Steve Rockwood at #RootsTech: Personal Trees, Partners, Provender

Sorry about the weird word in the title. I needed a synonym for food that began with the letter P. No lie. Food was a big theme of Steve Rockwood’s keynote address. So much so, he ate Rocky Road fudge in front of us. Isn’t there some rule against that? If you eat in front of someone, you have to provide some for everyone? All 10,000 of us? That’s what my mother always taught me. In Steve’s case, his mother taught him to love Rocky Road fudge. All things considered, I’d take the fudge.

It is a Christmas tradition in the Rockwood household. Rocky Road fudge. Steve’s mother got the recipe from Grandma Rockwood. Still today, Steve’s mother sends a tin of fudge at every single Christmas. This past Christmas Steve’s wife was helping when Steve’s mom said to her, “Please make sure the tradition continues.” There in front of us all, Steve turned to his mother in the audience, and promised, “Mom, we will make sure that, and many other traditions, continue.

“What is your Rocky Road?” Steve asked us. As we think about those foods, smells, tastes, and memories flood back. Steve challenged us to upload our Rocky Road recipes to FamilySearch.org/recipes so that all the descendants of our Grandma Rockwood can have that same experience.

Steve’s presentation had another big theme: partners, and for that portion of his presentation he called upon Stephen Valentine, a vice president at FamilySearch, to assist. Stephen said that FamilySearch is partnering to get more records published from around the world:

• FamilySearch partnered with Ancestry to digital and publish civil records from Mexico.
• FamilySearch is partnering with MyHeritage to grow by five times the number of Swedish, Danish, and Finnish records online, this year alone.
• FamilySearch is partnering with Findmypast to publish millions of U.S. marriage records never before published.
• FamilySearch is partnering with Geneanet in France to bring new opportunities forward.
• FamilySearch is working with partners to provide access to FamilySearch’s collection of Chinese genealogies—the largest in the world outside of China.
• FamilySearch is partnering with Brigham Young University to develop technology that has, so far, automatically indexed 26 million obituaries.

The final theme of Steve’s presentation was family trees.

FamilySearch has always marketed FamilySearch Family Tree—the one tree to uniquely document each person who has ever lived. Ron Tanner calls it “our tree” in contrast to “my tree.” What most people don’t know is that FamilySearch has both. For the first time to my knowledge, a FamilySearch executive—the president, no less—pointed out the existence of and recommended the use of FamilySearch “my trees.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Steve talked about Pando, “a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen.” (Wikipedia) From the surface, Pando looks like a 106 acre forest of aspen trees. But all the trees are connected by a common root system. Pando is considered to be a single, living organism—the heaviest and perhaps the oldest living organism on Earth.

“After a hundred and twenty years of FamilySearch helping [people] discover and connect with their families, connect with their homelands, and now starting to build and share their trees, we’ve learned a few things,” Steve said. “We’ve learned that every single family tree, no matter how unique it is, is ultimately connected.” Our family trees are each a part of a much larger tree. We are cultivating, in a sense, a family history Pando.

Steve recommended that people go ahead and continue using the tree systems they currently use, but also contribute their information to FamilySearch Family Tree. He said that the community has freely used our records and freely used our centers, and “now we politely invite you to come and use the Tree.”

“This collaborative tree is pretty awesome,” Steve said.

Steve validated concerns that user contributions can be changed in Family Tree. “We hear you.” In addition to contributing to Family Tree, he invited everyone to upload and preserve their trees in the Genealogies section of FamilySearch.org. To submit your tree, click on Search > Genealogies and scroll down to the Submit Tree button. It can’t be edited, it is under your control, and FamilySearch will preserrve it indefinitely. And, it becomes part of the Pando.

To view Steve Rockwood’s presentation in its entirety, go to https://www.rootstech.org/videos/steve-rockwood-2017-thu.

Family History Enhances Lives - #RootsTech 2017

Today was Innovator Summit at RootsTech 2017. In the general session Steve Rockwood asked us to “imagine how we’ll treat each other when we know we’re all connected.” He invited us to take the opportunity while we’re here at RootsTech to see if we are connected to him. His father is Trulan van Rockwood (PID KW88-46X in FamilySearch Family Tree). If you find a connection, he wants you to stop by his house for dinner. Um. Maybe I misheard that part. At least stop him and tell him you’re related.

