Ree Drummond is famous for her blog The Pioneer Woman. I had never heard of her, but when I heard that she was going to be a keynote speaker I looked her up online. I liked her on Facebook and have really enjoyed her posts. However I really wanted to win a pair of cowgirl boots. :( I entered the contest every day, but did not win. It was fun to see all the designer boots though
I didn't take any notes during her presentation. I just sat there being fascinated by her story. She is not really a genealogist, but she is an example of someone who is connecting with the rest of the world. She can teach us "genealogists" how to be more interesting and how to involve our families. I got some ideas of how photos can be used to build self-esteem and a sense of belonging in children.
I was amazed that Ree Drummond lives on a ranch in Oklahoma in a remote location and yet she can have a hugely popular blog, a fantastic Facebook page and a cooking show on the Food Network.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
RootsTech 2014 Keynote Speaker Annelies van den Belt Thursday February 6, 2014
Annilies van den Belt is the head of DC Thomson Family History (formerly BrightSolid). DC Thomson Family History is a family of online companies with collections of 1.8 billion genealogical records. Find My Past is part of DC Thomson Family History.
Ms. van den Belt is a native of the Netherlands but she has worldwide administrative experience in media broadcasting and digital publishing.
I was very impressed with her knowledge and with her sincere belief in the value of preserving and sharing history.
She told about an extensive project in the United Kingdom, the Imperial War Memorial, which is dedicated to documenting and sharing the lives of those involved in World War I. Here is the link to the Imperial War Museum. It has been one hundred years since World War I began.
Ms. van den Belt is a native of the Netherlands but she has worldwide administrative experience in media broadcasting and digital publishing.
I was very impressed with her knowledge and with her sincere belief in the value of preserving and sharing history.
She told about an extensive project in the United Kingdom, the Imperial War Memorial, which is dedicated to documenting and sharing the lives of those involved in World War I. Here is the link to the Imperial War Museum. It has been one hundred years since World War I began.
RootsTech 2014 Keynote Speaker Dennis Brimhall Thursday February 6, 2014
Dennis Brimhall is the current President and CEO of FamilySearch International, the family history arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since FamilySearch International is the main sponsor of RootsTech it was very natural that Elder Brimhall would be the first keynote speaker and introduce all the events and speakers to follow.
Elder Brimhall covered many significant changes and coming events in the world of family history. He spoke about how stories are very significant. It is stories that attract more people to the field of family history. Specifically he talked about the new feature to FamilySearch Family Tree where photos, documents and stories can be uploaded to Family Tree. It is called Memories. He said that 150,000 patrons have uploaded 2 million memories and 12 million sources to Family Tree. There are 500 stories being added every day and some of them are even true. (This was a joke and a disclaimer, I think.)
He told about the new LDS church booklet (1.7 million copies) about families which is for those who are doing family history without access to a computer. He said that a cell phone app is being developed and told about many teenagers in South America who do not have computers, but they do have cell phones.
Captain Jack Starling (a FamilySearch employee dressed up as a pirate) joined Elder Brimhall on stage to talk about indexing and specifically about the new obituary indexing project. See some previous posts I have made about Captain Jack.
Probably the most exciting announcement was of a partnership with Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com which will get the contents of the Granite Mountain Vaults online within a generation instead of within 200 years. I was excited to learn that eventually members of the LDS Church will have free access to these other websites. But I didn't learn this from Elder Brimhall's talk, it was in the Deseret News for that day.
Elder Brimhall also told us about the Puzzilla feature of FamilySearch and what a great aid it is to performing descendancy research. Elder Brimhall introduced the next two speakers for Thursday morning, Annelies van den Belt and Ree Drummond.
Elder Brimhall covered many significant changes and coming events in the world of family history. He spoke about how stories are very significant. It is stories that attract more people to the field of family history. Specifically he talked about the new feature to FamilySearch Family Tree where photos, documents and stories can be uploaded to Family Tree. It is called Memories. He said that 150,000 patrons have uploaded 2 million memories and 12 million sources to Family Tree. There are 500 stories being added every day and some of them are even true. (This was a joke and a disclaimer, I think.)
