RootsTech Connect 2021 - 1 Day To Go

Tomorrow evening is the start of the RootsTech Connect conference. The Expo Hall opens at 7:00pm EST and the first keynote speaker comes onstage at 11:00pm EST. Will you be awake for that? So far, my last five blog posts have been talking about the various ways we can make the most of the conference. I realize that there is a lot planned but just remember that much of it can be viewed on demand over the next year so you will want to focus on those items which will not be available after the conference. Here is a list of some items that will only be live or will be deactivated after the conference.

1) Let's Do Good Together - I provided details about these sessions in my previous blog post. These are panel discussions which will be held on Zoom. The audience will be able to ask questions and the panel members may ask the audience questions. Some of these will have breakout rooms where you can talk to others about your ideas and get feedback or potentially find others with similar interests who can help you achieve your goals.

2) Expo Hall - Just like in past years, there are many genealogy related companies represented at RootsTech. You can visit their virtual booths, ask them questions, find conference related discounts, and attend various product demonstration in the Demo Theater. Representatives for the companies will be there to help answer your questions in real time.

3) Innovators Portal - The Innovators Portal can be found under the Menu icon in the upper right corner. This area is where you will find the latest innovations in family history and genealogy and will be able to talk to those who are developing these new tools. There are more than a dozen projects being demonstrated here including FamilySearch's computer aided indexing, photo restoration applications, 3D family trees, immersive media, and more. Each innovator has a video and a link to their products demonstration site for you to explore. Take some time to investigate these innovations and ask the developers questions.

4) DNA Basics Learning Center - This area is where you can ask basic questions about DNA, participate in live DNA classes, and participate in interactive learning activities. All of these classes will be available on demand following their live presentation but the interactive instruction will not be available afterward.

5) Chats - Each session will have an active chat room. You can join each room using the link on the session's page. This will allow you to chat with the presenter and with other attendees who have joined the chat room. Many presenters will have "office hours" where they will be available live to answer questions. They will also be checking in periodically to monitor the chat and respond to comments or questions. These chats will be deactivated at the end of the conference so if you want to keep something that was said, you will have to copy and paste it into your notes.

There are some "live" events that may be available on demand later in case you missed them during their scheduled time. 

1) Live Sessions/Keynotes - There are live sessions scheduled throughout the day. You can find these live sessions by looking for the Calendar under the Menu icon. The lists for Main Stage and Sessions can be displayed for each day. Some of these sessions will be recorded and available later but a few may not be. 

2) Church Leadership Sessions - Various leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be hosting live discussions or talks throughout the conference. For example, Elder and Sister Holland will provide the keynote for Family Discovery Day and Elders Bednar, Stevenson, and Renlund will provide Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction.  Many other Church leaders will have pre-recorded messages available to watch.

I hope this list helps you create your conference schedule and make the most of your time. The conference is nearly 72 hours in length so make sure you include a few breaks for food, sleep and other necessary activities in your schedule. I will try to provide updates to my blog each day discussing what I did during the conference and hopefully providing additional tips for you to make the most of this event.

RootsTech Connect 2021 - 2 Days To Go

Can you believe that RootsTech Connect will be starting in just two days?! The Expo Hall will open at 7:00pm eastern time Wednesday and the first Keynote speaker will be Nick Vujicic at 11:00pm. He is an international motivational speaker and New York Times best selling author. Now that we are coming down to the final days before the conference starts, do you know what you will be doing? Does it seem overwhelming? Do you know the RootsTech survival strategies? If this all just seems to be too much to take in, may I suggest that you take some time to check out the Road to RootsTech video series or read some additional blogs on RootsTech to help you figure out what to do?

VIDEOS

The Roads to RootsTech is a series of short videos from the crew at RootsTech and FamilySearch explaining what will be happening.

Road to RootsTech - Episode 1: What's New This Year (2:23) - This is the first video in the Road to RootsTech series. The video introduces you to what RootsTech will be about and information that will be covered in future Roads to RootsTech videos.

Road to RootsTech - Episode 2: Family Stories - Asia, Africa & Europe (4:15) - This video contains family history stories from FamilySearch team members in Hong Kong, Ghana and Ukraine. The stories are in their native language so you may need to use YouTube's translate function.

