Lets start with the first day of the three day event. Wow! Can you imagine over 6700 adults and 2000 teens all attending a Genealogy Convention for the weekend? Well it started today.
The day started out with the opening session. You might wonder what is so great about this, let me tell you. The attendees came in all ages, sizes and some came in their motorized carts. Most had tablets, pads, smart phones in hand. Technology was at it's height. Apparently we took out their wireless, since it was very sketchy at most times.
First off, the event had it's own app with the schedule, and downloadable syllabus, speakers and exhibitors all on it. You could even set up your daily schedule so you knew where to go at a glance. Really pretty neat! Registration I believe went very well, some might complain but with the volume of people coming through it flowed. My cousin was able to set up her exhibit the night before when we picked up our registration packet. +Malta Made was back in the services area right next door to TenGenChart.comAs you can see the charts are pretty cool, they are a 10 generation circular configuration done from a gedcom you upload your self on the website. It can then be printed off at Staples or on the sites listed onsite. Very cool. I got my very own and I love it. Hope it makes it home safely.
The opening speaker on Thursday was Dennis Brimhall of FamilySearch who was hosting this shindig. Very motivational, key words were: "What would our Great Grandchildren wish we had done?". Makes you kind of think differently of what we can and should do. There was over 6700 registered attendees and over 2000 teens registered for Saturday's event to teach the kids how to do genealogy. There were more walk-ins each day. Masses of genealogists everywhere, all sharing ideas, families, recaps of what we liked or disliked (very few of those) of the classes we had attended. We had attendance from 49 states, 17 countries and 10,000 were attending via live streaming. Wow! The Best of RootsTech 2013 will be shown at 16 Family History Fairs throughout the world adding another 4000 people. We were told that there are now over 3.2 billion names online, and that there is now an Italian indexing program going on with the Italian Government to index there records, very cool for those of us that are researching there. Did you know that 40% of the world's people don't really exist because there are no records of them. In some third world countries there no birth, marriage or death records, so there is no record they existed. Kind of sad really.
Next we had Syd Lierberman who told us how to tell stories and how to think of getting those stories out there. The stories are our links to people and how that in telling the stories you then think again about that person in the story and when you share that story you make the person real to whoever is hearing it. Very touching. What stories are you telling? What stories can you tell to your children, grandchildren? Make your stories of your ancestors come alive with the next generations to come.
D. Joshua Taylor, late of Ancestry.com, now working with FindMyPast.com had words to get us to get the next generation interested using today's technology. We need to start getting ourselves using Apps and visual adds to get the kids interested in what we have been so passionate about. The photo to the right tells us that we need to know that the world is doing: 140 characters or less, have 51 followers per user, 175 million tweets a day, 40% of users watch but don't tweet, 163 billion total tweets, 50% of users are mobile and 1 million new accounts each day if you can't read it. The UK is using Teach with Twig, an award-winning online resource for teaching science, math and geography with over 1500 outstanding films, matched to the curriculum. Kids want accessible adventures but affordable, so video games of genealogy is cool. Oregon Trail of the 1980/1990's is still pretty cool. We also need to be thinking of our next audience for genealogy is Mexico, China, India, Philippines, and Vietnam since this where our large numbers of immigrants are coming from. How's your translation?
For the first session there was 14 sessions to choose from, I decided to do "The Future of Genealogy" hosted by Thomas MacEntee and the panels consisted of the biggies in Genealogy: Lisa Louise Cooke, Daniel Horowitz, Dick Eastman, Alan Philips, Dear Myrtle, and Josh Taylor. The things that stood out were: richer data is coming, people need to change to advance - not the "always done things this way so why change" which gets us nowhere, Archives are changing the hours they are open and more is online, and DNA is getting bigger and is a way to break down those brick walls.
My next class missed because I was tied up in talking with the vendors. Crazy things going on in the world of genealogy and tools we can use. I especially liked the Map nTour exhibit. They do things with Google Earth that make 3-D wonders. Imagine a 9 generation pedigree in 3D starting at the birth place of each of the ancestors going up into space. IT is so Cool! I want it now! Keep an eye out for the 3D images coming in the next six months they told me. I can hardly wait. http://mapntour.com/.
I didn't eat lunch, but visited as many of the vendors as I could. The next class I took was one on Evernote. Transform your note taking and remember everything with Evernote. I learned of this last year and started using it but then forgot about it and forgot how to use it. Boy was I missing out. This product is great for the genealogist. As I exited this class that was held in a pod of like 6 classes and we were to the end of it. This is what I saw, no chance of getting anywhere fast. Felt like a herd of cattle all trying to get to our next session quickly. That one was Content Planning for Bloggers taught by Tonia Kendrick who had taught the Evernote Class. Lots of goodies there, so hope you all will enjoy some of what I learned. I will end this post with my herding of genealogist photo. You will see that we come in all ages, sizes and physical abilities, saw some with their motorized scooters - more power to them.
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