Congratulations to Winnipeg genealogist and programmer Louis Kessler who received the Third Place Judges’ Choice Award in the RootsTech Innovator Showdown in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday.
Mr. Kessler received a prize worth $26,000 in cash and AWS credits for Double Match Triangulator (DMT), an app to help sort DNA matches into groups of relatives.
Louis Kessler from Winnipeg received $26,000 in cash and in-kind prizes at the RootsTech 2017 Innovator Showdown for his app Double Match Triangulator that helps sort DNA matches into groups of relatives. Photo courtesy of Alona Tester, Gould Genealogy, Adelaide, South Australia.
This is how Mr. Kessler describes his app: “Double Match Triangulator (DMT) combines two different people’s Chromosome Browser Results files from FamilyTreeDNA to provide Double Match and Triangulation data that can be used to help determine genealogical relationships. It loads the results into an Excel file along with a colorful map that helps the researcher visualize the matches and help to identify Triangulation Groups made up of people who could share a common ancestor, helping you to map your DNA segments to your ancestors.”
Five finalists
In front of crowd of close to 14,000 live and online viewers, Mr. Kessler and the other four RootsTech Innovator Showdown finalists battled for $199,000 in cash and prizes and bragging rights.
During the showdown, the finalists delivered a three-minute presentation to pitch their ideas and then answered judges’ questions. The judges selected the top three winners and the viewing audience selected the People’s Choice Award winner.
OldNews USA takes first place
First place honours went to experienced amateur genealogist Bill Nelson of Massachusetts for his OldNews USA app. Mr. Nelson walked away with $95,000 in cash and in-kind prizes for developing an android app that simplifies and streamlines the online newspaper search process. The app uses the Library of Congress Chronicling America collection of more than 11 million newspaper pages from 1789 to 1922.
Here’s how OldNews USA works. Using keywords, users can look for newspaper accounts of a person or topic with the option to look at articles of historical events. In a person search, you type names and dates into your mobile device and choose a location on Google Maps which produces a list of newspapers in the targeted geographic area for a time period. It brings up images of the actual newspapers with the name or event you are seeking highlighted so you can quickly locate it on the page. Images can be enlarged for easier access to detail.
Second place and People’s Choice
Second Place Judges’ Choice ($44,000 cash and AWS credits) went to the Qroma tag mobile app for embedding stories into pictures, tagging them by voice commands, and making the data accessible on various platforms.
People’s Choice ($25,000 cash and AWS credits) went to Kindex, an app designed to help users create searchable, shareable archives of family letters and other documents, using tags to help users easily locate information.
The entries were judged based on four main areas:
• Family History: They must be directly or indirectly related to family history.
• Quality of Idea: They should be original and creative.
• Implementation of Idea: Consideration is given to how well the developer has met the goal of the product idea.
• Potential Impact: How will this submission affect the genealogy community, will it solve real problems, and will users find it helpful.
No mention of Canada. Pity, eh?
FamilySearch said in its original news release, “The 5 finalists were whittled down from more than 40 applicants from the US and Europe.”
Eh? Did someone forget to mention the third-place finisher was from Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, not from the US or Europe?
After receiving my comment, and perhaps comments from others, FamilySearch quickly amended the news release to read, “from around the world.” But, really, would it have been too much for them to write, “from the US, Canada, and Europe”? Or am I being overly sensitive?
More information and a short video about Mr. Kessler’s DMT app are available here. You can also visit his website, Behold Genealogy.
If you missed the final round of the Innovator Showdown, you can watch it on the RootsTech website. (Mr. Kessler is first up. He appears at the 48-minute mark in the semi-final round.) All of the live-streamed presentations are available here. (Soon they may move the presentations to another location, so check the menu.)
