RootsTech 2023 Keynote Speakers

 

RootsTech 2023 Keynote Speakers from an email:

Jordin Sparks

The multi-platinum recording artist, actress, and American Idol Season 6 winner will share her personal story and speak about how music has shaped her life from a young age. Sparks has multiple Billboard hit singles, and her music videos have received over 90 million views on YouTube. She has also starred in several Broadway and film productions. Jordin Sparks will be featured opening day of RootsTech 2023, Thursday, March 2.

Sean Astin

The globally recognized actor and Academy Award-nominated director is perhaps best known for his character Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and starring roles in The Goonies, Rudy, Forever Strong, and more.  Astin has been building his fan base throughout his 40-year career and includes 160 credits. His character roles have emphasized heart, hope, determination, and loyalty. He will be sharing his heart at RootsTech 2023 on Saturday, March 4, as he shares his unique life experiences and the choices, challenges, and fulfillment that come with uniting families and people. 

Me Ra Koh

Today a famed photographer, Me Ra Koh grew from humble beginnings. Her inspiring story emerged from physical and emotional challenges, personal tragedy, homelessness, and even a period in a psychiatric hospital to a successful life as a wife, mother, and acclaimed photographer. She has mastered the talent of using the camera to capture the story of resilience within people. Watch Me Ra Koh in person or online at RootsTech 2023 on Friday, March 3.

Steve Rockwood

The CEO of FamilySearch, Steve Rockwood will kick off RootsTech 2023 on March 2, and introduce its theme of “Uniting.”  There is power in unified relationships of all types, and Rockwood will address how uniting families past, present, and future can do just that.

RootsTech 2023 Virtual Exclusive Keynotes

As a global event, RootsTech 2023 will feature keynotes from around the world.  They will not be on the main stage in Salt Lake City, Utah, but will be broadcasted online at RootsTech.org beginning March 3, 2023.

 

His Highness Sheikh Salem bin Sultan bin Saqr Al-Qasimi

His Highness the Sheikh is from the United Arab Emirates. He is a leader in promoting understanding, openness, and harmony among people of all cultures. He has also been a major contributor to achieving sustainability and food security in the UAE and was awarded the Medal of Excellence for being an important figure in sustainable investment. 

Tuti Furlan

An amazing psychologist from Guatemala, Furlan specializes in positive psychology and the science of happiness. 

Mona Magno-Veluz 

Magno-Veluz is a native of the Philippines where she serves as the National President of the Autism Society of the Philippines. She has designed and engineered initiatives that empower individuals on the autism spectrum and those who care for them.

Global Emcees

For the first time ever, RootsTech 2023 will offer localized main stage sessions. Fifteen emcees from all over the world, speaking in their native language, will direct online attendees through the 3 days of events on the main stage. 

Announcing RootsMagic 9

https://rootsmagic.com/

 Quoting from a recent email:

We are thrilled to announce the official release of RootsMagic 9, the latest version of the award-winning genealogy software, which makes researching, organizing, and sharing your family history easy and enjoyable. With the release comes an update to the free “RootsMagic Essentials” product and a limited-time discount offer for both new and existing users.

RootsMagic 9 includes exciting new features that will help you to discover more about your family history.

With our innovative new “Associations” feature, you can track more than just family relationships. This powerful tool lets you record friends, associates, neighbors, enslavements, and more, giving you a more complete picture of your ancestors and their connections.

Enhanced color coding with multiple color code sets and color labeling makes it easier to identify different branches of your family tree and see relationships at a glance.

With the ability to save and reuse search criteria and task filters, you can quickly access frequently used searches and save time on your research.

RootsMagic 9 also includes powerful new database tools, which can help you to identify and correct errors in your family tree data. This can lead to a more accurate family tree and more informed research.

The RootsMagic 9 note editor has been completely rewritten to be more responsive and now includes spell-checking.

For Windows users, RootsMagic 9 is now available in 32-bit and 64-bit formats.

And RootsMagic 9 includes dozens of new features designed to make working with your data faster, easier, and more enjoyable. 

Click here to learn more.  

Huge On-demand Library of Classes on RootsTech.org

 

https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/search?f.language=en-US&f.conferenceYear=2023&f.text=RootsTech&p.index=0&p.pageCount=10

With over 1500 classes on 185 topics in 30 languages, the RootsTech Archive that stretches back to 2019, is a treasure house of genealogical information. This year, 2023, there will be 180 new in-person classes and over 300 new online classes. I have heard that about 30 of these classes will be broadcast live and recorded. This will allow the online audience to participate in some of the in-person classes online and join in the excitement of the in-person experience.

https://rootstech2023.mapyourshow.com/8_0/explore/session-gallery.cfm?

