Rootstech 2018

RootsTech 2018 Theme: Connect. Belong.

The Return Trip

I have previously written about my trip to Rootstech/FGS 2015.

In February 2018 I shall be making another trip to Salt Lake City for the Rootstech conference.

I have taken time out since Rootstech started to watch the live streaming each year. However, after attending in 2015, I really miss the buzz of spending almost a week with other genealogists.

It is not just the conference with all the variety of learning sessions available. But the opportunity to meet up with online friends and make new ones.

I have registered to get the Early Bird Price and reserved my hotel room. I am in the process of arranging my flights and then there is travel insurance and ESTA to organise. So although it is almost five months away I have plenty to do in the meantime. 

I should arrive on Sunday evening and hope to get almost 2 days to research in the Family History Library. Getting there early means I can take advantage of the Tuesday check-in and not miss any of the four days.

This is a great theme, for only today I made a connection, to a fellow WikiTree genealogist. With all the divisions in the world, being able to connect and belong to one great community with a common goal, is the best feeling in the world.

Rootstech 2017 from across the pond

This year I am writing my review from the perspective of a UK family historian watching from afar and wishing she had made the journey across the pond.

When I first started to write this post I started to discuss what was happening in Salt Lake City. But I am not in Salt Lake City this year I am at home in Wales.
How can I write about a conference when I am not one of the attendees.

The Rootstech conference did not get underway until the Thursday but for me the excitement builds from the Monday.

In keeping with the tradition at 10am MST (SLC time) 5pm GMT the Rootstech week starts with Mondays with Myrt from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. The usual panel (including me) has little to say as Pat Richley-Erickson aka DearMYRTLE interviews a variety of folks from across the globe who have made the journey to Utah arriving early enough to get some research time in the Family History Library. 

Later on Monday early attendees from the Commonwealth countries enjoyed another tradition the Commonwealth dinner. This year they went to the Blue Lemon and afterwards photographs appeared on the Geniaus blog. I must say that when I went in 2015 this was a great way to meet others prior to the conference.

Going to an event like a genealogy conference is a great way to network with other genealogists/family historians. I know that for many attending classes is low priority. We all love to find connections with others (especially someone who may have photographs) and with such a large group many do find a link. This year a cousin of someone I met in 2015 made a connection with Judy G Russell The Legal Genealogist after watching her talk on the live stream. I knew about this via facebook before she wrote her post but she illustrates my point so well (better than I could).

I managed to catch all the RootsTech General Sessions on the live streaming and some of the classes that were streamed. Now that the recordings are up, those I missed I can catch up with later, there are more than those that livestreamed. Some are US centric but may hold useful suggestions most are general and the keynotes, in particular, inspirational and passionate.

If watching or attending RootsTech does nothing more than provide inspiration to feed your passion for your family then it has done its job. But we need innovators to provide us with the means to record, communicate and preserve. 
Some of the technology advances have brought about the success of this conference in getting to folks across the world. In the early years you could lose the video if anyone else was online. This year those at home could vote using the RootsTech app on their phone. 

We need new ideas rather than more of the same. I wonder what the innovators in the industry will bring us next year.

Before I go here courtesy of Lilian Magill (in the lilac sweater) is a photograph of many of the Geneabloggers at RootsTech 2017, noticeably absent were Russ Worthington (aka Cousin Russ) and Thomas MacEntee (Geneabloggers).

The final event for many of those in the photograph was an evening to wind down with friends courtesy of DearMyrtle who has some of her friends visit her house for an after party.

I love seeing the photographs from the other get togethers which are not part of the main RootsTech event. These are as much about why we should attend as the conference and you cannot get what I call "the buzz" unless you are actually there. 
There will be lots of tired, enthusiastic people headed home today or in the coming week (some stay on to do research) but for many it is so good you want to come back again.
Maybe next year I can write a first hand report. (fingers crossed)

Conferences and Genealogy Shows What's the Difference?

