Either Really, Really Good or Really, Really Bad

Leave it to FamilySearch to release a controversial new website design while I’m not available to write about it. I’ve got a couple of minutes, let’s cut to the chase, the new website is either really, really good or really, really bad and we won’t know for months which it is.

Think back to yesterday’s article, “The Chasm.” An organization's failure to recognize the chasm results in a one-size-fits-all approach that simultaneously overly simplifies post-chasm genealogy and overly complicates pre-chasm genealogy. As deficiencies are noticed for genealogists on one side of the chasm, the pendulum swings in their favor at the expense of the other.

One of two things just happened at the FamilySearch.org website. Either,

        1) FamilySearch realizes the chasm exists and we’re seeing the first move in constructing separate experiences for pre- and post-chasm genealogists,

or

        2) FamilySearch doesn’t realize the chasm exists and just swung the pendulum back towards pre-chasm genealogists.

The former would be really, really good if it is followed up with additional moves to create a post-chasm experience, and to make both experiences genealogically sound.

The latter would be really, really bad and serves neither genealogist particularly well.

Only time will tell.

P.S. Congratulations to FamilySearch indexers for hitting one billion records indexed (also while I’m out of town).

The Chasm

In genealogy there is a chasm. On one side of the chasm, genealogy is easy. On the other side, genealogy is hard.

On one side of the chasm are the ancestors and relatives we know personally. We know them as people. We grew up with them or with our parents talking about them. On the other side are ancestors and relatives that we know only through records.

On one side of the chasm we utilized living memory—our own and our loved ones.’ On the other side we utilized records.

On one side of the chasm are the modern census and vital records that uniquely identify individuals and relationships. On the other side records are incomplete, spotty, illegible, unindexed, hard-to-locate, or offline. Records are indispensably helpful, though seldomly so.

On one side of the chasm we blithely used direct evidence. On the other side, we painstakingly categorize, compare, contrast, correlate, and cite direct, indirect, contradictory, and negative evidence.

In genealogy there is a chasm. Before the chasm we thought genealogy was easy. After the chasm, do we forget it once was so?

Annual Fine Print

Before I get to the legal stuff, I wanted to proffer an explanation. I haven’t been writing much lately. That’s because I am dedicating large amounts of personal time to upgrading my genealogy skills.

This effort will probably consume a year of my time, so I ask your patience. I’ll still try to get in a couple of articles a week. That brings me to the next couple of weeks.

Don’t expect any articles.

I’m going to a conference! Then I’m going on a research trip!

I’m looking forward to town clerks and local historians and graveyards and librarians and vertical files and obituary collections and probate court clerks and court houses. And nice people… nearly all of them alive.

And now some stuff I like to remind you of every year, my annual “fine print.” You are welcome to skip the remainder of this article.

---

The Ancestry Insider blog is the unofficial, unauthorized view of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The Ancestry Insider reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these two websites and associated topics. The author attempts to fairly and evenly support both.

"Ancestry Insider" does not refer to Ancestry.com, but to the community in general. I don’t believe Ancestry.com owns or should own the word “ancestry” and I don’t believe anyone should use it synonymously with Ancestry.com.

I want you to know that my reporting is not completely unbiased. The Ancestry Insider may be biased by at least the following factors:

• The Ancestry Insider accepts products and services free of charge for review purposes, including an Ancestry.com subscription. And free access to FamilySearch.org. Oh wait, everyone gets that.
• The author of the Ancestry Insider is employed by FamilySearch owner and sponsor, the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All things considered, I would rather not lose my job. And I try to maintain good working relationships with those whose work I am critiquing.
• The author is a believing, practicing member of the same Church. Through and through.
• The author is a former employee of Ancestry.com. I loved it there and would work there again (although they probably wouldn’t have me). I maintain friendships established while employed there.
• It is the editorial policy of this column to be generally supportive of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.
• The author is an active volunteer for the National Genealogical Society. May I say again that you ought to strongly consider attending their conference next month in Las Vegas. ;-)

The Ancestry Insider is written independently of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. The opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. I write on my own time with rare exceptions. One exception is national genealogy conferences. FamilySearch has asked that I attend and write about these conferences. It does not prescribe what or who I write about, so I write about both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

I reserve the right to republish email and comments posted on my blog. These may be edited for content, length, and editorial style.

All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise.

For content copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider, permission is granted for non-commercial republication as long as you give credit and you link back to the original. You may copy articles in your newsletter if you are a non-profit genealogy society. Underneath the title, put “by the Ancestry Insider.” After the article put the address of the website (http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com). Hot link the address so that clicking it takes the user to my website.

