FamilySearch Announces New President

FamilySearch announced last week that Steve Rockwood will replace current president, Dennis C. Brimhall. Rockwood is currently director of the FamilySearch international division. He will assume the presidency on 1 October 2015.

“As president and CEO, Steve will bring a rich combination of management skills, customer focus, business acumen, and a can-do spirit that will build on the vision and work of Dennis Brimhall,” said Elder Allan F. Packer, Chairman of the Board.

Rockwood has built two companies from the ground up, culminating in acquisition by larger companies. His companies have worked with brands such as as MasterCard International, AT&T, Disney, Office Depot, and Citibank among others.

As the director of the International Division, Rockwood introduced the My Family booklet to FamilySearch employees back in 2013. (See “FamilySearch Annual Business Meeting.”) The booklet helps members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints start doing family history. It is utilized in areas throughout the world, particularly where computers are not readily available. (See “Announcing the My Family: Stories That Bring Us Together Booklet.”) The booklet is available in 32 languages for purchase or free download from the Church store. The booklet can also be filled out online.

Brimhall has served since January 2012. According to his biography on the RootsTech website, Brimhall will turn 67 in the days leading up to his retirement.

FamilySearch Donates $1.5 Million to MoAR

Dennis Brimhall addresses MoAR press conference
Photo courtesy Lisa J. Godfrey

Dennis Brimhall, president and CEO of FamilySearch International, last week presented a check of $1.5 million dollars to the Museum of the American Revolution (MoAR). He did so on behalf of FamilySearch sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The museum is being built in the historic heart of Philadelphia and is set to open in 2016. The gift boosted funds raised on the $150 million project to over $100 million.

“The story of America’s founding is one of faith, family, and religious freedom,” said Brimhall. “The Church is pleased to be a partner in the ongoing efforts to engage people in their heritage in inspiring, immersive, and interactive ways.”

The museum will tell the story of the American Revolution using its collection of objects, artifacts, artwork, and manuscripts. The museum will have permanent and special exhibition galleries, theaters, and large-scale tableaux and will engage people in the history and continuing relevance of the American Revolution.

The museum will include one of the new FamilySearch “Discovery Centers” announced at last year’s FGS conference. (See “Über Cool Family History Center of the Future Shown at #FGS2013.”) According to FamilySearch’s Merrill White, “the Family Discovery Center offers individuals and families simple yet powerful in-person experiences to discover their heritage and have their hearts turned to their ancestors.”

#RootsTech Brimhall Town Meeting

Thursday at RootsTech I attended a question and answer session with Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. Here’s some of what was said. Sorry about my English. I could take notes only so fast, so I am sometimes quoting and sometimes paraphrasing. That raises the possibility of misquotes, so take everything with a little caution.

Q. Can you clarify the contract with ancestry.com [and FindMyPast and MyHeritage]?

A. We have limits on how much we can do and we realize there are other companies that are also good at what we do. We approached them and they said, “We’d like access to your records, on our site. We don’t want them to leave our site to go to yours.” The deal: “We’ll let you have access to our records on your site. In return, we’d like to have access for our members [of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] who paid for our records with their tithing. It will be on their site. [I didn’t give FamilySearch an opportunity to edit this before I published it, but I’m sure they would point out at this point, that FamilySearch will give the general public access to these sites at FamilySearch’s family history centers.]

The other part of the deal is to coordinate in more acquisition. They image and we index, or we image and they index. In some cases, they pay to have the records indexed. After some embargo, the records would be opened up to everyone.

Q. When does it start?

A. The complicated part is how do you log into one account and end up being logged onto another site. The engineers are working it out to allow you to log on to their site with your LDS account. It might be 2nd quarter of this year. In the future, you’ll be able to search their records on our site.

Q. [Some question about using family history with missionary work.]

A. Many people who don’t know much about the Church know that the Church is interested in family history. What we’ve found is that it is kind of wonderful to ask people about their ancestors. We’ve found the My Family booklet, we’ve tested what happens when instead of talking about the doctrines of the Church, you spark an interest in family and then their interest might grow from there.

Q. What is the purpose of photos and the stories regarding the living?

A. We don’t share this often, but here is an interesting fact. Every member of Church members pays for FamilySearch.org, but only a fraction use it. “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” If we want to get more people to use it, something has to change. I’m going to offend some people but I have to say it. Who was the website designed for? The genealogists. So we begin to see what invites people in. You go to a cemetery and see two dates. What’s between the two dates? The dash. We’ve got to start concentrating on the dash. Do you know that until a year ago April, you could not add the story of an ancestor on FamilySearch.org?

Here’s an aside from the Ancestry Insider: You’re right. That does offend me. Now I’m going to offend some people, but I have to say it.

Let me quote from the BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, millennium edition, p. 18:  “Descriptive biographical information is provided for individuals in the lineage, pedigree, or genealogy. In addition to vital statistics, the compilation includes sufficient information about each person’s activities, residences, circumstances, contributions, and lifestyle to place them within the context of their historical era, society, and geographic place.”

That sounds a little clinical. Standards usually do. Nationally recognized genealogist, John Colletta, says it pretty well. “Creating a family tree is only half the goal. The other half is learning about your ancestors as men and women with personalities, character traits, motives and aspirations, joys and disappointments, just like you.”

Do you know that until a year ago April, you could not add the story of an ancestor on FamilySearch.org?

Back to your question, how do we address the living. We’re addressing the problem of not being able to see your spouse. You’re going to be able to see that before long.

We’re going to have an app available in the 2nd quarter where you can go to grandma and ask her a question and then post the recording online.

Outside North America many members of the Church haven’t entered both parents into Family Tree. Many more haven’t entered grandparents, and even more haven’t entered all their great-grandparents. The My Family booklet is trying to capture that living memory. That then becomes the basis for the family history research that is to come.

The good news is, its working. We’re seeing significant improvements in the number of people using the website.

Q. Oral histories. Is there a vision or a goal? Native Americans?

A. We are setting up in the family history centers recording booths to record oral histories. In St. George we have a green screen and you can show photos as you talk about your history.

We’ve been capturing histories in Africa for a number of years now, but it is very expensive to do it. We probably will not expand beyond Africa what we are doing there. It is not scalable. We don’t have enough missionaries to make it work.

We have some good collections for native Americans. I’ve met with five tribes in the last six months. They are good at cultural history, but how can we help them preserve their family histories? We’ll meet with them over the coming months to see how best to do this.

Q. [There was a long exposition. I kept waiting for the question, so I wasn’t writing anything. It was something about members finding information in the tree and assuming it must be true because it is an official Church website.]

