Recordings of RootsTech live-streamed presentations already available — and what’s new at Ancestry

The recordings of the live-streamed presentations at RootsTech are being recorded and posted online. Wednesdays presentations are already there, and by the time you read this, Thursdays presentations should be available as well.

With all the news pouring out of RootsTech this week, along with the live streaming, my brain is exploding. And there are still two more days of live streaming.

As I write this, I have only managed to watch two-and-half presentations, and they were excellent. I look forward to watching the others.

Presentations
On Wednesday, in Connecting Your DNA Matches, Diahan Southard took us through the DNA match list and explained the Shared Matches tool. She taught us how to create and employ a number of tools to boost our confidence in our genetic genealogy skills. She also explained Ancestry’s and MyHeritage’s new DNA tools and advised us on how to use them. She said her presentation was not for those just learning about DNA, but depending on your level of interest, I would watch it anyway.

I managed to catch part of Myko Clelland’s Wednesday presentation, Uncovering Family Stories with British and Irish Historic Newspapers, that was sponsored by Findmypast, and I will definitely watch the rest of it. Mr. Clelland is a polished, informative speaker. Even if you are not a Findmypast subscriber, you will benefit from at least the first half of the presentation, which is all I’ve seen so far. He discussed the history of newspapers and the numerous digitized collection of millions of pages of local and national historic newspapers, covering 300 years of history from every county in Britain and Ireland.

On Thursday, I watched Crista Cowan’s presentation, What You Don’t Know About Ancestry, and she was fabulous. She speaks with tremendous warmth, emotion, and enthusiasm for family history research. Her presentation focused on the new tools available for DNA and online trees, and she also talked about how to use the card catalogue and other features on the website. Even if you do not subscribe to Ancestry, this presentation is well worth watching. Ms. Cowan is Ancestry’s corporate genealogist.

What’s new at Ancestry
Lately, I’ve noticed a new attitude at Ancestry. If it was there before, I didn’t notice.

Ancestry is saying they’re listening to their customers. Perhaps this attitude has come from the new CEO Margo Georgiadis, who joined Ancestry in May 2018. No matter where it comes from, I like it.

In the beginning of her presentation, Ms. Cowan told the audience, “We are listening. We want your feedback.”

She ended her presentation with similar words, encouraging people to tell Ancestry how they’re using the new tools and what they want to see next. She told the audience in front of her and those watching online to use the feedback tool that frequently pops up on the screen. She said Ancestry’s project managers are listening. They want to know what we think.

Ms. Cowan’s monthly What’s New at Ancestry videos on YouTube will be returning in March. As a long-time subscriber, this is something I should watch to take full advantage of my subscription.

Looking farther ahead, Ms. Cowan said that Ancestry’s technology people are extracting obituaries from the millions of pages on Newspapers.com. She said this will create the “largest collection of global obituaries anywhere.”

Ancestry stats
These are some of the numbers Ms. Cowan shared in her presentation:

• Ancestry has about 100 million online family trees.
• Ancestry has 20 billion records, making it the “largest and most distinguished collection” of genealogical resources.
• About 15 million people are part of Ancestry’s DNA network.
• The average DNA user has 45,000 matches.