The day has finally come.  I arrived in Salt Lake City for the first time ever and for the biggest Rootstech Conference ever!  5000 people have already registered to attend in person!  Tens of thousands more will surely be following on-line streaming of the sessions (50,000 did last year!).

I only have 2500 contact cards so only one out of every two physical attendees may get this momentous souvenir and keepsake for this phenomenal occasion of genealogy and innovative development colliding for the third consecutive year.


I only have 10 vendor ordered T-shirts and 3 homemade hats for swag so I made need some linebackers to keep from getting run over to figure out what firsts will qualify attendees to be the lucky very few recipients! ...and they came over the hill in droves!

     See y'all in the morning or tonight if you found out the good place to eat ;-D

5 Days to Rootstech!

WOW! - It is extremely exciting to be so close (and a bit panicky;-) to be attending my first Rootstech Conference and first ever visit to Salt Lake City.  I have only driven in eastern Utah so this should be a great adventure.

I have 2500 contact cards to provide folks attending which should cover half of the possibly 5,000 people attending.

There also will be an extremely limited number of Genedocs T-Shirts (XL only) randomly given to conference attendees in a pretty random sequence (shown below):


0.  First person to offer me a ride from the Crystal Inn Thursday 

1. First Person in the Salt Palace to greet me.

2. First Genealogy Blogger to meet me.

3. First Person to recognize me by face and greet me by name and title.

4.  First person to sit next to me at a Keynote address.

5.  First attendee to sit next to me in me first session (I'll be at the end of one table to avoid ties ;-D

6.+ To be determined later!

Keeping it short with so much to do and hoping to see you there.  

The Countdown - 5 Weeks to Rootstech 2013!

Late posting from about two weeks ago (sorry!)    

For the next five weeks I will probably be luck to post even any imagery since there is so much other stuff to keep busy with, but I will try:

National Archives Work - and applying for new position/promotion slots
DeVryMarketing Class - forth class from 2013 graduation!
Daily facebook template example postings
Rootstech prearations:
    1.  Design, Select, and Print NEW Conference Contact Cards - (TXGen Conference was a big help)
    2.  Design, order, Print Genedocs Conference T-Shirts (decide random selection process of who will
         be chosen to recieve these limited edition Genedocs Swag items!)
    3.  Mass print Genedocs trifold brochures and any other key material
    4.  Continue preparing some of the best Demo Power Point Presentations on earth! 
          - these will likely only be made available to attendees present - I may add a sequnce of screenshots 
            for the blog while attending too - we'll see what pans out!
    5.  Misc. other creative items if any time left

Enjoy!

200,000+ Completed Family Group Sheets by Surname!

(Preparing slowly for Rootstech and moving from finals of Marketing and on into Business Law course)

Every so often we find a great site to share and Bill Yates certainly has created one here with hundreds of thousands of client completed family groupsheets for affordable price and searchabel and purchasable by your SURNAMES in his catalog at this link: 

http://www.yates.montana.com/catalogue.html
Bill has hundreds of thousands of family group sheets from his clients (...yes completed in the best way they can) indexed by SURNAME at this site. You can simply use CTRL + F to search for your surnames and see what he has for your tree names!

     I shared the Genedocs Family Group Sheet idea with him via e-mail to get word out to his many many loyal clients who would love to have photographs on their sheets and not be limited to six to 10 people per sheet. His pricing seems very reasonable and you can send him your digital sheets to add to the index if your at a brick wall and need cousins to find your details. (Always mind the privacy of the living before you hit 'Send".

What a great idea Bill! It would be perfect if it were FREE, but there is clearly a good bit of organizational work involved;-)

My Rootstech Sessions

With about 5 weeks left until Rootstech 2013, I figured now is as good a time to announce the sessions I look forward to attending and why:

THU March 21_________________________________________________________
( Hey! -February and March this year are nearly identical except for the last 3 days!)

