10,000+ member Milestone reached during Pandemic

As we mourn nearly a million Americans and millions more lost around the globe to Covid these past two years, remember to celebrate the little things most people forget to even notice:

Rootstech 2022 - Choosing Connection as Ancestors Animated Portraits Now Can Speak Back to Us and Researchers Soon Get to Correct 1950 Census Name Handwriting Challenges

Rootstech 2022 was another resounding global success in its 2nd year being held entirely free and entirely online. My plans to attend as a presenter in 2019 as a presenter were derailed with the financial need to support NARA in the final few hundred hours of what ended up being 1,060+ hours I volunteered of overtime work to catch up the entire Fort Worth center on backlogs. I was delighted to return in the second year of the pandemic as a Social Media Influencer with our 10,00 wonderful members at Genedocs Templates via Facebook Groups. While millions of family researchers in all degrees of experience enjoyed this years three day event packed with a fantastic theme song about choosing connection, many great keynote speakers messages, 800+ new presentations in addition to access to all the 2021 offerings, much of the focus was understandably zoomed in on new technological offerings that influence our personal family photo collectons, what new ways the big three (FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage) are each influencing the branches of our trees, and of course the 10 year long awaited release by NARA on 1 APR 2022 of one of our favorite and most used U.S. Records Collections in the genealogy realm.

As the 1950 Census is clearly the most anticipated records release this Spring, it certainly isn't the same old type of first day crash many of us witnessed in 2012 for the 1940 release. The biggest news tech-wise is that the at home time of many NARA folks was used to test and retest the new features of this massive 165TeraByte database
The most important feature will be researchers can use a new teted tool to submit corrections to names mistranscribed by the new Artificial Intelligence that scanned the handwritten entries of hundreds of thousands of enumerators nationwide on questionaires we all so greately love to peruse for just the right name. This is the first time researchers will have such an opportunity in U.S. history to quality review names of their relatives as they actually do their queries. The most dynamic new tools were clearly from MyHeritage with the Storytelling spoken option to the 2021 Animation of any ancestors animated portrait. We quickly learned we could edit each chapter of the spoken story, select from a fair variety of multiregional male and female voices of a fwe ages even, and that there is also a great timeline feature they are still working out some of the bugs on like missing death years for ancestors who we obviously had entered full dates for that should hve been extractable - it still provides a wonderfully useful view in the context of major global historical events and allows teh view to see clear overlap of lifetimes as well as what I call near misses that would have prevented us from even being here today. There are so many presentations, it is hared to pick a favorite in even the first month, but htat is why they will be available for a year, two, maybe three or more unless new technology makes them outdated so spend some quality free time viewing the key topics that interest you most and when you yearn for a new flavor, then try something completely new to you as well. They are usually 20 minutes to an hour to keep your attention and let you get up and move around between sessions, take a break, run an errand, etc. Most of us are prepping this week with the fastest ways to searhc out our ancestors ED#s based on their addresses for next Fridays big release which NARA say happens at 12:01 am on 1 APR this year to get an earlier start Genedocs members have my new filled in template to base their own off of and now you can to:

One more edit must add anoth3r column to this evolving 1950 Census Research Template thanks to Thomas MacEentee sharing how we can already search for Enumeration Districts at Ancestry in a beta version shared earlier today- Yay!

 

2020 Blogging Last Thing on Many Researchers' Minds:

Since before the U.S. Government Shutdown and Stay at Home orders in mid March We had and continue to have a deadly Pandemic with the Covid-19 "Corona" Virus and though it caused me to stay at home much of this year, sadly I elected not to blog.  Partly because social media was hugely distracting with all the political strife over who would be the 26th President of the United States following the astounding past four years, this years deadly Pandemic, and hopefully heal so much of what America needs to survive and thrive as a world leader during such trying times demanding tremendous personal and community resilience from the Atlantic to the Pacific span of the country and well beyond our own borders to long standing allies suffering similarly in their own cherished beautiful sovereign lands.

Did I personally get any research done - not hardly any that I recall unless it was related to ancestors living during the last pandemic in 1917-1919...it is hard to believe I was working on the world's last Pandemic Records for the U.S. Food Administration on a NARA work project just a few years ago and now we are sack dab in the middle of the next contagious world afflicting deadly virus just over 100 years later!

