church History Library
booth at RootsTech that Elder Steve
Snow's talk that he gave on 14
Feb 2013 in the Assembly Hall on
Temple Square about his and my
ancestor Erastus Snow will be
posted online. Elder Snow is
the LDS Church Historian.
The CHL staff told
me that 2 or 3 weeks after the 6-7
April General Conference, when they
can get to it, his talk will be
posted online. Since that talk
was in a series of talks about
historical Church members, I imagine
that other talks will be posted
there too. I forgot to ask
them which website they would be
posted on, but it will probably be
their website http://churchhistorylibrary.lds.org .
9.
MYHERITAGE
James
Tanner, author of Genealogy's Star
blog at http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/ and
a consultant
to MyHeritage http://www.myheritage.com/ pointed
out that the program Family Tree
Builder
from MyHeritage searches
the Internet for all the names on
your database. He pointed out
that it gives almost all good hits,
rather than almost all false
positive hits like so many of the
other genealogy searches yield.
You can sign up for a free
account and post your data and have
it search for your names. They
also have a more advanced account
that you have to pay for.
Their search engine searches
all the databases
on WorldVitalRecords, plus
more.
The MyHeritage website
also has lots of other family
history tools.
10.
NEW VENDORS AND TOOLS
There
were many new vendor companies this
year and I hadn't even heard the
names of some of them before.
For
example, PhotoFaceMatch at http://www.photofacematch.com/ .
This service uses facial
recognition to give you a
probability that two photos are of
the same person. This helps in
identifying old photographs where
you are not sure who the person is,
but you have other photos of that
individual. You upload the two
photos and the website gives you a
probability that they are the same
person. If you upload several
photos that you know are of the
person and then one that you are not
sure of, it can do better since it
has more information of what the
person really looks like. They are
just getting started and at present
the service is free.
10.
BILLION GRAVES AND
FIND A GRAVE
Geoff
Rasmussen pointed out some
differences between Billion Graves
and Find A Grave, for example, how
much easier it is to put cemetery
data on Billion Graves than
on FindAGrave, since you
use Billion Graves' smart
phone app and just take
the picture. It is sent
automatically to their file and is
posted on their website so someone
can transcribe it as soon as they
can get to it. For Find A
Grave you have to upload the photo.
But the Find A Grave database
has many times more graves than
Billion Graves and you own the
copyright to the photo, whereas
Billion Graves owns the copyright to
anything scanned with their app.
Geoff mentioned an idea for
when there is no headstone for the
person in the cemetery, but you are
sure they are buried there. He
suggested that you write their
information on a piece of paper, lay
it on the ground, and photograph it
with your Billion Graves smart
phone app so it will have the
correct GPS coordinates
included. The Billion Graves
app is free for smart
phones and can be used in any
cemetery by just snapping the
picture. You don't need to do
the entire cemetery, unless you have
time and want to, and that makes a
good youth project, e.g. an
Eagle Scout project. He said
his kids enjoy going to cemeteries
and walking around and snapping
pictures of the tombstones with
their smart phones.
12.
ANDROID APPS FOR GENEALOGY
I
attended a class on Android
genealogy apps taught by
David Lifferth. The video
of his presentation on this topic
from RootsTech 2012 is online
at https://familysearch.org/learningcenter/lesson/using-android-devices-for-genealogy/496 .
I was impressed by how
many Android users there are and how
many Android apps exist for family
history now. Android is the
operating system used on smart
phones and tablets that are
not iPhones and iPads.
David had us hold up our
Android device and he took pictures
to post on his blog. The
photos from his Android classes at
RootsTech in 2011 and 2012 are in
the video at the website above, but
the 2013 ones aren't there yet.
His notes and his presentation
list many apps for genealogy and now
I need to learn how to use some of
them on my Android tablet.
13.
USING EVERNOTE TO TAKE
NOTES ON MY ANDROID TABLET
At this
conference I experimented with
taking notes
using Evernote on
my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2
10.1 tablet. I typed them in
using a stylus with the virtual
keyboard and found that it was slow,
but I could get most of what I
wanted to write. Using
Evernote the notes
are sync'd on my desktop
and laptop computers at home, so I
can edit them more easily there.
I found it worked fine, but
that I've got things to learn about
Evernote on Android and how to use
it. I also need to learn how
to use a virtual keyboard faster.
(I'm writing these notes on my
desktop computer in Evernote so they
are sync'd on my laptop and on my
tablet.)
13.
WORLDCAT FROM OCLC (ONLINE COMPUTER
LIBRARY CENTER)
WorldCat from OCLC -- http://www.worldcat.org/ -- combines
the catalogs of over 10,000
libraries worldwide and shows you
which libraries have a given item.
It works on computers, as well
as mobile devices, and you can set
up a free account to keep track of
your searches
and bibliographies. You
can enter a zip code or city and it
shows the libraries within a given
number of miles of that zip code
that have the item. Knowing
where an item is, you can go there
or else request it via Interlibrary
Loans. The Family History
Library has recently joined so their
collection will now be included
in WorldCat searches.
14.
ROOTSTECH 2014
The dates
for RootsTech 2014 were announced as
6-8 Feb 2014 in the Salt Palace, but
in a new location in it.
Hopefully, it will be in a
part where there are some larger
rooms and where it is easier to get
from floor-to-floor with more
elevators and/or escalators.
Slow and crowded elevators
have been major problems in each of
the RootsTech conferences so far.
But the planners are aware of
it and may be able to do something
about it for next year. I
recommend you watch for details and
check on it for RootsTech 2014.
It is not just a conference
for avid family historians, but
includes lots for people at all
levels of expertise.
These are
only a few of the many things I
learned at RootsTech. Since
the notes are available to everyone,
we can all learn more of topics that
interest us, even if we didn't
attend that class. I like
having the notes available to
everyone, both before and after the
conference, and think that this made
the conference much more valuable
worldwide. I appreciate
all the work and money that went
into this conference and I hope
you've caught some of the excitement
I felt for RootsTech 2013.
Don Snow