RootsTech2020 - Day 3

Another day at RootsTech! One thing about RootsTech is that there are so many potential classes that it is hard to figure out which ones to go to. Yesterday my wife decided to spend her morning in the Ancestry booth attending their mini classes and had some great instruction on their DNA tools. Today I had scheduled several FamilySearch classes but after talking to several people in the Expo Hall, I decided to switch it all up and changed my schedule to include classes on accreditation. It has been my plan to become accredited at some time but I always say that I am too busy to make that commitment. I don't ever think I will slow down, so now is as good a time as any to start the process.

The accreditation track of classes was sponsored by ICAPGen and included the following:

• Accreditation: What, Why, and How taught by Diana Elder author of Research Like a Pro and blogger at Family Locket, and Jenny Hansen blogger at My Favorite Ancestor
• A Deep Dive into Locality Research taught by Mindy Taylor from Price Genealogy
• Put It in Writing: Effective Research Reports taught by Jana Greenhalgh blogger at The Genealogy Kids and Lisa Stokes from Lisa Stokes Heritage Research
• Dealing With Documents: Analysis, Extraction, Transcription and Abstraction taught by Mindy Taylor

In addition to those classes I attended a blogger class titled Taking Your Blog from Blah to Beautiful by Amy Johnson Crow, author of the blog Amy Johnson Crow Modern Genealogy Made Easy. This class presented techniques to improve your blog and make it more attractive and user friendly. I'll have to start using the ideas that she talked about in my blog.

During lunch I attended the MyHeritage sponsored lunch. MyHeritage talked about a few of their new developments. 

One of the new developments was their photo colorization tool. The tool was designed in reverse, taking color photos and making them black and white and then digitally aging them. As the computer learned the way to make the photos black and white it was also able to begin doing the process in reverse. During the first week that the tool was available there were over 1 million photos colorized by users. During the first 2 weeks of use it was mentioned in social media more than 60,000 times. You can colorize up to 10 photos for free. If you want to do more than that you will have to subscribe to MyHeritage. 

Another new development was the addition of 1.3 billion records from over 25,000 US City Directories. These records were consolidated to group records which now represent 545 million individual records. This collection was released today! The computer algorithm is able to estimate life events such as marriage and death dates based on the presence or absence of a person in the directory. The algorithm development and collection/processing of the digital images took over 2 years.

The third development that was released is the fan view chart. This chart can show up to 10 generations. Data can be added directly to the people in the fan view and colors are added to distinguish your family lines. They have also made the fan chart shareable on social media. The fan chart can be found by clicking on the Family Tree menu and then selecting the fan view icon.

MyHeritage had a virtual reality presentation at RootsTech that allows you to experience life as the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in celebration of the 400th anniversary. They are also looking for DNA from descendants of Mayflower descendants.

MyHeritage also announced their MyHeritage Education website. This collection is a knowledge base of educational content to master your skills and help you make the most of your research.

As if that wasn't enough, MyHeritage is preparing for the 24-hour Genealogy Webinar Marathon on March 12-13. They already have 6,000 people registered to watch the webinar. You can learn more at the Family Tree Webinar website.

One last announcement from MyHeritage...They have scheduled their next MyHeritage Live Conference in Tel Aviv on October 25-26, 2020. You can learn more about this conference on their webpage. You might want to consider having a combined trip to Tel Aviv for the conference on October 25-26 and then off to London for RootsTech on November 5-6 this fall.

Between the accreditation track and MyHeritage's announcements this has been a great day at RootsTech. One more day left here and then we can begin thinking about coming home. RootsTech 2021 will be held February 3-6, 2021. Time for you to start planning how you can attend this one of a kind event.