The first event of RootsTech 2012 was the keynote
presentation “Inventing the Future, as a Community” by Jay Verkler, outgoing
CEO of FamilySearch. Jay Verkler has led FamilySearch for ten years and
has recently been replaced by Dennis Brimhall. During the time he led FamilySearch
many innovations in technology have been implemented at FamilySearch. He has
reached out to other companies to encourage new developments and collaboration.
I first heard Jay
Verkler speak at the NGS Conference in 2010 and was further impressed with him
at RootTech 2011, the first RootsTech Conference. He has been a pioneer in
getting technology connected with genealogical research.
Jay Verkler’s keynote presentation was multi-media and he
gave credit to many others who helped him create it. It can be viewed at RootsTech.org and there was a great article about it in The
Church News. The The Ancestry Insider had a blog post giving more information about RootsTech reviews in The Church News.
Jay Verkler introduced the subject by giving background information
about the population of the world and telling how we must collaborate to
preserve family history information. He introduced Robert Gardner and David
Barney from Google who briefly told us about new metadata that has been
developed to optimize historical and genealogical searches. He introduced the
CEO of BrightSolid, Chris van der Kuyl,
and the CEO of Archives.com, Matthew Monahan. Both of these men
expressed the importance of collaboration. There was a dramatization of
collaboration between a FamilySearch researcher, a BrightSolid customer in
Sweden, a Facebook user in America. The presentation finished with a vignette
of a student in 2060 who was researching her family history. This was an
inspiring presentation and made me grateful to have access to all the wonderful
tools and possibilities for genealogical research. In conclusion Jay Verkler was presented a “To
Turn the Hearts Award” by FamilySearch. He richly deserves this award.
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