---

OK. I think that about covers it. Wish me luck. Don’t forget to register for the NGS conference Monday. Stay tuned…

#NGS2013 - Now Would Be a Good Time to Decide

The pre-registration deadline is fast approaching for the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. You should go sign up right now while you’re thinking about it. The deadline is this very Monday, 22 April 2013. The conference will be held 8–11 May 2013 at the LVH-Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. That’s three short weeks away.

Sure, you can always register at the door. Onsite registration opens Tuesday, 7 May 2013, noon through 7:00pm. Or show up any morning of the conference and purchase a full ($230 with member discount) or single-day registration ($115).

So why pre-register? Pre-registration is required if:

• you wish to purchase a ticket to one of the Thursday breakfasts, 9 May 2013, 7:00 a.m.
• you wish to purchase a ticket to any of the many luncheons held daily. Yours truly will speak—sans mask—at one of them.
• you wish to purchase a ticket to the NGS Banquet, Friday, 10 May 2013, 6:00 p.m.
• you wish to purchase one of the pre-conference Vegas area tours sponsored by the conference.

For more information about these events, consult the Conference Brochure.

So don’t just sit there. Register now at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_info .

New FamilySearch Website to Debut

As I wrote this article over the weekend, it appeared FamilySearch still plans to debut its new website today, 15 April 2013.

The AncestryInsider@gmail.com received an invitation to view a beta version of the website. The invitation was directed to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so it will be interesting to see if the new design is available to the general public. Give it a try (www.familysearch.org) and leave a comment letting everyone know what you find.

The new website highlights photo and story sharing, Family Tree, a new fan chart, and temple opportunities for Church members. According to the email, members of the Church will find their family history experience can start with the Church’s website, www.lds.org.

Click images to enlarge

When a new user registers and views their fan chart, they are prompted to enter basic information about their parents and grandparents. (See images, above.)

When I attempted to upload photos for the first time on the beta website I was given this message:

We're excited to have you join FamilySearch Photos and Stories! Due to the overwhelming response, all of today's invites have been spoken for. Never fear—more will be available tomorrow at 9 a.m. MST. Please check back and we will get you started preserving and sharing your family photos with this exciting new tool. In the meantime, you can view photos that have already been published.

When I viewed the indexing page, I found the page shared progress reports not readily available elsewhere:

That is not entirely true. I just found a special page (https://familysearch.org/billionrecords) showing the number of records that have been indexed. The page shows the count “down” (so to speak) to a billion records. Give the page a few moments and it will start showing the count incrementing. It’s pretty cool, although I think the counting is just for show. Hit F5 to refresh your screen and maybe you get a truer value.

But I digress…

When I clicked the Volunteer link, I saw some interesting information about donating to FamilySearch:

I haven’t seen FamilySearch soliciting donations before. Interesting.

There’s probably lots more interesting things to discover. Check out www.familysearch.org today to see if the new website is public.

RootsTech Ketchup

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

Dirk Weissleder

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

DearMYRTLE had an opportunity to interview him.

Dirk Weissleder interviewed by DearMYRTLE

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

Other RootsTechs

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

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

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

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

One Billion Records Indexed?

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

I never heard another word.

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

RootsTech Developer Challenge

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to the developers of these new, innovative products.

That’s a wrap. See you at NGS…

Ancestry Insider Spotted at RootsTech

Someone spotted me in the media center:

And in the Find My Past booth:

There are also a couple more, less obvious.

Veronica Johnson of Savvy Office Solutions posted a photograph of the new FamilySearch logo and unwittingly caught me (well, part of me):

Photo credit: Veronica Johnson (Linkedin, Twitter, via.me)

Now that you know where to look, check out this photograph taken at the same time by bloggers Sistas in Zion:

Photo Credit: Sistas in Zion (Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Pinterest)

If you missed me at RootsTech, come see me at the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society this May 8th through 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Land That I Love: RootsTech Tabernacle Choir Mini-Concert

One of several events Thursday night of RootsTech was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir min-concert, “Land That I Love.” The theme was immigration, to spotlight the need for indexers to help with the FamilySearch U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Community Project. My memory is getting pretty foggy, so I hope I don’t mess up the facts too badly.

We heard the choir sing “High On the Mountain Top.”

We watched a short video presentation about immigration in general and Irving Berlin in particular. We heard the choir sing, “God Bless America.”

We heard short remarks from Elder Allan F. Packer, FamilySearch chairman of the board, and a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He mentioned research done at Emory University by Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Robyn Fivush. They found that the more children know about their family history, the greater their self-esteem and well being. (See “Do You Know…: The power of family history in adolescent identity and well-being.”)