Road to RootsTech - Episode 3: Family Stories - North & Central America (4:40) - This episode focuses on the family history stories of two FamilySearch team members in the US and Mexico. The stories are in their native languages of English and Spanish.

Road to RootsTech - Episode 4: Connect, Social & Discovery (1:47) - This video talks about the ways you can interact with others during RootsTech. They discuss topics such as the chat function and the official RootsTech Facebook page.

Road to RootsTech - Episode 5: Classes, Keynotes & Expo Hall (1:44) - This video talks about how to find class sessions, keynote speakers and explore the Expo Hall. 

Road to RootsTech - Episode 6: Get to Know the Emcees (4:04) - This video introduces you to the RootsTech emcees that you will see around the RootsTech Connect venue during the conference. 

Road to RootsTech - Episode 7: A Virtual Survival Guide (4:53) - This video provides the tips you need to survive three days of RootsTech Connect. The video includes tips such as getting rest before the marathon viewing, get up and move around, be comfortable, familiarize yourself with the website, stay hydrated and have snacks available, and many more valuable ideas to make the conference enjoyable and inspirational.

Welcome to RootsTech Connect 2021! (3:06) - This video is a welcome to RootsTech Connect. They discuss the various parts of the website and give a quick tour of where to find various topics.

RootsTech 2021 Sneak Peak (52:00) - This video is an absolute necessity for anyone planning on attending RootsTech Connect. They talk about conference details and demonstrate various parts of the RootsTech Connect website. They answer viewer questions that may help you get ready for the conference.

Behind the Scenes with the RootsTech 2021 Conference (51:20) - This video covers some of the work that went into preparing the RootsTech Connect platform and how it was designed to improve the user experience. They walk through the website and explain where you will be able to find your events.

Where else can you find information about the RootsTech Connect conference? 

ROOTSTECH & FAMILYSEARCH

One great place to find information about RootsTech Connect is the RootsTech Facebook page. Follow the page to keep up on the latest conference news, ask questions, and see what is going on.

The FamilySearch blog also has several stories about RootsTech that might be helpful.

BLOGGERS

There are many bloggers, besides myself, who are writing stories about RootsTech. You can follow them to get a first hand view of their experience and see what advice they have for you as you attend this incredible conference. 

The Genea-Musings blog provides articles as well as a compilation of other blog articles about RootsTech. This is a great place to start to see who is writing about the event.

The Orthodox Genealogist, Dear Myrtle, Treasure Chest of Memories, KindredPast, Inspire Family History, The Genealogy Girl, Family History Hound, The Single Leaf, and Empty Branches on the Family Tree blogs, to name just a few, have already provided RootsTech related articles. I am sure that many more bloggers will start posting soon as we approach the start of the conference.

There will be many more sources of information about RootsTech Connect in the coming days so keep an eye out for it. We are here to help make this the most inspiring and educational experience possible.

RootsTech Connect 2021 - 3 Days To Go

The countdown continues to the opening of the RootsTech Connect Expo Hall this Wednesday. One of the great things about RootsTech when it was in person was meeting everyone and having time to chat. I have met many people and made many friendships in the years that I attended RootsTech and I expect that many of you have also met some great people if you have attended the conference in the past. But now that we are all virtual, how will we keep up with our friends and colleagues? RootsTech has that figured out.

One way we will be able to communicate is through the RootsTech Connect chat. You will be able to join a chat room for each class session, discussion, and vendor that you are interested in. On the specific session's page you will find a Join Chat Room or Chat With An Expert button either under or above the session description. Click on that and you will be added to their chat room. To see which chat rooms you are subscribed to, click on the Connect button in the lower right corner. From there you can manage your chats, see if there are new discussions, and ask questions. This pop-up also has a Direct Message capability so you can send messages to your friends to see what they are up to. Also, there is a red + button at the bottom of the pop-up which allows you to create your own chat groups. This can be handy if your friends or genealogical society want to keep in touch during the conference. Each chat room is limited to 1,000 participants but don't worry because we have been told that once that number is reached a new chat room will be created for that topic. The chats will be open throughout the RootsTech Connect conference but will be closed at the end of the conference. So, if you want to keep parts of the chats for your future use you will have to copy them and save them in your own notes.

