Mobility, Cloud Computing, Consumerism, Personalization, & Services

Shane R. Robison, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company, delivered the opening keynote presentation titled: “A World of Information”. Robison identified four macro forces that are shaping the future: (1) population growth; (2) urbanization; (3) globalization; and (4) information explosion. Exemplifying the convergence of these macro forces and emerging as global forces are China, India, and Latin America (led by Brazil). He forecast that by the year 2020, just nine years hence, there would be 25 million apps and 4 billion people online throughout the globe.

Robison predicted that two enabling technology trends, mobility and cloud computing, will direct IT organizations to focus on developing services. Picture a not-too-distant future in which people primarily meet their information needs using mobile appliances (such as smart phones, tablets, and their successors) to access cloud-based services (for example, printing services, location services, or scheduling services.)

Robison characterized future corporate IT operations as shifting their focus to emphasize “Information” versus “Technology”.  He suggested that successful companies will exploit analytics to make sense of the information at their disposal, information about service features, usage patterns, and user characteristics. This will enable companies to improve their competitive positions and revise their market strategies.

In fact, companies will face a good deal of competition going forward and it is expected that “technology disruptors” will find themselves disrupted at a fairly brisk pace. Robison used Netflix as an example. Not long ago Netflix disrupted the come-to-the-store movie rental business model of Blockbuster. Today, the Netflix online movie rental model is being disrupted by streaming video delivery providers. In the future technology disruptions will require companies to continually revise and reinvent their business models.

Following Robison the second opening keynote speaker was Jay Verkler, CEO of FamilySearch International. His presentation was entitled: “Turning Roots, Branches, Trees into Nodes, Links, Graphs”. Verkler identified four key future trends: (1) “as- a-service” technology model, (2) consumerism, (3) personalization, and (4) mobility.

The “as- a-service” business model, or “aaS”, already exists for software applications and infrastructure, such as cloud-based computing resources. Future services will include a range of information-based services, printing services, and many others. He suggested that any company, no matter its size, can build a new service that takes advantage of services offered by others. The second trend is consumerism, which is driving new technology developments. As evidence of this, Verkler stated that the market capitalization of Apple is now larger than Microsoft. The implication is that Apples’ consumer-driven products account for this fact. The third trend is personalization and the fourth is mobility. Exemplifying these trends are applications that are both location-aware and mobile-aware, for example, a smart phone app that suggests possible second cousins living in an area that a family history researcher is visiting.

• Web content needs to be generated by society members
• Good security is vital
• The web must provide value to members and non-members
• It must contribute in a meaningful way to the success of the society
• However it is implemented, it must be capable of being supported by volunteers

I also unveiled a Family Search Wiki page I created that is dedicated to resources and materials of interest to the genealogical society web master. My hope is that those of us working in the technical arena will use this as a vehicle to pool our collective knowledge to create a living and valuable resource for others to use.

The planners had expected about 800 participants and by the time the dust settled on the first day’s registrations, there were about 3,000. Clearly this is a subject that people are interested in.

Another thing that struck me was the types of vendors who were in the exhibit hall. We are accustomed to seeing FamilySearch.org, Ancestry, NEHGS and other genealogy-related organizations. Major sponsors and exhibitors for this event included Hewlett-Packard, Dell and other traditional hardware/software companies – definitely a sign of a growing interest in genealogy.

There was a lot of talk on the software developer’s side about “Cloud Computing.” I confess this is a subject that intrigues me; I plan to learn more in 2011 and will share what I learn as it applies to genealogy.

Check out some of the posts and links here to learn more about specific presentations and events.

Overall, RootsTech 2011 was a success. One way to define that success was by how many people were saying they’d “see you next year!” The dates are 2-4 February 2012 in Salt Lake City. It’s already on my calendar.

A webinar is an interactive presentation delivered over the internet. There are many ways to do this, but it appears that the technology has really matured and the costs are beginning to drop.

In fact, their discussion was one of several to be streamed live during the conference and featured several panelists who were not attending the conference.