Elder Packer also quoted Alex Haley:

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

Elder Packer reminded us of the great success of the 1940 U.S. Census Indexing Project. He then invited us to help out with the immigration project.

The choir finished with what I consider to be their trademark piece; it is one of my favorites. We heard them sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

For more detail about the concert, see “RootsTech Irving Berlin Concert Highlights Need to Index Immigration Records.”

RootsTech: Ancestry.com Search Tools

I have to apologize to Anne Mitchell, presenter from Ancestry.com. Every conference my article on her presentation is, well, wanting. It’s no fault of hers. She gives great presentations.

During the conference it is all I can do to keep up writing about the keynote sessions. In the days immediately following the conference I next turn to newsy sessions about Ancestry.com and FamilySearch that announced new and upcoming features. These are usually presented by product managers. Ancestry.com product managers don’t present; FamilySearch product managers do. That means FamilySearch gets more than an even share of articles.

By the time I’ve been home a week my memory has faded. My notes don’t make any sense. I’m bored with conference articles. I’m ready to move on. That’s when Mitchell’s presentation inevitably comes up. Sorry, Anne.

Well, that time has come.

Fortunately, Anne has posted her slides online. With slides in hand, for once my notes make sense! You can find them at http://ancestry-reference-desk.com/links/slides-from-presentations/. (The Ancestry.com Reference Desk website is Mitchell’s new blog about using Ancestry.com or Fold3 in a library or institution.)

While Mitchell’s overall presentation was about writing up our Ancestors’ stories, I was most interested in the numerous search tips and tools (slides 8-26).

“There is not one perfect way to search,” said Mitchell. “If anyone tells you differently, just smile at them.”

Search tools #3 and #4 concern local and family history books. “Local histories and surname histories are great resources,” said Mitchell. In my experience Ancestry’s normal search is not likely to find your ancestors in these books. You need to first identify a book of interest and then read or search it. First, find the book by going to the card catalog. Filter by Stories, Memories, & Histories. Type in the name of the place or surname in the Keywords field—not the titles field. Once you have found the book, try searching, but don’t ignore the index found at the back of the book.

Search tool #7 is One World Tree (OWT). OWT is a combination (like FamilySearch’s Ancestral File) of the submissions of many people, stitched together by a computer into a single tree of all humanity. I wasn’t able to find OWT in the Card Catalog. To find it, I clicked on Search, I scrolled down until I found “Family Trees” in the right-hand column. Underneath it I clicked on “More…” Then in the right-hand column I clicked on OneWorldTree. What you can find through the card catalog is Ancestry World Tree (aka RootsWeb WorldConnect) which is one of the sources for OWT. OWT hasn’t been updated in a long time, but to the extent that people update their RootsWeb WorldConnect trees, they are more current. Try searching these two tree systems, particularly the Ancestry World Trees marked with a Sources icon.

“Can I guarantee you that every tree out there is correct?” asked Mitchell. “No. Can I promise you that you can find absolutely amazing stuff? Yes.”

Search tool #15 is to read the database search form to see what is indexed and searchable. Select Show Advanced. “If you’re here at a conference, you are capable enough to never do anything but an advanced search,” she said. Then look at all of the fields listed.

As an example, look at “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957.” Beyond the standard things, you can search on:

• Arrival year, month, and day
• Arrival port
• Departure port
• Origin
• Destination
• Ship name

(Try searching on Ship’s name on FamilySearch. Don’t get me started on how poor their search forms are.)

I have a question about one thing Anne said. She said that if it isn’t listed, it wasn’t indexed for searching. That wasn’t true when I worked at Ancestry.com. The Keyword field was provided for searching a few miscellaneous fields that aren’t used enough or useful enough to warrant their own search field. Is that no longer the case?

She gave another, unnumbered, tip I wanted to mention. Sometimes its nice to know how big a place is when you’re creating theories about unique identity. To find the number of people in Smithfield, Utah in 1910 I would search the 1910 census, set Lived In to Smithfield, Cache, Utah, USA (restrict to that exact place), and leave the name fields blank. Above the results it says “Matches 1–20 of 2,067.” That tells me the number of people in town. Now I know that Smithfield’s a pretty small place, so everyone probably knows everyone. That’s useful to know.

Say I have a record about John Pitcher of Smithfield. Does that uniquely identify a person? I could add the name (restrict to exact) and find out there are three John Pitchers in town. No. I need more information to determine which John is spoken of. If there were only one, then I would know all the details of the record applied to that one person.

Thanks, Anne, for all these tips.