A. We’re trying to answer this question. How are we going to address this issue of data integrity? People often write and complains to me that someone has changed their ancestor’s data. I don’t know what is the truth. So how do we solve the problem? The only way to deal with this is to create an expectation in the minds of people that you need to check. The first expectation is that you need to source it. The second expectation is that members check for duplication before you submit a name to the temple. The duplication rate has gone down from around 30% to under 10% in the last several years.

We’re beginning to see very gradually that the database is going to clean itself up. The number one complaint used to be, “I cant fix the information.” Now the number one complaint is that someone is changing my information.

We think we’ve bottomed out. We’ve seen a decrease in duplication and an increase in sourcing.

Q. How do you decide what records to obtain?

A. We have a whole team that looks at this. They look at where the greatest demand is for records and where the records are available. We have a deal to acquire 400 million records in Italy. We have 267 camera crews with a goal to increase that to 500. We do a million images a day around the world. A significant portion is imaging records from out of the vault. There are 80 GB of images of the whole [didn’t hear this part]. In seven years we’ll be done with imaging all the records in the vault. Then how do we make up for no longer getting records out of the vault? [The increase in cameras.]

Q. Just finished serving a mission in Taiwan. There is a need for genealogy resources.

A. We have a robust strategy for dealing with Chinese. It is part of our ten core languages. This is not an announcement. We’ve had some discussions on how we might collaborate with records. We’ve had lots of dialog. [Something I didn’t catch], but it is on our radar.

In India they take a census every ten years. It results in 35 linear miles of shelf space. Seven years later they destroy it all to make room for the next one. Our first break in india, one state is allowing us to come in and image records. We’re in this for a long time. We’re in for the very long haul.

Q. [Some question about sources?]

There’s something that will be on the website very, very quickly. When you attach a census record to the tree, we have a feature that will be coming out, maybe next quarter, that when you attach a child from the census, it will present all the other people in the household and allow you to attach them. [Big applause.]

Q. When I add sources to the tree and then you image and index those records, will those be merged?

A. If one is digital and one is image, they will not be matched up. There is no way electronically to match them up.

There is something we’re going to try, one of the things we’ve been toying with. You know we’re coming out with a new indexing system. One of the things we’re considering is called indexing on the fly. If you find information in a record, why wouldn’t we allow you to index that record?

Q. I wrote a story and scanned some photos and I can’t get the photos into the story?

A. [Answer from David Burggraaf] Put them together in a PDF and upload them together.

Q. [Question about trees]

A. We are not generally promoting alternatives to the public tree. We are trying to get a common family tree. FindMyPast has agreed to use our Family Tree. [Answer from David Burggraaf:] Going forward we intend to continue to capture separate trees, but it is our intent that [users] merge and link [them] into the main tree.

Q. When President Hinckley announced the New FamilySearch software he said it was to reduce duplication and increase collaboration. But many people are not sharing their email address, so it is impossible to collaborate.

A. We have been toying with—and we don’t want to be too heavy handed—but one thing we’ve been discussing is that you have to give a valid email address. But half the church doesn’t have them.

Q. [Didn’t write it down.]

A. There’s a fine line between informing and not informing people. We think it would be nice if when anyone added a photo, we notified you. It starts to become spam very quickly. We might take 3% of registered users and turn that feature on and test it.

Q. [Didn’t write it down.]

A. We probably make three or four changes to the site every day. It’s the only way we get better.

#RootsTech Thursday’s Opening Session

Teaching and prepping has kept me busier at this conference than most, so I’m at least one day behind in writing. Here’s some thoughts from Thursday’s opening session.

At the opening keynote Dennis Brimhall, FamilySearch CEO thanked conference chairperson, Dan Martinez. Dan was avoiding the limelight, busy helping in the trenches. I thought about a study I read recently. Event planners have the 6th most stressful job in America. I sat behind him and his family at the evening program by BYU’s Vocal Point. Dan did not have particularly good seats. They were the best he could find after helping direct things down front until the last minute. I’m sure those sitting around him didn’t realize who they were sitting next to. It was so cute to see his daughters standing and dancing to the amazing a cappella music of Vocal Point. Hat’s off to Dan Martinez.

This is a much larger venue than previous years, thank goodness. I just saw a lady walk by keeping touch with her husband using a walkie-talkie!

I taught my session in a hall that seats 4,000 people. That’s intimidating. Fortunately, everyone fit in a small section down front. I was put in the large hall because they were video taping me for later broadcast. They already have the equipment set up for larger purposes and can’t move it to the regular classrooms.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Having three keynote speakers in a keynote session is too many. Each speaker goes over time making the whole session go late. For the opening keynote session on Thursday, the RootsTech host company, FamilySearch, had to get their time in. The platinum daily sponsor, Find My Past, had to get their time in. That puts quite the time crunch on the 3rd speaker, in this case blogger, cookbook author, and food channel personality, Ree Drummond.

Brimhall gave a top ten list on reasons people came to RootsTech. #9 – It’s almost as big as an Osmond Family Reunion. #7 – It was cheaper than Sochi. #6 – I had a long layover at the Salt Lake Delta hub and had nothing else to do. #5 – The winter air is so good in Utah, you can taste it. #4 – I’m a cowboy and I thought it was BootsTech. #2 – I’m going to have a chat with the arbitrator who dinged my indexing score. And #1 – I came to be part of the largest genealogy gathering of its kind in the world.

Every state in the Union was represented except one. (If you’ve got a friend in South Dakota, twist their arm next year.)

Brimhall repeated a lot of the information I’ve already told you from the partnership announcement before the show and the FamilySearch blogger dinner, so I won’t repeat it here.

He said that a large number of people FamilySearch is trying to reach don’t have computers. To meet that challenge, they created the My Family booklet. (See “FamilySearch Announced My Family Booklet.”) They’ve now shipped 1.7 million copies of the booklet in 21 languages. After filling out the booklet, they or someone else for them, can go online and enter the information into the tree. “We think this is a tremendous starting place for people around the world,” he said.

While many people throughout the world don’t have access to computers, cell phones are becoming common. FamilySearch is looking for ways to capitalize on that. He doesn’t know yet if anything will become of it. “Come back next year,” he joked.

As predicted, Capt’n Jack Starling made an appearance, and made the same plea (do pirates plea? maybe, demand) for volunteers to index obituaries. There can soon be millions of obituaries on FamilySearch.org, but volunteers are necessary. Capt’n Jack warned us, “Those obituaries be tricky business. Be sure to read them instructions before setting your indexing sails.” Brimhall said that obituaries are pure gold. Not only do they tell the story of a person’s life, they often include a photo.

