RootsTech 2019 - Thursday - 28 February

Are these your ancestors?

Hi there, day two of RootsTech is now over. It was another busy day and I am going on only 4 hours sleep (time change problem). So, what happened today? I spent more time in the Expo Hall today talking to vendors and seeing what new things were available. I also ran into these guys in the picture. I wonder if they are related to me?

My first class was New FamilySearch Record Innovations. This class discussed how records will be changing over the coming years. One thing they discussed was indexing. Last year there were 260 million records indexed by 327,696 indexers. In 2019, researchers will be able to thank the indexers for the records they worked on. Each indexed record will be linked to the indexers and arbitrator that worked on that record and there will be a Thank You button which the researcher can click to send a message to the indexers and arbitrator. This will probably be released sometime around July/August. Also, later this year, indexers will be able to take advantage of automatic name and place lookups. Names and place names will automatically be filled in as the indexer types the information for the record. This is currently in final testing. Additionally, there will be new ways to volunteer so that more indexers will be available to handle the increased number of digitized records. If you remember from my post yesterday, we are currently 40 years behind in indexing and each year enough new records are digitized to add another decade to the backlog. That means by the end of 2020 we will have a 60 year backlog of digitized images needing to be indexed. Another new item is that users will be able to edit records in the record details screen of the search results. This will start with being able to correct errors in names but will eventually expand to include places and other fields.

And what about all those unindexed records? There are currently 3.65 billion images available on FamilySearch. 1.36 billion of those images are browse only while 915.4 million of them are in the Family History Catalog. Only about 20% of the total number of images are indexed and that percentage is decreasing every year as new records are added. Currently it takes an average of 249 days for an image to go from digitization to being published on the FamilySearch website. Soon that time lag will be decreased to only 24 hours. Imagine that the images are scanned one day and available online the next day.

Explore Historical Images beta site

FamilySearch is now beta testing the Explore Historical Images function. This page allows you to search by place, date, event or film number and will provide a list of images not yet searchable or browseable through the regular FamilySearch website. As an example, I took the screenshot of the results for Auglaize County, Ohio. There ended up being 93 record sets for this area that are not yet available on FamilySearch but I can see them here and search through the tens of thousands of new images.

Additionally, FamilySearch again reiterated their work with computer aided indexing. The computers aren't as accurate as human indexers but they can more quickly index large numbers of typed records. The example of the GenealogyBank Obituary Collection only taking 3 weeks to provide 50 million indexed records was discussed and they also announced plans to add another 38 million more records very soon.

Ancestry Labs beta projects

The General Session featured Ancestry.com and some of their big news. Ancestry announced that they currently have more than 15 million people in their DNA network and they announced the release of DNA ThruLines in beta this week. This is another way to look at your DNA results and see connections between people. They also announced MyTreeTags which allows users to tag information to highlight details or tag for future research. These products can be accessed at https://www.ancestry.com/beta. Ancestry also announced several new expansion areas including 12 new state vital record collections, expanded US immigration/naturalization collections, expanded US WW II draft card collection, the world's largest obituary collection (newspapers.com), global expansion by adding more records for Denmark, France, Finland, Mexico and Norway, and 94 new African American DNA Communities.

Patricia Heaton, from Everybody Loves Raymond, finished off the General Session by talking about her family and the stories around them.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I attended the Ancestry sponsored lunch where Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke about a short film project called Railroad Ties. Railroad Ties was based on the story of the underground railroad and more specifically the escape of Mary Weems from slavery. The story revolved around 6 strangers and how genealogy research was able to connect them all to this event. If you want to see the story you can go to https://www.ancestry.com/cs/railroadties.

I thought Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made some very profound statements during this discussion.  He said "One of the biggest misconceptions today is the idea of racial purity." The average African American is 25% European. He himself is 50% European based on his DNA. Even European Americans are mixed ethnicity, having portions of their DNA represented in several different countries. He also said "We are all united in our amnesia of our ancestors." At one time he thought the lack of knowledge of ones ancestors was specific to African Americans. He believed that they didn't know about their ancestors because of the impact of slavery but after researching the genealogies of various people for his TV shows, he realized that we all have a lack of knowledge that basically begins with our great grandparents lives. We have very little concept of who our ancestors were beginning only 3 generations ago. He believes that "Genealogy can revolutionize how we teach American and World History." If we realized how our ancestors were involved in history or affected by it, we would have a greater appreciation for the history that we study in schools.

