Ancestry.com Bloggers Day: Data Center Tour (Part 2)

The Ancestry.com data center can store three petabytes of information. That’s the equivalent of a stack of DVDs piled three Empire State Buildings high, according to Ron Hair. (There were other bullet points that flew over my head: 3PAR for primary storage, Isilon & Nexsan, Hitachi, and finally NetApp for tier 3 storage.) I previously mentioned that a collection of 3,000 backup tapes containing a copy of all this data is stored in an underground vault, should catastrophe strike.

(You’ll recall that security was tight and we weren’t allowed to take pictures. As a result, please do not assume that I took these pictures with the camera hidden inside my umbrella. That one was out of film.)

With that much storage, and 6,000+ servers, one can expect that Ancestry.com eats through as much power in a month as many small Utah towns: 807,000 kilowatts per month. Should the power fail, the facility is equipped with enough battery backup to keep things running for 15 minutes. However, after 7 to 10 seconds a diesel powered electrical power plant comes online, powering the small town we know as Ancestry.com. One generator (like the one pictured above) can fail and the remaining two generators are strong enough to carry the load. A 1,600 gallon tank contains enough diesel to power the center for three days and can be refilled as necessary.

With that much energy being burned, you can imagine that quite a lot of heat is generated. The data center uses 16 huge air conditioning units, each of which could cool 160 homes. The aisles between the rack cabinets alternate between cold and hot. The cooling units blow cooled air into the cold aisles. Fans draw the cool air through the servers where it absorbs heat from the electronics. The heated air is then expelled out into the hot aisles, where it is sent back to the coolers. Each cold aisle was capped with a plastic covering that helps direct the cool air through the servers. You can see the plastic roof of the cold aisle in the photograph below. (Actually, this is a painting that I did with my photographic memory upon return home. Yep. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.)

Monitoring

Monitoring 6,000+ servers is no easy task. This year, Hair merely mentioned it, but last year we got to tour the monitoring room. With a dozen monitors and multiple operators, the room looks not unlike the control room of a nuclear power plant or NASA’s mission control. (“Uh, Houston. We have a problem here.”) See the photograph… I mean… watercolor, below.

Ancestry.com’s Ra Database Server Software

Hair (or was it Mike Wolfgramm?) did take the time to explain a home grown application that monitors and controls the 4,000+ genealogy data servers employed by the Ancestry.com website. The system is codenamed “Ra,” although its icon is the Eye of Horus.

Loads of generic servers are divvied up to handle requests to particular groups of Ancestry.com genealogy databases. One group might be birth, marriage, death databases. (Oops. The diagram was supposed to be labeled BMD!) Another group might handle military databases, and so forth. Database search requests are routed to the appropriate “stack” of servers which perform the search and return the results.

The servers are divided into three sets. The Live Servers set has all the servers currently in operation. If automatic monitoring software detects a problem with a server, that server is automatically moved to the Need Repairs set and is replaced with a server from the Available set. Technicians diagnose and fix the servers needing repair and return them to the Available set.

Last year we were told that a commercial vendor of a similar software program approached Ancestry.com to ply their wares. When the vendor saw the Ra system, they disappointedly announced that Ra was more sophisticated than their own offering.

I wish FamilySearch would give bloggers a similar briefing so I could contrast the two search systems. My suspicion is that Ancestry.com utilizes lots and lots of cheap servers with small databases while FamilySearch uses fewer, higher powered systems with monolithic databases. But I don’t really know. Some day I’ll have to give you my theory of why a for-profit company is naturally driven to the former and a non-profit company is naturally driven to the latter. But I digress…

Next week we’ll continue with a tour of Data Preservation Services, by Laryn Brown.

In the Ra diagram, the Eye of Horus image in the diagram above is copyright by Jeff Dahl and used under license, and the HP BL460 Blade server image is courtesy Hewlett-Packard.

Vault Vednesday: Excavation

Above, Construction photos.
Left, Leaders inspect a tunnel during
construction.
Source: Deseret News.

It’s Vault Vednesday! This is another in a series highlighting the Granite Mountain Record Vault (GMRV) and the NGS Family History Conference coming to Salt Lake City, 28 April—1 May 2010.