This is a capability (podcasts is another) that holds a lot of promise for Genealogical Societies as a way to reach a much larger audience that is possile with a conventional face to face meeting.

Trying to describe the impact of one of Curts talks would be like trying to describe, well, words escape me… He is inspirational, provocative, challenging and, above all, entertaining. I really tried to take notes during both his talks but failed due to hand fatigue, interruptions to applaud and, occasionally, to wipe a tear away.

He is passionately committed to the adaption of technology by societies to enable them to provide members (and potential members) with the data they want, in the form they want it when they want it. He is convinced that continuing to provide newsletters and journals on paper is a waste of valuable society resources that could be put to better use.

One idea he put forth surprised me a little at first… that societies should put some or most of their databases behind the ‘paywall’ in a members only area. He believes that this can and should be a good revenue stream that societies can use to support their efforts to digitize and index more local records.

On reflection I think that it is the only rational way that societies can capitalize on the growning use of the internet by genealogists who otherwise do not feel compelled to join and support the societies who provide the data they want.

Thomas has a web site ( GENEABLOGGERS ) that lists 1700 genealogy blogs. From this site you can search through posts from all of the blogs for specific keywords (a surname, for example).  The web site has a “Suggest A Blog” link if you want to recommend one to be added to his list.

 Several other things that were mentioned caught my attention:

• If you are looking for a domain name the panel recommended looking at domainname.com and name.com
• They discussed affiliate links…. these are links placed on your page that provide you revenue if somebody clicks on them and purchases something. Sounds like a good revenue tool for societies

One session in particular deserves special mention… On Friday afternoon I sat in on a session described as “Societies and Technology” scheduled and hosted by Jay Verkler. If that name sounds familiar it should… he is the CEO of FamilySearch International and the guy generally credited with creating the RootsTech conference.

It was kind of unreal to be sitting in a room with 20 other society members talking to Jay while he scribbled notes on a whiteboard and teased out ideas for how FamilySearch could better support Genealogical Societies.

I got to see a lot of him at the conference, and every interaction left me more inpressed by his knowledge, dedication and his character. He is one amazing individual.

• Always scan and save your images at a high resolution (300 – 600 dots per inch)
• Save the images using the TIFF format
• Never modify the original… if you want to enhance it, make a copy and work from it.

He seemed to like Photoshop Elements as a reasonably priced tool for editing and enhancing images.  He spent some time discussing how to use this software to associate descriptive tags to your images to simplify locating images of interest. He noted that, by default, these tags are maintianed by Photoshop Elements. You need to take an extra step to ‘push’ the tags out to each image to make them usable by another software tool.

He also discussed several options for uploading your images ‘into the cloud’. Adobe has PHOTOSHOP.COM to work with their Elements software. Google has Picasa. Both offer some free storage but charge to exceed that capacity. This is an excellent way to 1) Make your images available anywhere in the world, and 2) Establish a backup of your pictures. Both options allow you to restrict who can view your images.

Flickr will allow unlimited (but more public) uploading for $24.95 a year.

He also mentioned a really cool thing for digital camera owners. Eye-Fi memory cards. These replace the normal memory card in your camera and have the capability to automatically upload your pictures to a service like Photoshop.com or Picassa whenever you are within range of a wifi hot spot.

My take-away was that it has become relatively easy to make documents available on a print on demand basis. This is something that all societies shold look into as a vehicle for making information information to those who prefer a paper copy.

The panel concensus seemed to be that one of the leading providers was Lulu. All you need to provide is your document (MicroSoft Word is probably the best format). You upload it, select your options (type of paper, binding options, cover, etc…) and they will give you a per copy price. Once you finalize the deal people deal directly with Lulu to order and pay for their documents, and you get the royalties (how much depends on the price you set).

For magazines (and newsletters?) the panel recommended MagCloud.

I also learned a new buzzword: Freemium – free publications made available as ‘teasers’ to entice people to purchase other materials you have for sale.