Again, you can see the slides for yourself. They are posted on Anne’s blog.

Did Your Ancestor Fall Out of the Sky?

Ever feel like your dead-end ancestor must have fallen out of the sky? That’s how Bill Brazel feels about his grandfather, Joseph Kittinger Brazel. There’s even a family legend that he had.

“Joseph just kind of appeared out of nowhere,” says Bill of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Joseph showed up living about 80 miles north of Carlsbad, New Mexico when he started keeping a journal.

“Grandpa Joe’s journal is a real gem,” Bill says. “He meticulously kept track of the weather and the movement of the stars and planets. He was curious about everything and made beautiful drawings of plants and animals.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve found no record of him prior to that time,” says Bill.

Joseph appears in all the normal places, marrying, having children, and buying and selling land. He even appears in some recently declassified military documents. During World War II he worked as a civilian contractor at the White Sands military base. He was present at the testing of the first atomic bomb and was censured for watching the detonation from outside the safety bunker. He seemed to have suffered no ill effects, living cancer free his entire life. The brightness alone should have blinded him. Joseph is mentioned in an interesting newspaper article, having gone missing in early July of 1947. When he was found the next day in the desert he had no memory of what had happened.

But no document mentions parents, nativity, siblings, or prior residence. Bill says he’s tried to find friends, family, or neighbors associated with him from before that time, but keeps coming up empty. According to Bill’s father, Grandpa Joe never spoke about his early life.

“In an attempt to break through the brick wall, I had DNA tests done,” says Bill. Unfortunately, the tests were a bust and may have been messed up by the lab. To believe the test results, Bill has no close relatives anywhere on the planet and a full fourth of his ethnicity is unknown.

The answer to the mystery may best be answered by the last thing Joseph Kittinger Brazel wrote in his journal: This is an April Fools  work of fiction and in any resemblance to real persons no disrespect is intended.

#RootsTech – Ron Tanner: Go Fish

Why are 1.2 million comedians out of work? Because FamilySearch Family Tree product manager, Ron Tanner, will do it for free. His presentations are always entertaining and informative.

“If genealogists played cards, what game would they play?” Tanner asked. “Genealogists play Go Fish.”

“Do you have any sources for John?”

“Go fish!”

“How about for Ann?”

“Do I have to give you all my sources about Ann?”

“Yes. It’s ‘Go Fish'.’”

-—- o -—-

“[FamilySearch] Family Tree is different than most trees,” said Tanner. “Family Tree is not a bunch of trees that you can search. Instead we put them all together into one, shared tree.” He said the purpose of Family Tree is to document accurately the genealogy of the world and preserve it someplace safe.

“Approximately 80% of all research done in genealogy is duplication,” he said. Family Tree prevents duplication of research.

Tanner walked through various features that are designed to make sharing and collaboration easier. There are mechanisms allowing researchers to communicate, to monitor changes in ancestors, to track changes and the users making them, and to restore deleterious changes. Family Tree asks users to explain their changes and facilitates use of sources.

Change notifications are currently sent once a week, but daily and maybe hourly are being considered.

I have problems with one limitation of Family Tree. Tanner said that alternate values for vital events are no longer allowed. He said a person can only be born once and “there are clear genealogical rules to determine which date to pick.” I disagree. No set of codified rules is above interpretation and no codified rules exist for genealogy. Back in PAF 1.0 days the injunction that always followed product deficiency was “stick it in the notes.” Will that be the recommendation this time around?

Meanwhile, back to Tanner’s presentation…

Records and images from FamilySearch historical records can be linked to individuals in the tree by placing the record in the Source Box, then taking it back out and attaching it to an individual. (I wish I could do it in one step. And I wish I could attach the source to a piece of evidence rather than the person.)

“Our URLs on FamilySearch will not go bad,” said Tanner. “That’s our promise.” (Have I talked about this before? I’m not certain FamilySearch has ever said this publicly before, so I may not have. I understand it applies only to URLs that have “pal” in them. It stands for persistent archival links. I find pals in URLs for records and images, but not other stuff.) 

Merging two people takes a lot of effort (to do correctly). This is intentional. (In New FamilySearch a misguided soul could combine people with a few mouse clicks. Undoing the damage took many times the effort. In Family Tree, designers have reversed that. They made it hard to inflict the damage, and easy—just a few mouse clicks—to undo it.)

FamilySearch is working on the ability to upload scanned images of source documents. (While you can upload scanned documents today as photographs, I’m told it is best to wait until they can be uploaded and linked to sources.) In speaking of the importance of photos and stories Tanner said that after four generations no one knows you. “You are just a name.” He showed an example obituary and photograph he entered to preserve the memory of a close loved one.