He told about the new LDS church booklet (1.7 million copies) about families which is for those who are doing family history without access to a computer. He said that a cell phone app is being developed and told about many teenagers in South America who do not have computers, but they do have cell phones.
Captain Jack Starling (a FamilySearch employee dressed up as a pirate) joined Elder Brimhall on stage to talk about indexing and specifically about the new obituary indexing project. See some previous posts I have made about Captain Jack.
Probably the most exciting announcement was of a partnership with Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com which will get the contents of the Granite Mountain Vaults online within a generation instead of within 200 years. I was excited to learn that eventually members of the LDS Church will have free access to these other websites. But I didn't learn this from Elder Brimhall's talk, it was in the Deseret News for that day.
Elder Brimhall also told us about the Puzzilla feature of FamilySearch and what a great aid it is to performing descendancy research. Elder Brimhall introduced the next two speakers for Thursday morning, Annelies van den Belt and Ree Drummond.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
RootsTech 2014 Innovator Summit Day February 5, 2014
When I first registered for RootsTech 2014 I thought that I would not attend "Developer Day" because after all I am not a computer programmer and I thought it was just for those who are creating software products to help with family history. But I did purchase a full access pass. Then I got an email advertising this pre-conference event that sold me on going. It would not cost me extra, so I looked at the class options and registered for the ones that looked interesting. RootsTech renamed this day "Innovator Summit" Day.
The keynote speaker was Chris Dancy, "the most quantified human." I attended a funeral that morning, so I was not able to hear Mr. Dancy. But I heard reports that it was a very interesting presentation. It is supposedly online at the RootsTech website, but I have not been able to access it. Maybe I will write another blog post when I finally get to view it.
The first class that I chose was DEV1130 Getting Started with FamilySearch API taught by David Hale and Vaughn Hepworth. These gentlemen are employees of FamilySearch and I was very impressed with their knowledge and expertise and their sincere desire to share with all the RootsTech attendees. In fact, I could write this about all the presenters at RootsTech. There were no presenters that I did not like!
The first thing that I learned from the class was that API stands for application program interface. So the class was about writing programs or applications that will interface with FamilySearch. I do not see myself ever doing this, but it was interesting to learn a few things about the process and about authentication, access, certification levels, SCOE (source centric open edit), etc.
My second class for this day was DEV1283 Tap into Billions of Historical Records and Family Tree Profiles with the MyHeritage Matching API taught by Richard Stauffer, the lead software architect at My Heritage.com. He talked about smart matches and record matches and the way that MyHeritage software can find matches for individuals in your online family tree. I resolved to look more closely at the record matches for the individuals in the GEDCOM file that I uploaded to My Heritage.com last year.
My third class was DEV1981 Customer and Mobile First taught by Andrew Fox of Find My Past.com. He emphasized that it is important for developers to understand their users. He gave impressive statistics showing that more and more Internet users are using from mobile devices. So it is imperative that applications be optimized for mobile devices. One of his themes was "Utility beats Aesthetics."
He also talked about coming developments in gaming and visual realities in family history applications. He believes that family history is closer to a game than traditional web service.
While I was riding Trax back home I chatted with another RootsTech attendee who works for Kinpoint, Inc. a Utah-based company that is developing video games related to family history.
It was a "mind-blowing" day, just filled with new ideas and glimpses of technology advances for the future. A lot of the classes were really over my head though. I am not sure if anything I learned will have direct application for me, at least not direct application for my immediate goals.
The keynote speaker was Chris Dancy, "the most quantified human." I attended a funeral that morning, so I was not able to hear Mr. Dancy. But I heard reports that it was a very interesting presentation. It is supposedly online at the RootsTech website, but I have not been able to access it. Maybe I will write another blog post when I finally get to view it.
The first class that I chose was DEV1130 Getting Started with FamilySearch API taught by David Hale and Vaughn Hepworth. These gentlemen are employees of FamilySearch and I was very impressed with their knowledge and expertise and their sincere desire to share with all the RootsTech attendees. In fact, I could write this about all the presenters at RootsTech. There were no presenters that I did not like!