You can also find new cousins by checking the Relatives At RootsTech site on FamilySearch. You and your cousins will have to have a tree on FamilySearch for this to work since it searches the registered attendees against the data in their part of the FamilyTree to see your common ancestors. You can search by name or region and even invite your friends to participate if they are attending RootsTech Connect. As you can see in the image below, I don't have many relatives attending RootsTech this year but the 46 that I currently have is much more than any previous year. The surprising part is that I have no relatives from Germany but have 5 from Brazil. You can see how you are related to each person by clicking on their name or the dot on the map. You can also send them messages through FamilySearch messages when you want to chat.

These communication tools will help us reach out to fellow attendees, presenters, relatives, and friends. Each of us can participate in these chats and make this conference a more interactive experience, build our networks, and make new friendships, so try them out when you get a chance.

Remember, RootsTech Connect is free this year. You can easily register for it by going to the RootsTech website and filling out the registration form. I hope to see you there and feel free to message me and say "Hi".

RootsTech Connect 2021 - 4 Days to Go

We have four days until RootsTech Connect opens the Expo Hall on Wednesday at 7:00pm eastern time and the conference kicks off. Are you counting down the minutes? Yesterday, I wrote about some of the events you can participate in while you attend RootsTech this year. One of those was the Let's Do Good Together virtual booth. But what is that and what can you do there?

The Let's Do Good Together virtual booth will highlight people and the projects they are doing to bring people together through family history. Each panel discussion will be 1 hour in length with open chats throughout the RootsTech conference. You will hear directly from those participating in the various projects and be able to ask them questions. The Let's Do Good Together virtual booth will even allow you to create group chats and build a network of people interested in helping out with your projects. We hope you will come out of these discussions with ideas and be inspired and energized to do good in your community. So what can you expect to see in this virtual booth?

Discussions marked with (*) are panels that I will be participating in. All times listed are eastern time zone.

Thursday, February 25, 4:00pm - DNA Interest Groups - This discussion group will discuss ways we can help each other increase our skills working with DNA through DNA special interest groups. Special interest groups (SIGs) are established to share knowledge about specific topics, in this case DNA. The panel will consist of genealogists who are actively involved in DNA SIGs who will be answering questions from those who are interested in finding a local or virtual DNA group or starting an interest group in their own community.

*Thursday, February 25, 7:00pm - Connecting Your Communities in the FamilySearch Family Tree* - This discussion group will discuss Family and Community Reconstitution Projects. Reconstitution Projects are a way to give back to your community by using existing records to recreate families within a specific community. These communities could be a town, a neighborhood, a specific ethnic community, an organization, or any other community you may be part of. For example, the discussion will include several projects including ones recreating the families of those buried in historic African-American cemeteries and recreating the families of a town from a historic perspective.

Thursday, February 25, 8:00pm - Finding Family History in Newspapers: A Crowdsourcing Project - Many of us have found how valuable newspapers can be as a resource in our family history research but they continue to be an underutilized resource. This panel will discuss how a crowd sourced newspaper indexing project can make using newspapers easier and provide benefits to family historians.

*Thursday, February 25, 9:30pm - Family History and Genealogy in K-12 Classrooms* - This is an opportunity for educators to join a conversation about how to connect with your students through family history and genealogy activities as part of their curriculum. We will discuss how these activities can enhance their learning and provide ideas that you can take back to the classroom. 

*Friday, February 26, 3:00pm - Inspiring Children and Youth to Love Family History* - Children and youth can benefit greatly through experiencing family history, but how can we inspire them to love it? Join in on the discussion and hear about the challenges, successes, and ideas that you can use to inspire them to love family history.

Friday, February 26, 4:00pm - Search Angels for Adoptees - This panel will discuss ways that you can help adult adoptees find their biological families. Panelists will talk about traditional methods, DNA, and other tools that have helped them help others. Adoptees and families of adoptees who are searching can ask questions and get direction on the next steps. Other attendees will learn how they can become a search angel and help others in their search.