Photograph from the conference of Guild of One Name Studies held in Birmingham, England 

1st - 3rd April 2016

Conference or Show what do you get for your money?

Are they the same?

Does it depend where in the world you are?

Last year I wrote about going to Rootstech / FGS 2015 in Salt Lake City, my first impressions and compared it with WDYTYA Live which had just moved to Birmingham.

This year I was only able to catch the livestream and videos at Rootstech. However I did attend my first Guild of One Name Studies Conference held the weekend before Who Do You Think You Are Live. Both were in Birmingham the first at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole and the latter at the National Exhibition Centre the same as last year.

I have not attended anything in Australia and I know there are other conferences in the US. Pauleen Cass wrote a post on this blog last April about conferencing and she has quite a few references in this post to help give a more balanced view.

I did enjoy my Guild conference and have every intention of going to next year's conference which is being held on the outskirts my home city of Southampton. I am hoping to make the most of it by incorporating a research trip to the local archives in Southampton and the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester.

I decided to go to Birmingham on the train and managed to get a direct train both ways with a table seat for most of the journey. Both trains were crowded as it was the Easter holidays. Before I arrived at the hotel I could tell we were going to have an interesting and possibly noisy weekend see this tweet from Janet Few.

Chris Braund pointed me in the right direction and after registering, up to my room with the luggage, then back for a much needed drink before the first talk about DNA. 

Our first meal was followed by the quiz which I soon learnt was quite a challenge.

Unlike the likes of Rootstech the conference had 2 full days. The first part of the first morning was the AGM and the business side of things being swiftly dealt with we arrived early for the morning break. 

Next up was an interesting presentation about life on the canals. This guest was surprised when he actually sold out of the books he had brought with him. 

The session after lunch can be a real challenge and there was a lot of information to take on board. If you have anyone who lived and worked in British India the wealth of information available is incredible. Families in British India Society (FIBIS) has a lot on their website. They also had a big presence at WDYTYA Live this year and the celebrity I saw on the Saturday had gone to India to find out more about her family.

Anita Rani talking about her experience on WDYTYA at the Live show on Saturday 9th April 2016

The next speaker was from Twile but I will not expand further here as I plan to do a post on my own blog later this week.

Our final session for the day had to be changed at extremely short notice Paul Howes Chairman of the Guild did an admirable job and we heard some interesting stories from him and several other members.

Unlike Rootstech the Guild has a Reception and Dinner on the Saturday night a chance to chat and get to know other attendees a bit better.

A short church service first thing on Sunday was followed by 2 presentations. The first looked at presentation of your study using that member's own study. The second was looking at key sources outside the UK for finding your surname across the world.

Lots of information here and "food for thought" as to how to get the information and then how to put it into a useful format.

The session after lunch on Sunday was another change looking at how we might find living people. As one namers we often find the best information comes from members of families especially if you need individuals for DNA studies. Finding clues in the records and knowing where to look is crucial. The techniques shown were those I had used in doing my own family research and have reaped dividends in terms of family photographs.

The final session of the conference looked at example sources for emigration and immigration. This rounded off an interesting weekend. 

I had three days before the WDYTYA Live show and I will write about these on my own blog if you are interested.

For the first 2 days of WDYTYA Live I offered to help out on the GUILD stand. Here are some photographs that I took.

This was just across the aisle from the replica Spitfire that was on display at the Forces War Records stand

Ancestry, Family Search, Find My Past, My Heritage and The Genealogist all had their own stands. There were relatively few commercial vendors and several non-genealogical charities had their own stands. Much of the Society of Genealogists area was taken by Family History Societies although many local societies did not attend. A full list of exhibitors can be found here.
There was much more in the way of workshop sessions that could be attended and the interest in, and availability of, DNA testing appears to be growing.
Family Tree DNA sponsored a raft of free lectures in their theatre.

Having everything in one large hall with sections partitioned off for sessions can be a disadvantage but with well set up sound systems and microphones the only problems seem to be when technology failed.