The first thing that I learned from the class was that API stands for application program interface. So the class was about writing programs or applications that will interface with FamilySearch. I do not see myself ever doing this, but it was interesting to learn a few things about the process and about authentication, access, certification levels, SCOE (source centric open edit), etc.
My second class for this day was DEV1283 Tap into Billions of Historical Records and Family Tree Profiles with the MyHeritage Matching API taught by Richard Stauffer, the lead software architect at My Heritage.com. He talked about smart matches and record matches and the way that MyHeritage software can find matches for individuals in your online family tree. I resolved to look more closely at the record matches for the individuals in the GEDCOM file that I uploaded to My Heritage.com last year.
My third class was DEV1981 Customer and Mobile First taught by Andrew Fox of Find My Past.com. He emphasized that it is important for developers to understand their users. He gave impressive statistics showing that more and more Internet users are using from mobile devices. So it is imperative that applications be optimized for mobile devices. One of his themes was "Utility beats Aesthetics."
He also talked about coming developments in gaming and visual realities in family history applications. He believes that family history is closer to a game than traditional web service.
While I was riding Trax back home I chatted with another RootsTech attendee who works for Kinpoint, Inc. a Utah-based company that is developing video games related to family history.
It was a "mind-blowing" day, just filled with new ideas and glimpses of technology advances for the future. A lot of the classes were really over my head though. I am not sure if anything I learned will have direct application for me, at least not direct application for my immediate goals.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
SLCC Genealogy Course -- Blogging Project
Tonight I started on my Blogging Project. First I went to the Utah Genealogical Society web site. I logged in, because I am a member, and went to the archives of the virtual chapter meetings. I watched the February virtual chapter meeting (webinar) called Using Tools and Organization for Creating a Valuable Family History Blog presented by James L. Tanner, author of the Genealogy's Star blog. He gave this same presentation at RootsTech 2014 a few weeks before the UGA Virtual Chapter meeting on Thursday February 6, 2014. I attended the RootsTech presentation and was very impressed. I wanted to hear it again and I am glad that I did. It "used up" 1 1/2 hours of my 6 hours. :) There was an excellent syllabus for the RootsTech presentation which I downloaded and printed from the RootsTech 2014 web site. The presentation was number RT 1061.
Here are some things I considered as I watched the presentation tonight.
Why do I want to have a blog? It is a rather major time commitment, so I need to know why. What are my goals? I want to share my research and information. I want to preserve my family history. I want to preserve my research methodology and sources and citations for those who will come after me. I want to create a valuable resource that I can use. All these things are important to me, so that is why I want to create a better blog.
I considered adding more ways to share my blog and several add-ins and gadgets that I can implement on my blog. I definitely want to have a Google search function. And I definitely want to have the index function. I want to look for a newer more attractive template.
Before I heard James Tanner's presentation I was considering switching to WordPress and a paid site. I thought it would be more professional. But now I can see that he is doing a wonderful job with Blogger and so are several other top 40 Genealogy blogs. Blogger is quite a bit easier for me to use, because I am familiar with it. I have also used WordPress, but I have much more to learn about it. And Blogger is free!
James Tanner also made the point that if you write your blog posts in Microsoft Word there is a lot more formatting. Writing in the blog itself is simpler and even easier to make into a book. In fact, James Tanner recommends a blog as a good first step to writing a book.
Here are some things I considered as I watched the presentation tonight.
Why do I want to have a blog? It is a rather major time commitment, so I need to know why. What are my goals? I want to share my research and information. I want to preserve my family history. I want to preserve my research methodology and sources and citations for those who will come after me. I want to create a valuable resource that I can use. All these things are important to me, so that is why I want to create a better blog.
I considered adding more ways to share my blog and several add-ins and gadgets that I can implement on my blog. I definitely want to have a Google search function. And I definitely want to have the index function. I want to look for a newer more attractive template.
Before I heard James Tanner's presentation I was considering switching to WordPress and a paid site. I thought it would be more professional. But now I can see that he is doing a wonderful job with Blogger and so are several other top 40 Genealogy blogs. Blogger is quite a bit easier for me to use, because I am familiar with it. I have also used WordPress, but I have much more to learn about it. And Blogger is free!
