March the 1^st. Remember that old saying about March? If it enters like a lamb, it will leave like a lion, and vice versa.

Look what greeted us on the morning of the second day of RootsTech.

Whoo boy.

The good news, if there was any, was that this was Friday’s forecast for Saturday, and of course, it might, just might, be wrong. Fingers crossed!

The second day of RootsTech was jam-packed, as you can see in the MyHeritage booth below. I wondered if one reason for the extra-large Friday crowd was the weather forecast for Saturday.

I had just finished my booth talk for MyHeritage titled “Leveraging Triangulation – From 3 to Many” and stepped aside to take a picture.

This half-hour presentation defined triangulation as a three-legged stool and discussed when and how to use triangulation at MyHeritage.

I covered:

• How to use close relatives, including parents, to determine which side your matches are on.
• Why you can’t use immediate family members for triangulation.
• How to use triangulation with Shared Matches and the Chromosome Browser
• How to use and verify Theories of Family Relativity with triangulation
• AutoClusters as a triangulation roadmap
• Using AutoClusters and triangulation to determine which DNA descends from whom
• Bonus hints

Maybe I should turn this presentation into a blog article. What do you think?

DNA Academy aka An Afternoon in the Life of a Presenter

I only had about 45 minutes between the end of the MyHeritage session and the beginning of my class, “DNA Academy: Pulling it All Together – Tests, Vendors, Tools & You.”

I’m very grateful that RootsTech provided the opportunity for this experimental full-afternoon session, which provided the underpinnings for other DNA classes and sessions.

I had practiced and practiced to ensure the slide and topic pacing was fast enough to get through all the slides but not so fast that I would lose people.

Losing someone in a class of this duration means that they miss everything thereafter – and that could be a lot more than your normal 45 to 50-minute class.

Therefore, I needed to be prepared to take questions during the class. That’s always a bit risky because some questions are more like a short story, and you don’t want to run out of time at the end for your slides.

So, yes, I was a bit nervous. I was also concerned about technology gremlins named Murphy that seem to be ever-present. I absolutely did NOT need gremlins attending too.

There was no time between sessions for any kind of a proper lunch. No time to stand in line for food. However, I had to eat since I would have no break until after the class ended at 4, and then only after all of the attendees had left. On Sunday, I had purchased Lunchables at the local grocery store, so I bought a container of fruit and a bag of Doritos at one of those quick grab-it places on the way to my classroom and had a picnic in the back of the room as attendees began filtering in.

I headed for the front of the room with my laptop bag just as the tech person arrived to assist with setup. RootsTech encourages speakers to use RootsTech-provided equipment since they know it’s set up correctly to work with the AV equipment. That makes sense, but I always bring mine, just in case.

RootsTech also generously provided a stool so I wouldn’t have to stand for the entire afternoon.

Our first challenge was that the audio wasn’t working correctly, and never really did. We worked on it until the session started, and I even sent for the tech after the session began.

Eventually, after much fiddling around, I gave up and took the lavalier off. I held it near my mouth for the entire afternoon after finding that “sweet spot” with the assistance of everyone in attendance. We needed to find the mic position where people in the back of the room could hear me, it wasn’t so close it sounded like I was spitting, and we weren’t getting feedback. That seemed to be about a quarter-inch window. It was not ideal, but it worked, and I was very grateful for the audience’s help and patience. Teamwork!

The second challenge was that the RootsTech laptop defaulted to “Presenter View,” which means that your Powerpoint slide is in the upper left quadrant of the laptop screen, the next slide is shown at right, and “speaker notes,” if you’ve created any, appear at the bottom.

I don’t use speaker notes because I don’t want to sound like I’m reading aloud. Therefore, I never use Presenter View. I use the slides to remind me of what to say, and I know what’s coming next.

I initially thought, “Fine, so long as the slide advance works.” It wasn’t until after I began, and after the AV tech was long gone that I realized how small the RootsTech laptop screen was, meaning how SMALL my current slide was. To my horror, I realized that I couldn’t clearly see some portions of my slides.

OH NO!!!

I couldn’t exactly take my glasses off, lean over the podium, and squint. No, that would never do. I also couldn’t move the laptop closer without disrupting the setup and cables.

I also couldn’t see the movie screen to my left that attendees were viewing because I was positioned directly beside the screen and only slightly forward. I could see that the image was showing on the screen, but I couldn’t read anything on the image from that angle.