Yes the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted two whole years apparently and none of us can imagine going through a repeat of this year's craziness the overturned so much of day to day living no matter where you were, what your class level, what you thought you knew, who you supported, etc .  It is a shock that two NIELSEN great grandparents both died within three weeks of one another's passing both of that very deadly Spanish Flu in Denmark in the final year of that dreadful global disease.

  It was just as much as a shock that our paternal grandfather Richard Jelle, who later married one of their eldest grand daughters Dorothy, was to become the victim of TB while serving in WWI in the Philippines with another brother who I found the document at NARA showing they embarked from Angle Isle San Francisco out on the same ship the U.S. A. T. Sherman.  (Document and ship Images below) Richard was raised in part by an aunt from Norway because TB took his mother when he was just an infant revealing another reason siblings are so very much worth researching in any family as they are a huge part of why/how we even made it here and likely how/why some of our descendants will make it to the future on earth as well.

 

Richard also personally handed family another post card from his return trip from the pacific clearly via Nagasaki, JAPAN on the U.S. A. T. Thomas shown below.

 

2020 Had some positive sides to the down time like when MyHeritage offered Photo Enhancement and Colorization for Free to ALL Members through September - here are but a few of the best examples of my delights with using both those features for turning barely legible faces into crystal clear heirloom and book worthy delightful visual improvements!:

Genedocs Templates Facebook group reaches 8,000 members!

It has been far too long since I last posted to my blog, but clearly have been quite busy since in the end of May 2019 we finally crested the 8,000 member mark.  I extend sincere thanks to all who have helped spread the word to like minded folks around the globe to reach this amazing goal.

2017:

It is official - I have not blogged this year until today.  However, I have remained remarkably busy under considerable stress levels at work as well.  Here is a recap of 2017's biggest mentions:






November - Genedocs Templates group surpassed the initial 7,000 member milestone !!!

On Ancestry I stumbled across the passenger list of the Sherman WWI Army transport from San Francisco to Manila with our grandfather Richard Jelle and his brother Henry both listed on the same page.

We attended two great family weddings from September - November !!!

I also began a group for Nerf Rival in the local area - need more outdoor active recreation ;-)

I would have more but a PC crash left much inaccessible :-(

Family Legacy Protection 101

Who do you pay to protect your legacy on a regular basis to ensure it is safe from all reasonable threats?

     1. An Attorney?
     2. An Accountant?
     3. A Legacy Preservation Expert?
     4. A Surviving Former Victim of Harsh Attacks on their Family Legacy?

If you don't have all four covered, then your legacy is the most vulnerable to the threats most folks never see coming.

Who do you trust to bequeath your monetary legacy is one key part of protecting all you have worked so hard for over past decades, but there is much more than money to your legacy!

Who do you trust to bequeath your photographic and genealogical legacy?




Who do you entrust to bequeath your intellectual property?

Who will you be able to trust with your digital and on-line legacy?

It is a great deal to consider, but if you knew how things will turn out if you overlook each of these key legacy considerations, you would never wish the consequences upon any honorable person on earth.

More Rootstech 2016

There had to be some given returns  from 2015's Rootstech success and AJ Jaccobs was one for sure:

 Who would have thought we would all be donning medical masks this year?

 Beng an Ambassador, you get an up close and personal view of the stage and great periphery like this:

 

The expo hall is a huge reason many people come - hundreds of vendors all in one spot with new, improved, and exciting products and services!  What's not to love?

 

 Read the advert about this one that stood out for iphone users.

 

Geneabloggers abound in the media hub - where was I for this shot?  Photoshop specialist ahoy...

 

We were provided a great palace Map:

 

We were provided a decent Expo Hall Map:

Tami Osmer Mize ensured the vendor list was organized since the app didn't seem to be up at all:
Alphabetically first...

 

Then by vendor # to mate up with the map:

 

If you met me, then you were given one of these to adhere to your conference badge - Saturday folks wore wristbands which seemed a deterrent to the ribbon joy, but better creative planning next time ;-)

 

My planned schedule with purple check marks of my actual attended events - missing 7 sessions is not bad at all given all the folks I spent quality time with in lieu of each block of instruction.

I gave away more Genedocs hats than in 2013 and Carol advised we need to have a raffle for them next time!  I almost gave away some precious T-shirts just to be able to bring my conference bag back to TX.

 

I might even show up unexpectedly behind you at an after hours MyHeritage after party event with games, snacks, karaoke, and more!

 Rootstech is a blast no matter what year you decide to go - just make the most of every opportunity and encounter with every one you can meet!