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BCG and Legacy Offer Free Day of Learning

9/23/2016

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Top genealogists Pamela Boyer Sayre, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Ann Staley, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, David McDonald, and Judy Russell will present six one-hour lectures held at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City Friday, 7 October 2016between 9 AM and 5 PM mountain U.S. time. The lectures are free and open to the public (registration is not required), sponsored by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Most will also be broadcast online (free registration is required, see below). The board is an independent certifying body and author of the updated 2014 Genealogy Standards.

Times, topics, and speakers:

9:00 AM - "Enough is Enough. Or Is It?" Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL

10:15 AM - "FAN + GPS + DNA: The Problem-Solver's Great Trifecta." Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL

11:30 AM - "Black Sheep Ancestors and Their Records." Ann Staley, CG, CGL

1:30 PM - "Bringing Life to Our Ancestors: Manuscript Collections." Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG

2:45 PM - "Document Transcription & Analysis: A Workshop." David McDonald, CG

4:00 PM - "When Worlds Collide: Resolving Conflicting Evidence." Judy G. Russell, CG, CGL

“Whether you stop in for the lectures or join online, you will learn more about how to apply good methodology to your family research,” said President Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG. “The Board for Certification of Genealogists strives to foster public confidence in genealogy by promoting an attainable, uniform standard of competence and ethics. Educating all family historians of every level is part of this mission.”

For questions or more information contact office@BCGcertification.org.

Register for the Online Broadcasts

Five of the six classes will be broadcast online by BCG's webinar partner, Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Visit www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com/BCG to sign up individually (free)
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Registration for RootsTech Now Open

9/16/2016

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Registration is now open for RootsTech, the world’s largest genealogy and technology conference in the world. Happening February 8–11, 2017, at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, RootsTech 2017 will empower you to celebrate your family across generations using the newest technologies available. 

For a limited time, the full RootsTech conference pass is available at a discounted price of $159. Regularly priced at $269, that’s over $100 in savings!

A full RootsTech conference pass includes access to:
  • Over 200 RootsTech breakout sessions of all experience levels taught by industry professionals
  • The huge expo hall with hundreds of family history and technology exhibitors
  • Daily keynote sessions with inspiring messages
  • Evening events with popular and exciting entertainment
Register today, and learn how to discover your roots through technology!

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Third Annual 2017 RootsTech Innovator Showdown Boasts $100,000 in Prizes

9/12/2016

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The global innovation competition is now accepting entries.

RootsTech, the world’s largest family history and technology conference, is now accepting entries for the 2017 Innovator Showdown—a “Global Innovation Competition” for developers and entrepreneurs seeking an opportunity to impact the growing multi-billion dollar family history industry while competing for $100,000 in cash and prizes. The Innovator Showdown seeks to support, foster, and inspire innovation within the family history marketplace. The deadline for submitting to the 2017 Innovator Showdown is December 1, 2016. The winners will present on stage and be selected by judges and live audience voting at RootsTech 2017 on Friday, February 10, 2017. Go to RootsTech.devpost.com `for more information.

Last year, 50 contestants, including six international applicants, competed in the Innovator Showdown. In 2017, the total cash and in-kind Innovator Showdown prizes will again be $100,000—making it one of the most attractive innovator contests in the nation.
Showdown Calendar:
  • Submissions will be accepted: today through December 1, 2016
  • Online Judging: December 1–20, 2016
  • Semifinalists Announced: December 20, 2016
  • Showdown Semifinals: February 8, 2017
  • Showdown Finals: February 10, 2017 at RootsTech at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Out of all applicants, the field will be narrowed to 10 semifinalists. Showdown semifinals will be held during lunch at the RootsTech Innovator Summit in the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 8, 2017 where we will introduce the semifinalists and their products. Five finalists will be announced that evening.