(In a town-hall style meeting later in the day, Brimhall was asked to explain more about the obituary campaign. “We think obituaries are a gold mind but people haven’t been using them because it is too much work to find them…We’ve been meeting with several large companies with newspapers who can get the obituaries but they can’t get them indexed…Hundreds of millions of these are available…We’ve been casting these [index projects] out as a little trial. People love them because there is no handwriting and because there is a story in every one. We think they are pure gold.”)

He showed a map indicating where FamilySearch has 250-ish cameras (I didn’t quite catch the exact number) photographing records across the world. He said FamilySearch is fighting a battle against time and the loss of records.

While talking about partnerships, Brimhall mentioned smaller partners in addition to the large ones getting all the attention.

“We work with partners and they use their creative minds to create cool tools,” he said.

Among others, he mentioned Ancestral Quest, Legacy Family Tree, RootsMagic, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Federation of Genealogical Societies.

“FamilyMap is a way to see where your ancestors were located. Pins drop down. You can click on a pin to see an ancestor.”
“We’ve struggled in how to show descendencies. The folks at puzzilla.org have found a way to do that.” Brimhall said. Start with your pedigree. Click on an ancestor. Puzzilla then draws a chart showing that person’s descendants. The chart can be used to identify possible holes for descendency research. Hover over a node to see information about that person. Click on the person to open and view that person in FamilySearch Family Tree.

Cool beans. Several weeks ago I had planned on writing an article about these programs and didn’t get around to it. The point I was going to make is that the ecosystem growing around the FamilySearch API is a compelling reason to register for a FamilySearch account and add your data to Family Tree.

More RootsTech later…

#RootsTech FamilySearch Blogger Dinner Report

RootsTech began for me last evening, with the FamilySearch blogger dinner. I should have taken a count. This was the largest group I’ve ever seen at this event. FamilySearch pulled out all the stops this time. Dennis Brimhall, FamilySearch president and CEO, spoke briefly to us. During the socializing before the dinner we got to chat with FamilySearch board members, Elder Allan F. Packer and Elder Bradley D. Foster. Both are presiding authorities with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns, operates, and funds FamilySearch.

FamilySearch repeated several of the messages that they have communicated in recent weeks.

Pirate Capt’n Jack Starling made an appearance as part of FamilySearch’s campaign to index 100 million obituaries this year. “Dead men tell no tales…, but their obituaries do!” is the theme of the campaign. Obituaries are like locked up pirate treasure until they are indexed and published online.

Capt’n Jack will be popping up here and there during the conference. Attendees are invited to get their pictures taken with him, post it online with hashtags #ahoy, #FamilySearch, and #obits, and then claim a bit of treasure at the FamilySearch indexing booth. We were forewarned that he might just be interrupting Dennis Brimhall’s keynote this morning.

Don Anderson spoke about partnerships, reiterating the information released in the announcement I wrote about yesterday. (See “FamilySearch Gives Further Details on Partnerships.”) Regarding FamilySearch spreading its records around to Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.com, and MyHeritage.com, Anderson said, “We want you to be able to go wherever you think gives you the best experience.” He reiterated that FamilySearch has negotiated to make these three websites free in FamilySearch family history centers. (MyHeritage is not currently available; it will be added later this year.)

And he clarified something for me. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will have full subscriptions to these websites. The announcement was vague as to whether it was access to all records, or just those obtained from FamilySearch. Anderson asked that we please inform Church members that access is not available today. Please don’t call! It will come later this year and announcements will be made at that time.

Anderson said that these partners are also working on a tree-integration technology that will make it possible to transfer information between a tree on their website and the FamilySearch Family Tree. That technology is expected to be available later this year.

“We’ve always been concerned about the quality of the data,” Dennis Brimhall said. They’re excited about the accelerating specification of sources. He said it took seven years for users to add the first 70,000 to the FamilySearch tree. Now users are adding 70,000 sources a week and the total has surpassed 12 million. Users are uploading 5,000 photos a day and 500 stories.

Brimhall characterized genealogy and family history this way: on a grave marker that separates birth and death dates with a dash, the dates are genealogy and the dash is family history. We need to pay attention to the dash in addition to the dates.

I have to pause here and blow a little steam. To become a certified genealogists or to just be a competent genealogist, one has always had to delve into the details of an ancestor’s life. Genealogists—real genealogists—have always been concerned about the whole story. It’s partly practical. Once you’ve crossed the chasm, full identification and differentiation of a person often requires identification of residences, businesses, church memberships, associates, migrations and naturalizations, court actions, military service, real and personal property ownership, appearance of handwriting and signatures, and any and all other details you can find. Do you know who is only concerned with name, birth date, and death date? “Name collectors.” Those are the people wreaking havoc blindly accepting tree-to-tree hints in Ancestry Member Trees and recklessly merging persons in FamilySearch’s Family Tree. They ignore the dash between the dates. I totally agree with the point Brimhall is making. I love the power of the illustration, the dash between the dates. But does he have to mischaracterize the word genealogy to make the point?

Shipley Munson shared some interesting statistics about the growth of RootsTech. RootsTech 2011 had 3,200 registrants. RootsTech 2012 had 4,000. 2013 had 6,700. This year, RootsTech has 8,000 registrants! In addition, this year they have 4,000 youth (teenagers) signed up and another 1,000 on a waiting list! Last year, the total of registrants, youth, and unique users viewing online was 20,800 people. This year they expect that number to hit 30,000.

Last year they tested the concept of having satellite sites utilize recordings of RootsTech sessions in local family history conferences. They tested 15 locations in three languages and had an average of 200 people attend at each location. They are expanding that program this year. They have 622 locations signed up across the world, covering ten languages. There’s even a genealogy cruise in the South Pacific that is broadcasting the sessions. (RootsTech in Tahiti? Sign me up!)

Adding on the remote locations, last year’s RootsTech had 24,300 attendees and this year’s is expected to surpass 150,000!

Well, its late and I have breakfast with Ancestry.com early in the morning. I spent too much time ranting and now have no time for proofreading. (I confess. I threw that last punctuation error in on purpose. Anything else really was because I’m not proofreading this article. Good night!)

FamilySearch Annual Business Meeting

“Elder Allan F. Packer and I recently met with Family History Department employees and missionaries in our annual department business meeting,” wrote Dennis Brimhall, FamilySearch CEO. The Family History Department is the family history arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Packer is the executive director of the department and serves as chairman of the board of FamilySearch. Brimhall reported on the meeting in a recent blog post.