Tanner showed the new Fan Chart feature and indicated the goal is to have this out in the next month or so. Over the next couple of months they hope to add the ability to print real pedigree charts and family group records in PDF format.

“If we’re going to work together on a shared family tree, is there anything we’re going to have to do differently? The answer is ‘yes,’” said Tanner. “We need to stop playing Go Fish and play 52-card Share-em.”

“With all of us doing all the parts we can do, we can do amazing things,” he said. “We can build an amazing tree of human kind.”

RootsTech Ancestry.com Luncheon: It Was a Sign…

I stayed at a motel for the first two nights of RootsTech. The morning of the Ancestry.com luncheon on the topic of DNA, I saw a pattern in the carpet that hadn’t been there before:

Is it just me? Or do you see it too?

I saw it as a sign… a sign that I’m not very observant.

At the Ancestry.com luncheon we first heard from Ken Chahine, Ancestry.com senior vice president over DNA. Then we heard from Catherine Ball, AncestryDNA vice president of genomics. She explained some of the science behind their ethnicity determination.

AncestryDNA divides the world into 20 regions such as British Isles, Central European, West African, and so forth:

When AncestryDNA tests your DNA, they attempt to measure how much of your genetic ethnicity comes from each of these regions.

This can be quite difficult. Over the centuries DNA gets spread around a lot. So determining what constitutes a Scandinavian, for example, is difficult. There is no such thing as a 100% genetically pure Scandinavian.

An additional challenge is determining the genetic makeup of people in these regions in the past. Ancestry is in a better position to determine this because, unlike most genetic scientists, Ancestry has DNA samples linked to compiled pedigrees.

Ancestry attempts to identify reference persons from among their participants. (Is that what they called them? I can’t remember.) A reference person’s ancestors are all from the same region. (I think they looked at the eight great-grandparents, but I don’t remember for certain.) The more reference persons they can find for a region, the better they can isolate signatures that differentiate a person with ancestry from that region.

Consequently, the more participants that take an Ancestry DNA test, the higher the likelihood that they can properly identify your genetic ethnicity. They are especially interested in reference persons.

Ancestry can thus continually increase the accuracy of their ethnicity calculations. And as they do so, they will update your test results without further charge.

RootsTech FamilySearch Luncheon: I Am the Man

On Thursday Craig Miller spoke at the FamilySearch luncheon about “some of the challenges of dealing with family history.”

One issue is duplication of research. You do a lot of work to document a line; you spend countless hours. Only then do you come across the results of someone else researching the same line.

Another issue is the preservation of your work. “It’s all about saving that legacy,” said Miller. You could write a book, but your children may not read it. How do you preserve your research for those that value it?

Long time readers know I’ve taken particular delight in poking fun at FamilySearch for naming a website “new FamilySearch.” I’ve always wondered who picked that name. Thursday I found out.

“I am the man,” said Miller. “I named these websites the way they are.” He said we could blame him. He explained that  there were reasons. He didn’t have time to explain them.

Knowing where to start has been a challenge. The consolidation of new FamilySearch and FamilySearch Family Tree eliminates some confusion. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the starting place is the same now as for other online Church needs: lds.org. (See https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history.)

Miller then showed slides of a newly designed FamilySearch website. They’ve done some user testing and are simplifying navigation, brightening colors, increasing font size, and improving contrast (all issues I have raised over the years).

 
 
FamilySearch.org new website design utilizes warm color palette, photographs, simple icons.

A video shows the same things that Miller showed about the new website design:

The video, along with a description of features, is also available on a page on FamilySearch.org.

In addition to the new fan chart view, they will add a descendency view and other charts in the future.

FamilySearch is adding a feature to assist members of the Church provide temple ordinances for their deceased ancestors. They have added an automated way for them to scan their first four generations of ancestors for the people they’ve added as a quick flow rather than walking the tree manually.

“No one has a help system like us and it’s all free,” said Miller. There are several different ways to get help. Help is available via live chat, phone call, or help center. Help is available for products or for research assistance.

Three or four weeks from now the general public will have access to the photos and stories feature of the new website.

The FamilySearch website addresses challenges confronting family history. It allows people to work together on a common website. It preserves research. At the end of the day we have an ancestor page that is filled out and preserved, said Miller. “The vault isn’t going away. That is where we store the backup tapes.”

“The purpose of FamilySearch is to help families work together to preserve their heritage,” said Miller.

Brimhall Unveils New FamilySearch Logo

At the close of his keynote address Thursday, Dennis Brimhall, FamilySearch president and CEO unveiled a new logo.

