RootsTech Ketchup

RootsTech was three weeks ago and I’ve not finished all the stories I wanted to write. My memory’s mush, however. It’s time to ketchup…

Dirk Weissleder

In the media center at RootsTech I got to meet Dirk Weissleder, National Chairman of the German Federation of Genealogical Societies. Dirk has over thirty years in genealogy and he opened the 64^th Deutscher Genealogentag (German Genealogical Convention) on 31 August 2012.

DearMYRTLE had an opportunity to interview him.

Dirk Weissleder interviewed by DearMYRTLE

If you can’t see the video above, see it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BuJYiEAVLI.

Other RootsTechs

Read about the Houston RootsTech event in an article in the Cypress Creek Mirror. Interestingly, one of the local classes there was one about Google searches that was taught by a Google employee. I can see how these satellite events can tap into local talent and highlight local records and search strategies.

While I’ve never heard anything else from the other locations affiliated with RootsTech, I did come across a couple of pictures:

Houston: http://web.stagram.com/p/418852775163338210_290284870

Kansas City: http://web.stagram.com/p/417368225200771007_144712082

One Billion Records Indexed?

In the days leading up to RootsTech FamilySearch announced that indexers had indexed 984 million records since indexing began in September of 2006. They hoped that the billionth record would be indexed at RootsTech. There would be unspecified prizes for the indexers and the arbitrator of that billionth record.

I never heard another word.

I’ve gone looking and found a graphic posted on the FamilySearch Indexing Facebook page on 29 March 2013 that gives the number of records indexed as 989,999,999.

RootsTech Developer Challenge

Part of the original vision of RootsTech was to bring together technology developers with technology users. With this year’s RootsTech, that goal seems to have slipped from the objectives. However, there was still a developer’s day with special classes for developers.

And once again there was a developers challenge. Nearly 20 developers participated in the 2013 developer challenge by submitting projects that demonstrated technical innovations for family history. From these, a panel of judges selected six finalists.

Designation	Project Name	Submitted By
Finalist	BrowseHero	Tom Auga & Chris Giesey
Finalist	Completely Relative (MS Windows App Store)	Benjamin Godard
Finalist	Hope Chest	Eric Vance
Finalist	OurFamilyHealth	Jaehoon Lee
Finalist	ResearchTies	Jill N. Crandell
Finalist	Treelines.com	Tammy Hepps

When winners were announced on Friday we were told to visit http://rootstech.org/challenges/overview for full details. Unfortunately, that page hasn’t been updated to show the winners. (Yes, it’s true—the RootsTech website this year was never kept up to date.) According to my cryptic notes, BrowseHero and OurFamilyHealth were category winners and Treelines.com was the overall winner.

Congratulations to the developers of these new, innovative products.

That’s a wrap. See you at NGS…