Excavation

In the early ‘40s, FamilySearch sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, decided to build a storage chamber for preservation of the priceless microfilm negatives produced by FamilySearch predecessor, the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU). Preliminary investigations were made of several sites and a site in the Wasatch Mountain Range was selected.

In 1958 engineering surveys and a 500-foot test core confirmed the site was solid granite, without excessive moisture. The storage facility could be viably excavated inside the solid granite at a cost similar to other proposals. Final approval was granted in 1959.

Construction began in the summer of 1960, extending 500 feet into the mountain side. Three-fifths of a mile of solid granite would be excavated.

The 2010 NGS Family History Conference

You may recall when I left you last week that I was about to mention the best thing about the conference. So, let’s get right to it…

…right after this commercial message.

Are you interested in your genealogical maturity? Well, you should be. Hundreds of Americans suffer from this embarrassing condition. You owe it to yourself to investigate your genealogical maturity by reading The Ancestry Insider. Past articles will help you critique your own maturity, in the privacy of your own home! Don’t delay! Click now!

We now return to today’s installment of “Vault Vednesday.”

Now that you’ve decided you have room to improve your genealogical maturity, how are you going to do it? The best thing about the 2010 NGS Family History Conference is the amazing array of classes. Ten tracks run simultaneously each day. That’s right: ten. During each 60 minute class hour, you have ten different choices, so you’re virtually guaranteed to find something spot-on useful to you. The ten tracks vary slightly during the four days, filling five time slots with the country’s absolute top genealogy experts.

If you were to try and buy books to cover the same knowledge, you would pay many times the price of the conference. And then you’d have to try and motivate yourself to read all of them; you know you’d never get around to covering them all. Why not come and listen to the authors in person, in an environment where you can slip out and apply the learnings at the Family History Library (FHL), or the FHL computer lab provided onsite at the convention center. Handouts for all classes are included on the conference CD-ROM syllabus, for convenient reference after the conference.

If you’re serious about increasing your genealogical maturity, then the 2010 NGS Conference is a must attend event. Combine that with Jay Verkler’s keynote, the Granite Mountain Record Vault virtual tour, jam-packed exhibit halls, the special GenTech exhibition hall, and the Family History Library. I’m telling ya, if you don’t come to this conference, you are going to regret it for… for…, well, for a while, anyways.

And I haven’t even told you about the special event…

Oh! Look at the time! Tune in next week. Same vault time! Same vault channel!

Early bird registration must be postmarked by 8 March 2010. There are just 50 days left.
Pre-registration must be postmarked by 12 April 2010. There are just 85 days left.
The conference begins 28 April 2010. There are just 101 days left.

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Sources

     "Church Alters Plans For Archives Facility," Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 23 March 1962, pp. 1A, 6A-7A; digital images (http://news.google.com/newspapers : accessed 25 December 2009).
     "Industry Journal Tells Story Of Church Vault," Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 14 April 1962, p. 6A, col. 3; digital images (http://news.google.com/newspapers : accessed 25 December 2009); April issue of American Oil Co. magazine, Torch and Oval, featured use of company products in construction of the Vault.
     "Church Dedicates Vault For Record Safekeeping," Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 23 June 1966, p. A1 (cols. 3-5), p. A6 (cols. 1-4); digital images (http://news.google.com/newspapers : accessed 25 December 2009).
     James B. Allen, et. al., “Hearts Turned to the Fathers,” BYU Studies Vol. 34 No. 2 (1994-1995).
     John L. Hart, "Digitizing Hastens at Microfilm Vault," LDS Church News, 11 March 2006; online archives (www.ldschurchnews.com : accessed 25 December 2009).

Ancestry.com Bloggers Day: The Data Center

After Andrew Wait’s introduction, Ron Hair gave us a tour of the Ancestry.com data center.

There was really no need to blindfold me as they transported us to the Ancestry.com Data Center at “an undisclosed location somewhere in Salt Lake County.” I was initially disoriented until I recognized the soft whirling of microfilm readers as we drove by the Family History Library on West Temple Street. Our location was confirmed when we took a left and shortly I recognized the unique smell of the rolls as we passed the Lion House on South Temple Street…a right…a freeway ramp…a round-about…a right…and a right. That left only the mystery of why they even bothered to blindfold me in the first place. (Particularly since they told us the name of the business, which Google readily located. I guess if we can’t tell you the location, by extension I can’t tell you the name of the business, either.)