James Tanner also made the point that if you write your blog posts in Microsoft Word there is a lot more formatting. Writing in the blog itself is simpler and even easier to make into a book. In fact, James Tanner recommends a blog as a good first step to writing a book.
SLCC Genealogy 1000 Course: Preserving the Past and Present Project Approval
For my Midterm Project for the Preserving the Past and Present Module I was required to submit a proposal for a six-hour(at least) project that will be something I really want to do for my family.
Here is what I wrote for the proposal. Ihave identified three things that I could do for this six-hour project that I am going to do any way. The unit Preserving the Past and Present has been very stimulating!
Here is what I wrote for the proposal. Ihave identified three things that I could do for this six-hour project that I am going to do any way. The unit Preserving the Past and Present has been very stimulating!
- Interview my 92-year-old mother. However, she has been in the hospital the last week , so I need to take interviewing her more slowly than I could do for an assignment for this class. But I have already approached her and started an outline of what we need to do to help her write her personal history.
- Organize my photographs. I purchased a guide book for Picasa from Geeks on Tour and am going to learn how to use the program. The author Chris Guld has lots of online videos about using Picasa that I want to study.
- This is the one that I want to do first for this class. I want to work on my family history blog. I created the blog http://jhdfamilyhistory.blogspot.com in 2008. Ironically I started it (and then backed off of it) when I was called to be ward family history consultant. I thought it would be a good place to share family history information and instruction with ward members. But when I advertised it, I was instructed by the bishopric that we were to have no blogs or websites other than official church websites. (In the meantime members of the church have been encouraged to establish an online presence in multiple ways. That is the ironic part.)
When I attended RootsTech 2014 I went to the session about blogs by James
Tanner and was motivated to start writing more. I have been following his blog Genealogy Star and am amazed by how
prolific a writer he is. I plan on watching the UGA video of his presentation
on the same subject for more ideas on blogging. (I am a UGA member, so I have
access to the archives.) He stressed that if you insist on perfection, you will
not be writing very much. So I need to lower my standards and write more
frequently. I am also impressed with ReNee Zamora’s blog and how she writes
about her genealogy class assignments. I am thinking that if I do the same, my
research processes will be well-documented for those researchers in my family
who come after me.
I also like the idea of a blog just because I can save the instructional
things I learn from classes, from books, from webinars and from Internet
sources in a place where I can find them. So, this is my proposal. Spend at least six hours
writing posts for http://jhdfamilyhistory.blogspot.com. Use my notes from RootsTech 2014
and share what I learned, include links to online resources for many of these
classes. I think I can write at least 12 posts on the subject of RootsTech.
Then I want to start writing about class assignments, like Renee. I am probably
not going to write about past assignments. I will just start where I am.
My Instructor approved my project proposal. One of her comments was "It will become kind of a "notebook" of sorts for you to keep track of genealogy resources. Make sure you add the box that makes it searchable." What a good suggestion! I am thinking of lots of improvements that I can make to this blog. I am excited to get started on this project.
Ancestry Insider Writes about Migration of Sources from New Family Search to Family Tree
Yesterday on the Ancestry Insider blog there was more information about the migration of sources from New Family Search to Family Tree. This is another perspective on what the The Ancestor Files blog reported about this. Apparently the sources data is "corrupted" because there are ten fields for sources in New Family Search and three fields in Family Tree. Also, the sources are being placed in user source boxes. I will have to check my source box and see if there is any thing there that I need to attach to my people in Family Tree.
I was encouraged to read that this is a new round of migration which started in February and was expected to last about six weeks. So maybe it is almost over now. Regardless of what FamilySearch is doing it is incumbent upon me to add sources to my people in Family Tree and to have good citations for these sources.
I was encouraged to read that this is a new round of migration which started in February and was expected to last about six weeks. So maybe it is almost over now. Regardless of what FamilySearch is doing it is incumbent upon me to add sources to my people in Family Tree and to have good citations for these sources.
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