Crumb!

Therefore, I really had no good or detailed view of my own presentation – for 2.5 hours.

All I can say is that it’s a VERY good thing that I obsessively practice ahead of time, because that’s the ONLY thing that got me through.

I asked for the tech again to assist with the audio issues after trying multiple ways to adjust things myself, and he sent a message back to just move the lavalier up on my clothing. It was already as high as it could be placed, so not helpful.

Why am I telling you this? Often, people often don’t realize how much is beyond the speakers’ control and how much we just roll with the punches as best we can. Attendees are acutely aware of their experience, especially when it’s sub-optimum, and often blame the speaker.

One attendee asked if I could raise the image projection on the screen towards the top. I couldn’t control the image location at all. I knew that if one person couldn’t see because the image was too low on the screen, other people probably couldn’t either, and I felt awful.

Speakers are used to overcoming challenges, but no one wants to attempt to simultaneously overcome and compensate for several issues in the same presentation.

I wound up apologizing more than once to the class. These people had been kind enough to choose this long class and I wanted their experience to be the best possible.

I was very grateful for the people who said something positive afterward and for this person who left feedback on my blog.

A number of people were unhappy because the session wasn’t either live-streamed or recorded. Speakers have no way of knowing or influencing which sessions RootsTech selects for broader consumption. I’m sure they want to livestream a mixture of topics that would interest a variety of people.

I’ve reached out to Legacy Family Tree Webinars to see if they are interested in this class, although I would need to divide it into thirds. I want to leverage this effort and make it available to others who can benefit.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars are free to everyone for the first week, then available in the subscription library.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Ancestry Announcements

After DNA Academy ended, I headed back to the show floor. The second day of RootsTech is always the “late night” with activities until about 7:30. They close earlier, around 5, on the first day, and at 3 on the final day.

I was interested in Ancestry’s announcements and if I had missed anything from the earlier recorded session.

Of course, Ancestry was selling DNA tests. At RootsTech, Ancestry announced that it now has 25 million testers in its database.

Sitting inside the booth, I saw Crista Cowan, the Barefoot Genealogist who is also Ancestry’s corporate genealogist. I noticed the cast on her wrist and felt terrible for her, trying to navigate RootsTech and minor other activities, like, say, eating and presenting and the basic activities of daily living. Been there, done that, and it’s no fun. Crista said that she had discovered that one cannot create PowerPoint slides in a cast, especially when it’s your dominant hand. And I thought I had challenges.

Like I was saying about speakers compensating and making it happen, one way or another…

I’m not going to steal Crista’s thunder about how she became “The Barefoot Genealogist,” but if you don’t know, you can watch her RootsTech presentation here.

So, what else is in Crista’s presentation? What has Ancestry announced?

• Family Groups. Ancestry announced the ability to create a group of people in a family who are working on a common goal, facilitating collaboration.
• The Family Groups feature will be available to all accounts, LDS, paid, free, library, whatever.
• You will be able to assign tasks to people in the group. For example, Mom could be assigned to scan the family photos, upload them, note who they are and other relevant information
• A “Memories” feature will support either recording or uploading audio which can tell the story of a picture.
• A new Family Plan, currently only available in the US, allows you to pay for one subscription and add four people. I have seen pricing, but Ancestry has many different plans, and I’m unclear what is and is not included in the Family Plan. So if you’re interested, I’d suggest reaching out to Ancestry.
• Ancestry continues to add historical records at a rapid pace.

• Ancestry was indexing 2-3 million records per day. With the launch of the 1950 census, which utilized handwriting recognition and AI, they are now indexing millions more each month, according to Crista’s slide.
• Ancestry is re-imaging Newspapers.com pages using the same technology, which provides much more than OCR, which is plagued by issues such as image quality and lack of intelligence.
• One example of new features is that previously, some people were mentioned only by association, such as Mrs. John Doe. Now, Mrs. John Doe can potentially be recognized as Susan Doe or even Susan Jones Doe, based on other articles and information.
• Ancestry has created a new Stories and Events Index, which indexes the records by category, such as marriages or law and order.
• However, and this is important, these new re-imaged records are NOT found when you do a global search through Ancestry because, in layman’s terms, there are so many that they crash the system.
• Ancestry added 16 billion records from newspaper collections last year. You can find a hint or go directly to the newspaper database. Check the specific collection because you may not find the information searching generally.