Saturday, February 27, 11:00am - Texas Connect - Join the Texas Connect panel to discuss projects from Texas that will inspire you to do similar project in your community. Learn how you can participate in Texas projects and see how these projects were initiated and how they continue their work.

Saturday, February 27, 1:00pm - Exploring the Psychological Benefits of Family History - Scientific studies have shown the psychological benefits of family history. Children who understand their family history have been shown to be more resilient when faced with adversity. Learn how participating in projects like the 21-Day Family Connections Experiment can help you explore the psychological benefits of connecting with family, both past and present.

What do you think? Is that an incredible line-up of inspiring discussions or what? Just think of all the ideas you will bring back to your community or society. 

So how do you find these sessions on the RootsTech Connect website when it goes live next week? All you have to do is click on the Expo Hall icon in the upper right menu and then go to the bottom of the Expo Hall website where you will find the Let's Do Good Together logo under Featured Booths.

Join us for these discussions and be inspired to do good together with your fellow genealogists.

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RootsTech Connect 2021 - 5 Days to Go

 

Did you know that RootsTech Connect starts next Wednesday, February 24th, at 7:00pm Eastern time? That's right, it is only 5 days away and the participants are doing everything they can to get ready for it. The Expo Hall opens Wednesday at 7:00pm and gives attendees the opportunity to interact with the various vendors, see their sales, and ask them questions. I will be hosting chats at The Family History Guide's booth for 6 hours (8:00am-11:00am Thursday & Friday) during the conference but we will have people there throughout the entire conference to answer your questions. Each vendor will have their own virtual page at RootsTech with open chats and some will have their own classes going on during RootsTech. When RootsTech was in person, many people had to choose between attending classes and visiting the vendors. Now that it is virtual, you can set your own schedule and not worry about missing a class.

Classes, or sessions, will be on demand and you can set up your own playlist. Each session will have a virtual site where you can view the class, find similar classes, and leave chat messages for the speakers. Most sessions are about 20 minutes in length but some are up to an hour with several 20 minute sessions. The 18 page list of English language sessions can be found here. There will also be talks in over 35 other languages and every talk will be translated into 11 different languages so viewers around the world will be able to participate. I will be presenting a session on Adding Maps to Your Family History Analysis so be sure to stop in and chat with me. 

There will also be live keynote speakers but don't worry if you miss them. Their talks will be on demand after their live event. The keynote speakers begin on Wednesday at 11:00pm Eastern and run nearly every hour with a new speaker until 2:00pm Saturday. The keynote schedule can be seen here.

There will also be live Zoom panel discussions throughout the conference. These discussions are part of the Let's Do Good Together initiative. The panels will consist of around 4-6 panelists discussing the specific topic and will be open to audience participation and may have breakout sessions so you can talk to others about the topics. Each hour long discussion will also have an open chat room during the conference. Participants can post their questions or ideas, network with others, and encourage and inspire others to do good for the genealogy community. I will be participating in several of these events as a host or panelist. The three topics I will be participating in include Community Reconstitution Projects, Inspiring Youth in Family History, and Incorporating Family History in School Curriculum. We hope to have great discussions and send you all home inspired to try some of these initiatives in your community.

There are many other things planned including cultural events, a song contest, adding your family photos to a mosaic image, and much more. You can also participate in the Relatives at RootsTech activity. Once you log into the Relatives at RootsTech event you will be able to see all of your relatives attending the conference here. This is based on your tree on FamilySearch so make sure your FamilySearch tree is up to date. Once you discover a relative, you will be able to direct message them and begin your discussion. I guarantee you that you will not get much sleep during this event.

Thinking about all the activities that will happen during the three days may be overwhelming but you can plan your days around the events you want to participate in. The class sessions will be available for one year after the conference so you can go back to your favorite ones anytime you want or find ones that you haven't already watched anytime during the year. I believe I saw that there were over 1500 class sessions available so you are bound to find something.

So how big is RootsTech anyway? At last count, there were nearly 326,000 registered participants! They represented 226 countries and territories and I believe there were only 5 countries that were not represented at the event.

