Roots Tech 2014

Well the talk of the week is Roots Tech 2014. I wish I could have been there, but lack of money and other commitments kept me away. This is something I have added to my bucket list and I definitely will find a way to get there in near future. I better start saving money now and I should be set for next year or the year after.

But for those of us who didn’t make it to Roots Tech still can take advantage of some of the classes they offered. I even managed to view a few live as they were happening.

I saw Thursday presentation with Ron Tanner for FamilySearch Family Tree: What’s New and What’s Next.  I had recently viewed the Roots Tech 2013 presentation on the same subject and yes some was similar but Ron is such a good speaker you don’t even notice. My goal was to learn more about FamilySearch Family Tree.

I am one of those he spoke about that have a hard time sharing. In my case, my actual tree, I must have a control issue because I need full control over my tree. Really my problem is what I call “Looky Lou’s” who look at my tree, take my information and never share what they have on their branch. How am I supposed to grow my tree this way? So I have a private tree on Ancestry and if you want my information, the secret is to tell me how we are related or how you are related to the person in my tree. Quite simple and you are then given access to my tree!

However, I see the value in FamilySearch Family Tree. I look at it as a place to record my proven facts about my ancestors. Facts that I can source and thus others can see the value in the information. There are a few downfalls but there are in any tree you have on the internet. I explained mine with using Ancestry. I know I am duplicating my recording of this information on FamilySearch along with Ancestry which is linked to my Family Tree Maker software. The advantage I see by this duplication is that I can make sure that my information is properly sourced in my software package. I plan on having it as my reference point when I am adding people into FamilySearch FamilyTree.  Okay this is going to take a while, but as the saying goes “Nothing worth having comes easy!”

The next presentation that I saw was James Rader’s Intro to DNA for Genealogist.  Another great speaker and the time went by so fast because he was very easy on the ears. I just received my DNA results back from Ancestry and James shared his results from four major companies. Each came back slightly different. What I really took away from this talk was how testing siblings is not a waste of money because we are all unique and we get different percentages of DNA from each parent along with slightly different DNA. Once he said that, I was like “duh!” because he stated the obvious and of course I didn’t think of it myself! He explained the different types of test which I kind of knew the differences but he made it so much clearer. I loved his diagram on ways to find people with the Y-DNA you are in search of.

Finally I found time to watch Genealogy in the Cloud with Randy Hoffman. This was one of those talks that I was really interested in learning more about. I am a tech geek but I like to learn other ways of explaining things to people. I don’t want to come across too critical but I could not stand hearing him say “Umm”. He was saying “umm” so many times that it was distracting to me and took away from me learning anything from his talk. I end up turning it off after 15 minutes but I know I will need to go back and finish the talk. Hopefully he has less “umms” in the remaining minutes of the talk. So Randy, I am no expert or experience talker, however, you need to practice your speech and have someone listen and every time you say “umm” they should hit a buzzer, throw paper at you or something so that you become more aware of saying it and stop doing it.

Well, I see the remainder of the videos are now on like and I am ready to learn more!

Thank you Roots Tech for offering these videos for people like me!