The Innovation Showdown Finalists Are....

Last year a big portion of the $100,000 in cash and in-kind support from the Innovation Showdown at RootsTech 2016 went to TapGenes which has continued to develop its product and outreach. Today the ten semifinalists competing for a similar windfall of support and recognition were winnowed down to the five who will receive final consideration on Friday. By the end of the week the 2017 winner will be announced.

In case you want to look back at those semifinalists now, you can look at my earlier post where the ten are listed with links to where you can find more information.

Judging focused on both the promise of the product as well as the soundness of the business model. Each contestant had two minutes to present the product. Then the panel of five judges had a combined two minutes to ask questions or make comments. If you are familiar with the television show Shark Tank on ABC, you should be able to visualize this format.

These five projects were advanced to Friday's final round. The prize pot is being expanded beyond the announced $100,000. Three new sponsors just signed on. More information about this significant financial and in-kind support will be announced in a day or so.

Double Match Triangulator (DMT)

An autosomal DNA analysis tool for genealogists   From Canada.

Emberall

Capture, organize, store and share the life history of a loved one - from your smartphone in as little as 30 minutes!  caption

Kindex

Accessible, searchable archives for everyone through collaborative record sharing and indexing. 

OldNews USA

The easiest way to find your family in historic newspapers - on your phone!

QromaTag

Add your story to any photo using your iPhone and your voice.
Digital tagging of family photos with metadata and linking to GEDmatch files

As the winner is announced I'll update the list and add more information. If you are among the fortunate twelve thousand or so of my closest genealogical colleagues who have joined me in Salt Lake City for RootsTech, you will have a chance to "kick the tires" and "look under the hoods" of these new products over on Innovation Alley (through the turquoise gateway over the entrance on the left below) in the Exhibit Hall.

If not fortunate enough to be in Salt Lake, I'll update you as the competition unfolds. Keep in mind that the overall winner may not be the new product that will be the one most useful to you in your research. 

Now There Are Ten Innovation Semifinalists

Last year a big portion of the $100,000 in cash and in-kind support from the Innovation Showdown at RootsTech 2016 went to TapGenes which has continued to develop its product and outreach. This year there are still ten semifinalists competing for a similar windfall of support and recognition. That number will be reduced to those to receive final consideration by the middle of next week. By the end of the week the 2017 winner will be announced.

In case you want to take a peek at those semifinalists now, I have listed them below in alphabetical order with links to where you can find more information: 

Champollion 2.0

The scribe for savvy paleographers   

CSI: Crowd Sourced Indexing

Small organizations need an easier way to manage their indexing projects, and this is it. 

Cuzins

Cuzins is a mobile app that shows how you're related to friends & celebrities, and how they're related to each other

Double Match Triangulator (DMT)

An autosomal DNA analysis tool for genealogists   

Emberall

Capture, organize, store and share the life history of a loved one - from your smartphone in as little as 30 minutes!  caption

JoyFLIPS

We combine easy photo scanning, voice storytelling, and AI that brings in relevant historical data from everywhere   

Kindex

Accessible, searchable archives for everyone through collaborative record sharing and indexing. 

OldNews USA

The easiest way to find your family in historic newspapers - on your phone!

QromaTag

Add your story to any photo using your iPhone and your voice. 

RootsFinder

Family history for the whole family 

As the finalists are announced and I've had a chance to examine each product and talk with its developer(s), I'll update the list and add more information. If you are among the fortunate ten thousand or so of my closest genealogical colleagues who will be joining me in Salt Lake City for RootsTech, you will have a chance to "kick the tires" and "look under the hoods" of these new products over on Innovation Alley (through the turquoise gateway over the entrance on the left below) in the Exhibit Hall.

If not I'll try to update you as the competition unfolds. Keep in mind that the overall winner may not be the new product that will be the one most useful to you in your research. 

Genealogists as Lifelong Learners -- Part 1

All serious genealogists are lifelong learners. There is always more to learn about our families. You have probably learned by now that there is no such thing as a done genealogy. If you are successful in breaking through a brick wall, your reward is that your previously blocked line has now split into two lines to be followed.

