Keynote speaker for Friday morning was Josh Coates "Exabyte Social Clouds and Other Monstrosities" Mr Coates is CEO of Instructure. He is the founder of Mozy- storage. I have to say that his conversation was over my head and more geared to the developers in the audience. He talked about the origins of technology with complete rooms dedicated to computers, the implimentation of technology from the earliest days to now and what is happening today. He spoke alot about storage capabilities from the earliest time to current day to the future...... megabytes, to gigabytes, to terabytes, to petabytes, to exabyte to so much more........I can hardly visualize megabytes and now we are talking way past that to exabytes...... it is mindboggling.
I was able to watch this presentation on my computer as it streamed LIVE. So I decided that I would try some of the other sessions LIVE also. I found that I already had chosen a couple without knowing they would be broadcast LIVE. So I watched and listened LIVE from my hotel room in my PJ's Sandra Crowley's Genealogists "Go Mobile"...... excellent. She is a gadget geek and so buys and trys everything she can. She has iPad, PC laptop and an Android phone and claims that they all work together. She like alot of others really leans alot on the "CLOUD". She gave us alot of different app's to try for the iPhone, iPad and Android. I must be on the right track since alot of the apps she talked about I am already using. Her parting comment was 'Technology should make your life easier, not letting technology work against you'. The second LIVE session I watched was David Barney's "Google Toolbar and Genealogy" Excellent. They are continually making upgrades and trying to put into place more friendly applications, always making what is already available better and user friendly.
The other sessions I took in person was Luana Darbys "Can You Hear Me Now? Voice Recognition Software and Genealogy" ....... basically it was all about "Dragon" software. I wanted to see if it had improved. I won a full package over 30 years ago and it was not good. I see basically the same commercial but it has improved quite abit and I may go back and try it again. Several things you need to know is that you need to have a good microphone that keeps noise out, practice practice practice so that the software will recognize your voice, your tones, your levels. It is not perfect but I am sure it must be 80% better than it originally was. I think it is one of the best voice recognition programs available.
The last session was with Ian Tester "Telling Stories: Transforming the Bare Facts of Genealogy into the Astonishing Tale of You and Your Family" ....... Ian is with brightsolid corp. The room was packed, standing room only. I felt like a sardine in a can. However, the time went by much too quickly. We discussed the differences between a Narative vs. Stories. And the discussion centered around the different components of a story and then getting back to the narative. Excellent! (shout out to Beth Daugherty, Sacramento Public Library)
I did attend a luncheon today sponsored by "National Genealogical Society (NGS) with Barbara Resnick and Josh Taylor. I ran into some old friends from Root Cellar, Mary Gene Page and Judy Allen. We had a great time getting caught up on the days events - the good and the not so good.
Dinner in the Copper Canyon Grill in the Radisson with Jim Radar and Judy Allen. Discussion was around, what else? the conference and researching, technology and how is it changing.
And the last could be the best of the day but it is actually equal...... the Family History Library. The hours were extended to midnight. YES, MIDNIGHT!!!! I got over there about 7:30p and it was extremely crowded, everyone doing their own thing...... books, microfilm & fisch, discussion groups, classes and they had 'Who Do You Think You Are?' with Martin Sheen. (hope you all were able to watch it) I did not watch it because it was already half over and my DH is taping it for me. So off I went to find an available Microfilm reader, get my papers in order and out into the microfilm rows. While walking through the many rows of cabinets of microfilm I was envisioning the vault. WOW! Anyway, I spent the evening looking frame by frame in many rolls of microfilm- Naturalization mostly. Found a couple of things but nothing earthshattering........... every hour on the hour there were drawings for fabulous gifts (alot of the exhibitors donated great gifts) but it was not my night. Starting about 10pm the pizza was available on the first floor. (Dominoes) and then at 11p they announced that pizza was all gone but they were ordering more and about 11:40 the new pizza arrived and this was at the same time they are telling people that the library is closing, computers are shutting down BUT pizza is available....just the timing of it all! ...... and so I got things together, put my microfilms back and down to the first floor and sure enough there was 8 HUGE boxes of pizza.......... from a local pizza parlor that was excellent. So I ate and talked to Steve Morse(One Step Website) and Tim Cox (CGS). The room was full, everyone was buzzing about their finds, their day and about Who Do You Think You Are?. Cold walk back to the hotel.
NITE tomorrow is another day ..... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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