This data center is the primary location for all the computer servers that power Ancestry.com Inc. websites. A secondary data center will exist at a Verizon facility for disaster recovery. Security was tight. We weren’t allowed to take pictures. The building is guarded 24x7. Video surveillance is employed throughout the facility as shown in the photograph to the left, which I promise I did not take with a camera hidden in the earpiece of my glasses.

Access to the Ancestry.com server rooms requires visual identification by the guard, security card access, and a biometric handprint scan. Hair said that technicians have a private contest to see who can get the best score on the handprint recognition system. (When you’re putting in an all-nighter, as technicians are frequently required to do so their work doesn’t slow down your daytime use of the website, it must get awfully boring!) Again, I deny all knowledge of how this photograph was acquired. Any similarity to the same shirt hanging in my closet is purely coincidental.

In December 2003 RootsWeb.com was the first site moved here. Ancestry.com was moved here in October 2005. Ancestry.com, Inc. occupies two rooms of 3,700 and 2,800 sq. ft. in size. A special type of computer called a blade server is used in data centers. They are long and thin, with no keyboard or screen. The photograph below shows a side view of a server on the left, and a front view of five servers on the right.

Dozens of blade computers can be plugged into a frame, called a rack cabinet. Ancestry.com uses nearly 200 rack cabinets between the two rooms. The photograph to the left (standard disclaimer applies) shows seven racks filled with blade servers. Ancestry.com, Inc. finished last year with 6,118 servers, up from the 5,328 servers they had on our previous tour.

The racks also contain storage devices, tape backup drives, and specialized database servers. When personal member trees are too slow, it means Ancestry.com doesn’t have enough of the latter. Hair mentioned that they had added lots of these since our last tour.

Next time we’ll finish Ron Hair’s data center tour and presentation.

Ron Hair serves as senior director of Web/IT (Information Technologies) operations and is responsible for the day to day operation of datacenters and IT services where he has over 27 years of experience. Before Ancestry.com, he served as director of IT and vice president of technical services at Cimetrix, which provides software solutions for factory connectivity and advanced motion controls. Prior to Cimetrix, Hair worked for Evans & Sutherland in Salt Lake City as director of IT. He has a degree in design & computer graphics from Brigham Young University.

Ancestry.com Bloggers Day: Andrew Wait

Last year I intended to do stupendously rich write-ups of the Ancestry.com Bloggers Day presentations. Since I didn’t get around to it, for this year’s event, held 8 January 2010, you’re getting my stupidously poor notes.

Andrew Wait was the first presenter. Wait drew the job of introducing the key messages this year. These are the themes we heard over and over throughout the day:

• We wish to be transparent (even if being public makes that more difficult).
• We have become better listeners.
• We did what we said we’d do last year.
• What we do is expensive and complex.

Last year the message that every single last employee was personally invested in genealogy came across as forced and contrived. I was glad that that message was gone. But I was still glad when some presenters could use examples from their own genealogies. Another message that was gone was last year’s adversarial humor about Gary Gibb wanting to spend more on content than upper management. True or not, why would you want to send that message?!

Here are the rest of my notes from Andrew Wait’s introductory presentation:

o        At a Glance

§        700 employees

§        10 offices

·        US:

o        Provo,

o        San Francisco (now an official office. added knowledge workers),

o        Washington D.C. (Bethesda),

o        Bellevue

·        Europe:

o        London,

o        Munich,

o        Paris

·        Other:

o        Toronto,

o        Beijing,

o        Sydney

§        Websites for 9 countries

·        US, UK, Canada (Eng & French), Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, China

o        History

§        1983 established as a publishing company

§        1996 ancestry.com launched in January, includes online databases by November

·        access to the SSDI

§        Today

·        More than 4 billion online records

·        More than 8 billion names in online records

·        We’ve revised how we calculate this numbers to be more conservative than before.

o        Organization/departments

§        Content Acquisition

·        ~10 employees domestically (international employees are shown elsewhere)

·        Record keeping is the largest unfunded mandate in the US, which makes establishment of relationships with archives difficult.