There is also always more to learn about the craft of genealogy. None of us can be experts in all areas. Have you made any New Year resolutions about adding to your genealogy tool kit in 2017? If not there is no time like the present to make a short list of new skills you would like to acquire. Fortunately there are a wide and growing array of opportunities for learning that can be tailored to any learning style, budget or locale. These include from books, blogs, cruises, conferences, institutes, research tours, social media and webinars. The list seems to grow longer every month. Below are a few examples. Let's see who I can offend by leaving their favorite off the list.

Big conferences include:

1. RootsTech which has grown to more than 10,000 in person attendees from every state and numerous other countries. FamilySearch is the organizing force behind this relatively new conference. Usually held in February and always in Salt Lake City. The aim of this conference is to bring technologists and genealogists together. Many of the sessions are streamed around the world.
2. National Genealogical Society (NGS) Usually held in May and often in the Eastern part of the US.
3. Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). Usually held in the late summer. Although it is technically aimed at helping strengthen local and regional societies, there is a rich array of programing aimed at individual researchers.
4. Genealogy Jamboree of the Southern California Genealogy Society. Usually held about the 2nd week of June in Burbank. The last five years there has been a separate DNA Day at the same location the day before Jamboree begins. 

Home schooling options:

While these large conferences provide a rich array of opportunities in one location as a sort of shock treatment of simultaneous sessions and opportunities to consult with vendors, these sponsoring organizations also provide a rich array of other learning opportunities throughout the year. Some examples include:

1. FamilySearch offers a wide array of opportunities each month.
2. The SCGS Webinar Series that was introduced in a previous blog post offers two webinars each month plus some streaming from Jamboree in June.  

Personal learning objectives

I stayed up all night thinking about and writing this post and it is dawning on me that if I try to make it too comprehensive, nothing will ever get published. Tell me what your favorite learning opportunities are and I'll try to include them in my next post on this subject. 

Please share what you would like to learn in 2017.

2017 SCGS Webinar Series

Want to continue your genealogical education throughout the year but have a limited travel budget? The 2017 Jamboree Webinar Extension Series of the Southern California Genealogical Society offers some of the best offerings from its Jamboree conference presentations throughout the year and makes them accessible to you in your home. 

My presentation partner Beth Balkite and I make an appearance next October 18th as we present Family History + Health History Lead to Personalized Healthcare:

Genealogies record family relationships. Health histories reveal causes of death, disabilities, chronic diseases, or known genetic disorders within families. How can you build an accurate family health/medical history? Should you? Can genealogists lead the way to personalized healthcare/medicine?

For those of you who are not familiar with Beth's background, here is a summary of why I am delighted to partner with her:  Beth Balkite was a certified genetic counselor for over 30 years. She is an alum of the Graduate Program in Human Genetics at Sarah Lawrence College. She worked as a genetic counselor in Connecticut at the University of Connecticut Health Center, Yale University, and Norwalk Hospital prior to joining Genzyme Genetics as manager of Clinical Genetics Services in 1993. In 1998 she was hired as Genetics Education Strategy Advisor for GlaxoSmithKline. She has continued as a genetics educator in several capacities before retiring in 2012. She has studied her own family history for years and is now one of just two genetic counselors to practice and teach genetic genealogy. She is an instructor at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute (OLLI) at Duke University in Durham, NC, where she teaches a course “Applying DNA to Your Family Tree.” In the summer of 2016 she taught a session in the Advanced Genetic Genealogy course at GRIP (Genealogy Research Institute of Pittsburgh). 

Hope you will join us for this presentation and discussion.

A full description of the 2017 offerings is now available for this rich and diverse series.

FTDNA Holiday Sale 2016

FTDNA is kicking off its 2016 Holiday Sale today. If you are unfamiliar with FTDNA's recent holiday sales, here is how they work. The sale prices are very good. Some at the lowest prices I have ever seen. Here are the sale prices I have seen:

1. YDNA37       $139 
2. YDNA67       $229
3. YDNA111     $319
4. BIGY           $525
5. mtDNA Plus $79
6. mtDNA FMS $179
7. mtDNA upgrade $139
8. Family Finder (FF) $59
9. FF + 37      $188
10. FF + 67      $278
11. FF + 111    $364
12. FF + FMS   $228
13. FF + 67 + FMS $452

These prices are expected to be available until the end of the year. In addition to these great sales prices, FTDNA has added a minor social media frenzy the last couple of years by offering weekly coupon codes each Monday during the sale. They expire the following Sunday. These codes reduce the cost below the above sale prices. They can be used by the person who receives them on their myFTDNA page OR they can be shared with others. If you receive codes that you know you will not be using, please share them with other family members, fellow DNA project members or the general genetic genealogy community through Facebook. On Facebook it may be better to just state what level of coupon code you have and ask interested people to contact you. These codes can only be used once and then are no longer valid.