“We…had several Family History Department leaders give a peek into some of the exciting new developments that will be coming in 2014,” wrote Brimhall.

Don Anderson, department director (and FamilySearch senior vice president) of Patron and Partner Services talked about working with partners. (See my article about the Ancestry.com partnership, “More Information on Ancestry.com/FamilySearch Agreement.”) Anderson said that sharing FamilySearch records with partners results in more people using the records and the more FamilySearch shares with partners, the more the partners share with FamilySearch. Anderson added that FamilySearch is working with partners to facilitate growth of FamilySearch Family Tree. Brimhall reported that more information would be forthcoming.

Steve Rockwood, director of Worldwide Support Services (I don’t know his FamilySearch title) talked about the department’s efforts to service patrons worldwide. He also introduced a new booklet, My Family: Stories that Bring Us Together. I’ll talk about that more tomorrow.

Rod DeGiulio, director (and FamilySearch senior, executive vice president of records) showed a touching video illustrating the impact that volunteer indexing has. He said that in 2014 there will be a new indexing platform. The new platform should attract more indexers as well as increase quality and accuracy.

Craig Miller, director (and FamilySearch senior vice president) of product development announced that a mobile app is under development and will be available in 2014. He showed a video showing how it will work. He said that in the future you’ll be able to use the camera on your mobile device to capture photos and video and instantly add it directly to Family Tree. (Click the image below to see the video.)

Miller announced the progress that Family Tree is making, collecting sources. New FamilySearch, in its eight years, gathered 56,000 sources. Since the introduction of Family Tree, users have contributed more than 6.4 million sources.

“I want to thank everyone for all their help and their dedication to this great work,” wrote Brimhall. “We couldn’t do it without you.”

Not Just a Chart, But a Heart

“We may rattle your bones a little bit, those of you who are family history consultants,” said Dennis Brimhall. Brimhall was the Wednesday keynote speaker at the 2013 Brigham Young University Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Brimhall is the managing director of the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and CEO and president of FamilySearch, International. He also serves as an Area Seventy for the Church. Prior to coming to FamilySearch he spent his career in hospital administration. He explained that the Family History Department and FamilySearch, International are the same thing. His business card is a Church business card on one side and a FamilySearch business card on the other.

“To those of you who come from other faiths,” said Brimhall, “we recognize that you’re in a different culture here.” Indeed, much of Brimhall’s presentation was addressed to Church members or the Church’s family history consultants. (There are 70,000 of them worldwide.)

“We’re here to help people turn their hearts,” Brimhall said. We’ve not been successful in turning hearts of as many people as we need to be, he said.

“We have to start them with the heart and they’ll get to the chart later on,” he said. Too often we started them with the chart and lost them before turning their heart.

We’ve done some remarkable things, said Brimhall. FamilySearch has 4,700 family history centers in 129 countries. They’ve published 2.9 billion searchable names and are adding 1.7 million daily. They have 237 camera teams worldwide and hope to grow that to 500 by the end of next year. (They are looking for missionary volunteers who would like to spend some time doing this.) They are digitizing the microfilm in the vault and think they’ll be done in five to seven years.

“If you think of all of that, the question comes on occasion, ‘How well are we doing?’” said Brimhall. “How many Church members are using it if they are paying for it?” While 25% of adult Church members have registered, only 8% have returned to FamilySearch.org in the past 12 months.

Brimhall quoted a saying, “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.If we keep doing what we have been doing, we'll keep getting what we've always gotten… The definition of lunacy is to keep doing what you've always done and expect different results.” (He seems to have been quoting Paul Batalden of the Dartmouth Medical School.) He said we will not improve over the 8% unless we change what we’re doing.

Brimhall related several changes that FamilySearch is making.

A significant portion of Church members do not have access to computers. Just as members don’t need to have a computer to pay their tithing, so also members should not need a computer to gather information about their ancestors. FamilySearch has developed a “wonderful little booklet” (the same mentioned by Elder Packer yesterday) that will be available in 22 languages by the end of August. It starts by soliciting stories. This lets people get engaged without a computer. You can then take the booklet to a family history consultant who can put it into FamilySearch.org for you.

“We’re well on our way and it will be distributed primarily in countries outside the U.S. where computers are not available,” said Brimhall.

The next change is to family history centers and libraries. “We want to change the library from a computer lab to where the first thing you do—not for the seasoned users who go right to the computers—they can have a discovering experience where they can discover themselves,” said Brimhall. Let them learn about themselves and then get them to build their family history. The transitioning of family history centers will occur over time.

Another change is to rethink what a family history consultant is. “The consultant of the future may be different than the consultant of the past,” he said. He showed us a video clip featuring Julene Davidson, a 17 year old family history consultant in New Mexico. Before showing the clip he asked us to see how Davidson defined her role. (Watch the clip below.)

 

(To watch the video on the LDS Church website, click this link. Underneath the video window, click on the video titled “Discovery Through Stories.”)

Davidson felt her job was to get people excited about family history, said Brimhall. The research and the learning and the charts follow. Consultants must retrain themselves on how they can get people excited in addition to helping them with names, dates, and places.

FamilySearch has changed the FamilySearch.org website to make it more engaging to new people. Brimhall joked that we, genealogists, would come and use the website no matter what. The design is to attract those who haven’t visited before. The new features have been very successful. Family Tree contains 950 million names and 41,686 new names are added daily. Names added by the general public (as opposed to Church members) account for 27%. Users have contributed over 700,000 photographs and 5,000 more are added daily. There are over 60,000 stories and 500 are added each day.

Photographs and stories are a great way to engage family members and can be shared via email or other social media. “Kids are incapable of not clicking a link,” he joked. I could never get them through the front door [to the website], but I can get them through the side door, he said. Then we’ll move them from there to doing research.

Another change is to make family history a bigger part of Church culture. FamilySearch has found that wards who implement any five of seven key actions will double the number of members participating. They are:

• Leaders Guide a core part of the ward plan
• Youth called as family history consultants
• At least three family history consultants
• Youth provide 50% of names they take to the temple
• Consultants assigned to assist members
• Consultants assigned to assist new converts
• Consultants meet regularly with priesthood leaders

Another change is partnerships. FamilySearch knows it can’t do it all. We have started efforts to make all our records available on other sites and all their records available on our, said Brimhall.

In closing Brimhall said that “we have learned that we need to champion the things that affect the heart in addition to those that affect the chart.”

Answers Coming at the BYU Genealogy Conference?

