RootsTech 2015 - Day 1 - February 12th

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- Task Management Tools - Image Enhancement Software - Skype - Audio and Video - CyndisList - Portable Power - Labels - Outdated Technology - Distraction.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