Many of my topics relate to technology which evolves rapidly. These presentations are currently up to date.


Using Your SmartPhone Camera When a Scanner is Not Available

This presentation will help you will understand how to use the camera in your smartphone to obtain high quality images of documents and photographs in environments typically encountered by genealogists.


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Why Finding Atlantic Shipping Records is Challenging

Between 1500 and 1914 approximately 40 million people crossed the Atlantic and settled in the United States, and another 5 million settled, at least initially, in Canada. Finding records for these emigrants can be challenging and frustrating. This presentation will provide attendees with an understanding of how emigrants traveled to North America during this time-frame, an overview of the records that documented their journeys and a strategy for locating available records.

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What Do You Do When There Are No Records?

American researchers are familiar with the phrase “burned counties”, used to describe locations where records have been destroyed by fire, war, and similar causes. This presentation focuses on the Norwegian equivalent: a burned church. It will demonstrate how a variety of resources, but especially DNA matches, can be utilized to break through genealogical brick walls.

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Choosing Genealogy Services & Software

Genealogy has rapidly evolved from a paper-based hobby into a multi-billion-dollar industry. Family History Researchers can now choose from a wide range of products and services designed to create family trees, locate records of interest and identify DNA relationships.


This presentation will provide a high-level overview of the capabilities offered by Online Genealogical Services, Genetic DNA Testing Services and Family Tree Software providers with the goal of helping participants make informed choices from the many products and services that are currently available.

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Paper in the Cloud: Preserving Records Digitally

Genealogists soon find themselves overwhelmed by paper: records, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, and more. Learn a digitization strategy that will preserve for future generations these precious documents you’ve worked so hard to collect. Explore this digitization strategy through two case studies: a personal collection and a larger multi-year project implemented by a genealogical society.

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Hosting Virtual Meetings: Things You Should Know

Your society should be taking advantage of the capabilities provided by Virtual Conferencing services. This presentation will provide you with a basic understanding of the capabilities of Virtual Conferencing services and the hardware required. It also provides some practical tips that will help your Virtual Meetings be successful.

A recording of this presentation is available for viewing…

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Hybrid Virtual Meetings: Small Group, Minimal Equipment

This video demonstrates how to use Zoom with a single PC, Speakers, Microphone and projector/large TV to hold a hybrid meeting with a small group of in-person participants as well as internet participants.

A recording of this presentation is available for viewing…

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Hybrid Virtual Meetings: Auditorium with a PA System

This video demonstrates how to use Zoom with two PC’s and a PA system to host a virtual meeting consisting of in-person and internet participants.

A recording of this presentation is available for viewing…

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Demystifying Digital Images

Most of us don’t know how a JPEG file differs from a TIFF file and whether or not that difference is important. This presentation will provide you with a basic understanding of how images are digitized and will familiarize you with some of the fundamental characteristics of digital image files.

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How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Cybercrime

Hackers and scammers are actively trying to gain access to your computer and to your personal and financial information. Your family history records and your finances are at risk! This presentation will help you understand what they are doing, how they are doing it and the steps you can take to minimize the possibility that you will become a victim.

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Technology Enabled Collaboration

This presentation will examine three relatively new capabilities that are enabling collaborative family research: Greatly improved presentation of DNA results from Ancestry DNA and MyHeritage DNA, The Family Search Family Tree, and self-publishing family history using a blog or a website. Attendees will learn the benefits provided by each and will learn how to effectively incorporate them into their own personal research methodology.

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Family Search Family Tree Overview

This presentation provides an overview of the major features of the Family Search Family Tree

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An Exploration of the Integration of Social Networking Technologies into the Core Activities of Genealogical Societies

A presentation made at the First RootsTech (February 12, 2011)

View Slides from the Presentation (TC091)