And did I mention that this conference is FREE!? That's right, when was the last time you were able to attend a worldwide event from the comfort of your home, visit nearly 100 vendors, and see over 1500 genealogy sessions all for free?

You are all invited to experience this first of its kind worldwide event and experience how RootsTech can inspire you to connect and discover your family! Registration will be open until the end of the conference on Saturday but don't wait until then to register. You will want to experience the whole event and meet participants from around the world.

#GiveThanks - What I'm Thankful For

As we come up to the Thanksgiving holiday we have been asked to flood our social media with the things we are thankful for and use the #givethanks hashtag. Many of us have had losses of friends and/or family members or faced other adversity this year but we all have a lot to be thankful for even in this time of uncertainty and COVID-19. We need to remember the things that we are thankful for and let those lead us through our life.

I have many things to be thankful for: my family, my health, having a home to live in (even though some of it is torn up now due to the burst pipes we had over the summer), and of course everything I do in family history research - being able to research my ancestors, learn about their lives and difficulties, and my ability to reach out to others through various programs and by speaking around the country virtually at this time. 

Did you know that this blog started 12 years ago yesterday? During that time I have written over 150 posts and hopefully helped others find resources to help them in their research. I am not the most prolific writer but I do enjoy doing it when I have the time and feel inspired. I am thankful for those who have been following me from the start including Becky Jamison and Thomas MacEntee who were the first people to comment on my first post back in 2008.

So much has changed since 2008. My first couple posts were about planning a family reunion on a budget, a ward service project that I helped organize, newspaper collections from Australia and New Zealand, and the National Day of Listening. It is always interesting to see where we started in our blogs. I seem to recall Becky Jamison mentioning once after she posted a new blog post that she realized she had already done a very similar story a few years earlier. I know I have probably done the same thing over the years.

After reading through some of my early blogs, I wanted to follow up on my 2008 post about the National Day of Listening. National Day of Listening is celebrated the day after Thanksgiving and was started in 2008. The intent is for each of us to spend some time listening to the stories of others so we can understand more about those around us. Story Corps has provided a great website and tools to help you listen and record the stories of your family, friends, and neighbors. 

Following up on the National Day of Listening, one of the projects that I have helped to develop this year is the creation of a youth family history workshop which will be held during the Christmas holiday. This initiative is part of the Indian River Genealogical Society's community outreach plan and will be kicking off this year. We are inviting youth, aged 12-18, to join us in learning more about their family's history and the history of others in their community. The workshop will be held remotely by Zoom. We have pre-workshop activities including scavenger hunts and escape rooms similar to those that I developed earlier this year, short lessons on researching the census and newspapers, and group discussions where they can share their discoveries. Our first events will be held in cooperation with the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation's Teens Listen Project. The Teens Listen Project engages youth in the community in developing their interviewing and listening skills while recording the stories of members of their community.  They will be interviewing the pioneers of our area, veterans, "river folk", and others to preserve their stories. We will be working with these same youth to help them discover some of the back story through various records before they perform their interviews, so they will be prepared and have specific researched information to use in their interviews.

It has always been my intention to give back to the community, whether that be through this blog, my family history activities, my daily life, or in my career where I supervise an incredible team of dedicated scientists working to restore the Everglades ecosystem. I hope that each of us takes the time to pay it forward and do something nice for someone.

Now, for one additional thing that I am thankful for....Hulu has brought back the Animaniacs after 22 
years. They went off the air at the end of the last century (1998). What I love most about the Animaniacs is their satirical way of looking at the events in our world. It is fun for children since they like the surface level slapstick comedy but adults will get the deeper meanings of the stories. Last night we started our marathon viewing of the new season but we still have several more episodes to complete for this season. Guess what I will be doing this afternoon.

Have fun, take some time to enjoy life and your family, and most of all relax and find pleasure in the things around you. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Giving Back to Your Community Through Family History

 As family historians, much of our work is to record the history of our families and try to tell the stories of our ancestors. Some of us have specialized in specific parts of our research such as DNA, photographs, or home histories. Through all of our research we have found new cousins who are thankful for the work that we have done recording these stories. But much of the information we use originates as a result of work by others. Those people, the ones who do indexing, record burial places, and provide access to the various records that we use, are the angels that we don't always recognize. There are many ways that we can give back to our community through participating in the preservation of information and making it available to others. I have participated in many of these projects and have created a few of my own over the years.

