I knew that the first year would be tough. We were, after all, breaking the mold of genealogy conferences. We might get a few timid souls to wander out of their reserved wall-flower seating like a Middle School dance with one group indifferent, and the other jittery and eager, but not sure what to say. At worst it could wind up like a replay of Remember the Titans where two groups thrown together resisted this seemingly unnatural combination rather forcefully for the first year, only to come together victoriously in years to come. Oil and water? Peanut butter and jam? No one could really tell. Well, the numbers are in.
I was astonished to learn that a whopping 72% of attendees participated in collaboration between technology users and technology creators. No, this isn't just genealogists speaking with genealogists, or developers speaking to developers, this is a harmonious combination of both groups! Almost 3/4 of all attendees caught the vision and connected!
Where does this leave us for 2012? The future looks bright. Maybe we really will be like the Titans after all, minus the conflict: two groups who are more alike than they realized at a glance, working together to achieve a common goal.
This is great news. I didn't attend, but from what I can tell, you did an awesome job and the hard work of everyone involved led to SUCCESS! My husband and I definitely hope to attend in 2012. It's a great time to be doing genealogy!
ReplyDeleteAnne, your Roots Tech conference rocked! The streaming video presentations were a wonderful idea. I have begun to make plans to attend next year. Good Job!
ReplyDeleteI was one of the 72% and made my connections at the Community Zone. I did attend a tech developer class and it was way over my head. That's just me, though. I think it was great that you got the two groups in the sandbox this year. Next year will be ever better.
ReplyDeleteAs someone with a foot in both camps, I think it was a great start. I liked the fact two of the keynotes weren't specifically about family history at all. They featured one corporation and one non-profit on the leading edge of recent technology developments. I think it showed many genealogists in the audience what's possible today, but they might never have imagined otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI didn't go to any of the more in-depth technology sessions. Most of the ones I attended were either more genealogy-focused or technology-lite. Although some ended up being vendor demos for their products, or tutorials a bit simplistic for my needs, I got lots of great ideas seeing what others are doing.
One slightly disappointing aspect of RootsTech was low participation in the developer challenge. Maybe the objective was a little open-ended or the timeline too compressed. I've seen similar contests in the past, but don't recall one with such a short deadline. Consider announcing the challenge 24 hours or so before the conference starts.
For next year, at the same time the Call for Papers goes out, ask genealogists for challenge ideas. They'd describe bite-sized problems with possibly easy technological solutions. Then choose one, or better yet three or four to choose from, as objectives for the developer challenge.
I also liked one idea discussed at the session the developers presented their solutions. Because of the inherent conflict of interest, FamilySearch employees weren't allowed to participate in the challenge. You've obviously got plenty of talented programmers there, so setup a parallel bracket for them to compete with each other.