You can find the Historical Newspapers Collection under the Search tab.

Crista was also being plagued by technical gremlins to this point. It’s obvious that she was well-practiced too, as she barely missed a beat.

Crista encourages people to use the Card Catalog to view the new newspaper record collections.

Here’s what’s showing in my Card Catalog Records Collection view.

• Moving to DNA announcements, Crista stated that with 25 million people in the database, Ancestry has 88 ethnicity regions and now more than 2500 DNA Communities.

• The 88 ethnicity regions represent ancestors 500-1000 years ago, while the 2500 communities are formed by a genetic network of people related within approximately 200 years.
• Ancestry now has 120 million family trees that are mined for location information.
• Ancestry introduced 203 Communities in Ireland this past year. Crista mentioned that this means that those communities are as granular as counties and that now she knows where to search for her Irish ancestor. I hope she has only one Irish ancestor, and he’s close enough in time. I’m also hoping that the granularity of Communities provides very specific hints.
• Ancestry added 413 African American Communities in the southern US and Caribbean – some to within a 10-mile radius.
• Ancestry added 352 Mexico Communities.
• More Communities are planned to be released every 3-4 months or so during this next year. In other words, you’ll need to check from time to time, as there won’t be a specific large update for everyone.
• Traits and Communities, by parent, will be added within SideView

If you recall, SideView features now require either a full subscription, or a Plus subscription for DNA features. You can read about that here and here.

Pro Tools

Crista shifted gears here to discuss Pro Tools, which she described as tools that aren’t necessarily for pros, but are new ways to view family history.

Pro Tools is NOT the same as the DNA SideView features that are behind the regular Ancestry subscription or the Plus paywall.

Pro Tools was recently introduced. Crista didn’t mention this in the video, but Pro Tools costs an ADDITIONAL $10 per month, regardless of whether or not you have a full, World, or Plus subscription. In other words, you’ll pay another $120 per year to access Pro Tools

There are two schools of thought about this.

1. Some people are furious that Ancestry added an entirely new subscription instead of adding these functions to the full or Plus subscription level.
2. Some people are glad that Ancestry didn’t raise the cost of the full subscription by $120 per year, allowing people NOT to subscribe to these new Pro-Tools features if they don’t want them.

New features will be added under Pro Tools soon.

New shared matches view:

• The predicted relationship and how many cMs your shared matches share with any other shared match will be available in the first half of 2024.
• If shared matches triangulate.

Future Enhancements

• Ability to group shared matches into custom groups with one click using “select all”
• Ability to sort by your matches’ closest matches
• Highlight matches that have triangulated shared segments

Nope – No Chromosome Browser

People have been speculating for some time that Ancestry might have been going to add a Chromosome Browser. Nope, they didn’t.

Crista didn’t mention this, but discussion elsewhere revealed that the triangulated segment information will NOT include:

• The number of triangulated segments
• The size of triangulated segments
• Segment location information
• A chromosome browser

At this point, I have no plan to subscribe to Pro Tools. I feel like Ancestry is essentially teasing us. “Yes, you have a triangulated segment with two other people, but, sorry, we’re not going to tell you where it is.” It’s like they get us right up to the edge of something useful, within sight and sniffing distance, then, boom, dropped like a hot potato. To add insult to injury, we have to pay separately for the teaser, even with a full subscription. The best we could do, I think, is hope that one or some of the triangulated people have a tree so we can determine who the common ancestor or ancestral line might be. If we’re really lucky, there might be a ThruLine formed.

I’ll leave it at that, but I am not one bit happy about the features that are still excluded, and that the included features require yet another subscription.

I realize that after years of saying that segment information violates Ancestry’s perception of privacy, it would be difficult for Ancestry to reverse its position at this point.

Standing in the booth later, someone commented that they were surprised that Ancestry is going to provide estimated relationships between shared matches and shared cM amounts to each other. Crista said that Ancestry had needed to “work out some privacy stuff” first.

Perhaps this is the furthest Ancestry feels that they can move without entirely reversing their long-standing chromosome browser privacy position.

For those who want to work with segment information and a chromosome browser, you can upload your Ancestry DNA file to FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and GEDmatch. You’ll find step-by-step instructions here.

After visiting the Ancestry booth, I moved on to other vendors on the show floor.