I hadn’t planned on attending the BYU Family History and Genealogy Conference this year. Almost at the last moment I noticed who the keynote speakers were. Then I was honored to be named an Official Blogger.

On Tuesday, 30 July 2013, the keynote presenter will be Elder Allan F. Packer, executive director of the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In that capacity he fills the role of chairman of the board of FamilySearch, International. On Wednesday, 31 July 2013, the keynote will be delivered by Dennis C. Brimhall, managing director of the Family History Department and Chief Executive Officer of FamilySearch.

The third keynote this year is J. Mark Lowe, a genealogist and educator of national renown. He has a particular reputation for excellence in southern research. I myself chose my ancestors carefully so they were all from New England. But if you were less (or more, depending on your point of view) lucky than me, Lowe’s expertise may be just what you need.

Last April FamilySearch released a new website design that some felt deemphasized serious genealogy. That prompted me to write “The Chasm” and “Either Really, Really Good or Really, Really Bad.” In the former I pointed out that pre-Chasm genealogy and post-Chasm genealogy are very different. In the latter I pointed out that some organizations provide a one-size-fits-all type of experience because they are oblivious to the existence of the chasm. They err too much to one side or the other rather than competently addressing both.

I withheld judgment about the new FamilySearch website at that time, waiting for some signal from FamilySearch as to their direction. I am using these first two keynotes, coming from the top and directed to a post-chasm audience, as a litmus test. Does FamilySearch understand the differing customer requirements pre- and post-chasm? Or are they merely swinging (again) a single pendulum from one side of the chasm to the other?

If you aren’t signed up for the conference already, you might be out of luck. I was told Thursday that the conference was pretty-much, sold out. (Attendance at this popular conference is limited, which is one reason the RootsTech conference was born.) To check for last minute availability, see registration options on http://ce.byu.edu/cw/cwgen/registration.php.

Stay tuned to the Ancestry Insider for coverage of this strategic conference…

RootsTech to Have Three Opening Keynotes

RootsTech announced today that it will have three opening keynote speakers, Dennis Brimhall, Syd Liberman, and D. Joshua Taylor. Two, Brimahll and Taylor, are from RootsTech sponsors, FamilySearch and brightsolid, respectively. Liberman is a professional story teller. His participation may reflect this year’s joining of the Story@Home conference with RootsTech.

RootsTech will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah on the 21st through the 23rd of March. Early-early bird pricing is $149 for a full conference admission. This rate goes through the 15th of February. Early bird pricing, $179, continues after that for “a few weeks” according to FamilySearch spokesperson, Amy Smith. Eventually, pricing will go up to $219.

Keynote speaker, Dennis Brimhall, is currently the President and CEO of FamilySearch International.  He was formerly the President and Chief Executive Officer of University of Colorado Hospital from 1988 to 2005. A native of Provo, Utah, Brimhall earned an undergraduate degree in zoology from Brigham Young University in 1972 and a master’s degree in management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1974.

Syd Liberman is a nationally acclaimed storyteller, author, and award-winning teacher. Many of his stories deal with growing up in Chicago and raising a family in Evanston, Illinois. He is known for his original historical pieces. He has received commissions to write stories for some of America’s leading institutions and agencies, including the Smithsonian; Historic Philadelphia, Inc.; NASA; and the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. His work has garnered awards from the American Library Association, Parents' Choice, and Storytelling World. Liberman was one of six tellers featured on the television special, The Call of Story. He has also performed numerous times at the Timpanogos and National storytelling festivals.

D. Joshua Taylor is the Business Development Manager – North America for brightsolid online publishing, the creator of findmypast.com. A nationally known and recognized professional genealogist, lecturer, genealogical author, and researcher, Taylor is the current president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) and the former Director of Education at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Taylor holds an MLS (Archival Management) and an MA (History) from Simmons College, and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Federation of Genealogical Societies Award of Merit, and the Rubincam Youth Award from the National Genealogical Society. Taylor was also a featured genealogist on NBC's Who Do You Think You Are?.

My Christmas Card to You

I still have my The Generations Network Christmas shirt as you can see in the photograph to the right. I wear it once a year, even though Ancestry.com changed their name.

FamilySearch. did something interesting with their logo—see below—in a Christmas greeting they recently sent me.

If FamilySearch can play with their logo, so can Ancestry.com. Here’s what Ancestry did for a recent email campaign:

 

 

On a serious note, recent tragedies have underscored the importance of family, friends, and community. I pray you and yours will have a very, merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.

--The Insider

Brimhall and Verkler, Part 5

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. I’ve presented the interview throughout this week. Click to see all the articles in this series.

The Insider: I'm a big proponent of the FamilySearch wiki.

Jay: Me too.

Insider: Everyone knows something. Can I get both of you to commit to adding something?

Jay: I won't commit to add a page. But I will commit, as I use it if there is something I can add, that I will take time and add it. I'll definitely commit to that. But off the top of my head, I don't know what I will add.

Dennis: (Laughing.) You know, let me be honest with you. I'm a bit intimidated by the Wiki. I look at it and I'm a little frightened. I'm a little intimated to add anything because we have this sense on Wikipedia that you don't really add something unless you can really add it and document it and have a citation and demonstrate that what you're adding is really improving it. So I confess to a certain bit of intimidation there. Now maybe I need to get over that because I'm sure I can find something where I can add something.

But I am a bit intimidated. Am I alone?

Insider: You are not alone.

Dennis: I'm just afraid. The worst case is you'll add something and 15 people will say, "You're crazy." Give me some time. I'll warm up to it.

Insider: Jay, what one counsel would you give Dennis about leading FamilySearch?

Jay: Obviously Dennis and I talk a lot about different specific aspects of the organization, most of which doesn't belong in any kind of public forum. The broadest public statement in terms of counsel would be to continue FamilySearch’s strengths, to have long-term vision, to articulate that openly and clearly and continue to get more and more open. The journey to an open organization is a long journey and I hope that will continue because there is great strength in it. I think we are demonstrating the great strength and then the focus on execution for that vision. Think globally or think long-term, execute in the short term. That's probably the best advice I can give.

Insider: Dennis, if you could give Jay one piece of feedback about his accomplishments at FamilySearch, what would it be?

Dennis: Congratulations! If you go back to where we were when he came, if you just go back and say, “OK, that's what it looked like,” and you look at it today: it’s a miracle. It’s a stunning miracle. I think that because technology is like a frog in the water, it changes and we get used to it. All of a sudden we're used to cell phones. We forget when they were the size of bricks and they had batteries the size of shoeboxes. So [with FamilySearch,] go up and come back in and say, “Wow. Look at what's happened.” If you look at his contribution, if you look at what he did, how he organized us, and what he's gotten going, it's a stellar accomplishment. I would give him a statement of congratulations.