As always, there was so much to learn today that I can't provide everything in just one blog. If you want to see some of the talks that were given this week, you can visit the RootsTech YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/user/FamilySearch/videos. I hope this information is helpful to you. Now, it is time for me to get some sleep because tomorrow is another packed day.  Goodnight!

RootsTech 2018 - Day 4

Day 4, the final day of RootsTech 2018, was an incredible event. We started the day with a talk by Ken Chahine of Ancestry DNA. He talked about the progress that has been made in DNA and genetic genealogy since 2014. In 2014, they had 300,000 DNA samples in their database. Now they have over 7 million. Ancestry DNA has found 350 global DNA regions to provide users with more detail on their ethnicity.

After that, we were entertained by Natalie Lafourcade. She is an Hispanic singer who sang on Coco. Tomorrow night she is performing for the Oscars. She performed several songs and talked about her heritage. Ancestry presented her with their research on her ancestry. They traced one of her lines back to France. Her other line was from Chile. They found that several of her ancestors were musicians. The whole presentation brought many in the audience to tears.

Natalie Lafourcade

After Natalie sang we heard from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He started the discussion by saying how the miniseries Roots inspired him to look at his ancestry. He talked about discovering his several great grandmother Jane Gates (1819-1888). The experience of his search then led him to develop several TV series including "Faces of America" and "Finding Your Roots". He is now working on a curriculum based on students doing their genealogy. Every child would complete a family tree and take a DNA test. The results of the tree and DNA test would help the students learn about different cultures, social sciences, biological sciences, math and other subjects. He has put this program to a test with a summer camp and series called "Finding Your Roots - The Seedlings".

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I attended a talk by Jennifer Utley, from Ancestry. Her talk focused on how Ancestry researches several genealogy based TV shows, including "Who Do You Think You Are" and "Long Lost Family".  Each 42 minute episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" requires 1,000 hours of research.

The last talk I attended was Lisa Louise Cooke's "Reconstruct Your Ancestor's World with Google". This presentation focused on the Google toolbox (Google Search Engine, Google Books, Google Patents, Youtube, Google Earth, Google Images, and Google Scholar.) Once you have determined the basic facts of someone's life, you need to use these tools to fill in the gaps such as the life in the community, companies your ancestor may have worked for, what events occurred during their life, etc. She gave an example of one of her ancestors who repaired carriages and then went on to work on horseless carriages later in life. She was able to determine who he worked for and find some images of the company along with images of her ancestor. Lisa also discussed basic search techniques that help to focus your search.

There were many more presentations during the week than I have mentioned in my blog. I was only able to provide feedback on the few that I attended. I plan on providing one more post about RootsTech on Sunday or Monday, once I get back home. That post will focus on the social life of a RootsTech attendee. Stay tuned for some fun.

Central Florida Family History Conference - 2017 - Morning Session

Well, I finally did it. I managed to fit the Central Florida Family History Conference into my schedule and went this year. It was their 21st annual conference, but the first time I have attended. In the past, I was teaching at the University on Saturdays and couldn't just tell the students they had the day off. Now that we have moved and I am no longer teaching, it felt like a good time to go. So, I decided to provide some info for all my Family History Consultants and followers on what I learned at this conference.

The Keynote speaker was Crista Cowan - "The Barefoot Genealogist". For those who don't follow her, she works for Ancestry and produces educational videos for the Ancestry YouTube Channel. Her Keynote talk was about Ancestry and some of it's resources. She discussed her history with the company including her days as a representative travelling between the US and London trying to get contracts for records, her time in the indexing program, and now her time in the DNA and education arenas where she helps do research for several of the genealogy television shows. Currently, Ancestry has over 22 billion records and is adding about 2 million records each day. Most of the indexing is contracted out but some is completed by indexing projects. The biggest aid in adding new records to Ancestry is the advancement of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) which allows computers to index typed pages such as newspapers and directories. These OCR records are being added at an ever increasing rate as the accuracy of the technology has advanced. She also discussed the ProGenealogists program at Ancestry.  This is a small group of about 100 professional genealogists who can be contracted to help you break down your brick walls.

