'Who do you think you are? - Live' is almost here

I still have more to say about Rootstech, which has dominated my posts of late (and not just mine), but I will give it a rest for a while, since this weekend sees the 5th annual Who do you think you are? - Live at the Olympia exhibition centre.

Show highlights

It has been described as 'The largest genealogy event in the English-speaking world' by Dick Eastman, who comes all the way from the USA every year for this event (OK, he missed last year, but only because of a clash of dates). Dick will not be the only American visitor; the New England Historic Genealogical Society will have a presence for the second year running, and as usual the FamilySearch stand will be staffed by a combination of helpers from the London Family History Centre and a party who come over from Salt Lake City each year. The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) will also have a stand; this is an international organisation with members all over the world (including me), but with a high proportion of American members. Look out for a number of American speakers on the extensive programme of workshops.

Ireland is also well represented, as usual, by the National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the Irish Family History Foundation, Eneclann and Tourism Ireland. Tourism Ireland are also the sponsors of all the Irish talks in the Society of Genealogists regional workshops.

There is also the popular Military Pavilion on the mezzanine floor, where you will find a wealth of help and expertise, including the Military Memorabilia Checkpoint, and exhibitors such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Western Front Association.

The website

The printed Show Guide is quite widely available, but obviously had to go to print in advance, so you will find the most up-to-date information on the Who do you think you are? - Live website. Unfortunately the site is rather disappointing; the point size of most of the text is very small, and some of the colours could have been better chosen, so it's not always easy to read if your eyesight is less than perfect. The list of exhibitors is particularly poor, with very small orange text on a white background, and the list itself could be more helpful - some exhibitors are listed twice, and for many of them there is no extra information when you click on the name, let alone a link to a website. Whether this is the fault of the exhibitors, or of the organisers, it is impossible to tell, but it is a pity either way. The 'Starting Your Family Tree' page suggests that one of the stands you should visit at the show is the Probate Service, but they don't appear on the list of exhibitors. There whole site appears not to have been proof-read very carefully, and together with its other shortcomings it gives an overall impression of lack of care.

HOWEVER you shouldn't let the failings of the website put you off the show itself, which is visited by thousands of people every day that it is open, and who have a good time there. And people come back year after year, some of them from overseas, so the organisers are obviously doing something right! I'd rather have a good show and an indifferent website than the other way round, but getting both right would be even better.

Some tips

I will be there all day, on all three days, some of it as part of my job, and the rest as a volunteer and interested bystander. I am looking forward to meeting up with many old friends (and a few new ones I haven't met in person yet). As a veteran of all the previous WDYTYA Live events, and the Society of Genealogists shows for many years before that, I have learnt a few things over the years.

• Getting there; on Saturday and Sunday in particular there are often engineering works on the railways and London Transport, so check the Transport for London Journey Planner even if you think you know your route. 
• And of course wear comfortable shoes, because you will spend an awful lot of time walking or standing. 
• If you want to attend any of the free workshops, go and get your tickets as soon as you arrive, because the most popular ones can 'sell' out very quickly.  
• Food outlets in the hall tend to be expensive and have long queues at peak times, so you may want to bring your own food. Even if you don't come with a full-on picnic, I'd definitely advise bringing your own bottle of water, because it can get warm in there, and all that networking can make you very thirsty!
• If the cloakroom is in the same place as last year, it's not the most accessible I have seen; it's up a flight of stairs and can become congested. If the weather is not too bad, you might choose to travel as light as you can and carry your coat or jacket with you.

Feel free to ignore as much of the above as you like. I won't be checking up on you.

Have a great time - see you there!

Rootstech - Laundry on a line becomes laundry online

I might have overlooked this session on the Rootstech schedule, with 9 other excellent competing attractions to choose from in the same time slot. Fortunately, I had been at dinner a few nights before with a group that included Patricia Van Skaik from the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, and someone asked her about the presentation she would be giving on Saturday morning. I knew nothing about the Fontayne and Porter Daguerreotype before, and I have no particular interest in Cincinnati, but it sounded fascinating, so I decided there and then that this was a session I must not miss.

The room was packed, almost standing-room only, with a very appreciative audience. Patricia told her tale with great enthusiasm and an evident deep knowledge of her subject. The story of the  Cincinnati Panorama, as it is also known, is interesting enough in itself; it turns out to be the oldest photographic representation of urban America, and consists of eight 6.5" by 8.5" plates showing the Cincinnati waterfront in 1848, from Newport, Ky, on the opposite bank of the Ohio river. But the detective work involved in dating the picture, and the advanced technology used in restoring it are even more absorbing. It was featured in Wired magazine, where you can see some of the details. And what details! Although they could not be seen with the naked eye, or even a magnifying glass, a microscope scanner used by conservators at George Eastman House revealed details as fine as the time on a clock face that was only a millimetre wide on the Daguerreotype.

Astonishing as these details are, it is what can be done with them that is really exciting. Although none of the buildings in the picture still exists, this picture can be used to recreate the Cincinnati of 1848. Using directories, census, maps and a host of other records, it has been possible to identify buildings and their occupants. One of the close-up shots we saw featured some laundry hanging out to dry - little did its owners suspect that more than a century and a half later, the result of this unremarkable activity would be on display for all to see. Not only is the panorama on display in the Cincinnati Public Library, it is going to be the subject of a brand new website, hopefully later this year. Hence the cheesy title for this post - sorry, couldn't resist it. Got your attention though, didn't it?

As befits a technology event, Rootstech had an online facility where attendees could vote for the best presenters of each day, and I was delighted to see that Patricia won that prize for Saturday. she certainly deserved it.

