Last Friday over 25,000 attendees from all over the world (all 50 U.S States were represented and over 30 countries) to attend RootsTech, the world’s largest Family History technology conference. People of all backgrounds and all ages were in attendance. As I walked through the exhibit hall of the convention center I saw everything from young teenagers to 90+ year olds cruising along in their motorized scooters. I was thoroughly impressed at the diversity this conference attracted. Beyond just a wide span of age, there was everything from people just beginning to have an interest in family history that wanted to learn the basics on how to get started, to the most advanced professional genealogists looking to network with others in their field. In addition, there were software engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators, all sharing an interest in developing and creating systems and technologies that either cater to the field of family history and genealogy, or that utilize the data captured in that process to develop unique new applications.
One of the most exciting events at the conference is the Innovator’s Showdown. This event brings together top App developers from all over the world to compete for over $100,000 in prizes. This year 46 companies from around the globe applied to take part in the Innovator Showdown. Those 46 companies were whittled down to 6 finalists that appeared live onstage in front of 5 judges, of which I happened to be one, while around 10,000 attendees (both in person and via online stream) watched them give a two minute pitch followed by four minutes of judges Q&A (no pressure right?!).
The six finalist companies that presented included:
Ancestor Cloud: an online marketplace where those with family history needs can connect with those who can fill their needs. For example I can go into the marketplace and request that someone go and locate the grave of a deceased relative in another state or country and quote what I am willing to pay for it. Then someone who is in that area can offer to obtain that information for me for that fee. Ancestor Cloud is paid a portion of that fee for connecting the two parties together and facilitating the transaction. I see this as a great way to do genealogy research quickly and efficiently when traveling to the locations yourself isn’t an option. I also see it as a great tool for those people who don’t have expertise in genealogy research but who desire to find individuals that can help them with their efforts.
JRNL: a journaling app for recording memories as they happen via multiple avenues such as texting emailing, etc. One really nice feature of this system is the series of great questions it poses to a user that can help them start capturing their life history when they aren’t quite sure where to begin. This is especially great for people to use with their older living ancestors that may not have kept journals in the past and whose memories you want to capture for posterity sake. I also really liked that they were promoting multiple ways a person could keep a journal ongoing using simple method that we all use in everyday life. It gives us something that can someday become our own life history record to pass on to our future generations.
The History Project: an app that allows you to create digital time capsules of a person’s life using mixed media such as videos, photos, sound files, documents, etc. This company has formed partnerships with two major media companies that provide them content to help auto-populate important word events with dates and photos that occurred during the course of a person’s life. I felt their biggest strength was the heavy-hitting partnerships they have established thus far which are providing them substantial amounts of data that can be tied directly into each people’s time capsule. I also loved that their system allowed for all the differing media types so you capture favorite songs that held meaning at different points of your life as well as the videos.
Studio (by Legacy Republic): technology hardware and software for digitizing hard copy photo albums. A lot of us still have those old paper based photo albums and scrapbooks where the photos have begun to fade or turn yellow. However, we don’t want to remove the glued down photos from those albums to scan them for fear of damaging the pictures. Studio has come up with a pretty amazing solution for this problem. It’s a computer and a portable table combined into a single device that allows you to place your photo album as-is under this table, zip the cover down, place your iPhone camera on the tabletop in the built-in holder, and the computer captures the photo from your phone using all kinds of incredible technology to enhance the photo and avoid the glare of the plastic cover pages etc. I love that they found an innovative way to convert all your old photo albums to digital images without putting those priceless photos at risk.
Twile: a web app that populates a visual family timeline with data and media, displaying photos along a family timeline to highlight each important event along the way. Currently their system allows for photos to be laid out in the timeline but they are working on adding other forms of media as well. In addition they are in process of integrating to multiple social media platforms such as
TapGenes: not only do they offer users a secure personal health record to capture their medical data, but they also offer the ability to capture a family’s health story, allowing families to record health histories on all of their past generations. This is critically important information to capture because a family’s health history is considered to be the single strongest predictor of disease risk yet only 4% of Americans have a documented health history past their parents in their medical records. By capturing this information in a family health tree it creates opportunities around prevention, risk reduction, and overall health management for families. I think TapGenes has the ability to have a massive impact on the field of personalized medicine going forward, especially as they are capturing more genetic data to tie into the family health tree and health histories. I felt they were a clear standout in the Showdown.
Following their presentations, the prize winners were chosen by having each of the five judges cast their own votes independently and then adding up those scores to determine the winners. The voting was incredibly close as the judges were impressed with each of these companies. But the final selections of the judges were:
1st place – TapGenes
2nd place – Studio (by Legacy Republic)
3rd place – Twile
The live audience also was able to cast their votes at the event and a People’s Choice award for $10,000 was given to Twile as the audience favorite. It was interesting to see how the audience vote differed from the judges. They ranked their favorites for top three in the following order: 1st Twile, 2ndJRNL, and 3rdTapGenes.
Interestingly, TapGenes had participated in the 2015 Showdown but they didn’t make it to the final round. This year the company not only make it to the finals, but TapGenes won the grand prize! For all those companies who have tried to make it in the past and didn’t, TapGenes is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t give up! Sometimes it’s the second or third time that’s the charm. I can’t wait to see what amazing technologies are presented to us at next year’s Showdown. Keep those great innovations coming!
~Amy Rees Anderson (follow my daily blog at www.amyreesanderson.com/blog )