Jim Greene, from FamilySearch, was the first talk that I attended. His presentation was on What's New and What's Coming with FamilySearch. I always try to attend these types of talks so I can get ready for where FamilySearch is going in the next year or two. So, for the What's New part, Jim talked about the record collections that were added in 2016. The rate of use of FamilySearch continues to increase and during 2016 the users were adding 2.7 million new individuals each month. The largest connected tree has over a billion names and then there are many smaller bushes, as he calls them. These smaller bushes are those trees which haven't yet connected to the larger tree. Users are attaching 8 million sources each month. I'm sure I am a big part of those sources being attached because that is basically all that I do now. I just run up and down my tree making sure as many sources are connected as possible and adding new people based on those sources. The total number of individuals that are connected to trees on FamilySearch is now over 1.14 billion with 733 million sources attached. Another thing that happened was the decommissioning of new.familysearch.org (nFS). If you have been using FamilySearch for many years you probably remember this transitional program that eventually was replaced by the current FamilySearch interface. There were several issues with nFS that needed to be worked out in development, such as Individuals of Unusual Size (IOUS) who could not be merged due to capacity issues. For those techies out there, the transition from nFS, which was an Oracle system, to the current FamilySearch, a Casandra system, is a major leap in computing power. Another thing that was added is the "View My Relationship" function. I use this all the time to make sure I haven't strolled too far off my family tree (which I do way too often). I just wish they had the relationship spelled out so you know if you were working on a 3rd cousin 4 times removed instead of having to figure it out from the tree they show you. Don't get me wrong, I really like the tree that pops up, I just want the relationship added at the bottom, or somewhere. Another advancement is FamilySearch Lite. FamilySearch Lite is built for low bandwidth access. This is great for areas where broadband doesn't exist or for those with limited data plans on their phones. For example, the opening screen once you log in to FamilySearch is normally about 3 MB in size. With FamilySearch Lite, that same page is about 30 K. That is a huge difference. Jim also talked about the Relatives Around Me function on the FamilySearch App. This function shows you everyone within a 50 foot radius of you who has the app activated and then shows you how you are related (if you are). There were a few people in the audience with the app so we all turned it on to see what we found. The person behind me found that he was related to 3 of them. Of course, I was related to no one, as usual.

So, what is coming for FamilySearch in 2018? They are working on improving the Private portion of FamilySearch. The private area is a secure database, not connected to the public portion, where all the data on living people are housed. Currently, you can only attach one source to a living person. That will change so you can fully source and add memories to living people. This allows you to tell their story while they are still living. Once they die, they are transferred to the public data set with all their sources and memories attached. Also, you will be able to share private data with those you invite, such as family members, so they can work on the living lines together. This will allow for Group Messaging, Shared Memories, Shared To-Do List, and a Group Activity Feed, so you can coordinate your research with family members. All this private information will remain protected on the secure server to protect people's privacy. Another advancement will be the notifications if someone changes information you added. With these notifications you will know when any information that you have contributed has been changed. This is different than the Watch List that lets you know if anything on a person you are watching is changed, whether you contributed it or not.

The last speaker I attended during the morning session was Crista Cowan. Her presentation was titled Using Your Ancestry DNA Results to Make New Family Discoveries. I have been using Ancestry DNA for a couple years now and figured I might be able to learn something from the professional on this. Her introduction on Ancestry DNA started with sorting the data by the most recent so you can track who has been added since the last time you were online. You can find this at the top of the DNA Match page under the title text where it says "Sort by: Relationship/Date". She also mentioned how to add notes to the information (look for the small piece of paper icon on the person's individual page). These were great hints on how to keep track of what is in your DNA Matches. Also, clicking on the small dark circle with the i in it after the person's relationship provides you the DNA match information. That information can be translated by using some of the DANA relationship tables online, such as the ones on Blaine Bettinger's blog. Your list of DNA Matches is sorted by the size of the matching DNA, the number of matched centiMorgans. So, those at the top of each relationship section are your highest matches and those toward the bottom are less closely related. Crista mentioned that she has a good collection of YouTube videos on the AncestryDNA channel. Another great tip she provided was the Shared Matches screen which shows the matches that are connected to you and the person you are looking at. This can help you determine if the matches are on your maternal or paternal line if you have additional close family DNA results. For example, I have both my parents tested and my wife has her mother tested. If any of our parents show up as shared matches we know the side of the family they are connected to.