Rootstech - good news from Ireland

There are so many sessions to choose from at a big conference like Rootstech that it's hard to know which of them to choose. But I am always keen to find out what is going on the world of Irish research, so I made sure that I went to hear Brian Donovan give us the latest on the digitisation of Irish records.

It was nice to have some good news to report for a change. There are lots of exciting developments in the offing, from Brian's own company Eneclann and elsewhere. Starting with the Civil Registration indexes, many of these have been re-keyed by the Irish GRO, but there is no sign of them going online anytime soon. It is worth remembering, though, that many of the indexes are on FamilySearch, (Ireland Civil Registration Indexes 1845-1958) as are a selection of the actual registers, included in the Ireland Births and Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths and Burials indexes.

One of the problems with Irish genealogy in the past has been that relatively few people in Ireland were interested in their family history. But things are beginning to change, and the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport is committed to putting records online, free of charge. You can search church records for Dublin, Cork & Ross, Kerry and Carlow on Irish Genealogy

The National Archives of Ireland, in conjunction with FamilySearch, are imaging and indexing the Tithe Applotments 1826-1837. No launch date has been announced, but this is one to look out for. Another important source is the Landed Estates Court Records, which should be online by mid-2011. These records contain the names of approximately 600,000 tenants.

Another major series in the offing is a colossal collection of prison records from the 26 counties, containing up to 6 million names of Irish prisoners, their families and their victims. This collection spans more than a century, from the 1790s to the 1920s. The records of 15 million cases in Irish Petty Sessions, from 1821 to 1910, featuring 40 million people will also be released from mid-2011 onwards.

To keep up with these and other developments, be sure to sign for the Eneclann newsletter, and wait for news of a brand new website with some of these digitised records, to be launched on St Patrick's Day. The site also includes a comprehensive article about the digitisation of Irish records, which is not news (it was originally published in The Septs,Volume 29 Number 2, April 2008) but provides an excellent overview of the records and the challenges involved in these projects.

The above was based on notes I made during Brian's presentation at Rootstech, so any inaccuracies are entirely my own. There are many other Irish records which, it is hoped, will make their way online, though not in the near future. There are exciting times to come for Irish research at last. Bring it on!

Rootstech - very social, very network

One of the great things about conferences is the people you meet. In recent years they usually include people you know from Facebook, Twitter or some other social network. Rootstech took this to a new level. People were meeting, communicating and interacting in all kinds of ways. As usual I met old friends from previous conferences, some new people, and finally met in person quite a few that were Facebook friends, fellow bloggers, or that I knew from Twitter or email.

This wasn't an event where you just sat in a room to be talked at. The 'tech' part of Rootstech was very much in evidence, and absolutely integral to the proceedings. The Rootstech Official Bloggers were right at the heart of things, quite literally; they were based right in the middle of the Expo Hall, complete with two 'fish-tank'  rooms where sound and video interviews were being recorded  for much of the time. You can see a chat between two of the leading bloggers, Dear Myrtle and Thomas McEntee on You Tube recorded during the show. If you search for 'Rootstech' om You tube you'll find more interviews and video clips.

Some of the Rootstech sessions, including the keynote addresses on all three days, were streamed live online, so that people all over the world could follow the proceedings. And we know this was working, because a number of these remote attendees were tweeting their comments using the hashtag #Rootstech. One of my favourites was when Chris Van Der Kuyl, CEO of Brightsolid, was introducing Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. Most of the audience probably hadn't heard a Dundee accent before, and one of them  tweeted "Okay, I'm just going to say it: That accent is hot. don't tell HR.", which was re-tweeted with an added "Was thinking that too.", followed by a third, obviously following on Twitter, but not in audio "Why are people tweeting about an accent? What did I miss?" Joking aside, the main event, Brewster Kahle's keynote speech, was compelling, so much so that when he said 'In conclusion...' I was genuinely surprised that it was already time for him to wind up. If you are not already familiar with the Internet Archive, you really need to go exploring; it has far more in it than you could have imagined. I thought I had a pretty good idea, but I was amazed.

I was tweeting news from Brian Donovan's session on the digitisation of Irish records, which was then being re-tweeted by Chris Paton back in Scotland, and then repeated on his Scottish GENES blog, with the assurance that there would be a full write-up from me in due course! Thanks, Chris, I suppose I'll really have to do it now - I'll save it for the next post.

And in case you were wondering, the badge at the top was given to geneabloggers by the lovely Thomas McEntee, along with with some very fetching red heart beads. I shall treasure them always.

More Rootstech - catching up

Flip-Pal mobile scanner

Rootstech really is different. I've never been to a conference where the keynote speakers were introduced with loud rock music, and where the vendor hall includes a Microsoft playground. This turned out to be a real playground, where you could play table tennis, pool,  or table football and even get a free massage. Yes, really. There was a demo area where new products were demonstrated, an internet cafe, some Family History Library research computers and an area where the Rootstech Official Bloggers were stationed.

As you'd expect, there were technology vendors, from major sponsors like Dell and Microsoft to software vendors and small outfits like the nice people selling the Flip-Pal mobile scanner. I had heard good things about this from some of my friends over here, so I treated myself to one of these - they're not available in the UK yet. I'm looking forward to giving it a good try out.

There are seating areas where people can chat and talk business if necessary - lots of networking going on. It ended this afternoon with a big fanfare, and the news that there will be a Rootstech 2012 - same place, slightly different time, 2-4 February, a week earlier. Great news! Awards were presented to the best speakers for each day, based on delegates' votes. There were also prizes for the winners of the Developers' Challenge, and some door prizes. As far as I am concerned this was the best bit, because I won a seven-night stay at the Plaza Hotel! So I will definitely be coming back next year.