The videos from i4GG conference are finally available and I have not yet finished looking at Rootstech videos! You can purchase any or all of these videos from the i4GG site.

Personally, I went immediately to the presentations I missed at the time because they conflicted with another talk I went to.

Carol Rolnick, a fellow member of DIGG (the North San Diego DNA special interest group) gave a talk called “Tips and Tricks from the Genetic Genealogy Trenches” at the same time as my talk on “What’s new at GEDmatch on 2017” so of course hers was the first talk I listened to (after my own).

Several tips she gave were new to me. For example, did you know that in Chrome you can right click on an image and get google to search for it? Sometimes this works to find the name of an individual on your match list who has used a pseudonym. Of course a lot of the time it does not find a name but rather you get something like “official” or “portrait.”

I tried the picture I have of my great-great-grandmother and this is what I got.

Oh well. It is more likely to work for a living person if they have used that same picture elsewhere. And yes my great-grandmother’s mtDNA haplofroup was H5a1.

Carol gave a wonderful description of how to conduct a phone call to a possible genealogy contact. Meek, mild, think puppy dog, don’t sound like a marketer, and always leave voicemail (many still screen via an answering machine!).

She likes Scapple, a free format charting software tool, like a mind map for visualizing DNA relationships. Maybe this would be an easier way to make a McGuire diagram than the Excel template I have. Something to try.

Next I watched the video of another DIGG member, Michelle Trostler, talk about “Examining Your Matches at the Big 3.” Like Carol did, she discussed how useful a matches profile page is on Ancestry and demonstrated that you should always click through to view full tree.

She also discussed my favorite new tool from Jonny Perl which shows the percentages and likely relationships within Blaine’s shared cM chart using Leah Larkin’s and Andrew Millard’s calculations – https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

Both Michelle and Carol worked with Cece on the Paul Fronczak case and together they gave a wonderful presentation of that case which I saw in person. Undoubtedly I will view it again after I finish the talks I did not see. Other talks I recommend are any of Blaine’s or Cece’s talks. Actually just buy the whole set and enjoy it at your leisure!