Family Tree has a handy “View My Relationship” link that you can use to see if you are related. (You must have first created a FamilySearch account and entered your tree.)

Steve, we are 9th cousins, once removed. What time is dinner?

He encouraged attendees to innovate and said, “Those are the opportunities we have to connect people with their families, to their homelands, and to the wonderful effects of family history in their lives.”

“Family history has the ability to enhance everyone’s life.”

Turning the Model Upside Down #BYUgen #BYUFHGC

FamilySearch wants to turn upside down the usual order in which people engage in family history, said Steve Rockwood in his keynote address at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Steve is president and chief executive officer (CEO) of FamilySearch International. He is the managing director of the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors FamilySearch.

Steve said in the past we presented people with a chart or a computer to start them in family history. Those that were willing to stay with it long enough eventually experienced the positive emotions associated with family history. In the Church today, that amounts to 2% of the members.

“We want everyone to feel those emotions [they experience] through the act of doing family history,” Steve said. “We believe that this is primarily an emotional movement.” He said doing family history brings feelings of love, joy, peace and other strong positive emotions. (The Church ascribes these to the Holy Ghost, he said. He pointed us to Galatians 5:22-23 and Ephesian 5:9 in the New Testament.)

“We are concentrating on how everyone can experience and feel those emotions.” By giving them immediate, emotional experiences, FamilySearch hopes they then engage in family history. FamilySearch decided to concentrate on stories. “We are serious” [about this change]. Steve said. “We changed our logo, our entire branding.” The FamilySearch logo now looks like a set of picture frames. FamilySearch starts people with photos, audio recordings, anything that anyone can participate in. That makes it an exciting world of change. “Now, more and more people are getting involved in this thing called family history.” For example, FamilySearch has seen a 47% increase in young people involved in family history.

This change can be discomforting to existing genealogists. Steve likened it to the situation when society started shifting from agricultural to urbanized life. Our great-grandparents said things like “How can you learn how to live life if you don’t grow up on a farm?” And “How can you learn the law of the harvest?” Somehow we all turned out okay, even though we didn’t grow up on farms. The same will occur with this change in approaching family history.

Steve assured us that we were still valued and accuracy is still important. “We’re all standing on your shoulders. We honor you and thank you.” We will not compromise on the integrity of the genealogy, he said. It needs to be accurate. “Accuracy is paramount,” he emphasized.

Steve talked about five experience areas, as he did at the last RootsTech. (See “RootsTech is a Gathering of Heart Specialists” on my blog.) One of these is searchable records. “They have to be searchable,” he said. Most people are not willing to wade through microfilm or unindexed images. Steve said FamilySearch is doing all they can do to digitize the films in the vault and hope to be done in three years. But they still need to be made searchable. FamilySearch is doing so by pursuing three strategies: FamilySearch Indexing, commercial partnerships, and automation. If computers can be programmed to index the documents, let them do it.

The Memories experience area will continue to stay core to FamilySearch’s strategy. Steve pointed out that photos and stories that are valuable now will have “unbelievable power” for generations to come.

While we think of Family Discovery today in terms of brick and mortar Discovery Centers, FamilySearch is looking at opening it up to experiences that are less expensive to deploy to almost any family history center, or on your computer screen, or even on your phone. FamilySearch is looking at packaging Family Discovery in new, appealing ways. The idea is to package your tree in a way that gives others an engaging taste of it.

Steve gave some indication of the countries where FamilySearch may be expanding efforts. He said that Lehi in the Book of Mormon sent his sons back to Jerusalem to get a record of their genealogy. “We have to concentrate on the question, ‘Where’s your Jerusalem?’” If it is America or Scandinavia or England, then FamilySearch can give you a pretty good experience. But if your Jerusalem is China or Ghana or most other places, the experience is not as good. He said that because of a partnership with Ancestry.com, in five years the experience will be good for those whose Jerusalem is Mexico. Steve said if you ever want to know some places where we are diversifying, listen to the Church’s General Conference and see where the Prophet [Thomas S. Monson] is announcing temples. When that happens, opportunities open up for us, he said. Look where there are 27 temples still under construction. Steve said that 60% of visitors to Temple Square (across the street from the Salt Lake City Family History Library) speak Chinese. What kind of discovery experience can we provide for them?

