RootsTech 2024 --Day 1 Online

Day 1 Highlights:  

FamilySearch Tech Forum

100 Million Records Searchable with Full Text Search

This is so exciting for me.  I had the opportunity to use the AI search prototype they had available in 2023.  In the few days I had it, it was mind-blowing how many new records I found.

US Land & Probate Records and Mexico Notary Records are currently the only available collections to browse.

Plantation Records records were also mentioned 

See Family Search Labs page for 

https://www.familysearch.org/labs/

Early Release of Family Group Trees

Check FamilySearch Labs for new products under development

MyHeritage has redesigned their profile page.  See their blog post about it at the following link.

https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/02/introducing-all-new-profile-pages-with-hints/

Also don't forget they are offering Access to All DNA Features with DNA uploaded thru March 4th, 2024.  This is the perfect time for those who have tested at AncestryDNA or other sites to upload and get tools for dna analysis for free.

My Virtual Attendee Session Schedule

• 9:00 AM Fixing Sticky Problems in FamilySearch Family Tree--Kathryn Grant  

            This was a great presentation and was very helpful in simplifying the process of making corrections that are due to bad merges and  incorrect relationships.  

Fixing Process

1. Fix Incorrect Merges
2. Fix Incorrect relationships
3. Fix incorrect info and sources.

Half the battle for me has always been trying to figure out the best procedure for correcting.  I've about got my pedigree corrected thru my 2nd Great Grandparents.

Check out the templates that Kathryn has on her website.  

Timeline Grid Information and Templates

Other Templates

• 10:30 AM Who is My Ancestor? Tracing Individuals with Similar Names--D. Joshua Taylor

Joshua's discussion of the 5 step strategy for identifying & tracing individuals with similar names is one we all as family history researchers can use.  

"The best way to know who your ancestor IS, is to know who your ancestor ISN'T"

He talked about using Timelines ,which is one of my favorite strategies for same name research.  The importance of writing and sharing your findings about those same named ancestors can not be stressed enough.

• 1:15 PM Genetic Genealogy Turns 25: DNA Experts Tell Their Stories--Diahan Southard

Happy Birthday, Genetic Genealogy!!  It was great to hear all the experts talk about their start in genetic genealogy research.

• 2:30 PM What’s New at Ancestry® in 2024 Crista Cowan
• Family Groups
• Memories--upload stories, audio, photos(you can organize in albums)
• Life and Times in the US Stories & Events --Newspapers.com   https://www.ancestry.com/c/newspapers
• Sideview Traits and Communities by parent
• DNA--Communities Updated.  We should expect an update about every 3-4 months for the communities although you can be added to a community at any time if there are enough testers with DNA in common showing they all belong to that specific community
• Pro Tools

• 4:00 PM Innovation and Tech Forum 2024 RootsTech

There were presentations by each of the following companies
about their latest projects and how they are harnessing the power of AI to use
in order to bring family history to life.

• Microsoft Copilot
• LivingHistory.AI 
• Storied
• EmulateMe

To be honest, this afterlife and dead relative talk kind of creeped me out.  I love AI as it pertains to indexing and gathering information.

These were just the classes that I viewed.  There are many more available.  For more in depth information on the days events check out any of the classes or online expo hall at

RootsTech website