The codes are generated at random to your myFTDNA pages. They are expected to include the following discounts:

1. $10 off any YDNA STR 
2. $20 off any YDNA STR
3. $40 off YDNA 67
4. $60 off YDNA 111
5. 10% off any YDNA Upgrade
6. 20% off any YDNA Upgrade
7. $50 off Big Y
8. $75 off Big Y
9. $100 off Big Y
10. $10 off FF
11. $10 off any mtDNA product
12. $20 off any mtDNA product
13. $40 off FMS

If you see any other coupon codes, please post a comment at the end of this blog post.

The strategy comes in if you are planning to do additional testing but are on a limited budget. How long do you wait for the bigger discounts to show up? There are fewer of them. Is it better to order using a smaller discount which will expire the following Monday or gamble that a bigger discount will come your way some other week?

Let the games begin and enjoy the fun as we build our genetic genealogy databases for the benefit of us all.

Has anyone seen holiday sales prices for other companies?  

First Meeting: Mary and Joy

Mary and Joy, half sisters, met last night in the airport in Dallas. This event was eight decades in the making. To find out how this came about, please review my two earlier posts:

Finding Joy and

From Whom Did Mary and Joy Come

California Mary with sea shells meets Texas Joy

Do these happy faces look like half-sisters?

The two were just united in person for the first time late last night.

THE ASSASSIN’S CREED DNA TESTING BUNDLE

FTDNA, 20th Century Fox and Find My Past team up to offer a one time bundle to those intrepid explorers who wish to explore their inner space. In a promotion aimed to coincide with the December 21st release of the "epic adventure film" Assassin's Creed, participants will be invited to explore their own past. What is included?

JUST$89USD

• WHAT'S IN THE BUNDLE
• The Warrior Gene DNA Test
• Family Finder DNA Test + myOrigins
• Findmypast Subscription

Other sweepstakes style prizes are included Check out the details at: https://www.familytreedna.com/assassinscreed/#bundle 

From whom did Mary & Joy come?

Connect a septuagenarian with her half-sister for the first time and instantly she wants to know more about her ancestors -- particularly those on the sisters' shared paternal side of the family which was to be priority #1:

1. I would like to complete the maternal side of the Dodder family....

2. Then I would like you to investigate the Hessick side of the family.

3. Then I would like you to look at the Vosti family.

4. Finally, we’d like to research Bob’s family.

That was quite an agenda. I was willing to explore what might be involved with priority #1. As I did I noticed there were conflicting opinions as to the name of Mary's and Joy's paternal grandmother. In one source she was listed as Ida Dodder Grove. For short time I entertained the idea that she had remarried a Grove after her marriage to Charles Dodder had ended. That speculation was short lived. FamilySearch's cooperative and comprehensive Family Tree listed her as Ida Smith and assigned her a long multi-generational list of ancestors. But that Ida Smith was going to turn out to be born about a decade too early. Ida's true maiden name was literally chiseled in stone.

To investigate more deeply what the atDNA of Mary and Joy could tell us, I downloaded their raw results from AncestryDNA and uploaded them to GEDmatch. GEDmatch keeps operating on donations and does not charge membership subscriptions for most of its services including the ones I will be discussing here. Additional analysis tools are offered to those who donate to keep this volunteer site operating. I used the People who match both kits tool to narrow my focus to individuals to whom Mary and Joy both were related through their shared father. When I did so some familiar names began to emerge.

The 3rd, 5th, 9th and 18th highest matches on their combined list were known close cousins of mine. Bob is my maternal 2nd cousin. Doris, James and Mary S. are known maternal 1st cousins. Even I was a match but was way down the list. Isn't atDNA fickle? ;-)

	name	Mary M	Joy
	Bob	63.7	37.7
	Doris	51.7	62.6
	James	44.4	52.2
	Mary S	31.7	38.7
	Dave	12.0	33.5

Conclusion: The two half-sisters are related to my family on my maternal side. In addition, this relationship was through my maternal grandmother because of the strong match of my 2nd cousin Bob. Now we are making progress. But how far back was our connection?