As regards costs the ticket prices for Who Do You Think You Are Live can be found here. The website of The Guild of One Name Studies can be found here if you want to know more about who they are and the benefits of becoming a member. Rootstech has a different pricing structure to WDYTYA Live and details can be found on the FAQ page. Pricing for this year's FGS Conference is not yet online you can find their website here. The FGS Conference has more in common with WDYTYA Live than Rootstech in regards to the topics for the presentations. This is not surprising given that The Society of Genealogists and The Federation of Family History Societies are similar organizations to FGS in the US.

Comparisons between events in different countries are difficult as the audience and how they interact can be affected by the numbers that attend for just a single day. In the US conference attendees are more likely to stay overnight in the area rather than travel on the day. Up until this year I travelled on the day, this was cheaper than finding overnight accomodation, this makes for a long day which means that a single day is all that most would feel up to attending.
Whether more would be willing to stay if evening activities were included it is difficult to know. It can be a problem organising events and then not getting sufficient uptake for them to take place. Having cancelled a day of the WDYTYA Live event in Glasgow the organisers are unlikely to want to take on any additional evening entertainment.

If you have attended other genealogical conferences or shows elsewhere in the world I would be interested in your comments.
If genealogists don't tell the organisers what we like or don't like or how we think they could improve the experience for us then we risk falling attendances. 
Many societies are seeing falling membership numbers. 
What do those researching want from them and what can we as members contribute? 
Why do you belong to a society? 
Have you allowed your membership to lapse? 
If so, why did this happen?

Why are some societies not attending national events?

Finding Your Desk - Another Take on Organization

Many of us spent part of February either attending or viewing sessions at RootsTech/FGS 2015. We learned about new technology, new resources, and new ways of looking at or working with our family history research. One of the more interesting exercises at this conference was to engage in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." (I'm talking about our genealogy management programs, spreadsheet programs, and filing systems - what were you thinking?!)

Why were we getting together to discuss software and apps, spreadsheets and image software, filing systems and work-spaces? Because it is always interesting to see how others do things! We also want to make sure that no one has a better, easier, or faster system for filing, maintaining, and retrieving all our family history finds. So many genealogists and family historians have been at this for decades and they either have some truly wonderful ideas and are quite organized or they have piles of information and mention that getting organized is the next thing on their to-do list.

In my case I did not start doing genealogy until 2007 and the first thing I did was check a few books out of the library on how to do genealogy and sign up for the American Records track at the Salt Lake Institute for Genealogy. Paula Stuart Warren was my first teacher. At that seminar, I asked about digital filing and got strange looks from most of the other attendees. Today everyone is surprised if someone hasn't scanned all their paper files!

make a plan and work your plan!
Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net ID-10061774 digitalart

Luckily for me, some genealogists who had been at it for awhile offered to sit down with me and gave me some wonderful advice.

• get a genealogy management program and learn how to use it (it doesn't matter which program as it is highly individual - but kick those tires, take a few programs on a test drive, and then make a decision)
• don't do a smash and grab with online or offline family trees (start with your own family and work with your own records - it helps you understand the process and working with known people, places and dates gives you an opportunity to have a useful sample file; don't rely on others' work - consider everything you see online as clues on your search but rely on your own research and work product)
• the best filing system is the one you actually use (you can have all the greatest systems, color-coding, fancy folders, etc., but if it is too much trouble or too involved it just won't happen and then you will have those dreaded filing piles)
• take the time, on a regular basis, to clean up and organize your work space (I learned this with cooking - cleaning as you go is much easier than looking at a huge mess in the kitchen later)

I took their advice to heart and although I don't have a perfect system, I have a perfect system for me (and that's what important). My genealogy filing system was in its early stages when our family decided to organize and scan all our family slides and photos a few years ago. We did some serious research (you have probably figured out we love to research, plan and organize things in my family - both parents are, and always have been, list makers and with eight children my mom had to be organized!). We decided to spend the money to have our slides and photographs professionally scanned. We met with the lead person, asked him about logistics, and took the time to come up with a plan. The company did the "hard work" of cleaning, scanning and digitizing everything and then the process moved on to us to incorporate metadata and tagging in our software of choice (this is where it is helpful to have lots of siblings). It was a great division of labor because he and his team knew about scanning and we knew who our family members were, as well as the dates and occasions that were reflected in the images.

