NOTE: Because I will be on the way home tomorrow afternoon, Day 4 of RootsTech 2019 will post on Sunday. Friday’s Family History Finds will post tomorrow. 🙂

I am off and running on Day 3. With RootsTech half over now, I still have so many sessions to visit and exhibitors with whom to chat. It will be two more hectic, but fun, days!

My first session was Chromosome Browsing for Absolute Beginners by Jonny Perl, who is the developer of DNA Painter.

I was quite amazed to hear him share his story and related that he was not a big believer in DNA and jumped into the game rather late.

His talk explained chromosome mapping in a simple-to-understand way. After covering quick basics of chromosomes, he talked about tools available to manipulate DNA results and the benefits of doing so.

Most of the rest of the morning was spent talking with representatives from companies in the Expo Hall. There aren’t as many new companies this year, but that gave me more time to spend with those I did visit.

In my wanderings, I came upon not one, but two, dinosaurs locked in a heated battle!

I loved seeing the FamilySearch book scanners here again this year and,yes, people did bring books that were digitized before their eyes. Another big shout out to FamilySearch. 🙂

I attended two afternoon sessions. The first was Sources and Structures for Successful Genealogical Research in Germany by Dirk Weislander. Mr. Weissleder is an excellent speaker, as I heard him last year.

However, because there is so much activity in the German genealogical world, I wanted to learn about progress and newly available resources.

First, a brief overview of German history was provided to understand the background of the regions that were united to become the modern nation of Germany.

The talk progressed through the types of resources that can be accessed and the time span in which they were created. While there are many societies, repositories and organizations that might help the family researcher, many of them are at the local level and a bit of digging may be needed to have success.

The next afternoon class was How to Start a Family History Blog and Why You Might Want To by Laura Hedgecock and Elizabeth O’Neal.

Why did I go to this when I have been blogging for five years?

I went to support fellow bloggers and tell others it is fun and not really difficult to begin. I can attest to that being a person with basic tech skills. Also, I usually learn a thing or two in blogging classes, which is also good.

Laura and Elizabeth explained what blogging is and gave an overview of reasons for and methods to use to blog. If I hadn’t already been blogging, their talk would have motivated me to try it out. Steps to investigate, try out and launch a blog were easy to follow and blogging was suggested as a fun, not too difficult way to share one’s genealogical stories, successes and brick walls.

The room was large, not full, but far from empty. I love to read others’ blogs. I hope many of the class attendees decide to try out life as a blogger.

The final session of Day 3 was going to be a challenge to my non-techie brain, but I need to learn more than the tiny bit I know about metadata. Chris Desmond and Mike Taylor spoke on Behind the Metadata Curtain: What Common Platforms Read, Create and Release Photo Tags?

A survey of the audience and their knowledge of metadata showed that most attendees were way more advanced in this area than I am. It wasn’t long before the discussion was totally over my head. However, I did understand some of the discussion and learned a few new facts about using metadata. The audience asked very sophisticated questions that were also way beyond me.

So ended Day 3. Tomorrow, Friday Finds will post in the morning and Day 4 will post on Sunday because I will be on the way back to Arizona in the evening.

I can’t believe another RootsTech is almost over.