RootsTech Archives - OnGenealogy

How to Access All Your Passwords–anytime, anywhere

Every year at RootsTech the password problem is front and center. People go to a booth and try to sign up for a new partner product that uses their FamilySearch account, etc but they can't remember their login and password for FamilySearch so they can't enable the new product to access their information. Worse, they don't know how to login to their email when they're not in front of their home computer, so they can't use the site's password reset or retrieval option. Nothing is more frustrating than being at a world-class conference and not being able to take advantage of the specials and offerings. If you have issues remembering your passwords, here are some sites that will help you. These sites allow you to sync your password list across multiple devices (some only do this with paid versions). So if you show up at a Genealogy Convention needing access to some obscure account, you'll have it ready and waiting on your phone!

Keeper Security&n…

How I’m Using Curt Witcher’s RootsTech class: Five Things All Genealogists Should Do Before They Die

I attended Curt Witcher's RootsTech class "Five Things All Genealogists Should Do Before They Die" because I looked over the handout and knew he was part of my tribe. He is the Senior Manager for Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library. Each of his bullet points is something I'm working on and care about deeply. He is a brilliant, engaging lecturer and has a lot of great ideas.

His bucket list items were:

Tell Your Own StoryInterview as many Relatives, Family, Friends, and Colleagues as possibleOrganize your ResearchDeal with your ImagesExplore new Technologies

1. Tell Your Own Story

I've written a couple of blogs about this and am carving some time in my weekly monthly schedule to record stories of my life. I'm writing episodic stories about specific events and then I'd like to create short Animoto videos to go along with the longer, written version. Both of my parents di…

How to Create Engaging Family Histories

My favorite part of RootsTech was learning different ways to create engaging family histories--family histories our children will be interested in.

Here's one example, from a class taught by Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems. Her class was titled, Video Magic: Creating Brilliant Videos Quickly & Easily. She shared many methods for creating slideshows to tell the stories of our ancestors in digestible snippets.

This was my first go at this type of slideshow, and it was probably overly-ambitious to try to sum up 80 years of life in a 3-minute slideshow (my choice, not her recommendation). I used Animoto Memories with a professional license. They also have a Personal license for $5/month that will leave the Animoto logo at the end of videos and a Business license for $49/month that will give you accounts for up to 3 users.

You can use the arrows in the bottom right-hand corner to enlarge the video…