family history technology workshop 07

Family History Technology Workshop '07

Yesterday I attended the 2007 Family History Technology Workshop

hosted at BYU. Joe Martel from our team gave a presentation about

FamilySearch Labs and the Pedigree Viewer. Joe did a great job and the

presentation was well received.

We also had a table where we gave demos of the Pedigree Viewer and the

Life Browser (not yet linked to the labs site but coming very soon). I

thought the responses to the demos and the FamilySearch Labs concept

were interesting. People were very fond of the applications but were

amazed (and pleased) at the level of openness on the labs site. One

gentleman that stopped to talk commented how for years the Church

would go dark and then just release something. He felt the labs

concept a strong and refreshing break from this approach.

Several developers asked about the possibility of getting their hands

on the code for the Pedigree Viewer. We're definitely open to that. We

just need to work out the logistics.

There were a couple of really strong highlights for me this year. If

you missed the workshop, you'll want to check these out when the

presentations become available.

* Gordon Clarke's presentation at lunch about the FamilySearch

Affiliates program, APIs, and building a community of developers.

If you're a developer the content of this presentation will be

refreshing news.

* The Millenium CD. A group of researchers at BYU have invented a CD

that will store for a thousand years without the data turning to

mush. They believe that within a few years these disks will be the

same cost as regular CDs/DVDs. We may finally have a digital

counterpart to paper for preservation.

* John Finlay, Neumont U., and phpGEDView (PGV). This was a great

presentation about their efforts to add a collaborative research

assistant to PGV. Very good work. I really, really like their

approach. Their UI leaves much to be desired but their approach is

very solid.

posted by Dan Lawyer @ 9:19 AM 2 comments links to this post

2 Comments:

At 8:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know if this appropraite for a BLOG or not. But here it

goes. I stumbled across your name doing a genealogy search.

Would you happen to have any genealogy linked with an Asa

Lawyer born around 1790 in New Jersey?

At 9:27 AM, Blogger Dan Lawyer said...

I don't have any information in my database. Currently my

Lawyer research goes back to Jacob Lawyer in Frederick County

Virginia. Born sometime about 1757, died in Fayette Ohio about

1821. Contact me via e-mail if you'd like to discuss further:

lawyerdc at ldschurch.org

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