FamilySearch employees were not given a chance to see the logo before the general public. Upon inquiry, someone said it was because it has not been finalized. I don’t know how authoritative that source is.

The animation in Brimhall’s presentation suggests that the logo represents FamilySearch’s new emphasis on photos and stories. Photographs from his story about his father morphed into the shape of the tree logo:

On a different note, you’ll recall that last week I wrote about next year’s expansion of RootsTech. (See “FamilySearch Gives RootsTech Bloggers Sneak Peak.”) In his keynote, Brimhall showed maps visually showing the scope of the increase.

This year FamilySearch is broadcasting sessions out to 16 satellite locations in seven countries, with translations into native languages. The expected reach is another 4,000 people.

If the experiment is successful, next year FamilySearch will expand that to 600 locations with an expected reach of 120,000 people!

That is a wow moment.

Saturday Keynotes: The Pit is Always Smaller than the Plum

RootsTech’s Saturday keynote session featured the last two of seven keynote speakers. Maybe that word—keynote—doesn’t mean what I think it means. Actually, with my short attention span, I think I like having more, but shorter keynotes. Now, what was I talking about? Oh, right. Saturday’s keynote speakers were David Pogue and James Tanner.

What do RootsTech, HOGs (Harley Owners Group), and a Tattoo convention all have in common? David Pogue pointed out they were all being held at the Salt Palace Convention Center at the same time.

Pogue is the weekly personal-technology columnist for The New York Times and a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is also an Emmy Award-winning tech correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the current host of NOVA ScienceNow.

He also noticed that the theme for the conference, “Find, Organize, Preserve, and Share,” form the acronym FOPS. Perhaps RootsTech organizers hadn’t thought that one through…

Pogue spoke—humorously—about disruptive technologies. Disruptive technologies change everything.

Web 2.0 is a disruptive technology. “Web 1.0” refers to websites where the website creator supplies the content. FamilySearch Historical Record Collections is an example of Web 1.0. “Web 2.0” refers to sites where users supply the content. FamilySearch Family Tree is an example. Twitter is another.

Pogue asked Twitter users several questions for a book he was writing. One was, “Invent a Chinese Proverb that sounds authentic.” He got some really great responses like, “a pig with a cold still makes good bacon.”

“App phones” (iPhones and such) are another disruptive technology. With a toolbox of components in an app phone, app writers can be incredibly creative. Pogue showed us the Ocarina app. It turns your iPhone into a flute-like instrument that you play by blowing into the end and placing your fingers on the stops on the touch screen. I have an app that measures your heart beat using the light and the camera. He pointed out the Word Lens app. Point it at a sign in Spanish and the screen will display the same sign in English!

To sum up his presentation, “the pit is always smaller than the plum.”

The scheduled speaker from MyHeritage, Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO, was unable to come to RootsTech because of a death in the family. Our hearts and prayers are with them.

Ori Soen, chief marketing officer of MyHeritage, spoke for a moment and then introduced someone to give Japhet’s presentation.

That someone was fellow blogger, James Tanner of the Genealogy’s Star blog! James did a great job, making all us bloggers proud. Now we can say that a genealogy blogger has given a keynote presentation at a national genealogical conference.

I’ll defer on reviewing the presentation, since it was MyHeritage specific. I’m snowed under trying to cover Ancestry.com and FamilySearch presentations and my mind can only fit so much inside at a time. It’s true. The pit really is smaller than the plum.

From RootsTech: Ancestry.com Partnering with FamilySearch for Probates

RootsTech’s opening session on Friday featured two keynote speakers, Jyl Pattee and Tim Sullivan.

“It’s exciting for me to stand on this stage at this conference and announce our largest and most ambitious collaboration with FamilySearch ever,” said Sullivan, president and CEO of Ancestry.com. “Over the next three years FamilySearch and Ancestry are going to work together to digitize and index over 140 million pages of U.S. probate records spanning from 1800 to 1930.”

At this announcement the audience interrupted with applause. “It’s alright,” Sullivan said. “I’m excited too.”

Tim acknowledged FamilySearch’s decades of work filming these documents. Efforts are underway to secure rights from administrators and archives to publish these records online, and the progress is positive.

“We are very excited about working with FamilySearch on this project.”

Sullivan committed to spend over $100 million over the next five years to digitize and index new content for publication on Ancestry.com, Fold3, and Archives.com. “We’re investing aggressively in new content,” he said. This past year Ancestry published over 1.7 billion records, including over 1 billion names from city directories using the new technology they demonstrated last year. (See “Tim Sullivan: A Fantastic Era in Family History,” and “Data Extraction Technology at Ancestry.com.”)

