#RootsTech 2017 in Brief: Notes from the Conference - #1

Even if you didn't make it to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit RootsTech 2017, you can still watch selected parts of the Conference live online. Click on the link to RootsTech 2017 and then click on the live feed. That's all there is to watching the conference proceedings. All times are Mountain Daylight Time.

I will be starting today with the Innovators Summit and talking and visiting classes. The rest of the week, I will be most presenting short classes at The Family History Guide booth and at the MyHeritage.com booth.

Yesterday, I attended the BYU Family History Technology Workshop on the Brigham Young University Campus. I saw presentations about amazing advances in handwriting recognition and many other fabulous topics. I will be writing about these in particular when then class notes are published on the website. Here are some of the topics of the workshop.

• Using Neural Cells for Line Segmentation, Patrick Schone
• Applying Machine Learning to Chinese Jiapu, Allen Liao, Timothy Davis
• Self-improving Extraction Systems, David Embley
• Symbol Stitching for Handwriting Recognition, Seth Stewart
• Double Match Triangulator, Louis Kessler
• CSI: Crowd Sourced Indexing, Banai Feldstein
• QromaTag, Tony Knight
• Thresholding Method for Form Images, Randall Christensen
• Coverage Rate in Knox County Ohio, Joseph Price
• Inferring Parent Genomes Using Sibling Genotype Data, Amy L. Williams
• Geometric Distortion for Handwriting Recognition, Curtis Wigington
• Recreating Probabilistic History through Genealogy, Robert Ball
• "Robokeying" of Born-Paper Obituaries, Heath Nielson
• Future Directions of Behold, Louis Kessler
• Case for Decentralized Distributed Trees, Matt Misbach
• GEDCOM X: Scope, Usage, and Future, Ryan Heaton
• Data Management for Large Genealogy Projects, Tammy Hepps

I have a long list of future blog post topics to cover. One of the things I am getting more involved with is the development of Chinese Text and Handwriting recognition. I do not speak or read Chinese but that is not really an issue since there are people who do both. I am mostly becoming involved in supporting and facilitating the development. One of the presentations, "Coverage Rate in Knox County Ohio, Joseph Price," was an interesting and very complex validation of the importance of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I will certainly get to a lot of these topics in the future. If your interest is piqued, I suggest doing a Google search for the topics and the names of the presenters and you will find a lot more information.