·        2 full-time employees working with societies for World Archives Project (Suzanne and Lou)

§        Development & IT/IS

·        ~160 employees.

·        Ramped up, perhaps doubling the ancestry.com team from last year

§        Product management and UI design

·        ~50 employees.

·        Change in philosophy: Don’t grow our own product managers; hire the best from outside.

·        Tony Macklin doing search.

o        Background at ask.com and eBay

o        Spent a year listening to customers before he was willing to propose any major search changes. More on this later from Tony.

§        International

·        ~60 employees

§        Document preservation services

·        ~150 employees

·        Much, much larger than it was a year ago.

·        Most of the growth is outside Provo.

·        Moving from digitizing mostly microfilm to mostly paper.

·        14 or 15 onsite scanning projects in the US.

·        About the same outside the US.

o        This is because paper records can’t be shipped to Provo like microfilm can.

§        Member services

·        ~160 employees

·        Have some genealogy heroes. Have some real stars.

·        Showed “Behind the Scenes at Ancestry.com,” a “fun video” of employees

o        Production rate: 2 million images per week

§        Public Relations & marketing

·        ~50 employees

·        They do: customer acquisition, customer education, analytics, creative design, partners

§        Corp staff

·        ~50 employees

 

Next time: Tour of the data center, by Ron Hair.

Wait is the senior vice president and general manager of family history at Ancestry.com, Inc., and is responsible for planning and directing all aspects of the company’s products, marketing and operations. Prior to joining the company in March 2006, Wait served as senior director of marketing at Kodak Gallery from October 2003 to January 2006. From January 2000 to October 2003, he was the senior director of marketing for EarthLink’s PeoplePC brand. Earlier in his career, he held various marketing positions with Pacific Bell/SBC, Bank of America and Hilton Hotels. Wait holds a Master of International Business Administration from Saint Mary’s College and a bachelors degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley.

They Come in Threes

Some people believe that bad things come in threes. Some, good things. But what about TV shows featuring people learning about their ancestors? Do those come in threes also?

Faces of America

“Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” is a 4-part miniseries featuring twelve celebrities. “Faces” debuts Wednesday, 10 February 2010 on PBS. Celebrities include Yo-Yo Ma, Eva Longoria Parker, Meryl Streep, Stephen Colbert, and Kristi Yamaguchi.

To see a preview, click on the video above, or view the video on YouTube.

The Generations Project

Last Monday, 14 January 2010, FamilySearch’s Jay Verkler invited members of the genealogical community, assembled for FGS board meetings and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, to attend a special luncheon. One topic covered was a new series from BYU TV, “The Generations Project.” This series departs from the formula by featuring the ancestry of ordinary people like you and me.

Several episodes have already aired, and more are scheduled (see list below). Episodes can be watched on BYU TV Monday nights on BYU TV or online at BYU Broadcasting.

View the Lumina episode above, or click here to view it online.

Who Do You Think You Are

At the Ancestry.com Bloggers Day, Andrew Wait swore us to secrecy and told us that NBC was days away from announcing the debut date for the eagerly anticipated American version of the popular BBC television series, “Who Do You Think You Are.” The show will premiere Friday, 5 March 2010 from 8 to 9 pm ET on NBC.

With any luck, NBC will have officially announced the show before you read this. Wait told us that celebrities announced for the show are Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Susan Sarandon. He mentioned several others stars, but I can’t mention any of them until the network releases the information.

UPDATE NOTE: The announcement came Thursday afternoon, so I’m not in trouble (anymore).

This isn’t the first time NBC has scheduled this series. (See this report.) If they postpone it again, they may have to rename it to, “When Do You Think ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ Is.”

Then we’ll know if three announcements was good or bad.

Vault Vednesday: Ancestry.com’s Granite Vault

It’s Vault Vednesday! This is another in a series highlighting record vaults and the NGS Family History Conference coming to Salt Lake City, 28 April—1 May 2010.

Ancestry.com’s Granite Vault

Today we combine my Vault Vednesday series with my Ancestry.com Bloggers Day series of reports.

