Rootstech is a family history conference that brings together technology developers and users. David and Sariah went last year and loved it. So, I decided to go this year.
The conference was a lot of fun and more importantly I learned a lot. It was great to have David and Sariah there. We travel together and we could discuss the different sessions. It also helped to divide and conquer when there was more that one great sounding session at the same time.
Following are just some of the highlights of what I learned.
Did you know that in Google search you can upload an image and search using that instead of typing in a word?? That amazed me!! Try it. Go to google.com then click images in the toolbar on the top left hand corner. Notice the camera icon on the right side of the search box? Click on it and you add an image from your computer and use that to scan. Cool, isn't it??
I also learned other little tricks to get better results in searches like using the tilde and setting year ranges.
Lisa Alzo's was inspiring in her presentation titled, "Show Don't Tell: Creating Interactive Family Histories". She talked about many creative ways to share family history, including newsletters, family websites, memorial pages. I loved the slide presentation she shared about her own family. It was very touching.
The class on "Helping to Index the 1940 Census" helped me get more excited than ever to participate in this exciting project. This census was gathered on just one day, April 1 1940. I hope my family didn't play an April Fools joke and give inaccurate answers. This census has some great questions that will be helpful in family history research such as, "where did you live in 1935?. And if your family member was lucky enough to be on line 14 and 29 then they answered some supplemental questions about some interesting topics like the birth of parents, and if a woman, how many babies did they give birth too.
I loved the idea of "Using Your Blog As a Research Log" so well, that I created a blog just to do that. Instead of a paper sitting at home or a document file in a folder on my computer the log will be available where ever I am as long as there is access to the Internet. It is also searchable and others can join in the hunt.
The talk by Ron Tanner about The Future of FamilySearch Family Tree had me laughing out loud!! He started out my saying he is crazy and I believe he may be!! I loved how he added humor to a subject that people have strong feelings about. He talked about how we have the disease "my-tree-itus". We have shared our family history and don't want others changing it, but there are so many errors the only way to change it is for everyone to work together. There will no longer be combined records, but rather merged records and anyone can change information as long as they have a source to share. It will be great!!
I am hoping I can go to RootsTech again next year.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting! It's great that you were able to go, and that David & Sariah were able to join you!
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