Here are some of my
thoughts from my experiences from the first day of RootsTech 2015.
General Session
Dennis Brimhall, FamilySearch International CEO
"Who Inspires You" is the theme of this year's conference.
How do you get more
people engaged in family history?
How do we get them
to enjoy what we know and love?
He shared that there
are over 1.3 million names being added to FamilySearch each day due to the
Indexing efforts of 319,000 individuals. He provided an update on the Family
Discovery Center and that it really is a "Museum of Me" and all of
our ancestors are exhibits in our own museum.
The center is now open in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt
Lake City. I was able to go through the experience there on Friday and will
share my thoughts of my experience in a future blog post. There will be a center in Philadelphia in the
Musuem of the American Revolution, a center in London, and a smaller center in
Seattle.
Mike Mallin, MyHeritage Chief Product Officer
What is a discovery?
A discovery is a
gift of knowledge.
The beginning of a
journey into a new world ….
How do we give this
to everyone?
The wider market
requires immediate gratification.
Arthur C. Clarke's
Third Law: "Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Tan Le, the founder and CEO of Emotiv shared
her Vietnamese refugee story and the strength that came from her family. I loved her comments that the jigsaw puzzle
of our lives is not yet complete.
Here is the link to
the recorded session: http://rootstech.org/video/4050134760001
30 Pieces of Tech I can't
Live Without - D. Joshua Taylor
I use a few of the
items that Josh described and most were new to me. Here is the list of 30:
Tablet - Evernote -
Social Media - Spreadsheets - Family History Software - Online Subscriptions -
Online Tree - Portable Scanner - Library Card - Dedicated E-mail - Portable
External Hard Drive - WordPress and Blogger - Dropbox - Google - Webinars - WorldCat
- ArchiveGrid - Find a Society - DNA Testing - Web Clipping Service - Book
Cataloging - Task Management Tools - Image Enhancement Software - Skype - Audio
and Video - CyndisList - Portable Power - Labels - Outdated Technology -
Distraction.
Here is the link to
the recorded session: http://rootstech.org/video/4053364432001
60 Minutes - 60 Ideas to
Jump Start Your Personal or Family History - Tom Taylor
To make your
personal history worthwhile you will want to tell your best stories. We need to
take notes on every aspect of our lives; and to consider our best stories we
need to consider all the possibilities.
We should start by
making a timeline of our life and separate it into milestones or decades. Set a
timer for 60 minutes and just start jotting down anything we can think about.
Particularly people, places, events, and challenges. Just brainstorm and let the ideas come. Also we can use trigger questions - ones that
ask us specific questions to help us remember something; like "what was your first job and how
old were you?" Pictures can also provide triggers to help remind us of
stories. We should write the stories in
the order they come to us. Then later we
can go back and put them in another order if we choose. And the biggest hint of all was to not let
the process overwhelm us. Even one small
story recorded is worth more than the millions never recorded.
Consultant Training - New
Possibilities with FamilySearch Partners - Craig Miller of FamilySearch
Announced that there are approximately 60 FamilySearch certified partners. Here are the links to the products and apps: https://familysearch.org/products/ https://familysearch.org/apps/
With partners we can
compress 300 years of indexing into one 30 year generation.
Within 2015
FamilySearch is planning on releasing an internal messaging tool that will
enable contributors to connect with one another within the system. Additionally sometime in 2015 they will be
releasing, in North America, temple reserved records that have been held for
more than two years.
I finished the day
with my own presentation which was recorded on Thursday and streamed online on
Saturday. I will share in a future blog
post more about my session.
#RootsTech
I like the 60 minutes, 60 ideas Concept. Thanks Amy for the summary.
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