I hope that he handles the withdrawal well. (Laughter.) He will. He's very bright. He's got other great things to do.

Insider: Thank you both. Any final thoughts?

Dennis: Thank you. As you know we are very, very appreciative and dependent on this type of interaction [with the genealogy media and bloggers] for what we're getting done. You are all people who feel strongly about it. You all contribute in some way. We don't get our efforts done by going on Good Morning America so much as we just talk to passionate people who can spread the word. We're very grateful for it.

Obviously we're looking out to the 1940 census so any little boost you can give us there will be gratefully appreciated. It's not “we,” it’s a community effort. But thanks for all you do.

Jay: it's been a fantastic ten years and I've really appreciated all the great people, in FamilySearch and all the great people outside the organization. This is a community with some really great people I'm going to continue to meet and run into all the time, just people who are really good people. It has been a great privilege.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

Brimhall and Verkler, Part 4

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. I’ll present the interview, a couple of questions at a time, throughout this week. Click to see all the articles in this series.

The Insider: What are FamilySearch's biggest strengths?

Dennis: There may be other people that have more records on line but nobody has more images than we do. By an order of magnitude we have more images than anybody else. One of our strengths is simply the repository of our images: 2.4 million rolls of microfilm. And [the number of images] is growing every hour. We've got cameras out their collecting these images, getting the digital rights to them. That ability to collect and preserve images is a hugely important part of what we do.

Another advantage is that we have volunteers. Every day we have 100,000 indexers doing a million indexes a day. That's a strength. When it comes time to do the 1940 census, we can turn 100,000 indexers on that task. Why? Because they like doing it.

We have the ability to marshal more resources and so as we begin to think about doing the 1940 census, the number of people doing indexing needs to go up to 150 to 200 thousand. We have the ability and the infrastructure to do that, the scale, the size that we can work, the ability to do a project like the census and say we'll get this done and then get it available for everybody.

Another advantage is that we're neutral. We're not for profit. We love the people that are in this area. We love the commercial companies that are here and are making money. We love that because we're all doing the same work. People find a name on our tree versus their tree; we're happy with that either way. We can have that neutrality where we're not threatened by anybody. We're happy when anybody succeeds.

Jay: I think we've already talked about most of them. The position we operate from [is a strength]. Probably its biggest strength is that its focus is really for the good of the industry. If the organization can continue to have that focus, it will make the right choices, not competing or hurting things. Also not being a wall flower, having a direction, having a focus. "These are the things we need to accomplish." A long term focus, the ability to execute in incremental steps, those I think are its greatest strengths.

Insider: What are FamilySearch’s biggest weaknesses?

Dennis: It’s a very large enterprise. To keep it focused and moving and the flow from images, to records, to indexing, to a tree, at that scale is a very big thing. Trying to make sure that we can use our volunteers properly. The worst thing that you can do is to have a volunteer that's not tasked in a way that they're comfortable and happy. Trying to keep 250,000 volunteers feeling like they’re really contributing and doing something meaningful is an issue.

The larger you get as an organization, the more bureaucracy you get, the more difficult it gets to adjust or move when we expect to do that rapidly. We talk about making the elephant dance. That's a tome that's used organizationally to say how do you take something organizationally that's ponderous and make it nimble. That’s one of the things in which I have a lot of interest in and some experience in. Those are some challenges we have in those areas.

Jay: When you're as diverse as FamilySearch is—and it needs to be in my opinion—it can be difficult to keep all the plates spinning. I think in many cases we need to keep those plates spinning for various conscious reasons. And we have to keep the ability to do so, but that can slow us down if we don't manage it well. It's a leadership challenge and can become a weakness if we're not careful.

Insider: The 1940 Census indexing project is coming up. Do you plan on taking time out of your busy schedules to help out?

Jay: I would argue that I've helped out quite a bit, and helped out more in the things that I've been doing than if I took the same time and indexed. I plan to do some indexing because I think it's important to have direct contact with the experience so I do plan to do some indexing, but I probably won't spend hundreds of hours indexing.

Dennis: You know, I'm going to do it. Now my wife does a lot of indexing. I haven't been doing it but I've absolutely made a personal commitment that I'm going to index the 1940 census. The wonderful thing about indexing is that you can do it even if you are busy. You can be sitting in the doctor's office with your iPad and you can do it. So absolutely, I'm already signed up. I want to be ready.

So I'm not a foreigner to it; I just need to get caught up with the technology and get ready to do it online.

 

Friday: “Will you commit to add something to the FamilySearch Wiki?”

Brimhall and Verkler, Part 3

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. I’ll present the interview, a couple of questions at a time, throughout this week. Click to see all the articles in this series.

The Insider: Jay, what do you think are your top accomplishments at FamilySearch?

Jay: When you're the CEO of an organization the organization's successes are your successes, the organizations failures are your failures. You don't succeed and have the organization fail. That also means that at some level anything that you call a great success wasn't your success. So there are things I'm really proud of, that FamilySearch has done in the last ten years, but it would be wrong to call them Jay's success or the things that Jay's done. One of the things that's sometimes a little hard to control is that—if you'll let me just babble on for a minute—is being CEO is a really visible thing and I get a lot of compliments. I wish I could translate the thanks that I often receive, to the people that actually deserve the thanks. The organization works because of all the people in it.

Some of the things I'm most proud of the organization in the last ten years:

I think we've really come to a new understanding about our role within the ecosystem of family history and how family history works. I have a diagram that has a little pond. It's got the sun and the soil, the water, the animals, all those elements are part of an ecosystem. None of them are the most important. All of them are required and needed for that whole ecosystem to occur. I think FamilySearch has really gotten their head around our role in the ecosystem. It’s got non-profit archives, societies, consumers. The consumers themselves can be professionals or avid hobbyists. They can be people who spend 20 hours at this, and really ought to call it a part time job, a serious avocation in terms of hobby, all the way to beginning people. And of course commercial organizations and commercial companies of all sizes from public companies like Ancestry to a brand new little company. Understanding and comprehending that ecosystem, learning to play within it, learning what our roles need to be and what we don't need to do so others can do—I've really been happy with how the organization has done that.

I've been very happy we've been able to execute and deliver the digital records that are coming out. Last year we published over 300 million digital records, which is more than we had at the start of the year, so we more than doubled the digital records. That's just really cool. I think that's awesome.