Here is my live class and I have six videos to enlarge the information in my class. 

https://rootstech2023.mapyourshow.com/8_0/sessions/session-details.cfm?scheduleid=85

How does an indentured servant, redemptioner, or enslaved ancestor affect your research?

 

Although data on immigration for the colonial period are scattered and incomplete several scholars have estimated that between half and three quarters of European immigrants arriving in the colonies came as indentured or redemptioner servants. See Rosenblum, Joshua. n.d. “Indentured Servitude in the Colonial U.S.” Accessed February 23, 2023. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/indentured-servitude-in-the-colonial-u-s/. 

An indentured servant is defined as a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another for a specified time especially in return for payment of travel expenses and maintenance. Redemptioners are more specifically defined as follows: 

Redemptioners were European immigrants, generally in the 18th or early 19th century, who gained passage to American Colonies (most often Pennsylvania) by selling themselves into indentured servitude to pay back the shipping company which had advanced the cost of the transatlantic voyage. British indentured servants generally did not arrive as redemptioners after the early colonial period due to certain protections afforded them by law. Redemptioners were at a disadvantage because they negotiated their indentures upon arrival after a long and difficult voyage with no prospect to return to their homelands. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemptioner

As part of the number of indentured servants, approximately 60,000 of them were criminals who were transported to the colonies. Here is a quote about the numbers which vary according to the source. 

Not many people know that between 1718 and 1775 over 52,000 convicts were transported from the British Isles to America, mainly to Maryland and Virginia, to be sold as slaves to the highest bidder. It is reckoned that transported convicts made up a quarter of the British immigrants to colonial America in the 18th century.

Before the Transportation Act of 1718, criminals either escaped with just a whipping or a branding. They were then released back onto the streets to commit more crimes. Or they were hanged. Because the jails were not intended for long-term incarceration, there was nothing in between.

After the passing of the Act, transportation became the main punishment at the courts’ disposal. From May 1718 to the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775, over 70 per cent of those who were found guilty at the Old Bailey were sentenced to be transported, compared with less than one per cent in the period from 1700 to March 1718. See https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-land-of-the-free-criminal-transportation-to-america/

 You need to add to that number that current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#:~:text=Slaves%20were%20imprisoned%20in%20a,a%20span%20of%20400%20years. In addition, about 59,000 free African Americans lived in the United States in the census of 1790 or about 19 percent of the total population.

All these figures about the percentages and numbers of these early populations are subject to opinion, methodology, and verification. But all things considered, there is a huge proportion of the United States population that has ancestors in these three categories. 

If you think about these numbers for just few minutes, you will understand that if you have ancestors that appear in the American colonies before or about the time of independence from England and you are stuck trying to find how or when they arrived in America, you are very likely to have one or even all three of these categories of ancestors. This is why a remarkably high percentage of the ancestral lines in the United States really end in or before the 1700s. Record keeping and identification of the people in these three categories is often inaccurate or incomplete. 

If you find a family line in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree that goes back to colonial times, you need to carefully document each parent/child relationship because a huge number of these lines come from one or more of these three categories and there are unlikely to be any records showing an actual extension of the family line back to Europe. Of course, tracking an enslaved family back to its origins is one of the ultimate challenges of genealogy.  

Sean Astin, Renowned Actor, to Keynote RootsTech 2023

 

Here is a quote from the FamilySearch.org announcement about the new Keynote speaker:

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, February 21, 2023—Sean Astin, perhaps best known for his character “Samwise Gamgee” in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will be the featured RootsTech 2023 keynote speaker on Saturday, March 4 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. The globally recognized actor and Academy Award-nominated director will take to the main stage to inspire attendees, the worldwide audience and fans, through his personal message of the power of family and unity, whatever that may look like for each of us. Watch RootsTech 2023 in person or online, March 2–4. Learn more at RootsTech.org.

Sean Astin’s acting career, beginning at age 10, has spanned four decades and includes over 160 credits. Throughout this time, Astin has come to touch all generations through his roles on the big screen. Astin’s mentionable roles include The Lord of the Rings, The Goonies, Rudy, Forever Strong, and more. 

Jen Allen, director of events at FamilySearch, says, “Sean Astin unites generations. My mother is just as excited as my teenagers to see him at RootsTech 2023.” Astin was born into a world of talent, coming from two parents who are both well-known actors themselves, Patty Duke and John Astin.

Astin succeeded at building his fan base early on through roles that emphasize his good heart, hope, determination, and loyalty. In fact, his personal motto is “people will root for anyone who shows them their heart.” Astin will be doing just that at RootsTech 2023 as he shares his heart with millions of viewers around the world and shares his unique life experiences and the choices, challenges, and fulfillment that come with uniting families and people. 

"Sean has a rich history in the film industry, and as we've seen his characters come to life on screen, we look forward to getting to know the man behind all the characters we have come to love,” said RootsTech creative manager, Jonathan Wing.

