Today is day 2 of RootsTech 2022. I spent less time on the Main Stage and more time in the Expo Hall. I managed to completely screw up the times for the live sessions. I will admit that I am time conversion challenged.
I’m pretty bummed I missed Roberta Estes doing her DNA presentation and their were a couple of others I would have liked to have seen. I hope that the links to the videos of these events will be posted on the site so people who couldn’t catch them live (me) will be able to see them.
Here’s my roundup for today.
The FamilySearch.Org Booth
One of the booths I visited was the FamilySearch.Org website booth. I had so much fun here! Yesterday I mentioned Relatives At RootsTech where you can see if you connect to any of the other attendees. Today I learned that none of my ancestors that I have in the FamilySearch tree are related to anyone famous. I got a big kick out of that!
Today I learned all about the Activities tab at FamilySearch. How did I not know this was there before?
From there I went to the “Where Am I From” demo. You’ll find this under Activities in the Menu Bar. If you have your ancestors in the FamilySearch family tree, you really have a treat waiting for you. This feature places your ancestors on a map where they were born. It can be adjusted by generation. You can learn some about the heritage of a specific ancestor and you can see them in a historical timeline context.
The part I loved was seeing my ancestors on the map with a connection from me to their ancestral birth places. When you select an ancestor, it draws a line between you and them. This is how it looked between me and my grandfather and his Azorean parents. I didn’t put him in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by accident. He was born at sea.
Isn’t that cool? I love finding new ways to understand my ancestry. It gives me new perspectives.
There’s still a lot more demos for me to explore, but I could play with this all day.
Over To The FTDNA Booth
FTDNA is one of the sites that I have my DNA at. I wanted to see what they have planned for 2022. This is their demonstration. They’ve got quite a bit of enhancements coming to their Y-DNA test results. They also talked about their DNA and health testing product.
I was most interesting in the updates coming to their autosomal DNA results and the family tree. Though, they didn’t go into too much detail, I gathered that the results will be tweaked a little to improve some of the new features added in 2021. Screen loading will be sped up and search function improved on the DNA match page. I hope they fix the fuzzy search criteria for surnames. It is much too broad.
They also mentioned that their family tree will by improved upon. It will be easier to add the matches you’ve figured out to your tree. I hope they make it easier to navigate. Sometimes I get stuck on an ancestor’s profile and can only get out by going back to the start page.
Finally, they mentioned that they are improving their system for processing kits including mailing and receiving. It looks like they are especially focusing on making things quicker for the international market.
Ancestral Logs Demo Was Lacking
Ancestral Logs sounded like a really interesting product. The main idea is that genealogists who collaborate often duplicate their work. I know I’ve spent hours researching something only to find my cousin had it in her tree all along.
The idea is that with Ancestral Logs you can keep your work together. Documents, research notes, and so forth would all be kept in one place so that everyone working on a family would know what’s been done already.
Unfortunately, while they spelled out the problem very well, they didn’t really show much of what their product was or how it worked. I’d like to see how the app is laid out and how it functions, please.
Searching For Close Relatives With Your DNA Results Live Session
As I mentioned, I am time conversion challenge. Also, the schedule on my tablet for some reason didn’t seem to mesh with the actual schedule. I am quirk prone. I am sure it’s on my end. I happened to click on a link at the right time and caught this live session with Mckell Keeney.
As the description says, it was geared toward adoptees and those with an unknown parent. She walked through different strategies for building a tree when you don’t know how you and a match are related.
I was intrigued by the different utilities in DNA Painter than she used to figure out which relatives might be a possible parent using their “What are the Odds” tool. Although I’ve got many of my matches uploaded to DNA Painter, I haven’t explored anything beyond “painting”. I still have some holes in my tree and really should get back to this useful utility.
There was a Q&A session as well.
Azores Represent!
The last things I did today was watch Devin Meireles’ presentation on how he explored his Azorean roots. Devin’s roots are from Rosto de Cao, Sao Miguel Island.
Devin traveled to the Azores to research his family tree. He then turned his research into a book about his grandfather’s life. His Portuguese Ancestry Story video is an enjoyable look at our Azorean Roots
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That’s what I spent my time doing today. I have probably touches 1/1000th of what’s available at this conference. Tomorrow is another day!
If you are attending, let me know what you did today and what you enjoyed.
