RootsTech 2011: Keynote Addresses

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The keynote address­es for the Root­sTech 2011 con­fer­ence are now avail­able for view­ing on the Root­sTech site:

http://rootstech.familysearch.org/video.php

These videos include:

  • Jay Verkler — CEO of Fam­il­y­Search Inter­na­tion­al — Open­ing Keynote “Warm-Down” Address (34:18)
  • Bar­ry Ewell — “Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serv­ing Your Fam­i­ly Her­itage.” This one seems a lit­tle over-the-top, and not real­ly focused. Mr. Ewell knows a lot about dig­i­tal preser­va­tion, but after point­ing out that all of his slides and thoughts on the top­ic could not fit into a one-hour talk, pro­ceeds to lose his focus. How­ev­er, the abil­i­ty to pause and take notes makes this bet­ter on video. (58:00)
  • Curt B. Witch­er — His­tor­i­cal Geneal­o­gy Depart­ment Man­ag­er, Allen Coun­ty Pub­lic Library. A talk on the chang­ing times in geneal­o­gy, with an intro­duc­tion by Tim Sul­li­van, CEO of Ancestry.com (1:09:33)
  • Bri­an Pugh — “Cloud Com­put­ing: What it is and how we used it to build familysearch.org” (1:03:00)
  • Thomas MacEn­tee — “Vir­tu­al Pre­sen­ta­tion Round Table” Fea­tur­ing Lisa Louise Cooke, Mar­i­an Pierre-Louis, Geoff Ras­mussen, Pat Rich­ley-Erick­son, Alli­son Stacey, and Mau­reen Tay­lor. A well-bal­anced, well-mod­er­at­ed dis­cus­sion of how pre­sen­ters can give vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions, and how genealog­i­cal soci­eties can facil­i­tate this ser­vice. (1:03:57)
  • Brew­ster Kahle — Founder of the Inter­net Archive — This is a pow­er­ful speech, and was one of the high­lights of the con­fer­ence for me. (51:17)

This is a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the con­fer­ence. It was what we call in high-tech “drink­ing from the fire hose.” At approx­i­mate­ly 5 1/2 hours, this will either take a good chunk of your day.