Astin’s keynote address will take place at the RootsTech General Session on Saturday, March 4, 2023, 11:00 AM MST. Register now at RootsTech.org to get your in-person pass. Can’t attend in-person? Register to watch Sean Astin live at RootsTech.org.

Registration for RootsTech 2023 is still open you can register by clicking here: Registration 

I hope to see you there. 

How will Artificial Intelligence affect Genealogy?

 

Here is the origin of the term "artificial intelligence"

John McCarthy is one of the "founding fathers" of artificial intelligence, together with Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon. McCarthy, Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude E. Shannon coined the term "artificial intelligence" in a proposal that they wrote for the famous Dartmouth conference in Summer 1956. This conference started AI as a field. (Minsky later joined McCarthy at MIT in 1959.)

I would have been in elementary school in 1956 but I was an avid reader of science fiction and probably learned about artificial intelligence about the time it became a popular term. But the book I Robot by Isaac Asimov was already published in 1950 and I am sure I read that book about the same time it was still newly published. In addition to my interest in science fiction, I have also read extensively about the history of computers. I knew enough to know that the early AI app, Eliza (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA, flunked the Touring Test (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test if you are interested).

What has this to do with genealogy? Well, many people have been involved in FamilySearch's Indexing project. If you go to FamilySearch.org and click on the Indexing link and then ask for a project, you will get the following screen. 

Yes, there are no projects to do in English. In fact, you can search in all the languages and there are no projects found. The only thing left are reviews using the app on your phone. Why is this? AI indexing using handwriting recognition is indexing the records. Now, the job for human intervention has moved to reviewing the AI Indexing. 

Yet the development of current AI projects, such as those currently being implemented by Google and Microsoft, demonstrate an even more expansive. Here is a question I put to ChatGPT:

Tell me about Henry Martin Tanner born in 1852 in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, California and died on 21 March 1935 in Gilbert, Maricopa, Arizona, United States. What did he do for a living, tell me about his family, were any of his children famous. 

Relatively, there is a huge amount of information about Henry, much of it in digital form online, including a complete biography. So, what did ChatGPT have to write about him? Here is what I got from ChatGPT:

Henry Martin Tanner (1852-1935) was an American artist known for his paintings and prints of landscapes, figures, and biblical scenes. He was born in San Bernardino, California, to parents who were former slaves, and was the eldest of thirteen children.

Tanner's family moved to Philadelphia in the late 1850s, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He later studied in France, where he lived for most of his life and where his work was greatly influenced by the Barbizon School of landscape painters.

Tanner's work often reflected his Christian faith, and he is perhaps best known for his religious paintings, such as "The Raising of Lazarus" and "The Annunciation." His work was also notable for its realism and its use of light and shadow.

Tanner was married to Jessie Macauley Olsson, a Swedish-American opera singer, and they had one child together, a son named Jesse O. Tanner. Jesse was not famous, but he did follow in his father's artistic footsteps, becoming a photographer and graphic designer.

In addition to his artistic work, Tanner was also involved in various civil rights organizations and was an advocate for social justice. He was the first African American artist to gain international acclaim, and he paved the way for other Black artists to gain recognition and success in the art world. Tanner died in 1935 in Arizona at the age of 82.

Hmm. It seems like I never knew my great-grandfather was famous and could paint. This is the dumb kind of mistake you would shake your head at. In genealogy this is called the same name same person mistake. What I got was a tolerable biography of Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was born in 1859 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and died in 1937 in Paris, France. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ossawa_Tanner. Except it got birth and death places wrong. 

I don't know about you, but I am not quite ready to start relying too heavily on AI to solve any of my genealogical problems. It seems AI does make a good indexer but it isn't even close to making a bare minimum genealogist.

Find New Cousins Using Free Relatives at RootsTech 2023 Tool

Here is another announcement from FamilySearch.org:

 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (17 February 2023)—Ever wondered if you have cousins, you didn’t know about? Now, thanks to the free Relatives at RootsTech 2023 discovery experience by FamilySearch, you can find and connect with your living relatives worldwide. The fun tool is available today through March 31 through the FamilySearch Tree app, as part of the annual in-person and virtual RootsTech 2023 event (March 2–4) that attracted over 3 million participants worldwide in 2022. To connect with your global cousins through the Relatives at RootsTech 2023 experience, download the FamilySearch Tree app, or go to FamilySearch.org/Connect.

 The highly anticipated Relatives at RootsTech annual experience went global in 2021 as the first worldwide virtual RootsTech conference was held, drawing more than 1 million visitors from 240 different countries and territories. In 2022, over 3 million participated. With the in-person event returning in 2023, now all attendees, both virtual and in person, can join Relatives at RootsTech 2023 to find living relatives using the free FamilySearch Family Tree mobile app or online at FamilySearch.org.