One of the Ancestry.com Bloggers Day presenters mentioned that there is more than one storage vault up in the granite mountains above Salt Lake City. Ancestry.com uses the vault of Perpetual Storage, Inc. to store backup tapes containing the contents of its websites.

As I understand, even user contributed content is among the 3,000 tapes Ancestry.com has stored in the vault for use in the event of über-catastrophic server failure. That makes Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com among the safest places on the planet for the storage of your personal genealogical research results.

Photographs of Perpetual Storage, the other granite vault:

	Fossil found during Perpetual Storage vault excavation

 

The 2010 NGS Family History Conference

Last week I mentioned a free opportunity open to everyone, attendees and the public. Following Jay Verkler’s opening keynote, the exhibit hall will open. The exhibit hall, already sold out, may be the largest collection of genealogy vendors ever assembled. You know there will be show specials offered on many of your favorite genealogy products! Book vendors will have the greatest breadth of titles you’ve ever seen (short of the Family History Library, of course).

And there’s something extra special happening this year: FamilySearch is sponsoring a GenTech Technology Hall. There will be a demonstration area, big screen, and seating. There will be a computer lab with 60 computers for free use. If they can work out the logistics, each computer will all be equipped with the famous Family History Library desktop and its amazing collection of premium websites and resources, free for your use!

The concept envisioned for this special extension to the main hall is to bring together vendors and other organizations showing the hottest technology applicable to genealogists. I’ve heard rumor that a variety of FamilySearch personnel might be doing demonstrations of their latest work. If the GenTech Hall works out the way it’s been conceived, it will be amazing!

But wait! There’s more! No, not ginsu knives. Sign up for the conference and you will also receive—and this is what I think is the best thing about the conference—you will also receive… You know, I think I’ve told you enough for one week. Stay tuned!

Early bird registration must be postmarked by 8 March 2010. There are just 52 days left.
Pre-registration must be postmarked by 12 April 2010. There are just 87 days left.
The conference begins 28 April 2010. There are just 103 days left.

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Sources

     Jack Monson, "Granite Rock Protects Storage Vaults," Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 15 March 1979, pp. H7; digital images (http://news.google.com/newspapers : accessed 12 January 2010).
     Perpetual Storage, Inc. (www.perpetualstorage.com : accessed 12 January 2010).

Ancestry.com Bloggers Day Banquet

Saturday night Ancestry.com hosted a banquet for the Bloggers Day attendees, a half-dozen representative users, the FGS board, Salt Lake Institute attendees, and other guests. The banquet was held in a fancy room at the Salt Lake City Little America Hotel. I believe that is where the out-of-town bloggers stayed. Last year Randy Seaver mentioned how easy it was to catch the TRAX light rail train to travel from the Little America to the Family History Library. The ride is within the free-fare zone, which makes it especially convenient.

I don’t know what was more scrumptious, the food, the company, or the speaker.

First the food

I have a simple palate, but even I loved this fancy food. The salad was mixed field greens, devoid of iceberg, grated carrots for contrasting color and taste, with fresh tomatoes and little pats of pesto baby mozzarella adorning one edge. Sandra Hargreaves Luebking described the balsamic vinaigrette. Yes! I’m name dropping! I ate dinner with a famed co-editor of The Source and various genealogy periodicals. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The rolls were to die for. Wendy Bebout Elliott thought they were even more light than her own. Who would have thought that the immediate past president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies  (FGS) would be a baker? Oops. I’m doing it again. Back to the menu:

The entry was a delicious chicken oscar (not to be confused with Lisa Provolone’s boyfriend), garnished by asparagus (How does Little America shoot the asparagus through the middle of the chicken like that?) and accompanied with two artfully interconnected shrimp and a wild rice/lentil blend. The plate was completed by green beans and carrots, which must have been slathered in butter, judging by how delicious Lou described it. That’s Loretto “Lou” Dennis Szucs. Yes! I ate dinner with both editors of The Source!

Dessert was a cheese cake (sabayon maybe?) topped with strawberries, with a tuft of whip cream discretely off to one side and topped with chocolate garnish. Mmmmm! I failed to notice if Jan Meisels Allen liked hers. You know Jan, director of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), an umbrella organization for 75 national and local Jewish genealogical societies from around the world. Oh yes, and in Jan’s “spare time” she represents IAJGS on the Records Preservation and Access Committee.