Sullivan also announced a new price point, $99, for Ancestry’s DNA test. They are improving their ethnicity estimation and cousin matching. They currently have a database of 120,000 customer samples and have made two million 4th cousin matches. I think one of the best ways to increase the value of their database and the effectiveness of their ethnicity determination algorithms is to increase the pool of samples. I believe for that reason, they are decreasing the price. Since they regularly upgrade the results for all previous testees, everyone benefits from a larger sample pool. The new price applies to both subscribers and non-subscribers.

Sullivan said a new version (4.1) of their iPhone/iPad app will soon be available. It will enhance the ability to share on Facebook and Twitter. It will provide photo hints and pair your tree with someone else’s tree. Over one-third of their new registrants come via their mobile app. My notes here are a little cryptic, but he said something about 50% of them are younger than the average age. That’s a law of mathematics, isn’t it? There must be something wrong with my notes. Anyway, the point was that “this is a whole new generation of family historians.”

Sullivan began his presentation with an appeal (but not in so many words) that experienced genealogists open up their private Ancestry Member Trees.

“I’m here today to make a confession about Ancestry family trees,” Sullivan said in mock seriousness. “They are not always 100% accurate all the time. I know that’s a shocking revelation.”

In my opinion, both Ancestry and FamilySearch have a big problem. In my experience, the greater the expertise of the genealogist, the less likely they are to make their Ancestry Member Tree public and the less likely they are to participate in FamilySearch’s unified Family Tree.

According to Sullivan, both beginner and expert alike benefit from collaboration. Beginners sometimes give experts good advice. (See, for example, Crista Cowen’s “Lessons in Genealogy Collaboration.”) Also, more people than ever are combing through online records from multiple websites and adding sources to online trees. More people are scanning one-of-a-kind documents and photos and adding them to their trees. More people are using digital cameras to capture grave markers and other valuable photographs.

“To take advantage, you’ve really got to take the plunge to share and collaborate.”

From RootsTech: Wow Moments

RootsTech’s opening session on Friday featured two more keynote speakers, (that’s five total, for those of you not keeping track), Jyl Pattee and Tim Sullivan.

Jyl quoted Hilary Cooper as saying, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

“We don’t take the time to think about the small, wow moments that take our breath away on a daily basis,” Jyl said. However, we should.

Jyl is a social media expert with a focus on women and mothers. She is the founder of Mom It Forward Media, a digital agency and “network of social media influencers.”

She gave RootsTech attendees a recipe for Wow moments:

1. Create the WOW
2. Capture the WOW
3. Archive the WOW
4. Share the WOW

Jyl once created a bunch of wow moments through a goal to jump in each state. She’s pictured to the right at the final state, Iowa.

Twelve years ago Jyl took the time to capture some small wow moments from the life of her grandmother. She taped a microphone to a telephone, called her up on a regular basis, and got her to talk about her life.

“The stories may not have been wow moments for her, but they definitely were for me.” Her grandmother has since passed away. Jyl has added photographs to the audio and created a YouTube video for sharing with her cousins.

In parting, Jyl told us, “Go make it a wow weekend!”

RootsTech Opening Session Theme: Stories

The 2013 RootsTech Conference opened this (Thursday) morning with keynotes by Dennis Brimhall, Syd Lieberman, and Josh Taylor. There seemed to be a common theme among all three: stories.

“I have grown up in this community,” said Josh Taylor, “so I thought I would start by telling a story.” Taylor is Business Development Manager—North America for Brightsolid, owner of FindMyPast.com, FindMyPast.co.uk, and other websites. (I’ve listed them in a previous article. )

Taylor began by telling us his own story, “the story of me.” 

His Aunt Carol was one of the first genealogists he encountered. She loved to tend Josh. All she had to do was drop him off at the Carbon County Courthouse and he would entertain himself for hours.

“What I’m really good at is libraries and archives and books,” he said. “Don’t ever get me on a football field. It’s slightly awkward.” In school when they asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, he always said, “I want to be a genealogist!” People would look at him like he was crazy.

“The first genealogical mistake I made was not with a record,” he said. He discovered that his grandmother was born a year before her parents were married. He was about 11 or 12. “I did not understand the complexities of what I was about to reveal to my grandmother,” he said.

“Grandmother! Guess what I discovered!”

“I do believe in telling the stories about our families,” he said, “because if we don’t, all we’ve done is fill out a pedigree and a family group record and left it somewhere on a shelf hoping that one of our children or grandchildren will make a discovery.”