Steve said that what FamilySearch is doing is trying to bring all of God’s children into family history and providing them records according to their Jerusalem.

#RootsTech is a Gathering of Heart Specialists

“RootsTech is a gathering of heart specialists,” said Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch.

Steve was one of the opening day’s keynote speakers at RootsTech 2016. He began by asking each of us to think of a family story. He told us what we just did was family history. He then gave us 60 seconds to share the story with the person sitting next to us.

He then asked us to think about what we felt as we told our story. When we share stories we feel love, joy, peace—sometimes even sadness, “I believe you can be inspiring to your family members,” he told us. “Your family needs what you have.”
Steve told us that FamilySearch’s vision is to continuously improve these five experiences:

1. Discovery. There have recently been a 482% increase in teens discovering their family history.
2. Family Tree. Family Tree now has over 1 billion persons.
3. Searchable records.
4. Memories. There are now over 10 million memories in FamilySearch.org.
5. Contextual help. This needs to address the needs of the younger generations in the ways that work best for them. That is probably through their peers.

Steve advised us to reach out to people’s hearts. When he was an eight year old boy he had to have heart surgery. “You are, in a way, heart specialists.” We are the heart doctors in our families. Just as Steve’s doctor didn’t need to turn him into a heart doctor in order to fix his heart, we don’t need to turn our family members into genealogists in order to touch their hearts.

Start small. Steve told us to think about the story we thought of at the beginning of his presentation. He then asked us to think about a family member who needs to hear that story. “Go talk to them today.” Do it in person. Or call. Or Skype. But try to tell the story in less than a minute.

Then ask them to share a story.

 

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RootsTech 2016 By the Numbers

• 25,000 - people registered
• 50 – states represented by attendees (RootsTech finally got all 50!)
• 40 - countries
• 4,000 – teenage attendees registered
• 3,000 – registered 8 to 12 year olds
• 360+ - exhibiters
• 125,000 - expected live streaming audience
• 1,500 - Family Discovery Days last year rebroadcasting some sessions from RootsTech
• 250,000 – attendees to the Family Discovery Days

#InnovatorSummit at #RootsTech – Inside-out and Upside-down

As a prelude to #RootsTech, the 2016 Innovator Summit began yesterday in Salt Lake City. The opening keynotes were given by Steven Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch, and Ken Krogue, cofounder of InsideSales.com.

Steve Rookwood said that innovators make a living by looking at different ways to approach things. FamilySearch was looking at things differently when they came up with the “crazy” idea of a shared, public family tree. Looking at things differently is something Steve’s done in his career. He likes to solve problems by looking at them “inside-out and upside-down.” (Hence the joke his staff played on him by projecting his first slide upside-down.) In 1990 he and partner, Jim Ball, created Alpine Axis in Golden, Colorado. They had the idea of creating call center technology for a center that wasn’t a center at all. They developed technology that allowed workers to work out of their homes. Calls coming into an 800 number would be routed out to the employees in their own homes.

Now as the new CEO of FamilySearch, it is a skill he is bringing to his work. Prior to becoming CEO, he served as a vice president over international concerns and as part of his responsibilities lived outside the United States. He comes to his new position as, in a way, an outsider looking in. Steve identified five areas FamilySearch is focusing on: discovery, family tree, searchable records, memories, and contextual help.

Everyone has positive feelings about family history. If someone becomes engaged, they develop skills. With those skills, they produce results. What would our industry be like if we could extend engagement to teenagers and millennials? What if we learned how to bring others into our circle, providing them the feelings, skills, and results that we experience?

What would our industry be like if we could integrate family history into our everyday lives, like we do in subtle ways with math?

Let’s grow the family history space. Let’s bring family history out, to weave it into the fabric of everyday life.