The company

Well, that completes the food. Now I’ll talk about the scrumptious company at my table. Let’s see, did I mention Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, Wendy Bebout Elliott, Loretto Dennis Szucs, and Jan Meisels Allen? I did? Well, continuing on around the table, next to Jan was Cherel Henderson, director of the East Tennessee Historical Society, co-host for this year’s FGS Annual Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Finishing off our table, next to Cherel was Kory Meyerink, noted genealogist and adjunct professor of history and religion at Brigham Young University. Besides my table, each table in the room was similarly garnished with decorated genealogists. Thank you, Ancestry.com, for allowing little ol’ me to attend.

The Speaker

Our speaker was D. Joshua Taylor, director of education and programs for the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). Only 24 years old, “Josh” is the recipient of the Rubincam Youth Award from the National Genealogical Society, the 2003 and 2004 Distinguished Service Awards from the Utah Genealogical Association, and an Award of Merit (2009) from the Federation of Genealogical Societies. He has authored articles in UGA Crossroads, FGS Forum, Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly, and New England Ancestors, and was a columnist for Digital Genealogist. A frequent speaker at genealogical societies, libraries, and other organizations, his previous speaking engagements include GENTECH, the Federation of Genealogical Societies Annual Conferences, the National Genealogical Society Annual Conference, and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy.

Taylor spoke on “The Changing Face of Genealogy,” the challenge of “engaging the next generation of genealogists.” Indeed, he said, “our existence and our relevance depends on [it].” We have to make our skills accessible to these new genealogists. The way in which they wish to interact with genealogy is different. Taylor shared two experiences illustrating this.

The first was the creation of the website, Tories, Timid, or True Blue?, an educational website for the Old North Church Foundation. (John Adams described the 1775 Continental Congress as, “one-third Tories, one-third timid, and one-third true blue.”) Taylor worked with “arch nemesis Whitney,” a young, dreadlocked graduate student member of MIT HyperStudio for Digital Humanities. Delivering a standard NEHGS-compliant register narrative of ancestor, Mather Byles, to her, Whitney declared it “boring.” As the oldster (at 24?) and youngster circled, they discovered common ground: the excitement of discovery. With Whitney’s guidance, they developed a design that lets “students fully assume the role of historians,” review for themselves original and derivative sources of primary and secondary information, confront inconsistencies, make their own conclusions, and record their interpretations.

The second experience with the new generation was a joint genealogy program with students from Boston University. Taylor found this new generation of genealogists—confused with simple pedigree charts until relabeled “Your Mother’s Name is”—to be extensively more diverse than previous generations. The group included students from China, India, Pakistan—places for which Ancestry.com gave no records. It included 25 students whose families had immigrated after 1900, the most recent in 2000. Necessity directed them to living relatives. All of you know where that led!

Drawn to the first session by free pizza, in subsequent sessions cell phones totally disappeared except for excited announcements of discoveries called in to parents and grandparents. By the last session, the initially disparate group of students had commonality. The ancestors discovered were different; the magic of sharing the experiences was what bonded them together. “To see these young people interact,” said Taylor, “is what I think is the face of this new generation of genealogists.”

Ancestry.com 2nd Annual Bloggers Day

OK! OK! I confess. I was pulling your leg. I’ll only tell you, so don’t pass it on. (I do have my trouble-maker image to uphold.) I didn’t have to do anything illegal to attend; I was invited. Don’t worry though, I’m still a loose cannon.

Andrew Wait kicked off the event telling us that you can’t call the first of any event “annual,” but now in its second year he could welcome us to the Ancestry.com 2nd Annual Bloggers Day. Unless you remember the old Ancestry.com, that may not seem very significant. But it wasn’t very long ago that Ancestry.com would not have opened the kimono even once. Now they were implicitly committing to do so year after year!! Wow! How far we’ve come.