11AM - Noon: Future of Genealogy by Thomas MacEntee
                        To finally meet the blogmaster and hear this genealogy ninja present live

145 - 245PM:  Create Your Own Online Research Class by Anne Metcalf
                        This sounds very useful and may be very effective for a future presentation venue

300 - 400PM:  Finding Needles in haystacks! Powerful Search Features in Family Search
                        Search Engine by Phil Dunn
                         I am a die hard familysearch user, but with all the changes this never hurts to know more!

415 - 515PM:  TBA Open Block...Hmm!

Passing on the museum for the evening to strategize for FRIDAY!

FRI March 22___________________________________________________________

945 - 1045AM:  Where is Lost Relative - Finding Living Family Members by Lorinda Mann
                           Now who doesn't want to find more brick wall crushing cousins?!

11AM - Noon:  Screen Capture by Lisa B Lee
                          I do this all the time and can't wait to finally meet Lisa the master.
11AM - Noon:  Plan B if Lisa's Session is packed - Family Search Family Tree by Ron Tanner'
                         This is an exciting sounding new feature from the TXGen Conference in Nov 2012
                          so it would be great to learn more!

145 - 245PM:  Genographic Project 2.0 by Cece Moore
                        Spencer Wells orignial work and TV production on how all humans are related took my
                        breath away for obvious reasons so keeping up with his work will be phenomenal!

300 - 400PM:  Using Excel to Create Timelines by Robert Raymond
                        Why wouldn't and Excel Guru want to learn and share more from this powerhouse

EVENING AT THE LIBRARY

SAT March 23___________________________________________________________

945 - 1045: Digital Photo Metadata by Randy Whited
                   Randy is great so this should be excellent again

11AM - NOON:  Possibly Mastering Google  by Lisa Louise Cooke
        OR
11AM - NOON:  The late breaking content session they said I couldn't snag ;-)

145 - 245PM:  Open Source Tools by Joshua Taylor
                        Josh is at the top of his game moving upward
      OR
145 - 245PM:  Ten Habits of Successful Genealogists by Barry Ewell
                        Couldn't we all benefi from this kind of sharing?

300 - 400PM:  Digital Storytelling - More than Bullet Points By Denise Barrett Olson
                        This sounds like a great wrap up before the trip to the airport.


Subject to Change at any time of course ;-)  Hoping to see you there!







                        

Digital vs. Hardcopy Saturday

Throughout our careers in various fields of work, we each gain level of expertise in the specific segments of business that we are relied upon.  As a genealogist, I have found tremendous value in the unusual overlap of my fields and segments of work since my honorable discharge from the Air Force in 2000:

2000 - 2001:  Family Services Counselor with Service Corporation International
2001 - 2003:  Cemetery Office Manager with Service Corporation International

2003 - 2005:  Van Driver with Docuvault records management company

2005 - 2006:  Army Casualty Office Contract Lead with Chugach McKinley Incorporated

2006 - 2008:  Branch Supervisor with Docuvault

2008 - 2009:  Operations Supervisor with Iron Mountain records management company

2010 - 2010:  Office Clerk with the U.S. Census Bureau

2011 - Now:  Archives Aid with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Many people viewing such a work history on a resume' would simply be hesitant, afraid, or perhaps even intimidated by such a broad array of titles and mixed organizations.  However, each position worked in has one factor in common.  Each involved working with information and records on some level or another.  I was writing sales agreements for nearly a year with SCI and then reviewing and approving or rejecting over a million dollars worth of the same business contracts over the next two years.  The following two years I carried tens of thousands of boxes full of records in both hard copy and digital format to and from clients all over the Colorado Springs and surrounding area.  The next year, I found myself supervising not only a staff of three casualty contractors working with the reporting and tracking of combat and non combat related deaths and the entire gamut of GWOT injuries, but also benefits applications for survivors and the often completely unprepared officers selected to perform line of duty investigations on their comrades for determinng similar benefit eligibility.  I gained a new found respect for the value of a current DD Form 93 that hadn't been realized while I myself was in service of Uncle Sam.  My return to Docuvault to supervise opened up new perspectives on physical and digital records management as I strengthened the solid founded relationships with many key client organization contacts.  When Iron Mountain purchased Docuvault, the job changed little other than the tools and processes of a new international parent company.  The next year, the 2010 Decennial Census reminded me of the importance of details in records as hundreds of thousands of enumeration questionnaires passed through our hands with record breaking efficiency in only a few months.  A new job at NARA seems only natural with even more remarkable learning of how our nation handles all federal agencies' hardcopy and digital records. 

