TechZone

The laws our ancestors lived by can tell us much about life in earlier times. Finding those laws, and the stories they tell, can be a daunting task, but—from colonial statutes to today, from the halls of Congress to the statehouses of 50 states—the choices legislators made about what laws were needed give a rich and deep context to family history.

When Yvette found a line to Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), Queen of France and England, in online trees, she quickly realized the existing research did not meet standards. She set about verifying the line one generation at a time, to meet the Genealogical Proof Standard. In this presentation, she will take you on her journey, sharing the skills, methods, and documents she used to verify her royal line back to the 1100s.

Do you have genealogy-related PowerPoint presentations full of interesting material that could benefit other researchers, except your presentations are languishing in a file on your computer? For whatever reason, do you no longer wish to share your research knowledge or material in front of a physical or digitally-linked audience? Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help you share your knowledge in a much different way. In today’s dynamic digital landscape, visual content remains a dominant force. As genealogy professionals, we are always exploring new ways to captivate, educate, and motivate our audience. Enter PowerPoint to video converters — these revolutionary tools empower us to transform our static presentations into engaging videos. It’s time to give our PowerPoint presentations the upgrade they deserve. In today’s fast-paced digital era, transforming your PowerPoint presentations into dynamic videos can elevate your content’s appeal and broaden its reach across multiple platforms. This presentation will show you how to move forward with AI to create and distribute video content.

MyHeritage makes it easy to fix problems in old photographs—without having to buy expensive and complicated photo-editing software. Upload a photo to MyHeritage and, with just a few clicks, you can sharpen blurry faces, remove scratches and transform a black-and-white photo to color. If your old color photos have faded, you can restore the original colors. You can even animate a face in a photo and create a video of someone telling his or life story. In this webinar, you’ll learn how to use all these tools.

The 1870 census was the first time farmers fell below 50% of American wage earners. Even then, they were still close, at 47.7%. By 1920, farmers were less than one third of the American population. Between 1870 and 1920, 11 million Americans migrated to cities. Learn about the events that spurred this migration and changed our ancestors from rural to urban dwellers and how to reconstruct their stories.

Learn how to use the free Google Earth Web platform to create and share engaging, interactive, multimedia stories that follow the footsteps of your ancestors. Although both the web and desktop versions have Google Earth in their name, they are very different. Learn how to navigate the platform interface, add multimedia content to your digital story, share your digital family history story, and preserve it. We will also discuss best practices for planning your Google Earth Web story. No coding skills needed!

This presentation focusses on helping family historians with British ancestry to research those whose conditions or behaviours may have led them to become marginalised, or discriminated against. Their circumstances were often the result of personal misfortune, exacerbated by society’s intolerance and they are often the ancestors who are not given due attention when we research, perhaps because their life experiences make us feel uncomfortable. Now is the time to focus on the Illegitimate, the poverty stricken, the sick and the lawbreakers and restore them to prominence in the family’s story. The presentation will also consider the ethical issues that arise when telling the stories of the marginalised.

In Germany, more and more directories are online, and some of them are even indexed. This presentation will tell you where to find them, show you how to work with them, and explain how to interpret the information typical for German directories.

Dive into the fascinating history of the Mecklenburg region and discover how to trace your ancestral roots with expert guidance. This presentation will begin with a journey through the historic landscape of two Mecklenburgs – Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz – highlighting their cultural and political development over the centuries. We will explore a wealth of genealogical resources, both online and in archives, that can help you uncover your family’s past. Special emphasis will be placed on church records, civil records, and the Mecklenburg census. But you will also learn about special sources off the beaten path, such as family records and emigration documents. Whether you’re just beginning your genealogical journey or looking for new avenues of research, this presentation will provide valuable insights and strategies to help you piece together your Mecklenburg heritage.