To explore that question I ran a Generations analysis. The value shown is estimated generations to Most Recent Common Ancestor.(MRCA):

name	Mary M	Joy
Mary M		1.4
Joy	1.4
Doris	4.1	3.9
Dave	5.1	4.4
Mary S	4.4	4.3
James	4.2	4.1
Bob	3.9	4.3

Unsurprisingly the two half sisters showed up as about a generation and a half apart since they only share one parent. The rest of us showed up about 4 generations removed from the Most Recent Common Ancestor we shared with the half-sisters. Now we are getting someplace. We are looking for someone who is an ancestor of my maternal grandmother who is about 4 generations back. But we still have quite a way to go. 

My grandmother had a Cashatt father and a Grove mother. Where have we seen one of those names before? Can atDNA help us more? 

I do have a 3rd cousin who also has transferred her atDNA results to GEDmatch. She does not share my Cashatt ancestors but she does share the Grove line. Do her results help? Actually they do. She shares 32.2 cM with Joy and 15.3 with Mary. Apparently these just missed the threshold to be included in the test I ran above. She is predicted to be 4.4 generations removed from her common ancestor with Joy and 4.9 generations from Mary. This cousin shares Grove ancestors. I think we have a winner here. 

We still don't know how far back this connection is. To determine that I had to build back the pedigree tree of Ida. Remember her? After considerable research that included several marriage records, several census records, several vital records, etc. I was able to connect her back to my 3rd great-grandparents. I had been able to confirm my connection to them 11 years ago using both property records and tombstones as the remnants of Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on Ohio; but that is another story for another day. 

Below is a chart that connects me to my newly discovered 4th cousin half-sisters:  

One part of the mystery of from whom did Mary and Joy come has been solved.

Finding Joy

It was the third full day of Olympic competition in Rio. In the pool Ryan Murphy had just collected a gold medal for the US in the 100 meter backstroke. Michael Phelps swam semis of 200 meter butterfly. Keri Walsh Jennings & April Ross had convincingly defeated the Chinese team of Wang & Yue 21-16, 21-9 on the beach. Although there was more competition on TV, I had had enough for the night and headed to bed. However, I walked past my computer and felt compelled to check my email.

There was an incoming message from a former colleague in California. I had renewed my acquaintance with Mary during a chance encounter in June at a restaurant in Morro Bay, CA, where we were having lunch with several friends and former neighbors. She walked in to the restaurant with a former genealogy client of mine and we got to chatting about using DNA in family history research. I had previously made a cameo appearance in her journalism class to discuss two aspects of intellectual property that I covered in my course “Ethics in the Information Age” – copyright and plagiarism.

Mary’s email said in part:

I bought your books and am reading and learning as fast as I can, but I don’t think I can find my sister in less than a year. You are so incredibly fast at this relative hunting do you think you can find her for me? I would be happy to pay for your time but it would never be enough.   She is probably 80 by now so time is critical.

Thanks for considering my proposal. I’ve visited more than 90 countries and now I’d just like to talk about the dad she never knew with this half sister. Her family never approved of my dad, the creative inventor, so pushed him away after only a year. Her name is Joy by the way.

I made sure I had the codes to access Mary’s recent DNA test results and went on to bed.

The search turned out to be easier than any of us expected. By the time Mary got up and checked her email the next morning, there was a message asking her to call me AND there were two pictures of Joy waiting in her email box. 

Before noon Nashville time Mary had used one of the phone numbers I had given her to reach Joy and they had talked on the phone for more than an hour and a half. This was to be the first of many, almost daily calls that have followed.

It is rarely this easy. Two years earlier when I had unexpectedly gotten an unknown 1^st cousin DNA match, it had taken over seven months to figure out which sibling of one of my parents was responsible for my newly discovered cousin Jim being on this earth. That tale has previously been chronicled in this blog. As difficult as Jim’s search had been, even Jim’s search was easier than many.