The exciting Showdown Finals are held during RootsTech before a panel of industry judges, including genealogy, technology and business gurus, and a live audience of 3,000 family history consumers, making the Innovator Showdown arguably one of the largest live audience tech competitions in North America. Finals will also be streamed live through RootsTech.org to tens of thousands of online viewers. This year, five finalists will pitch their innovations, field questions from judges, and await the announcement of the winners, while real time audience voting is taking place via texting to determine the winner of the People’s Choice prize.

Cash Prize Breakdown for Finalists:
  • Judge’s 1st Choice: $20,000
  • Judge’s 2nd Choice: $14,000
  • Judge’s 3rd Choice: $6,000
  • People’s Choice: $10,000
Besides cash prizes, winners will receive fabulous in-kind prizes from sponsors to assist in successfully launching their products to the awaiting world of family history enthusiasts, bringing the total prize value up to $100,000. 
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2016 Showdown winners represented a wide variety of family history related products that included:
  • 1st place winner, TapGenes by Heather Holmes—Tools to identify medical and genetic threads that tie your family together. TapGenes also competed in the 2015 competition.
  • 2nd Place winner, Studio from Legacy Republic by Michael Chang—Technology hardware and software for digitizing hard copy photo albums using off-the-shelf smartphone technology
  • 3rd Place winner, Twile by Paul Brooks from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK— Web app that populates a visual family timeline with data and media
  • People’s Choice winner--Twile
Entries for the 2017 Innovator Showdown can be made through http://rootstech.devpost.com/ and must include a video.

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Guild of One-Name Studies Is Now Available at FamilySearch.org

9/6/2016

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LONDON, UK and SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (September 6, 2016)—The Guild of One-Name Studies, a charitable organization that promotes facts about given surnames, and FamilySearch International, a nonprofit and the largest genealogy organization in the world, announced today The Guild’s collections will now be searchable at FamilySearch.org.  The partnership gives Guild members another source for preserving their great work while also allowing more researchers across the globe to benefit from exploring the variant spellings of their personal surnames and possibly connect with others with the same last name throughout the world. 

The study of one’s last name (one-name or surname) researches all known occurrences of that particular surname in all identifiable resources worldwide, as opposed to the ancestors or descendants of a person. Such richly compiled studies can assist a family history researcher see the geographical distribution of surnames in their tree over centuries which can help in reconstructing family lines bearing variants of those names. A common hope of customers that use surname studies is to identify the actual geographic locale of origin of a family surname. This could very well happen for unique surnames, but for common surnames that reflect an occupation (like “Farmer” or “Fisher”) or a patronymic-type surname (Johnson or Williamson), there may not be a single place of origin.

Cliff Kemball, Guild Publicity Manager said “The partnership with FamilySearch give Guild members another method of preserving their One-Name Study data.  Their data is fully preserved for the long term, while still remaining within the control of the Guild member, who may update, replace or delete it as their work develops.”

The Guild was founded in 1979, and has over 2,980 members, studying over 8,935 individual surnames.  The Guild of One-Name Studies website launched April 1, 2016, and is continually expanding its list of surnames. The Guild expects the volume of data submitted by Guild members to significantly increase now that they can make their research contributions online. And teaming up with FamilySearch.org will ensure more people are making interesting discoveries about their surnames.

David Rencher, the Chief Genealogy Office for FamilySearch, said, “The rigorous standards and guidelines required by the Guild of One Name Studies for members of the guild make this the highest quality data available for these surnames. Those who administer and oversee the collection of this data have spent decades collecting all instances of the surnames from a wide variety of records. Since many of these sources are yet to be made available on the Internet, this new set of records on FamilySearch is a rich new source of information.”

To see if your surname has been researched by The Guild community, go to FamilySearch.org, Search, Genealogies, enter your last name, and search Guild of One-name Studies.
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More information about the Guild can be found at one-name.org where researchers can also register their own surnames.

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    Author

    Amy Lenertz, MLIS is the founder of Raincross Information Services.

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