Some of the easiest projects to find are indexing or transcription of records. There are many indexing projects available online and with the isolation and closure of many repositories due to COVID-19, many more are making their records available to indexers. Here are just a few examples:

FamilySearch Indexing is the standard for indexing records. FamilySearch has a wide variety of records available for indexing in many different languages. They really need your help if you are able to read other languages. There are several interesting projects available which you can participate in. This year is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in the United States. As part of this centennial event, FamilySearch is providing more voting records that need indexing. Additionally, they have released a large number of city directories from around the US. Some of these city directories have up to 300 names per page. FamilySearch Indexing allows you to create groups where you can work with your genealogical society, church group, or any other organization to index records together. All of the records indexed on FamilySearch are freely available to researchers.

Zooniverse is a crowd sourcing platform where organizations and researchers can place their projects for citizen volunteers to participate in. There are a variety of projects posted there including some record indexing projects. One indexing project that they are hosting is the American World War I Burial Cards Project. This project helps to record the burial locations of over 78,000 American soldiers from WW I. The Every Name Counts Project is an attempt to record the names of the millions of people who were held prisoner or killed in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The ANZACS Project works to record the stories of the men and women from New Zealand who served during WW I. Another project, the Criminal Characters Project, tells the story of the English criminals who were sent to Australia as punishment.

This period of social distancing has also made archives rethink their operating plans. Many archives have allowed their staff to work from home digitizing documents and preparing them for online access. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has a Citizen Archivist Project where the public can help transcribe some of the many records held by the archive.

The Library and Archives of Canada has a similar project where volunteers can help record information so other researchers can use that information to discover their ancestor's stories.

Many states have also provided projects for volunteers to help record information. The Ohio Memory Project has their Ohio Memory Transcriptions Project where volunteers can work on several projects including the Toledoans in WW II, the Warren G. Harding Collection, and the Ohio History Collection. Search for your state to see if they also have projects.

We all need time outside to get exercise and just relax. Many of us have participated in FindAGrave and BillionGraves projects over the years. Both of these have their own mobile apps: FindAGrave app, BillionGraves app. You can see which cemeteries in your area still need burials recorded and spend a few hours in the fresh air, getting some exercise, and helping others find information on their ancestors.

BYU Linking Labs also has a variety of projects. These projects are developed by students at BYU to test many of the most advanced technologies such as handwriting recognition software. Assisting with these projects not only helps index records but is also used to develop more accurate computer algorithms. A list of their projects can be found on their Projects Page. Their African-American Families and Customized Geo Hints Projects allow you to search in a specific area or surname and attach records to their families in FamilySearch. The Automated Indexing Project uses a computer algorithm to select similar information such as surnames or cause of death. This is an easy way to index records by selecting choices that match the record you see on the screen and letting the computer program know if any of the words are not correctly matched.

There are also projects that individuals are working on to make more records available. The Family Bible Preservation Project is one such project. This project has over 5,000 pages, many of them from family bibles, which have been digitized and saved to FamilySearch Memories. Volunteers can select pages and attach them to the people on FamilySearch. Many of these family bibles have been separated from their families and found in various places such as online auctions, flea markets, antique shops, and yard sales. Without this project, many of these families would never know that there was a family bible with their ancestor's information.

You can even start your own projects. Over the years, I have purchased old photographs at antique sales and have attached them to their records in FamilySearch. Imagine doing your research and finding a picture of your great-great grandmother already attached to her profile. My current project is reading the stories in my hometown newspaper and connecting them to people from the community. My current focus is connecting stories about individuals during WW II. Some of these stories are about furlough visits, their letters, injuries, or missing or killed in action.

All of these activities are available for volunteers to participate in to make more records available to researchers. I don't always have time to contribute to these projects but last month I was able to index over 1,000 records for FamilySearch. Even if you only have a few minutes to participate in these projects, the records you contribute could be the one that someone has been looking for to break down their brick wall.