Necessity is the Mother of Invention

I used this graphic in my presentation entitled "Innovations in Genealogy and Family History."

I thought it would be funny to display this pedigree chart and have the audience figure out the word game.

It didn't take too long and someone yelled out "Necessity is the Mother of Invention."

FamilyLink.com at the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Expo Feb 8-9 '08

FamilyLink.com, Inc. and WorldVitalRecords.com had a memorable event at the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Conf. Feb 8-9, 2008.


This was a great winter time get away for us from Northern Utah. When we left Provo it was snowing! We arrived in St. George to beautiful spring like weather. It was warm but had recently snowed on the beautiful red rock mountains above St. George. The colors of Red, White, and Blue were very vivid. The sky was clear and cobalt blue.

One of the first people that I ran into after we got there was Dear Myrtle. I gave her a big hug and thanked her for her designation of WorldVitalRecords.com as the BEST Database Site. She did this in her BEST of the Internet for Genealogists Award on 3 Feb 2008. I later had a chance to sit down and visit with her in her booth.

This was the first conference that we had our new booth. I sure like how it looks and how it represents our company and products. The booth is fairly quick and easy to set up and it down. This is Amy and Ryan setting up the booth.

The new booth turned out to be a hit. It was always a busy beehive of activity. We had numerous compliments on the form and function of the booth, even from my friends at Ancestry.com. We had so much traffic to our booth that we have decided to double out booth space from 10x10 to 20x10 for next years conference.

We had our new video playing non-stop on a projector in our booth. Our video touches people in a way that they can relate to. As I watch people that are viewing the video, they are all nodding their heads to indicate that they have the same feeling about doing their family history research. RootsTV has uploaded the video to their site. So our WorldVitalRecords.com video is now on YouTube and RootsTV.

We had numerous opportunities for FamilyLink representatives to speak to large groups of genealogy enthusiasts. Yvette Arts, Jason McGowan, and I addressed large crowds.











Now that we have over 25,000 subscribers to WorldVitalRecords.com and over 50,000 members on FamilyLink.com, and over 2 million users four Facebook applications such as "We're Related" and "Family Groups" everyone seems to know who we are. I spoke with a lady that she was one of our first members and she talked with me at last year's St. George expo and requested that we add several new features. We have since added those features to our web sites and she thanked me for listening.

Probably due to our increased profile in the industry and our success at putting 6,000 databases with 1 billion names on line, we now have a steady stream of organizations and individuals that want to license their content to us. In the early days of our company (last year) it was sometimes a tough sell to get content owners to license their content to us. This is good news to our subscribers as our content pipeline is growing and flowing.

As a sponsor of the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Expo and CD syllabus, we will be able to make the electronic syllabus available for our users as a reference on WorldVitalRecords.com. Watch our newsletter for when we announce upcoming content on our site.

WVR mentioned prominently in the 3 of top 4 Gen. News Stories of '07

World Vital Records (and FamilyLink.com) is mentioned prominently in 3 of the top 4 Genealogy news stories of 2007 as reported by Family Tree Magazine. The other top 4 story "Record Digitization Accelerates" is something that we are actively involved in, but we did not get mentioned by name.

We appreciated this recognition as we feel that it indicates our leadership and innovation are changing and improving family history and genealogy.

www.familytreemagazine.com/insider/PermaLink,guid,550a49eb-2aa2-4da7-a2e3-051d308a2971.aspx

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
10 Biggest Genealogy News Stories in 2007
Posted by Diane Haddad


Here are the top genealogy developments of 2007… at least in our humble opinion.

Competition comes back
For a few years there, after industry leader MyFamily.com (now The Generations Network) purchased second-place Genealogy.com in 2003, industry competition ebbed and online innovation slowed. Today The Generations Network is still the giant, but the growth of relative newcomers including World Vital Records and Footnote, plus FamilySearch’s records-digitization initiatives, are keeping the genealogy business on its toes.

Records digitization accelerates
In October, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced it was teaming up with FamilySearch to digitize case files of approved pension applications from widows of Civil War Union soldiers. That’s part of an even bigger arrangement that has FamilySearch volunteers stationed at NARA to scan all kinds of records. Footnote also has agreements to digitize NARA records, and FamilySearch has mobilized thousands of volunteers to index scanned records.

Partnerships proliferate
Organizations are joining forces right and left. World Vital Records, which launched in 2006, has built its genealogy database largely through partnership agreements. That site, Footnote, ProQuest and the Godfrey Library announced in May they’d provide access at FamilySearch’s Family History Centers. Nonprofit libraries and archives, including NARA, are using partnerships to increase records access without blowing their budgets.

Social networking explodes
As contributing editor Rick Crume points out in his January 2008 Family Tree Magazine social networking guide, Web 2.0 has allowed sites to be more interactive than ever. In addition to the popularity of photo- and family-history-sharing sites such as Geni and Amiglia, and genealogy networking sites such as FamilyLink and WeRelate, database sites such as FindMyPast have added social networking features.