Attendees at this year’s event are pictured above:

• Front row, left to right: Craig Manson, GeneaBlogie
• Diane Haddad, Family Tree Magazine’s Genealogy Insider (We think we’re related, but we’re still trying to figure out how.)
• Lisa Louise Cooke, Genealogy Gems
• Dear Myrtle
• Kimberly Powell, About.com’s Genealogy Expert
• Back row: Dick Eastman, Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter
• Thomas MacEntee, GeneaBloggers
• Leland Meitzler, GenealogyBlog
• Ancestry Insider

We were treated to an agenda similar to last year:

• Tour of the data center, by Ron Hair.
• Tour of Document Preservation Services, Laryn Brown.
• Technology Presentation, by Mike Wolfgramm and Jonathan Young.
• Lunch with Tim Sullivan.
• Content Report by Gary Gibb.
• Virtual Tour of the Ancestry.com District of Columbia NARA scanning center.
• Tour of member services, by Tom Foster.
• Product Discussion by Eric Shoup.
• Newer Than New Search, the Not Yet Ready for Prime Time Search, by Tony Macklin.
• Pre-announcement by Andrew Wait.
• Saturday Evening Banquet.

Watch for more reports from myself, later this week, and from other attendees.

Ancestry.com Blogger Day 2010

Today the second annual Ancestry.com Bloggers Day is convening at their corporate headquarters. I understand that they have invited a slightly different set of bloggers this year. For maximum PR effect, that makes sense. But still… I’d sure like to be there…

Hey! I still have an old TGN key card. I wonder if it would still work? Do you think they would notice if an extra person slipped into the blogger meetings? Someone with bright orange skin?

Tune in Monday and I’ll let you know how I fared…

Vault Vednesday: The Mountain

Hooray! It’s Vault Vednesday! This is another in a series highlighting the Granite Mountain Record Vault (GMRV) and the NGS Family History Conference coming to Salt Lake City, 28 April—1 May 2010.

The Mountain

For over 70 years FamilySearch has been sending photographers out microfilming copies of the world’s genealogical records. Today, most of the microfilm cameras have been replaced with specialized digital cameras. To safeguard these priceless records, in the early 1960s FamilySearch sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, constructed six interconnected, protective vaults under 700 feet of granite. Some 20 miles southeast of downtown Salt Lake City, four entry tunnels breach the rock wall 400 feet above the Little Cottonwood Canyon road.

Notice the teeny parking lot and the old cars.

The 2010 NGS Family History Conference

I can hardly wait for the 2010 NGS Conference. Pre-conference stuff starts on Tuesday, 27 April; I may talk more about that stuff later.

Did I mentioned last week that the opening keynote will be given by Jay Verkler? Bright and early Wednesday, 28 April 2010 Verkler will speak to the topic, “From the Granite Mountain to the Ends of the World.” According to the conference brochure, attendees will

take a never-before-seen video tour of the largest repository of genealogy records in the world—the Granite Mountain Records Vault. The Vault protects billions of records gathered from governments, churches, and other archives around the world.

From there, the tour continues as we explore trends and resources that will enable these and other records to be viewed worldwide.

Can’t afford to go? (A better question might be, can you afford not to go!) Next time I’ll talk about an opportunity that is free to everyone. Stay tuned…

 

Early bird registration must be postmarked by 8 March 2010. There are just days left.
Pre-registration must be postmarked by 12 April 2010. There are just days left.
The conference begins 28 April 2010. There are just days left.

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Sources

     The Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Records Protection in an Uncertain World, 16 p. brochure ([Salt Lake City, Utah: self-published, 1973).
     The Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, In a Granite Mountain, 12 p. brochure ([Salt Lake City, Utah: self-published, 1975]).
     John L. Hart, "Digitizing Hastens at Microfilm Vault," LDS Church News, 11 March 2006; online archives (www.ldschurchnews.com : accessed 25 December 2009).

A Bright Future for New FamilySearch Tree

Last Monday’s article brought out a lot of great comments about New FamilySearch (NFS), the universal tree database under development by FamilySearch. Thank you, all!

I, for one, am very optimistic about New FamilySearch’s future and I’ll tell you a couple of reasons why.

Incremental Development

Many of you are accustomed to the old way of developing software. It is called “waterfall development.” For-profit companies made one release a year and non-profit companies like FamilySearch made one release every three to five years.