The help world: We delivered 35,000 help requests in 2002 and we delivered 11.5 million interactions in 2011. Now that's some cool growth in terms of really helping people and executing a model that works in 12 languages and that's cool. Again, did I do that? No. Don [Anderson] and all kinds of great people, thousands actually, made that happen.

The tree that's going to become public this year.

The framework I talked about at RootsTech: I think we have resources to help accomplish and partners that want to accomplish and so forth and an ecosystem that I hope will bring that to bear. I will be so happy if that occurs.

So those are all things that I don't think I would take credit for but I'm really excited happened in the last ten years.

Insider: Dennis, what do you hope will be your top accomplishments at FamilySearch?

Dennis: Jay was here ten years. If I'm here ten years, what would I look back and say “gee, what did we do?”

First of all, we've got lots of records that we need to get available. We're just scratching the surface of with the records that we have today. We're got teams out there with cameras collecting more images every minute of every day. We've got to make sure that that flow of what's coming in and what's getting digitized and available to people, we've got to keep that going. One of the things I'd be happy about is if we were making a dent in that, if we could say that we can see the point at which we were going to get this done. There is a finite number of records that we're dealing with right now. Whether that's North America or other places, there's still a finite number. It seems inconceivable that we could do it, but we will do it. We’ll get it done. So I'm hoping that we'll make a sizable dent in that.

One thing is, I hope we'll have an experience for our patrons that is delightful, that they enjoy it, and they’re not frustrated by it. Those of us who've been around a while have been frustrated by technology. We need to be moving beyond that. We need to be having experiences that are enjoyable and attracting. That would be another area of success.

Another thing, our efforts have been historically North America and English countries because that's where we have the interest. That's where we have the records. You can track that back a little further, but it goes right back to Europe and England and Scandinavia. That's where Americans came from. Some came from further south, but there are only a few places. We have members of our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that are all over the world and the growth is in Latin America and Asia and Africa and in some cases Eastern Europe and into what was formerly the soviet Union. We've got to do some more work to make sure that when they feel the desire to find their ancestors they can come on our site and we can help them.

That can be different because here we're very focused on names and places and dates. Many of these people focus on relationships. We go to Africa and we've got people who can't say when they were born. They don't know how old they are. But they understand the relationships and oral histories. So we've got a large team right now collecting thousands and thousands of oral histories in Africa. It’s a different culture. We need to be respectful of that. They're still part of the same mission. So I will feel success in ten years if we've really been able to go beyond this English North American-centric view and understand that we've got people around the world that feel the same desires and the same needs. We help them and partner with people who can do it better.

Sounds a little grandiose, doesn't it? We've got ten years to do it.

 

Thursday: FamilySearch’s biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses. Dancing elephants and spinning plates. The Insider challenges the CEOs to index the 1940 census.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

Brimhall and Verkler, Part 2

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. I’ll present the interview, a couple of questions at a time, throughout this week. Click to see all the articles in this series.

The Insider: What's the hardest thing about leading an organization as large as FamilySearch?

Dennis: One of the hardest things is we're keeping up with technology that changes so rapidly. You just feel like you've got it fixed and solved and all of a sudden you've got a new place you need to take it. Many people who’re in this genealogical area don't have to worry about preservation. They simply get it somehow and they enter it into their software programs and once they've got it there that's fine. But we also have the issue of preservation, which is a huge part of what we do. Making sure that we're attending to that at the same time that we're enabling the patron to find their ancestors, that's the broader task, the broader issue than just connecting the ancestors together.

The other thing is it’s a worldwide effort. You know we have 4600 family history centers all over the world. Just in your mind you hear about that and figuring out how to make it work is something I'm trying to grasp right now. I'm so new I'm still trying to get my brain around what it means to have that number of volunteers and that number of places all marching in the right direction.

Jay: It's inertia. Inertia's your friend and inertia's your foe. If you get inertia aligned and moving towards your target it's awesome. Things work and there are benefits and so forth. And when the organization isn't aligned for what your goal is and the inertia is elsewhere, that becomes probably the most difficult thing in getting a large organization working.

The other thing that's tricky about this particular organization is championing and helping innovation come from different parts of the organization, especially when people lock onto their individual “this is what I want to do” role. I feel like we've made great progress in that area, but it’s always a challenge in an organization like ours.

One of the other things that's challenging about an organization like FamilySearch is because we don't take a competitive position with really anybody. Well, sure we'll take a competitive position with evil, or something moral, but we don't take a competitive position with other companies. So often in a corporate environment, that competition creates urgency, but at FamilySearch we have to be motivated by not just competitive urgency, because that's not the key motivator, we really want to be motivated by how quickly the work needs to happen, where are the opportunities. We have to be opportunity motivated, not competition motived. That's a different motivational factor.

Insider: How would you describe your leadership style?

Dennis: I think I may have mentioned before that I can't do the job of anybody. And if I can't do it then what I need is to empower them to do it and then stay out of their way. I think my leadership style is really to empower people. Now you can't empower them unless you've made it very clear why you exist. You have to be very, very clear that this is our mission; this is what we're trying to accomplish. Once people understand your goal and what you're trying to accomplish, most people, if you leave them alone, they'll get there. I can't write code, I'm not a licensed genealogist, but we have a lot of people that do and are. I think I make sure that they understand exactly why we exist and then I stay out of their way.

Jay: Probably the thing I would say the most about my leadership style is that it's variable. It's variable depending on the task at hand, what I think needs to happen, the organization, and the people. And I think that it's important to be variable.

Let me give you a quick example of where that sort of thinking came from. Back when I was at Oracle, so this is 1992/1993, I was being recruited by a bunch of different companies who would essentially give me—now I was in a reasonably large organization then—give me the same job in their organization. The organization might grow, it might even double in size, but the type of job would roughly be the same thing in three years and five years. I realized at Oracle that changing hats is far more difficult than just running a large organization. Starting a small organization that grows rapidly, so you're three people and then 20 people and then 50 people and then 200 people and then five- and then a thousand and so forth—that is much more difficult than taking an organization from 500 to 900. And so I actually left a large organization and started [a small one] with three people, literally 3 people, and we shipped a product, a whole product, within 9 months, which inside Oracle had never been done. It was ten people within two months and so on, but it meant it grew to build a business just very rapidly.