     So what is this experts oppinion on hardcopy versus digital records?  I deeply respect the value of the traditional hardcopy document with its feel and look and smell of decades or even sometimes centuries of authenticity just as truthfully as I hold my ancestors hardcopy files organized by individual in a few containers that would surely be at the tope of my list of things to grab in case of a fire.

     I also truly understand and appreciate the astounding recent capabilites and those yet to come from the digitally preserved documents scanned and preserved for people to be able to view perhaps thousands of years from now.  It is nothing less than completely remarkable that we can now store dozens of Gigabites on a thumb/flash drive USB that fits on your keyring or even in your wallet and absurdly phenomenal that you can hold a device with a few terrabytes in the palm of your hand or pocket.

    The honest answer I have for which is better or more necessary is that for now they certainly both are equally needed.  One day I envision when the documents we type up from templates and save will not ever go to a printer, but only be saved to a computer drive with an ultra secure backup copy elsewhere.  All documents will be e-mailed or skyped or whatever the next technology affords.  One day we will all go digital, but for now enjoy the ancient seeming hard copy documents that may one day end up on Antiques Roadshow or in museums around the world.  We are bound and determined to digitize all the information of our world and existence.  It is an unstoppable wave we must continue to ride.

How to Cut Your Genealogy Conference Costs

     Technically, Rootstech 2013 will be my third genconference event after one at the LDS Stake in Colorado Springs which was great and the November Texas Genealogy Society Conference in my back yard of Fort Worth.  They just keep getting bigger and better! At first I wasn't sure I could manage to budget the conference, but then applied some assertive qualifying and price fishing tactics that made it possible.  I think other conference goers and especially many want-to-go-next-timers will find this analysis useful in making a possibility into an exciting actuality on their genealogy desired to-do lists.  Personally speaking, I was so excited in 2010 and 11 to keep up with the first conference, but also bitter sweetly depressed that I couldn't be there to offer the thousands of tech savvy genea-cohorts there the most amazing and innovative tools that genealogy has seen since the designing of the first pedigree chart and first family group sheet!  It pushed me though to compete from home in 2012 in the Developers Challenge which I sadly didn't place in.  So my resilience and a holiday loan at the last minute made it possible for this grass roots innovative style of free genealogy tools to launch in a few months into the biggest brightest genconference in the entire United States!

First Cost Estimates:
Registration (early bird)................$149
Lunches 3 days of conference.......$75
Air Fare......................................$1,055
Lodging.........................................$370
Total...........................................$1649

     It was looking like I'd need a few book publishing deals to even start to afford this estimate.
Then I dug deeper...

Final Cost Pricing:
Registration
(early bird Student rate at DeVry......$39  Great! - cut $110!
Lunches 3 days of conference...........$75
Air Fare......(via priceline)...............$394 WOW - saved $661!
Lodging..........................................$370
Total..............................................$878 = Phenomenally more affordable!

So if you get frustrated with pricing, be sure to TRY AGAIN especially with airlines and double check if you can qualify as a presenter (who may still receive FREE lodging as was provided in 2011), student, vendor of key conference services or products, etc.

If you are headed to Salt Lake in March, I can't wait to see and talk with you!