Now, companies like FamilySearch and Ancestry.com use a new approach to software development that is “incremental.” Ancestry.com, a for-profit company, makes a new release to their web software once a week. As we’ve seen for several years now, FamilySearch makes a new release to their web software once every quarter. Incremental development allows an organization to get feedback about their software and make course corrections more often. I have a lot of respect for planners like Ron Tanner and Dan Lawyer and many other knowledgeable individuals working for FamilySearch. I believe it is only a matter of time before NFS evolves into something better.

Collaborative Requirements

The other reason I’m optimistic about the future of New FamilySearch has to do with its collaborative environment. Here’s my thinking:

New FamilySearch is collaborative.

Because it is collaborative, conflicting opinions will occur. When Wikipedia users toggle a fact back and forth, it is called an “edit war.” FamilySearch employees have said that corresponding “pedigree wars” occurred in corrections to FamilySearch Ancestral File.

Because pedigree wars will occur, FamilySearch will be forced to turn to the genealogy field’s knowledge of how to best judge conflicting genealogical evidence. Part of Wikipedia’s solution to edit wars was the creation of volunteer arbitrators empowered to pass judgment in edit wars.

Because judging conflicting genealogical evidence requires extensive historical knowledge specific to the people, time, place, and records, those who have the time and inclination to receive the necessary training will make the best arbitrators.

As a result, the genealogical community will achieve its objective of evidence-based conclusions and FamilySearch sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will achieve its objective of making family history easier for all its members without burdening all members with time-consuming, specialized training.

 

So I have no doubt that New FamilySearch will incrementally become an ever more valuable tool for both the Church’s members and for the world’s genealogists. My only doubt lies in my ability to handle the frustrating void between what New FamilySearch is and what it will become.

Stay tuned…

The Name Appeared on the Screen

It's called coincidence, hunch, synchronicity, fortuitous luck, spiritual guidance, paranormal activity, karma, extra sensory perception, life-after-death, fate, divine intervention, genetic memory, manifestation of providence, intuition, statistical inevitability, inspiration, psychic channeling, revelation, subconscious reasoning, vision, sixth sense, collective subconscious, dream, past-life imprinting on present consciousness, educated guess, inner voice, out-of-body journey, chance, non-mechanical reality, portent, omen or "the sheer cussed ... wonder of things."¹

We call it Serendipity in Genealogy.

Serendipity in Genealogy

A woman in Utah had been searching for information on one of her ancestors. One day she attended a Family History Library class on Church records taught by employee, John Van Weezep, a senior bibliographer in the acquisitions department. During the class, Van Weezep showed an immigration record from Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire, England.

To their astonishment, the example contained the very information for which the woman was searching!²

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     1. Henry Z Jones, Jr., Psychic Roots : Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1993), p. 81.

     2. Douglas D. Palmer, “What’s Your Line?” LDS Church News, 23 December 1967, p. 14, col. 1; images online, Google News Archive(http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZTEpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=30kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5629%2C5849721 : accessed 28 December 2009).

New Series: Vault Vednesday

I’ve been trying to wait until 2010 to kick off this new series, but I’m just too excited to vait!

It’s been like vaiting for Christmas, vaiting for 2010 to come. The 2010 National Genealogical Society (NGS) Family History Conference is going to be held in Salt Lake City! This is going to be… well… AWESOME!!! I’m so excited! The nation’s best genealogy lecturers are coming to town! And FamilySearch is planning some cool stuff for conference attendees, which brings us to this new series.

According to the conference vebsite, the conference highlights will include a virtual tour of the Granite Mountain Record Vault! Shock and awe! I’ve always been fascinated by FamilySearch’s Granite Mountain Record Vault (the GMRV as we at FamilySearch like to abbreviate it) in a canyon up above the Salt Lake Valley.

Now, I hate to steal any thunder from the head of FamilySearch (who has the authority to fire me!), but I figure sharing some of my fascination with the Vault (as we at FamilySearch like to call it) can only increase your desire to come to the conference and attend this virtual tour.

Picking the day of the veek to run this series vas a little tricky, as I couldn’t find a day of the veek that begins with “V.” But I think I’ve vorked out a vay to make that vork. Stay tuned for “Vault Vednesday!”