That was much more difficult and challenging and fun. So for my style I certainly have got to switch roles. There was a time here when I needed to be an engineering V.P. and a CEO. That was really hard. Those two jobs are really hard and I tried to broadcast to everybody that I was going to drop a whole bunch of balls, especially on the CEO side because we had to get the product working and shipping, for the whole org depended on it. That was tough. It was a good change in style; I became very focused when I became engineering V.P. and I was drilling through all kinds of things. I became known as the micromanager for a while there because of the drilling to deliver. I would say that that was probably not my style right now or when I left the organization at all because the organization developed in a way that that was an inappropriate style. So I've tried to match style with the org. Not everyone would agree with my choices there, but that's how I think about leadership style.

Wednesday: A cool past. A grandiose future.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

Brimhall and Verkler, Part 1

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. I’ll present the interview, a couple of questions at a time, throughout this week.

Click to see all the articles in this series.

The Insider: Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Dennis: I actually grew up in Utah. I went to BYU and then headed off to Northwestern Kellogg School of Management and got an MBA. I have spent my career in academic medicine, which is in running large university hospitals: first the University of Utah, then the University of California at San Francisco, and then the University of Colorado. That's my background and that's the area I loved in life and enjoyed for all these years.

I was retired when I got a call from the Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] which said, “Would you come and be involved in FamilySearch?” I said, “Are you sure you've got the right person?” knowing the great things that Jay Verkler has done. I remember that they said, “Yes, we change things every now and again.” I think one of the reasons was that FamilySearch has become a very large and complex organization. It has grown rapidly so now the opportunity is—not to abandon a technology focus by any means—but to begin to organize for the next steps forward.

Jay: I love a lot of things. Of course my family and all those important things. I love FamilySearch; I love what's happened here and I love the industry. I love a lot of hobbies. And I enjoy the diversity, whether its water skiing or sports stuff or music. I love a lot of different kinds of music. I love cars; I love speed (laughing). I love mountain roping. I love hiking and camping and backpacking. There are a lot of wonderful things in life.

Insider: Enough about you; tell us a little about your ancestry.

Dennis: I know a little bit about it. I’ve studied. I've done a little bit of work. I'm not entirely a pilgrim when it comes to genealogy, but my ancestry has pioneers who came across the plains, including Rebecca Winters who's buried up by Scottsbluff, Nebraska, one of the very few recorded pioneer graves. It’s a terrific story about that grave and the laying of the railroad track.

And then we can go back to her father, Gideon Burdick, who was George Washington's drummer boy when he crossed the Delaware River on that Christmas night in 1776.

If you go back further on both sides, with the exception of a little French in there, it goes back to England. We are from England and so the name was Bramhall originally. When we came over here they wanted to change their names so we became the Brimhalls. So Brimhall was entirely an American name and there's not many around. We've lived in Chicago and Denver and San Francisco and we were the only Brimhalls in the phone book. So it is not a very common name. It is out here [locally] because of the brothers who early on joined the Church. That's why we concentrate out here.

Jay: I consider my ancestry to be not just my personal ancestry but my wife's ancestry too. That's interesting. I'd never really realized that until you asked. On my side of the world I have pioneers who crossed the plains from back in England. That's all been well researched. I've never validated it. I will someday but that doesn't look like the most productive area to work in.

For my father there's no genealogy completed at all. The Verkler line goes back into Zurich but I haven't documented it well back into Zurich and that's what I'm going to work on in the next few months. His mother died when he was 6 years old and so he knew nothing about her. I've opened up a lot of that line through some research that goes back into Germany and I'm trying to get across the pond. Illinois is where the Verklers were part of. My wife has Hungarian roots. She and her father have done some research on Norwegian lines. For her Japanese lines, I have a personal enjoyment. Part of what I care doing is the family history of my kids. That's where our different roots are. My kids are just a mix of everything. It’s kind of cool.

Insider: What is the best thing about leading an organization as large as FamilySearch?

Dennis: One of the really interesting things—and I've found this in the hospital world as well, but it’s probably more of the case here—the people who work for us really, really want to do this work. And they want to do it right. Yes, for many of our people, they're paid but most of them could do something else for a little more money than we pay them. They really want to be here. That's one of the really nice things about it. The other thing is, they're very passionate about making it work for other people; they understand that if we’re successful other people will be successful. That kind of focus on the purpose, focus on the mission, it’s just different than coming to work every day.

The other thing that is always important to remember is we have 250,000 volunteers. Now that is a stunning number. It’s a stunning number! All over the world these are people we don't get paid at all, but they're here simply because they love it and they want to do it. Managing that number of volunteers and keeping them focused and busy doing things that are collectively for the good, and helping us move along is really a big effort. Just imagine having 250,000 helpers who are dedicated to what you want to do. Who’s got that? That's really neat.

Jay: There's a ton of things that are wonderful about FamilySearch that really don't equate to its size: the clear mission that FamilySearch has. That mission is really about helping everyone on the planet. Yes, sure, a lot of companies want to help everyone on the planet. For over ten years I've really understood the impact that family history has on all kinds of different walks of life. When you hear the African American leaders in the inner city explain how important it is that their kids who don't have fathers know where they came from, that's cool. Or when you sit on a plane—and I've sat on a lot of those plane rides, especially when I was commuting—and you have people just light up when they know what you do because they want to tell you about their families. Just seeing impact after impact after impact of family history has been awesome.

FamilySearch's role is as a non-profit organization that can partner with archives and can be kind of a partner archive that can provide resources to the world, but can also work with companies in a trusted way. We're trusted by so many different companies and organizations; that's just totally cool.

And then just to see patrons discover things because of our focus on people, those dimensions of the FamilySearch organization, whether it’s small or large, have been wonderful.

Of course one of the nice things about a larger institution is that you can have a lot of impact if you get everyone singing the same song, and going in the same direction. And that's been fun too.

 

Tuesday: Micromanagement, competition, and opportunity.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

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Notice: The opinions expressed herein are those of the Ancestry Insider, not necessarily those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise. See http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com for other important legal notices.

Dennis Brimhall and Jay Verkler, A RootsTech Interview

At RootsTech I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with FamilySearch outgoing CEO, Jay Verkler, and with incoming CEO, Dennis Brimhall. I asked each the same set of questions.

There’s a reason the interviews I did at RootsTech are only now being published. May I say that transcribing long interviews is excruciating. But I think it was well worth it. The similarities and differences in their responses make interesting reading. Their responses to my challenges to index and contribute to the Wiki were… well, I’ll let you discover for yourselves.

I’ll present the interview, a couple of questions at a time, throughout the week.

Monday Dennis and Jay introduce themselves. “Are you sure you’ve got the right person?” “Horse thieves.” “I love speed.”