Goldie May

I hadn’t heard of Goldie May until Drew Smith introduced me recently. Thanks Drew!

You can take a look at their genealogy organizational tools, but their best feature for genealogists who give presentations is the ability to blur names in screenshots.

This feature, available under Goldie May Pro for $24 per month, senses names and blurs them along with associated profile photos for you. The lack of blurring is one reason I never do anything live or make “how-to” videos.

Right now, this feature only works for Ancestry pages, but hopefully, it will soon work for pages of other DNA vendors and DNAPainter.

DNAPainter

Speaking of DNAPainter, they are one of my favorite third-party vendors. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not related to Jonny, and I pay full price for my subscription, just like all of you.

I mention this only because DNAPainter appears in just about every presentation I create about autosomal DNA and matches, regardless of the vendor – except Ancestry, of course.

I saw Jonny sitting at a table, showing someone how to paint their matching segments.

One person who attended the conference agreed to a 10-minute DNAPainter lesson after dinner with a friend – only 10 minutes, though, because he was tired! Although his friend was long asleep, he was still painting at 4 AM  and had surpassed the 50% mark of his painted chromosomes assigned to known ancestors. I think we have a new convert!

You can find DNAPainter instructions here.

On the corner of the table was a shared cM relationship map, one of the free tools that Jonny offers in collaboration with others in the community.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture of Jonny in his very cool striped tennis shoes that look amazingly like painted chromosomes.

I remember the first time I saw Jonny in 2018, looking very nervous at RootsTech, standing by himself in a small booth the first year he introduced DNApainter. I had never heard of DNAPainter.

In 2018, Jonny was a candidate in the new tech innovation contest, which he won. This motivated me to try DNAPainter myself, leading to another award at the beginning of 2019.

How things have changed in six years. Now, EVERYONE knows Jonny Perl. He was included in the 25-year genetic genealogy celebration as someone who has shaped the industry, and he’s no longer standing nervously alone in his booth. Also, he has way cool shoes now!!

In fact, it’s hard to find Jonny alone at any time to take a picture.

I just love success stories!

More Friends on the Show Floor

I knew Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist, was at RootsTech and presenting, but I hadn’t actually seen her yet. By now, I’m sure almost everyone has had the opportunity to hear Judy speak, but I’ve often said that if Judy were talking about dirt, I’d attend because it would be funny, witty, and educational.

I found Judy, in her second-generation signature pink jacket, hanging out with Janine Cloud in the FamilyTreeDNA booth.

Friday was the late evening at RootsTech. People were getting tired and hungry, and most attendees had already left by 7:30 when the Expo Hall officially closed.

In the center of the hall, near the front, FamilySearch had a “garden” or “park” area with park benches and fun games like chess.

As I was walking out, I noticed Bennett Greenspan, at left, playing park chess with Katherine Borges, Director of ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, at right.

I had a good chuckle as I realized that assembling the DNA of our ancestors and applying it meaningfully to our genealogy is like playing chess.

Warning

We had been hoping all day that the weather forecast would change for the better.

Maybe it wouldn’t snow at all.

Maybe it wouldn’t snow much.

Uh-oh!!

It was cold, and the wind was blowing hard as we exited the Salt Palace, whipping our hair into our faces and eyes.

Everything felt ominous. Even the locals were worried.

Attendees were heading home early, and even those who had to stay and work on Saturday were trying to change their flights to Saturday afternoon in the hope that they could escape before the brunt of the storm hit.

Airlines were contacting passengers with weather advisories, saying they could change their flights without charge. They were hoping to get people out ahead of the storm.

The various weather services showed different scenarios. One reported that it would be 33 degrees and rain until just after lunch, when it would turn to snow.

Another predicted that it would be 31 and blizzard conditions with 4-6 inches of snow and whiteout conditions by noon.

What? “Hurricane-force gusts”? You’re kidding, right? But they weren’t. This was no joke.

No one knew what to expect, and local people were bidding us adieu, saying they weren’t planning to be back on Saturday.

What would we wake up to on Saturday morning? What about flights? And hotel rooms? What would we be facing?

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DNA Purchases and Free Uploads

• FamilyTreeDNA – Y, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA testing
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Genealogy Products and Services

• MyHeritage Subscription with Free Trial
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• Genealogical.com – Lots of wonderful genealogy research books
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Genealogy Research

• Legacy Tree Genealogists – Professional genealogy research