Because We Can

What a difference a day makes. This weekend saw a solid line of people filling their plates each morning. Empty tables at the back section closed off made for a very pleasant breakfast. One of the conference speakers sat two tables away from us and I was able to complement him on what a great job he did. He not only knew his subject matter, he spoke slowly and distinctly and used his slides very effectively. Unfortunately most of the MyHeritage staff are non-native English speakers. They tend to speak rapidly with much less volume and often turn away from the microphone to look at the slides. That in itself is one of the things that goes into deciding which sessions we will attend. Since they will all be available for free on video, we can take our time and try to learn something from those we skip. Since it was the last morning, I felt I could, to use Linda's word "overindulge" in the little coconut pie sweet treats. I only took two, likely something I will ...

Not interested in genealogy or family history? Proceed with caution. My turn for the morning photo out the window. This is one of those, if there was time to post process it, which there isn't, I could have lightened the very bottom a little and slightly darkened the buildings on the other side of the river. It is something I might have done in the past so I guess you could say I'm just getting old and lazy. Or you could say I just spend my time doing what's important which is having a great time in Europe. This year I've opted for the latter and am happier for it. To be blunt about it, there were a lot of things wrong about this year's conference on the technical side particularly. There is a speaker standing behind the podium. Obviously these were left over podiums from talks from NBA players, not normal people. We've joked in the past about how tall the average Dutch person is so maybe these podiums are considered normal sized here. Slide from o...

These post is genealogy focused. You have been warned. Hard to believe, but we stepped in this morning so Linda took the morning photo out of our window. I warned above this was a genealogy focused post I really is just about all it's about. Jeff Rasmussen of Legacy Family Tree and Legacy Webinars introducing Gilad Japhet, founder and owner of MyHeritage who would give the Keynote talk. Gilad. He has the real deal, a genealogist who founded and runs a genealogy company as a genealogy company. Unlike the CEO of Ancestry who before becoming CEO was the CEO of the toy company, Mattel. MyHeritage totally dominates the genealogy business in Europe and has his eyes set on ever widening that lead. Two new acquisitions announced by Gilad. What they are working on for ethnicity of students will definitely make them the leaders in that area. They are also doing some amazing things with free text recognition of newspapers and it was interesting hearing ...