RootsTech Review 2012: Day Two

For this morning’s opening address, Josh Coates, addressed the topic, “Exabyte Social Clouds and Other Monstrosities.”  (If you have any idea what that means, you know more than I do.)  As CEO of Instructure, an education software company and founder of Mozy, Coates’s remarks were way over my head.  I’ll have to leave it to other bloggers to tell you what he said!

I CAN comment about the classes I attended today:

• “Publish Your Genealogy Online,” by Laura Prescott.  Prescott addressed the need for software to turn family trees into a product that may be used in a website.    Some software has this ability built in, but the result is sometimes generic and unattractive.  TNG, The Next Generation, is one program Prescott recommends that is easy to use and publishes a quality product.  Prescott talked about options for publishing family trees online, considerations, and apps to provide portability for your tree.
• “Telling Stories: Transforming the Bare Facts of Genealogy into the …,” by Ian Tester of britesolid.  This class was not as I expected.  In Tester’s defense, he opened his remarks with a disclaimer, saying the class would not about how to bring family stories into a family tree.  Instead, Tester described the difference between narrative (events and facts) vs. story telling (take facts and put something on top, embellish it).  As an example, he talked about reality TV shows like Who Do You Think You Are.  In England, this show has transformed the way they think about genealogy and family history, and the British have dropped the word “genealogy” from their discussions; it’s all about “family history.”  What drives the interest in these shows?  Tester asserts it’s viewing a celebrity, the background or history about his or her family, and their emotional response to things learned.
• “Use Adobe Creative Suite to Self-Publish Your Family History Book,” by Nancy Barnes.  Barnes launched into her lecture with lightning speed and masterfully covered the elements needed to self-publish a book.  It quickly became apparent that preparing a document for publishing is a complicated process.   Barnes knew her material and had so much experience with it, she could have recited the procedure in her sleep.  As for the students in attendance, Barnes informed and educated without making the less techies among us (including me) feel intimidated.  Barnes also intends to record her lecture and put it online for subsequent viewing.  THAT should help those of us who missed some of the vital points the first time through.  Barnes’ site is www.StoriesToTellBooks.com
• “Taking Your Family History Electronic- Creating Your Own Amazing Ebook,” by Luana Darby.  Darby’s lecture was a great way to wind up my day.  She demonstrated a free ebook editor, Sigil, a Google product for creating an ebook in an ePub format.  She went live to show an ebook she created, and entertained a variety of questions from the audience.  She made it look so easy, I think I could do it.  Now, that says a lot!

In between classes I strolled the exhibit hall and met with vendors.  It was a treat to meet the creators of many great products.  I’ll share some of those with you in other posts.

That’s about it for day two!

Don’t forget RootsTech is broadcasting certain classes live.  You may check the schedule in an earlier post titled, “Attend RootsTech Without Leaving Home.”