Now everyone in our family has a DVD set of the early years (about 11,000 photos and slides), we have a family vault (on an external hard drive backed up on another one). We can easily add to the vault and provide scans when requested by extended family members - which is helpful with reunions, marriages, graduations, etc. Did I mention that we also use both our images and my documents with some of our creative family endeavors? I was very happy to see Panstoria at the RootsTech Exhibit Hall. I love their software - Historian (the vault where you store and work with images) and Artisan (the playground where you make posters, cards, scrapbooks, etc., using images from your vault).

I took the lessons learned from that scanning exercise and applied them to my genealogy filing system (online and offline - it helps to mirror your systems). Since it is the same idea, I have a process in place that I use and it works. And that is what it is all about. The key to any of this is thinking about how you want to use your data or your images, how the search feature of your operating system works, and not get too obsessed with folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders. I agree with Jill Ball and others - KISS Keep It Simple Sweetheart (not the version I heard!) Definitely think about the long term, plan, then execute on a small level, tweak, revise, then JUST DO IT, and stick with it.

Thanks to Jill Ball, Pauleen Cass and Julie Goucher for sharing their experiences with file organization (Jill - sorry I missed your GeniAus hangout - will watch it on YouTube as I love organization). I am happy to say that no animals were injured in the writing of this blog (you mentioned something about skinning cats in your blog post). I will admit to checking out coggle after reading Pauleen's recent post (not quite a shiny penny as I have been playing with the idea of mind mapping so thanks Pauleen for the link - coggle passed my first test - it was easy to figure out!). I am making use of a new-to-me idea that is a bullet journal. I found myself using a variety of online reminders that I simply ignored or pushed off, and writing notes on blank pieces of paper which added to my filing pile (oh yes I have one because I am not perfect). I decided to go old school and write all my tasks, appointments, meeting notes, books read, expenses, to-dos, and project ideas in one notebook in a day by day format (Julie - I think this is what you have been doing for years!). So far so good. At least I know where to find everything (and it fits in my bag so it's all good).

My advice - think about the output you want as it will determine your input. While some refer to it as garbage in, garbage out, I prefer to think of it as gold in, gold out.

gold in, gold out - think about it before you do it!
Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net ID-10067079 stuart miles

Until next month,
Tessa

Salt Lake City The Rootstech 2015/ FGS Conference First Impressions

I arrived in Salt Lake City on 8th February to a beautiful sunny warm day which was totally out of keeping for this part of the world in early February.
I had spent the previous week with my cousins near Memphis where we had days of warm sunshine and sub zero overnight temperatures, but no rain or snow. On the 7th February we were sitting outside in the garden and cooking on the barbecue. What crazy weather this year and I could have left some of the cold weather gear at home.
Enough of the British preoccupation with the weather this is a genealogy blog and I want to share my first impressions of this major US conference.
I have taken some photographs and I have included one or two that others have shared.
This is the place to connect with others but I am surprised at how many faces I recognised.
On the opening day of FGS I attended sessions from Lisa Louise Cooke, Thomas MacEntee, Judy G Russell and Cyndi Ingle as well as the Opening session.
Here is a link to a video blog that Jill Ball has on her You Tube channel.

On the first day of Rootstech 2015 apart from the Keynote speakers I went to a talk by Thomas W Jones the author of Mastering Genealogical Proof which we studied with DearMYRTLE last year. Then after a lunch in the Expo Hall where I caught up with the WikiTree team I went to a talk by Rosalind McCutcheon Irish Records - Beyond the Obvious and then Thomas MacEntee was Pinning Your Family History.

Here is a slideshow of some of the photographs I have taken or have been shared with me. I am sure I will have many more by the time I go home on Sunday.