The SCGS Jamboree is perhaps my favorite genealogy conference because there are so many DNA talks. Of course the i4GG conference, which is coming back to San Diego on December 8-9, is all DNA so I love that one even more.

It was great to meet so many of the people I only knew via the internet, particularly the DNAadoption crew for whom I have written several tools. Here we all are last Thursday night (thank you Leah Larkin for taking the photo!)

Front: Rob Warthen, L to R: Gale French, Barbara Rae-Venter, Pam Tabor, Barbara Taylor, Richard Weiss, Karin Corbeil, me, Don Worth, Kaitlin Mueller (Rob’s stepdaughter)

A shout out to all who came to my Triangulation talk, the slide for MyHeritage triangulation is now included. Those slides are online at https://slides.com/kittycooper/dna-triangulation-8-8-26#/

My presentation about using GWorks with unknown parentage cases went very well. This pleased me since I had worked so hard to try and make this tool understandable. I did this by showing how I used it on a few cases. Here is my favorite slide:

The idea is that you can usually find the ancestral couple to build down from on a second cousin match’s tree by using GWorks alone. Look at the top ancestors in the GWorks compare all trees to see if any of them are on the second cousin’s pedigree tree.  In the image above the tree is on the left and the top GWorks matches on the right. Do you see any names in both places? Click the image to go to the slide, then click the forward > to see the answer highlighted.

All the conference videos and audios are available for sale (Click here). There were talks I did not get to in time to get a seat, and others that conflicted with each other, so I will probably buy a few myself.

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot recently is how to get my younger family members interested in family history and perhaps even DNA.

So I was delighted that the children’s book The One and Only Me: A Book About Genes was one of the prizes on the 23andme spin the wheel at their booth. The book is an easy and pleasant read and I managed to win two of them.

However an idea that has been occurring to me recently is to make a picture book of the Munson family history for both younger and older family members. So I went to Devon Noel Lee’s talk “Self Publishing Your Family History” to see what I could learn. Besides, I wanted to meet her since I have agreed to participate in the Family History Fanatic’s Summer of DNA e-conference run by Noel and her husband Andrew. This is a disclaimer since I will be paid for that!

Noel was a delight, very energetic, and quite inspiring. She suggested Lulu for self publishing a family book and Pinnacle for editing your videos. I found a youtube video where she discusses picking a photo book company between her two finalists a year ago, Mixbook and Presto Photo. The Lees have a Family Fanatics channel on youtube which I am now subscribed to.

Noel compares PrestoPhoto and Mixbook on youtube

Later in the conference, I dropped by her friend Brett Weiss’ Photos Movies and More booth and bought his service to copy my last 5 VCR family movie tapes to MP4. He will even come pick them up!

From Angie Bush of AncestryProGenealogists I learned to try Lucid to make better diagrams.

My genealogy education also included learning about online Pennsylvania records for my Beyer cousins from the wonderful James Beidler.

Apologies for plugging so many products (most of which I am not even affiliated with) but the exhibit hall was, as usual, one of my favorite parts of the conference, aside from the outdoor restaurant bar. See the footer on this site for my affiliation disclaimer.

I have more news from some of my favorite companies, but those will get their own posts.

I hope you all come to the Jamboree next year for the 50th anniversary bash!

UPDATE 6 JUN 2018: By popular demand, here is the solution to the question posed in my slide shown above. Both Cranford and Pratt are listed in both places so the Cranford/Pratt married couple are the ancestors to work from: