Category Archives: RootsTech

RootsTech 2013, Day 2 – Development

Keynote

I was not impressed with the keynote today and they didn’t hold my attention to really say much about them.

Jyl Pattee was talking about story telling. This seems to be the theme this year, except that it’s developer day. They must have been even more bored than me. She asked us to think about “wow” moments, then expected those to be major life events. She didn’t know her audience very well because I wasn’t the only person to think about a genealogy find. Even though it sounded off topic from the previous day, which was about telling stories about every day life, she did kind of turn every moment into a “wow” moment, which really didn’t appeal to me.

Then Tim Sullivan spoke about Ancestry.com, beginner research, and collaboration. He announced a new Ancestry/FamilySearch collaboration of probate records. As he did the lead-up, I was expecting a different announcement, due to things I’ve been told. While it sounds like a perfectly decent project, I was hoping for something better; it’s likely not to affect my research at all. I may have missed something, but the whole thing felt a little like a commercial about his site.

As the Developer’s Challenge winners were announced, I paid attention because I knew a finalist. I didn’t even look up if the finalists were listed anywhere on the web site. As the description of the third winner barely began, I could tell Tammy Hepps had won for TreeLines.

 

Dear Myrtle Interviews Tammy Hepps after her Developer’s Challenge win.

It snowed on the drive, but the traffic problems of yesterday did not repeat. I even had time for breakfast before my first session.

Developer Sessions

The Genealogy Workflow Model was about how FamilySearch graphed the genealogy research process. I thought it was supposed to explain how they programmed based on that model, but not so much. It was still kind of interesting but not what I was expecting.

After lunch, there was Modern Databases for Genealogy. We heard about various databases, then focused on MongoDB. I remember this one mentioned from last year. The code looked clear enough to me. I couldn’t figure out how to get it on my shared web server last year, so that’s likely to be an impediment this year too. It was interesting to get a taste of it, but I still don’t know if I’ll ever get to use it for a long time.

A Graph Based Family Tree was a disappointment. I couldn’t follow what he was talking about and he couldn’t hold my interest enough to figure it out, so I left early.

I ended the day listening to Crowdsourcing: When the Power of Many Benefits All. It didn’t sound technical enough for the developer track, and it really wasn’t. It attracted a lot of users. But it was interesting to learn how MyHeritage was handling its translations with crowd sourcing. I had no idea. I didn’t originally have it chosen to attend, but the speaker, Daniel Horowitz, is a good friend, a good speaker, and I had nothing else to do anyway.

Thomas MacEntee threw a big party in honor of his birthday in the evening. It was loud and a little crazy and fun. I was already exhausted but still enjoyed it. I finally drove home late and in the snow.

Thomas MacEntee chats with someone at his party.

Communication

As a user and a developer, I am in a unique position at this conference. There are some other people who are both, but I only know a couple of them. I know the bloggers, the Twitterers, and the Jewish genealogists. My experience is a little different because I don’t talk to the developers as a user, and I can go to the developer sessions without getting in so far over my head.

Even so, I didn’t really talk to any developers (except when they were selling to me as vendors) and I only went to developer sessions all day. What did everyone else do? Did the bloggers speak to anyone besides the developer’s challenge winners? Last year, it was a point of contention that there was little interaction between the two groups, and this year could only have made it worse.

And tomorrow, they have invited about 2,000 children to attend, as if 7,000 people didn’t already feel like a madhouse sometimes. One more day left of this.

The URL of this post is http://idogenealogy.com/2013/03/23/rootstech-2013-day-2-development/.

RootsTech 2013, Day 1 – Gaming

A Bad Start to the Day

I got almost no sleep, but I was expecting that. No, I wasn’t overly excited. I just haven’t been sleeping well lately. Or at night.

So I watched the keynote from home, and I already blogged about those. They were good. Then I headed downtown. The snow had stopped and the sun was shining. Until I was partway there on 201 and, to the right in my forward view, were the Wasatch mountains. To the left, gray. Just gray. I saw the snow storm I was driving into before I got there.

To make matters worse, I realized that even with everything I grabbed on the way out, I left my conference badge at home. I was not in a position to turn around for a long time, so I decided to just go. Then I got stuck in traffic just on a couple of streets downtown which doubled my commute time. I was not a happy camper.

Arrival and Things Improve

Registration was great, they gave me a new badge, and I headed to the exhibitor hall. I was just in time to hear the quick overview of Janet Hovorka’s Zap the Grandma Gap presentation, so I got some popcorn and sat down for a bit to hear her top tips of getting kids involved in genealogy.

Exhibitors

I then wandered around the exhibit hall, just in time for the lunch break, so I had quite a bit of time. I visited the media center and chatted with the bloggers a couple of times, and collected my beads and ribbons. I stopped at several other booths to get chocolate, or pick up goodies, or to talk to the vendors. Yes, I actually did talk and not just go for stuff and food.

I always visit my friends at MyHeritage, many times, I chatted with Dean at Genlighten (I’ve been a provider on his site for years), found out what ReelGenie is about, asked why the FHL doesn’t yet have Newspapers.com, chatted with someone at the FamilySearch Indexing booth, found out that APG ran out of ribbons yesterday, and plenty of others.

FamilySearch Indexing Counters. But… they don’t match.

I headed out for a session, but couldn’t find the room. My alternate had a crowd around the door, so it was back to the exhibitor hall for me.

I was already pretty disappointed after reading the syllabus this morning. I didn’t do that last year. This year, I saw that all sessions were marked either everyone, beginner, or intermediate. I thought the users complained last year that there were no or too few advanced sessions for them, and this year there are none? So I didn’t think I was really missing anything anyway, since just about everything I read for the day looked too simple to keep my interest for long.

Gaming Genealogy

I did eventually make it to a session, where I listened to Joshua Taylor again, one of the keynote speakers, talk about Gaming and Virtual Realities: Attracting the Next Generation of Genealogists. He said some things that got me thinking about how genealogy could be gamified, but I doubt I have the programming skills to write a serious game on my own. He did a lot of comparing between genealogy and games, and genealogists and gamers: we are both geeks, form communities, are easily distracted by our obsessions (eg. skipping dinner), we have conferences, and he even compared cosplay to reenactments. We both work on strategies to succeed; we track, hidden features of games vs. research logs; both are very addicted; we love gadgets; we’re quick to adopt new technologies; and more.

He continued to give small examples of gaming ideas that were very specific to his family or other ideas he had, but I think a game would have to be quite a bit more generic. But he compared parts of games to researching genealogy in ways that gave me some interesting ideas. I’ll have to let my brain simmer on them for a while.

It seemed to him that one of the trickiest parts is that a game should have an ending and genealogy never ends. To that, he joked that the ending just might be: “Now you’re completely addicted to family history. Good luck!”

We then had a preview of a game that findmypast has been working on. He logged in to Facebook to access it, and almost immediately someone started chatting with him. The game loaded very slowly, but he did show us just a bit, repeating a few times that his game family was so hungry because he hadn’t fed them in a week.

I’ve heard Josh speak before, even before the keynote. He is a great speaker, comfortable behind the podium, and humorous. I talked to him just after and told him he should give that presentation to the developers, because they are the ones who would have to write it. He was planning on it, just not at RootsTech.

Societies

I continued the day with an unconferencing session for genealogy societies. It was an interesting discussion between a small group of society leaders about using technology. I really have to look into one of the things we discussed, for UJGS.

Evening Special Event

Exiting that room, I saw a gathering of people, some of whom I knew, joined them for dinner, then for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performance.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Miscellaneous

Tomorrow is developer day, another downgrade from last year, in my opinion. Along with the the lack of advanced user sessions, there was a lack of interaction between users and developers. This year, the advanced sessions don’t exist, and the interaction might not either, with developers only around for one day. I’ll read through the syllabus again before I get there and see which sessions I’ve marked that really sound interesting. Hopefully they won’t all be at the same time, with nothing else the rest of the day.

One more critique about the app. Trying to find the name of a vendor for this post, I found a handful of vendors bookmarked that I never bookmarked. What is going on now? And as I type this, there’s another update. Is that maybe 20 today? At least three since I got home.

The URL of this post is http://idogenealogy.com/2013/03/22/rootstech-2013-day-1-gaming/.

RootsTech 2013, Day 1 – Keynotes

I can save this for a full day’s blog post or put something out that’s shorter and quicker. I’m opting for the latter.

I thought I’d go to the keynote in person; what was I thinking? But I was just out of the shower as it began and I listened to all three speakers.

I have a few whisper to my neighbor comments about the keynote speakers.

Dennis Brimhall had some staggering facts and great stories. He said, “People don’t really exist until we know their story.” Also, “If there is no record, they don’t exist,” when talking about the 40% of people in the world today that will be born, live, and die, and leave no documentation. Well, actually, they will still exist, they just won’t exist in the future for anyone to find them. Just like those stillbirths buried in the cemetery behind my great-grandparents, along with others from her family. There are no names and no parents’ names on those graves, and no telling if there are more buried there than the two stones. Will I ever know who they were? Actually, I probably will someday. I just don’t have easy access to stillbirths right now. But if there were more, will I find them all? How many other children were born and died before they showed up in the census so I don’t even know to look for them?

Syd Lieberman had some interesting stories to tell. I don’t have much in the way of comments for him. I loved the one quote where his mother had a date and called him to say, “In case you’re gonna call me tonight, I’m not gonna be home.”

Josh Taylor’s stories about his two grandmothers was interesting. I didn’t have a fantastic Grandma Taylor like he did. I did get to speak to both of mine around age 11 or 12 and get some of their family trees, but I didn’t know what I was doing and nobody told me more. After collecting the first round of data, I knew nothing about asking more questions, getting more details, collecting stories, or that there were genealogy societies to teach me more about what I was trying to do. I wish I had that.

One critique I had about his talk was saying that we needed technology to be able to translate old records. Why? There isn’t technology like that now and we learn to read the records for ourselves. Why must future generations have it so much easier? ;-P

Josh also told us not to disregard Twitter. Does that mean he intends to tweet more often? Because we rarely hear from him on there. Psst, hey Josh, tweet more. ;-)

And now I’m going to finish getting ready and head downtown to experience RootsTech in person. I don’t have my blogger beads yet.

The URL of this post is http://idogenealogy.com/2013/03/21/rootstech-day-1-keynotes/.

RootsTech 2013, Day -1

It’s RootsTech time again.

I had some regular research to do today so I spent some time at the Family History Library. It was more crowded than usual. And the Internet cut out before it closed (an hour late for the conference). But the outage was bigger than just the building, so I heard on the way out.

Someone here for RT lent me a microUSB cable to copy my files to my Android, since I forgot my flash drive (again?!). And I helped someone else on the way out who had coincidentally visited this week and had a fabulous old photo album. I suggested she try to get a consult with Maureen Taylor at RT and did a bit of sleuthing on my cell phone to show here where to look for more info.

I still haven’t seen any of the Twitterers and bloggers that have been gathering together. I must keep missing them during meal breaks or something. Or I’m walking right past the ones I don’t know well enough to recognize.

App Updates

A little follow-up on the RootsTech app. Things have changed since my review. The main icons have grown to number 16. I’ll skip the details. Updates are pretty constant. Hopefully they’ll get the unconferencing in there quickly so I don’t screw up and add something I want to go to on the wrong day again like I did last year. I will likely be using my phone this whole conference, since I’m expecting the same behavior as last year from the provided Internet. In that case, at least, I’ll be connected more often and get any updates in a more timely fashion.

The bad updates are when it tells me to download a new version, then takes me to my browser. I’m not logged in to Google Play in my browser and I have to go out and back through the app store app instead.

App Syncing

They activated some syncing between devices. I set my phone as device #1 and my 5″ as #2. My schedule was on #2. Two days moved to #1 and deleted from #2. Day three disappeared from both. Later, probably after some update, day three reappeared and the others vanished. Eventually it was all wiped out, so I had to go through it all again. I did it again on #2 and it appeared on #1. I didn’t double check everything, but it looks about right.

More App Stuff

Exhibitors no longer looks bad with the one category and all are just listed. I’m pretty sure they changed the look of each exhibitor screen, and they removed the phone numbers entirely.

There are some Conference Documents and App Tip Sheets that, when I have clicked any of them, try to download or email. I haven’t bothered to download or email any of them, so I can’t say what they are. It’s just not important enough to me to bother at this point. Maybe if I run out of other things to nitpick, but I doubt that could happen.

Day -1

I arrived at my typical time to the FHL and got some work done. I didn’t see anything on Twitter, so I asked about crowds at registration. A couple of replies made me feel like I wouldn’t be stuck in long lines, so I went for a walk to the Salt Palace. A certain sign greeted me as I walked into the side door.

At least I knew I was in the right place. The registration line was nothing. I knew to stay away at first and I showed up about three hours after they began.

Registration at 7pm

Jeanette Rosenberg (our Tuesday night UJGS speaker) and Mark Nicholls were hanging around so I said hello to them, then headed to the Exhibitor Hall. I was kind of expecting more security but I just walked right in, but not before being greeted by a certain sign.

The previous registration picture, I posted on Twitter, to which I got a fabulous reply from Alex Coles, @wychwoodnz: “my eyes! #carpet”. I later realized it hasn’t changed since last year. Also, I prefer that wild one to this one.

You just scrolled back up to check out the carpet, didn’t you? :-)

In the Exhibitor Hall, it turned out that the person I was looking for was the first one I saw, and closest to the door, talking to someone. We walked back to the FHL, but not before I snapped a couple more pictures.

Unconferencing Schedule

It appears that Unconferencing is already about half scheduled even before the conference begins. There are two boards, and the other is similarly filled.

Little Things

I like the bag colors better this year than last. And the style of it too. I looked through the ads in it and found the card for the usual iPad giveaway, but with no mention of T-shirts. Did they skip them this year? I saw tweets about 6,800 registered attendees, not counting almost 2,000 children. Last year, they said they had limited shirts, fewer than the attendee numbers, and still had some left near the end.

The badges are a different type and smaller, so the usual ribbons do not fit properly. Daniel Horowitz already had a MyHeritage ribbon on his for me to see that.

I had some more nitpicking here, but I could write whole blog posts about those topics (and I’m sure I will), so I’ve deleted them and saved them for future articles. Thus, I’ll end here and see lots of genealogists tomorrow at RootsTech.

The URL of this post is http://idogenealogy.com/2013/03/21/rootstech-day-1-3/.

RootsTech App 2013 First Impressions

RootsTech 2013 is approaching and the app is finally out. The Google Play store says it came out on the 21st, but I didn’t see any mention online until the 26th.

Once again, the app comes to us from Core-apps, a developer of conference apps. The app was pretty glitchy last year, so I was hoping it would be improved this year; they’ve had at least a year more to learn to program it. So far, it’s doing better.

Main Screen. Do you love the “screen captured” message that shows up *during* the screen capture?

The bulk of this article was written last night, but some things changed overnight.

There were eleven icons on the main screen last night, but this morning, there are twelve. And I’m pretty sure the background color changed.

Exhibitors

The exhibitors seemed empty at first. Under the categories, there was only one: movie theatre. Only when someone online mentioned checking on the exhibitors in the app did I realize that no one was categorized and they were all in there. Several are listed twice. Each can be bookmarked and marked as visited. There is also a space for notes, with an option to email those notes. I’m not sure about the schedule option. Can I schedule through the app to visit with the vendors? Title is required. Title of what? That part, I don’t get it.

I didn’t check all of them, but my favorite exhibitor listing right now is MyHeritage: their phone number is 9.73E+11. Yeah, try to figure that out. I guess the app is US-only and not adaptable.



Maps

The map for the Salt Palace is typically confusing, as it always is. The downtown SLC map looks familiar. Did they really have to include the QR code in the scanned version? Is someone going to look at the map on their device and use another device to scan the code or something? Things like this are the reason why some people write articles saying that QR codes are dead — because they’re used in dumb ways.

Thursday Schedule. What am I doing sometime after 4pm?

Events

This is the place to find the schedule. I don’t see the keynotes or any special events. Are there special events this year? I can’t even remember hearing about anything.

The events take some time to get through, especially when you want to bookmark overlapping events. You get a pop-up warning that you’ve scheduled multiple things, and you get a separate one for each, so you can’t see anything behind it while that’s cycling through each time. I don’t need a warning when I can clearly see on my calendar that I have multiple things marked.

There are a lot of typos in the schedule. I haven’t checked the RootsTech web site lately, but some seem familiar, like they were also on the site. A simple spell check would probably fix half of them.

There are an awful lot of sessions without a speaker listed. That’s a really bad omission. It’s common to find multiple sessions of interest at the same time and sometimes the tie breaker is the speaker.

 

Friday Schedule. Does that come with lunch and dinner breaks?

My Schedule

This is a very useful part of the app, as long as it works.

There was an issue last year where I was adding an unconferencing event by hand and the white board showed the wrong date, so I added it on the wrong date. An update that came too late showed those sessions and would have added it into the schedule for me, hopefully on the correct date, so I wouldn’t have missed it. I hope that information also ends up in the app again with a more timely update than last year. Obviously, that can’t be in here yet since those are set up after the conference begins.

After going through the schedule and marking some of the sessions, I have four time slots marked with sessions on Thursday (image above). One has six sessions, so the ones I marked are: Conte, Curati, Findin, Mappi, Next, and Beyo. No, that doesn’t help me much to see what I’ve selected and I have to tap through to each one just to see the title. There probably isn’t any better solution to programming this, other than giving me more information to narrow down my choices.

Friday gets much more interesting, with sessions running from 9:45 AM to 10:45 PM — three of them. Is there a lunch break?

After going through all three days, I noticed that some sessions repeat. Having this somewhere in the description would be helpful. Maybe I have more time to attend on the other day. Or I might mark it for both days and not realize I’m repeating a session, since there are several similar sessions. Maybe telling me the speaker will help me choose which I want to attend?

After setting up the schedule on my other Android to take a proper screen capture, those pop-up warnings went on for about a minute, even after I closed the app. I don’t need warnings that I’ve set sessions at the same time. I can clearly see it when I go to the schedule.

Twitter, Facebook

Twitter is already pulling up the hashtagged posts, Facebook apparently goes to the mobile version of the Facebook page. My Android browser is not logged in to Facebook. (I’m not sure the app is either, since I don’t really use it on the go.)

News

News looks like an RSS reader of selected blogs — not all official bloggers, at least not all of the official bloggers. The problem is that tapping on an article opens up a web browser. Not only that, but I tapped on the first article on About.com and the browser went to an article on The Ancestry Insider. I tried tapping on the article it actually brought me to and nothing happened. Trying several others at random mostly did nothing, so this part of the app, which should be pretty simple, is really bad.

Photo Gallery, Videos

Photo gallery is empty for now. Videos was added overnight and is already populated with videos from 2012.

Friends, Attendees

I’m pretty sure that last year’s app had these features, but didn’t run them very well. It used the app Bump to add people in proximity, but the app wasn’t working well for me. (It could have been the non-phone Android I was using.) There were also randomly-generated six digit codes to add your friends, but when people posted their codes to Facebook or Twitter, they would quickly expire and you’d have to post them again. That was not good.

Error. “Yes”, there was an error. No, I can’t do screen captures from this Android. Yes, it was 2:25AM.

This year, the attendees can add themselves to an app directory, listed by name. You can then add them to contacts or add them as friends. Dear Myrtle was the first person to show up twice. Having installed the app on two Androids, I thought that I should be listed twice as well, but maybe I’m not seeing myself listed, so I only see myself on the other Android.

I had some trouble adding a friend, or rather, a friend adding me. Jill Ball was, well, on the ball, and quickly sent a friend request, which when I tried to accept, I just got an error. However, this morning, trying it again, it did add her as my friend, and a couple more who had added me since.

The problem is that there is no connection between my two Androids in this app. It doesn’t even recognize that I have identical contact information between them, so the friends I have in one app do not show up in the other. The same goes for the schedule and all the marks I have made. I think this was mentioned by others last year and I think there was eventually a solution that allowed syncing somehow, but it doesn’t seem to exist now. Will they add it before the conference?

Settings

This is not a main icon but an option from the top of the screen. The menu button should take you to this, but the developers have ignored the Android buttons. Within the settings, you can edit your profile and send emails — either inviting friends to download the app or email all of your notes. I haven’t added notes to try this, so I’m going to imagine that it works.

Conclusion

The glitches of last year’s app seem to have gone away. I can’t remember specifically what they all were, and don’t want to reinstall it just to find out again, but this one works much smoother, save for the adding a friend that didn’t work last night, but does now.

The problem with the typos in the schedule is a serious problem. Some, if not all, of those typos have been around for months. Are they going to fix them before the conference if they haven’t already?

Not syncing between devices is also a problem. I am not the only person with multiple devices. Lots of people have a smartphone and a tablet these days. The app needs a way to either sync online or import/export the data between devices. I certainly don’t want to edit my schedule on two devices constantly, or add everyone as a friend twice. And what if I decide to put this on my tablets?

That’s about all I’ve got to say about the app for now, but that last paragraph didn’t seem a suitable ending to this article. I look forward to seeing my genea-friends next month at RootsTech.

The URL of this post is http://idogenealogy.com/2013/02/27/rootstech-app-2013/.

The Nitpicker’s Critique of RootsTech

I had a great time at RootsTech. Besides all the issues that annoyed me, I knew I’d see a lot of people I know and meet a lot of people I previously only knew online. For me, genealogy conferences have really become about seeing the people and not about the conference itself; all the conference does is bring all the people to one place.

That being said, the nitpicker can’t help but critique things. Note that these are not in any kind of order of best to worst or anything, just as I thought of them while typing.

1. For the first keynote, I was delegated to another room because the main ballroom was full. The Salt Palace is a very big building. Couldn’t they have found a part of it big enough for everyone? I was late to the second keynote but got into the main room. I watched the third online from home. Apparently fewer showed up each day, but I did not like the first day being split up. Also, it might have been nice to have the Who Do You Think You Are? viewing there instead of trying to cram everyone in to the FHL. The overcrowding I expected was one reason why I helped arrange for a more private party (which probably turned out multitudes better).

2. The developer’s challenge was greatly improved over last year for a number of reasons. FamilySearch employees were excluded last year, thus limiting the entries. However, one rule this year was vague and not followed by half or possibly more of the participants (and the judges). I spoke to the person in charge and confirmed that I understood the rules as they were meant: create a brand new program, not submit something that’s been in-progress or already completed. He also said they will be more clear next year. I did like the idea that the first place winner was a brand new program, whereas most if not all of the other finalists were in development for much longer. Still, a big improvement over last year, with only three entries.

3. I could count the female developers in the sessions on one hand. Were they in other sessions or were there that few female developers? I wonder if something can be done to attract more. I wonder if the guys in the room were looking at us like we were lost. I did like that many developer sessions were easier to understand and not technically ridiculous, or maybe I chose my topics better this year. I thought some were labeled incorrectly when they said intermediate as they were incredibly beginner for developers, but they would have been advanced for users.

4. One speaker was a no-show. There was no indication that the session was cancelled or that anyone from RootsTech knew he wasn’t there or going to be there. However, it did turn into one of the better conversations at the conference.

5. The mobile app was good and also seriously lacking. It was not created exclusively for RootsTech, but by a company who does this, and some parts still were non-functional. Also, it was released about a week before the conference and should have been tested and released sooner. I got a notification about an additional update that had to be downloaded from the market the day after the conference. (It might have been out the day before, but that’s #7.) Also, notifications about updates took me to the web browser and never to the store to actually update the app, which was wrong. I could go into a lot of details about the app problems, but I’ll skip them and hope the company cleans up their code by next year. The schedule was the best part of it. I could choose the sessions I was most interested in and see them on my schedule.

6. The big white board of unconferencing sessions was labeled as February 3rd and 4th, though it was actually the 2nd and 3rd. I added one session to my schedule and missed it by a day. If the app had been filled in with the sessions (and wifi worked so it updated), I could have just chosen it from the list and it would have landed in the right place.

7. Wifi was abysmal. Even when I was connected, I often couldn’t even send a single tweet. Many times, I wanted to tweet “Hey, this speaker is really great!” By the time I had tried sending for 30 minutes or more, that tweet had always morphed into “The wifi sucks.” Sometimes the tweet never got through. Sometimes I couldn’t even connect to the wifi. Usually, I could find at least a dozen hotspots, so many others were activating those to have access. Please, RootsTECH, get your tech improved. I could stand next to the router and not even see the network in some rooms. Apparently the vendors had to pay dearly for their wired connections and even those were problematic. If the Salt Palace has bad hardware, RootsTech should provide their own. The FHL has good connectivity, so I know that FamilySearch can figure out how to make it work.

8. In 2011, there was a closing session. In 2012, it just kind of ended and everyone had to slink away. I think I preferred the first year for that; gave it closure and gathered everyone together to say goodbye. (In 2011, I was so tired, I just tore out of there after the session to go home to sleep, but still…)

9. Some of the handling of the official bloggers could have been better. Having been (kind of) asked in 2011 to be official in 2012, I was disappointed not to be included. When I asked why, I never received an answer. They asked for more blogger suggestions, then more ethnic bloggers, and still I didn’t even get a response. I had a discussion with Paul Nauta about it, which un-annoyed me a bit. If every conference promotes the same official bloggers every year, the others never have a chance to catch up in popularity and readership. It occurred to me after talking to him that I don’t think they had an official blogger who is a developer, so they had no one reporting from that side of the conference. Maybe they should take that into consideration for next year too, and not just who blogs the most and has the most readers. It doesn’t help if all of the official bloggers are blogging about the same sessions.

10. I had an interesting discussion with two other developers when a speaker didn’t show up where this topic was discussed. One of the goals of RootsTech is to bring together genealogists and technologists to learn the needs of the other. But how does that actually happen when the users are going to the user sessions and the developers are going to the developer sessions? Personally, I can just talk to myself, because I’m a user and a developer, but few people can really say that. Also, I don’t use all the apps, so I don’t know what the genealogists need, and I’ve fallen a bit behind in technologies that the developers would know about — so I really need to talk to both. Instead of separating us out by sessions, there needs to be something that literally brings us together: a social event or maybe some kind of game, or speed “dating” of sorts. Put us in a room, let everyone be labeled user or developer, and force us to talk to people on the opposite side about appropriate topics. I understand the unconferencing was better for this also, but alas, the one I had picked out ended up on my schedule on the wrong day.

Conclusion

So, in order to improve for RootsTech 3.0, I suggest that they be far better about responding to emails, be more clear in the rules about the developer’s challenge (and the judges should follow the rules as they were written and intended and not accept the entries that break the rules just because they’re good), make sure the mobile app creators can create a functional app instead of the partly broken thing they released, possibly try to reach out to more female developers, really bring the genealogists and technologists together (not just by being in the same conference center), and get serious about providing reliable Internet connectivity to everyone everywhere at the conference.

I can’t wait to see everyone again next year. And a few more people who didn’t make it this year. Or at other conferences this year. Who’s going to other conferences? I think I will be.

RootsTech, Day 3

Though I was up later other nights, last night my eyes just couldn’t stay open even long enough to post some photos. It was a less busy day. I stayed home for the keynote, arriving later for a couple sessions. I skipped one and the other speaker was a no-show, but three of us sat in the room and had a nice, off-topic conversation about development.

I stuck around after closing to watch what happened with the MyHeritage balloons. I witnessed the carnage of the deaths of more than half of them. Then I headed south to Janet Hovorka’s house for dinner. I had no idea how many people she had invited, and was surprised that I was one of the earliest arrivals, having left at least an hour after the conference ended. I met even more people, including Jim Ericson, where we discussed the developer’s challenge a bit. I learned some interesting details about last year too.

In the end, of course it all turned out great. No matter how annoyed I was at a variety of things, I knew I’d still enjoy myself since, for me, it’s not about the conference, it’s about all the people I get to see there.

RootsTech, Day 2

Sometime after posting yesterday’s blog post, I realized how many people I met in the media center that I didn’t mention. But I’m so tired now, if I tried to list them, I’m sure I’d miss most again. I went to some more developer sessions. One was great, one was not. I was the only woman of about three in one (so that makes twice) and the only woman in the boring one; I also left that one early.

I seem to have a lot of overexposed pictures today, along with plenty of blurry shots too. Not sure if I just shot badly or was tired and couldn’t see what I was doing.

Caroline Pointer had mentioned wanting a Who Do You Think You Are? viewing party, along with the drinking game, in a hotel bar or someone’s room. Terryn Barill heard this and immediately called her hotel, the Peery, for permission to take over the TV in the bar. We invited the bloggers and a few others and had a blast. Back at the FHL after, I kept Daniel Horowitz company for a couple hours.

RootsTech, Day 1

I can’t begin to list all the people I saw and the new ones I met. I didn’t get pictures of a lot. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be even more snap happy with the camera. I also have a lot of blurry ones today. I wasn’t allowed in the media hub, but later I got past the guard dogs while they were talking and sat in for a while with the bloggers. Finally met Caroline Pointer, Denise Levenick, saw Thomas MacEntee, Amy Coffin, Kerry Scott, Ancestry Insider, Randy Seaver was in there, Pat Richley, and I’m certain about twice as many as I’ve mentioned. Later, I was spotted by Terryn Barill and Brooke Ganz.

I went to a developer session of about 60 people and I think there were maybe three other women; I could only see the backs of their heads, but was sure at least one was. I verified it was Brooke later.

Overheard at the after dinner event:

“Sweet potatoes are a lie.” – Daniel Horowitz
A French cat food story – Steve Morse

If only I could remember every word that was said, that list would be so long. After the comedian, Daniel wanted a steak. The rest of us (six of us) just went to keep him company and had a great time. I also learned that I am now the very last person to be using Eudora; Daniel has switched to Gmail.

RootsTech, Day Minus 1

Genealogists have been coming to SLC for a week. One person today thought she came in early by arriving the day before the conference. That was cute.

Let’s see, who did I see and meet today?

Carol Starin, Elise Friedman, Jill Ball, Robert Ball, Randy Seaver, Russ Worthington, Jan Brandt, Elyse Doreflinger, Jan Meisels Allen, I saw Elise and Elyse meet (so cute, I should have gotten them to pose for a picture), Pamela Weisberger, Steve Morse, Dan Lynch, Daniel Horowitz, Mark Olsen, and Yuval Ben-Galim.

Yep, it was a fun day already.