Keynote 1 Continued:

familysearch CEO

SHOCKER:
According to UNICEF 40% of all people on earth will be born , live, and die without leaving any record behind.
Nepalese women expectant working in the fields who were going right back into the fields after birth were understandably facing higher infant mortality rates, but remarkably, when they were offered a certificate for the birth of their child , they agreed to receive the life and death difference only post natal care can provide.

Rootstech Expansion News:
Likelihood of Conference Coming to a City Nearer You!

This year a mini-rootstech was on trial in Kansas City to gauge how practical expansion is to other major cities.  If it goes well, then next year or two will shoot for nation wide locations in major cities and following year to go global shooting for 160,000 attendees by 2015 in 16 or more countries!

KEYNOTE 1:

Dennis Brimhall / CEO of Familysearch.org

TOPICS:

- Only Two Survivors Within Reach After WWII,

- Rootstech Global Vision,

- New Familysearch Logo!

Ancestry Insider blog  here has some great coverage too at  http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/

Genedocs' take:

Immigration Records and Itialian Records Digitization Projects

Q: "What will out great great grandchildren wish we would have done/"
A: "Record and Preserve therich fabric of our lives."

Amazing Share:
His father was shot down in WWII bomber and taken as a POW by the Germans.  Dnnis' daughter published a book on this small key swath of fabric entitled " My Mission to Fulfill".  Also his father had been living fin the same town for decades with the only other survivor of the shot down planes of that bombing mission.  They actually exchanged a glanc and two words on the chute decent down into the sky amidst firey hunks of their respective planes - the other fwllow falling faster with a burning chute!  The two words the other fellow said to him on the way down:  "Hey buddy".  That other fellow actually took photos of Dennis' father's plane as it was shot and busrt into flames and the film survived too for his daughters book on her grandfather!  The antiaircraft flak was overwhelming and the film captures such a pivotal life or death moment for Dennis' father as he was violently hurled out of the burning falling wreckage.  The two men had no idea for years and years that theylived in thesame town and passed one another doubtlessly dozens if not hundreds of times until one day they identified a unit patch in common while close enogh once again to exchange comments.  "hey buddy" became two unbelievable words in a split second.

 more to follow

Phenomenal 2013 Rootstech Opening Day

Summary for my brave few followers ;-)
[SNOWED FIRECELY FOR WALK FROM SHUTTLE TO PALACE]
PS Who cares - I'm now from Fort Worth where we need the snow ;-)


Keynotes:  These were all phenomenal with standouts of Syd Leibermans stories - OMG he was perfect for this, Joshua Taylor's drive for the tech demand of attracting youth via Genegaming apps - very passionate and authentic.

Expo Hall:  Packed with vendors all genealogy related, not as many tech booths as previous years (from what others were telling me at lunch courtesy of NEHGS) Many charting and other service providers (still not in all the the dimensions of the Hybrid Chart yet;-).

Sessions:  I made it to all but one - the FamilySearch session was filled up early somehow.

     Anne Metcalf's Session was stupendously useful admidst even a barage of A/V interference - Thnak you Anne

    I finally met the Genea-Ninja and Thomas MacEntee was great in hsi flip pal scanner session.
 

T-Shirt Update:
Only three given away - first to introduce herself, first to sit next to me in the keynote, and first to sit next to me in a session. Seven more to go!

Off to Bed and On to an Even better Friday!                          

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;-)