There are amazing technologies that the genealogy community is not yet using. “We must make learning about family history a visual and interactive experience. We need to make genealogical adventures accessible to the rising generation.”

“We need to bring gaming into family history now,” he said. (Private message to Josh: Is this a pre-announcement of a brightsolid product!?) We need to make genealogical engagement fun.

“If we tell the stories that are so important to our families we have absolutely endless possibilities as a community.”

From RootsTech: When I Tell Their Stories, I’m With My Ancestors Again

The 2013 RootsTech Conference opened this (Thursday) morning with keynotes by Dennis Brimhall, Syd Lieberman, and Josh Taylor. It looks like each day’s keynotes feature a RootsTech presenter and a Story@Home presenter. Lieberman was Thursday’s Story@Home presenter. Syd is a nationally acclaimed story teller, author, and teacher. He was awesome. When the videos are posted. He is a must see.

We heard stories of his grandchildren. We heard stories of his children. We heard stories of his parents. We heard stories of his grandparents. I hesitate to try and retell any. I could not do them justice. And I felt like Syd was sharing an intimate part of himself. “All of these stories together are the story of my life,” he said.

OK. I’ll attempt just one.

Syd said at the conference last year he was a little uppity, a story teller among genealogists. “What did genealogists have to offer me”?” Then he met Mike Hall of FamilySearch.

Syd’s grandparents were Jews living in Russian controlled Lithuania. Conscripted into a 25 year term in the Russian army, with Syd’s grandmother pregnant, they fled to America. Syd’s father was born as they crossed the Atlantic. “I didn’t know if I was American or not,” he used to say. He claimed he was born on the 4th of July. What could be more American than that?

Mike Hall pulled up information from FamilySearch.org about this family. Upon their arrival in America, they claimed the United States as their birthplace and English as their native language. In successive censuses, Mike and Syd witnessed a change. Eventually Syd’s family acknowledged their true nativity and true native language. The facts reinforced and helped tell the story.

“It’s a wonderful way to remember your ancestors,” Syd said of stories. “When I tell their stories, I am with them again.”

“Why are we here?” Syd asked conference attendees. “Because we love our family stories…We’re here to record our stories… We’re here to rejoice in this improbable and wonderful thing called life.”

From RootsTech: It’s More than Names—It’s Their Stories

The 2013 RootsTech Conference opened this morning with keynotes by Dennis Brimhall, Syd Lieberman, and Josh Taylor.

“We need to get a lot more people engaged in genealogy,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO and president of FamilySearch. There are some things we need need to do. “Technology is an enabling tool. What we really want is to turn hearts to our ancestors,” said Dennis. “Technology plus stories and photos equals family history for everyone.”

Dennis was indexing immigration records recently when he came across the record of a small boy. Under the country of origin was a single word, “stowaway.” Dennis said that there was a story there. There might be descendants of that young boy sitting in the room today. Wouldn’t they like to know that story?

A year ago Dennis was the brand new leader of FamilySearch just trying to learn the role. Now, a year later, he can confidently spell genealogy. He thought as a new leader that he would spend a lot of his time thinking about the past, acquiring records, and such. But he’s found he’s spending most of his time thinking about the future. What will we be doing 20, 50, 100 years from now? Will our great-grandchildren look back at us in the same way that we look back at our great-grandparents?

“What will our great-grandchildren wish we had done?” he asked. “Will they be happy, joyful, or frustrated?” They will wish we had recorded the richness, the fabric of our lives. They’ll want much more than names, dates, and places.

Dennis related a compelling story of his father’s experiences in the Army Air Corp during World Ward II. His plane was shot down over Germany. Only two of the crew survived. Dennis’s father didn’t talk about his experiences much, but one of Dennis’s daughters felt compelled to learn and tell the story. In the forward to the resulting book she wrote, “I feel it is my duty and honor to make sure his life experiences have been captured and preserved for his posterity to read. I want his grandchildren to know this man, so they can discover and come to realize their honorable heritage.”

Photographs behind him illustrated Dennis’s story. Then he told us that the plane being shot down in one photograph was THE plane; his father’s plane. His family had the photographs through a remarkable coincidence. One day at the grocery store, his father noticed a man wearing the patch for his unit. He approached the man and found they were both on that ill fated mission. This man’s assignment was to document the mission via photography. He had taken photographs of the plane going down. He figured no one had survived. Both men lived in the same town and shopped in the same grocery store. Through this serendipitous meeting, Dennis’s father obtained precious photographs of his plane going down in flames over southern Germany. They are a treasure to his family.

“It’s more than names,” said Dennis. “It’s their stories.”