Thursday, March 3, 2022

RootsTech 2022 - Day 1 - What Did I Learn?


RootsTech is an incredible family history conference. More than 1 million people have registered for RootsTech, are you related to any of them? Check out the Relatives at RootsTech page to see how many you are related to. I currently have 132 relatives at RootsTech. That is a small number compared to most people but it is significant to me. There are so many things to learn while attending the various venues.

FamilySearch has a short 6-minute video to introduce you to the new Get Involved! initiative. This video talks about their use of handwriting technology to increase the number of records that are being made searchable. They have been focusing on the Spanish language baptisms with this handwriting technology. For Indexers, this allows them to review the information instead of having to type it in. Computers can process a million records each day so there is a need to increase our capacity to review those records. In order to address this need, FamilySearch developed the Get Involved app which is available in the Google App Store. You can currently use this app to review English and Spanish language records. But, in April, you will be able to work on the 1950 US Census with the app! You can watch the video introducing the 1950 US Census project and how the Get Involved app will be used at the FamilySearch booth in the Expo Hall. You can also learn more about how you can get involved by clicking on the Get Involved tab at FamilySearch.org. The site is active and you can start testing this technology by getting involved with US probate records project and then switch over to the 1950 US Census once it is ready.

1950 US Census Project

Last year MyHeritage announced Deep Nostalgia during their RootsTech presentation. Deep Nostalgia added animation to your photographs. The application went viral overnight and people from across the globe were adding animated ancestors to their social media feeds. This year they announced Live Story which creates an animated video narrative of your ancestor telling their own story. Live Stories can be created automatically from the data linked to your ancestor and their family. You can select from various voices and edit the story as you like. MyHeritage also announced the Date Estimator for historic photos which will be live soon. The Date Estimator uses artificial intelligence to estimate the date of the photo based on various characteristics in the photo. Another new announcement is the Relationship Diagram and the Family Tree Timeline which help you visualize your family tree and find errors more easily. Additionally, MyHeritage added 4 billion new records to their collection in 2021. You can learn more about these announcements on their Main Stage Keynote presentation.

MyHeritage's Live Story


Family Tree Timeline

These are just a few of the things that were announced at RootsTech today. I will continue to add more information to my blog throughout the RootsTech conference.

2 comments:

Bella In The Bayou said...

Is the Get Involved App not available for Apple products? Your link goes to google.

Thanks for the summary of what happened day 1.
Belle

Miles Meyer said...

I don't use Apple products so I don't know about the link to the Apple Store. You can search the store for Get Involved to see if the app is there.