Joy was literally just sitting there waiting to be found. She had positioned herself well. Both she and Mary had tested at AncestryDNA. Joy appeared on Mary's match list:

1,857 cM of shared DNA is far too much for a normal 1^st cousin match. This almost certainly had to be the half-sister Mary was seeking. All that remained was to locate her.

I immediately left a message for this match in Ancestry’s proprietary process of contacting other members. However, because years of experience have taught me that this indirect method of contact is slow at best and often ineffective. It values the privacy of the matches over efficiency of making contact. It also does not always notify the match that a message is waiting online – particularly if the match has not maintained an ongoing Ancestry subscription.

Fortunately, in this case Joy had not made a serious effort to hide her identity. I was later to find out that she also had been searching for her half-sister off and on for a decade but there are lots of women named Mary out there.

Joy’s Ancestry login was a combination of her initials and married name --not so good for privacy but great for leaving bread crumbs for matches to follow. Joy had posted a brief pedigree chart on Ancestry which listed her as “Private” but outed her husband and included a picture of him. After searching several online directories of living people I found a recent address in Texas and three phone numbers listed in The U.S. Public Records Index. I was able to find accounts for Joy on LinkedIn and Facebook. While exploring LinkedIn, I got a popup suggestion of a person who might be able to introduce us. That person was a person very active in helping adoptees find their birth families. This led me to believe that Joy might be actively seeking her biological relatives – an assumption that turned out to be only partly correct. The pictures on Facebook matched the handsome fellow attached to Joy’s pedigree chart on Ancestry. 

This search was a little more complicated than that but not much. I’ll probably never have an easier case than this. 

Mary sent me a check with a generous tip added; but I’ll always treasure what was written in the memo section of the check more than the money. It said, “For Great Joy".

A big uniting event is planned for early November in Texas. Pictures to follow.

Dr. D. made another interesting find as he located the missing half-sister. It connects him to the sisters; but that is another story for another day -- sometime very soon.     

It's Not My Life! It's Not My Family!

Even if a million copies of The Stranger in My Genes are sold when it is officially released next week, it is unlikely that one single reader would react at every turn as did the protagonist in this very personal memoir. Complex combinations of motivations cause the course of this pilgrimage of personal discovery to be both unpredictable and compelling. Many of us think we know how we would react in certain situations. Then it happens to us and all bets may be off.

Powerful emotions are the driving force for Bill Griffeth’s actions at least as he begins to process information from a DNA test that suggests his biological father may not be the man who raised him. The book cover including a partial family both present and absent in front of a rural church/school is a very appropriate starting point. These forces compete with professional and religious/moral values to lead him on an unpredictable journey that will compel readers to keep turning the pages. What will he do next? Will he be brash or do nothing at all?

This book should be required reading for those who seek unknown parents and those of us who strive to help them in their quests. If there is one important take-away from this book, it is that there is not one single path that is best for all of us.

This is not a book about DNA or about genealogical research methods although those are interwoven throughout. Most of the DNA information is correct except for the brief confusion in Chapter 16 of X chromosome DNA with mitochondrial DNA. However, this does not detract from the story line and will not be noticed by most readers.

One of the paradoxes of the book is that the author and main protagonist was a serious genealogist who had reveled in uncovering family secrets through traditional research methods. However, when a secret affected him very personally and was uncovered by DNA testing, everything was different. Was that because DNA was involved? Probably not. When we are suddenly forced to reevaluate deeply held personal myths which have guided our daily lives for half a century, we are thrown into uncharted territory.

Another paradox is that the author had built a very successful professional career as a high profile investigative interviewer on a live nationally televised show. Would he subject his own personal discovery to the same level of scrutiny that he regularly employed to his on air guests? Why or why not? Is it different to probe business transactions and family values?

You never should judge others until you have walked in their moccasins. For those of us who work daily with genetic genealogy, this book can sensitize us to the balancing act we should be employing as we seek the proper equilibrium between the right to know and the right to privacy of various actors in the multifaceted and often deeply emotional dynamics of family life.

I strongly recommend the book. Once you start reading you won’t be able to put it down for long. I don’t think I would have made some of the decisions Griffeth made; but then it was his life not mine and it was not deeply personal for me. In such intimate situations we all need to respect and validate the rights of others to find out what works for them. Our role should be to give them the support they need to process their own emotions and family situations. One solution definitely does not fit all situations.