Well, I don't want to overwhelm everyone so I will stop here and continue with the afternoon session in my next post. Hope you enjoy this post and have learned something.

RootsTech 2017 - Day 4

Day 4 has finally come. This is the last day of RootsTech 2017 and the first morning that I actually slept until my alarm went off at 5:45 am. My day will end at 6:00 am tomorrow morning when I arrive at the Orlando Airport.

Our opening session today was hosted by Ancestry DNA. Ancestry DNA announced the launch of their new Genetic Communities scheduled for March/April this year. The Genetic Communities is basically a high resolution population cluster analysis indicating the most probable locations linked to your DNA results. They currently have 1,000 communities to compare your DNA but only 300 will be available at the initial launch. These communities are smaller geographic regions where there is a high concentration of specific genetic interconnectivity. This technology is ground breaking and was recently published in the journal Nature. With this resolution of data Ancestry can show migration routes and provide historical context to help build your stories. The results also show which of your DNA match cousins also belong to your genetic communities, allowing you to see how these cousins could be related if they don't already have trees on Ancestry to match to.

CeCe Moore, the Genetic Genealogist, talked about her research and how memories may be carried through generations via DNA. There have been several studies that indicate this may actually occur. She told about several of her projects where she reunited families that were separated at birth or found people who had forgotten who they were. The value of DNA in genealogical research is proving to be one of the most important discoveries of our time.

The winners of the Innovator Showdown were announced this morning. They were:

• Kindex - People's Choice Award - $25,000 in cash and in kind credits
• Double Match Triangulator - 3rd Place - $26,000 in cash and in kind credits
• Qroma Tag - 2nd Place - $44,000 in cash and in kind credits
• OldNews USA - 1st Place - $95,000 in cash and in kind credits

I also attended the Ancestry sponsored lunch. Ancestry has set a priority of making more records available and making their search process as fast as possible. In the old days it took an average of 1 hour and 20 minutes to find a person in the 1870 US census on microfilm. It now takes 22 seconds to perform the same task on Ancestry. Just in the last year, their page access time has improved by 44%, resulting in a 2x increase in page loading speed. Additionally, they are working on a predictive search algorithm, focusing the results based on your recent activities.

Ancestry has over 19 billion online records and added 2.3 billion new records last year alone with the largest increases being the addition of US Vital Records, Church of England Parishes, Ireland Catholic Parish Registers, German Lutheran Church Registers, and German Directories. Their US Marriage library now totals more than 300 million records, three times larger than FindMyPast's collection of US marriage records. Ancestry plans on adding another 120 million German records in the next 3 months resulting in a total of 640 million German records. They are also expanding their Dutch and Swedish record collections. And, one more collection, the US WW I Troop Transport collection will be available in April of 2017. This collection includes the crew and passenger lists for the troop transport ships during WW I. The partnership between Ancestry and FamilySearch provides a record library larger than all the other FamilySearch partners combined.

What else is Ancestry planning for 2017? Newspapers.com is adding 8 to 10 million pages each month and currently have more than 240 million pages online. They will launch the We Remember personal memorial pages later this year. These memorial pages can be created for your deceased ancestors, providing one point of entry to tell their stories. AncestryDNA now has over 3 million users, a 2 million user increase over this time a year ago. The increased number of DNA kits in their system is providing many more results for those using the system.

The closing ceremony featured Noteworthy and Vocal Point, two groups from BYU. Additionally, they announced the winners from the cake contest, judged by The Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro. There were 60 cakes entered in the competition and the winner was awarded nearly $12,000 in high end kitchen appliances.

It has been a wonderful conference and I look forward to next year. FamilySearch announced that the RootsTech 2018 conference will be February 28 - March 3. It's time to start saving up for your trip.