Thank you Kristin Rapinac, Gwynn Socolich, Linda Teather, Diane Burley, Taleh Yusef, Jim the Historian, Marcia Keats Rudolph, Betty Naylor Horny, Deborah Carl, Kathy Stone, Robin Hetzler, Cassandra Norman, Lisa Rex and many others for tuning into my live video today with Bill Moore!
I can’t tell you how much it means to us to see you join us from across the planet. Your thoughts, comments, and encouragement are the glue that holds this global community together. Were you there? Did I miss you? The chat isn’t captured, but your additions can be by dropping them into the comments below.
Projectkin programming is offered free with the kind support of our Patrons worldwide. Explore our story and join us 👇.
Today’s Tips and Takeaways
We started with a focus on the conference agenda, which starts today (Thursday in Asia/Pacific). Bill had a few terrific suggestions, building on others we’ve heard in the last few days:
* Printing out the handouts allows you to make notes and stay focused during the program. Oh, that’s a nice fit for my large-sized notebook!
In our conversation about Relatives at RootsTech we went on to a discussion of both font-sizes (increase fonts on your screen if needed), and strategies for viewing different sides of the family by ancestors.
* Related is the Wilford Woodruff Papers project launched this year. This can be a useful project to explore if you have family lines in America in the mid-nineteenth century. With parallel family trees, my cousin Bill and I have thousands of family members who intersected with the remarkable documentarian Wilford Woodruff.
* Then we got into an extended discussion of RelativeFinder.org from the BYU Family History Technology Lab. This tool revealed a major upgrade over the last few days, and will be a vendor in the expo hall. (Find them at booth #1519, or in the live Chat once that opens.)
* Explore that link, then log in using your FamilySearch login.
* Once you’ve done that, please visit our group, “Projectkin,” and request access. I’ll let you in, and you can join the 25+ community members collaborating on our family trees.
* Best of all, there’s no limit on this project to the 30-April deadline for Relatives at RootsTech.
Ride Along Announcements
I made two announcements yesterday in the notes from my conversation with Lynda Heines, and then later added to the RideAlongPartners website. In case you missed my conversation with Lynda, here’s the link:
These are the announcements:
* Group Photoshoot for the Ride Along!
Yep, we’re going to do one! Commemorate your participation in this crazy venture by getting your photo taken on Friday/Saturday (in Asia/Pac).
⮕ Learn more on the RideAlongPartners page and the event pages:
* On-site group photo (at Ride Along Partners booth)
* Atlantic-friendly online photo (from a gallery screenshot over Zoom)
* Pacific-friendly online photo(from a gallery screenshot over Zoom)
* Watch Parties!
We’re taking the simple route with a scheduled Zoom call, so we follow along with the chat. The most obvious one to start with was the AI Guidelines panel tomorrow morning:
* We’ll start with this remarkable program, “Guidelines for the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Genealogy in 2026.” The panel includes David Ouimette, Steve Little, Katherine Borges, James Tanner, and Lynn Broderick. If you think you might be interested in watching the program with friends, join us!
* Learn more and register for the Zoom link.
New Idea!
In today’s conversation, Bill and I also discussed the idea of adding a tab to the Ride Along Partners page for posts about vendors, feedback, suggestions, and tips. I’m interested.
* Here’s my offer: If five of you submit posts, notes, or some digital commentary that will embed on the page, I’ll create the page. Use the Add page, or let me know what you think directly:
Ride Along Ready! 🚙💨
From the start, Geneabloggers and Projectkin have shared a passion for family history and storytelling since the beginning. We both see the extraordinary value of pursuing this work with the support and encouragement of a community. So, with RootsTech approaching, it only made sense to do this together.
Tomorrow’s the big start to RootsTech with Keynotes starting in Utah on Thursday morning. See the schedule at RootsTech.org to check local times. For our special events, see the Ride Along calendar.
Have suggestions for this Ride Along? Visit the RideAlongPartners.org page and tap that “Add” button. Think others might benefit from all of this? Everyone’s welcome, feel free to share it with a friend!
Postscript: So this happened
If you do your own livestreams, you may want to fast-forward or hold out to the very end. Consider it a blooper reel. After I tapped “end” to end the livestream, it somehow kept going. This appears to be a known bug that the Substack team is still working on. It’s awkward, and you can basically ignore it, but know that if it happens to you, the way to get out of it is to quit the app. (I was on an iPad.) There’s an awkward 15 minutes or so there while I figured it out. 🤦♀️
