 And hello, wiki peeps. Welcome to our live rootstack version of our live cast on wiki tree, presented by Grandma's Jeans. Today we have visiting with us Peter Roberts, our DNA guru extraordinaire and our DNA leader extraordinary kitty Smith. And we're gonna talk about DNA today. I do have notes that I left somewhere else to be right back. It's live. It's live. Can I tell you it's live? Go ahead and enjoy that for a second. Talk amongst yourselves. I wanted to tell you that we're gonna be taking questions from our live chat, which is going on now. Julie's got that covered and moderating as she usually does. And we're gonna get questions into Julian, to Peter and Kitty from Julie. I'm also really, really, are you guys tired? Yes. Yeah. It's been a long week. It's been a long week. So first off, I wanna tell you that Kitty has been a member of wiki tree since 2013. She has 77,408 contributions, 5,880 thank yous on her profile page. And her profile has been accessed 29,636 times. She has been DNA tested and has one other DNA connection that shows up on her profile. And her last comment as of Monday when I was looking at this was an at a wiki treeer from our forest elf, Aowyn Langoff for hard work. So whoo-hoo Kitty. And Peter here. Peter has been on wiki tree since about 2013 as well. He has 16,652 contributions with 1,601 thank yous. His profile has been accessed 24,063 times. And of course DNA testing is all over his profile. If you go to his profile, you will see actual DNA file in the background. Is that actually your DNA? No, it's just a generic. It's generic, okay. And he has nine DNA connections listed in his wiki tree profile. He has 67 badges. I didn't write down how many badges Kitty has, but I guarantee it's a few. And Peter's last comment on his profile page that I saw on Monday was thank you Peter for suggesting to open up some of my profiles from private to private with public family tree. It's done, barely active on wiki tree nowadays, but can reply to critical tasks. And I hope that this does help, which is a really important thing. So we've been at Roots Tech since Wednesday. Some of us have been here since Tuesday. And we were brought out here to work the wiki tree, to volunteer the wiki tree booth to promote wiki tree here at Roots Tech, which is the largest genealogical conference in the world. And it is tech focused. So doing DNA talk today is a really good idea. I have a question that you both can answer. What discovery brought each of you to wiki tree? Yeah, I can start with that, is that I have a Bahamas DNA project and I was trying to find really good descendant charts and ancestral charts that I could link to. And I discovered that wiki tree could do it. And I saw a little DNA icon and I thought, wow, how can I make use of this? This is a shareable collaborative tree. Right. And that was it. That was it, that brought you. What about you, Kitty? Just the collaborative nature of the wiki tree and being able to work with other people on Smith's, got Smith's. And it's been a fabulous tool for me. So how is DNA used in genealogy in general? How does somebody use their DNA? The ideal way is that you find cousins that you match and hopefully those cousins have shared, you can find the shared ancestry that you have with those cousins. Some of those cousins may have information about your ancestry that you don't have. By matching with the DNA, you can actually confirm your ancestry is accurate. So, and Kitty, do you have something to add? I was just gonna say, and it can be a very distant cousin. It doesn't have to be a first cousin or anything. Yes, it can be. And how many times have you been asked this and I'm gonna ask you this again, but what kind of DNA test should someone take? Okay, if you're a male, I highly recommend that you take a wide DNA test because that tells you about your direct male line all the way back to the beginning. Males and females can take a mitochondrial test that will reveal their direct maternal line all the way back to the beginning. And anyone can also do an autosomal DNA test and it will look at about, within about the five or six, seven, eight generations who you share DNA with within that, those amount of generations. And that also includes X DNA. And when you said, all the way to the beginning, you don't mean that. You mean all the way back to- Beginning of life. Beginning of life, from mitochondrial and Y, all the way back. Well, yeah, I mean, mitochondrial is beginning of life. Right, but basically though, in genealogy, you really can't go past- WikiTree's only going about 2,000 years. And it's useful back that far. For Y and mitochondrial DNA. And for genealogy research, isn't there a kind of a cut off at the time that surnames started to be- For wide chromosome, you're looking at within the genealogical timeframe, which is when surnames became fixed with direct male lines and also when church records became reported and civil records became reported. The traditional genealogical resources. Kitty, do you have something? Just that as a Smith researcher, I'm finding that Y DNA is the only way to sort out the different Smith lines. And so if you take a test and you have a match on any of the surnames, you know that that's your genetic family and you can ignore all the other families that have that same surname because you're not related to them, at least not genetically. So- One thing I'd like to add is right currently, autosomal DNA testing is very popular, but it's actually very difficult to use and why DNA testing is exceedingly easy to use and it's exceedingly powerful. And mitochondrial DNA is incredibly easy to use, but because we live in a patriarchal society, the matrilineal, the mother's line, you don't get surnames. So the surnames change each generation, but that's usually the part of our tree that's least known. So it's actually quite helpful to do a mitochondrial test because you can actually add to that line of ancestry. That's so cool. And when you get a DNA test and your test is back, we have all these results, the information is on the testing site. Why do I need to bring my test over and do something with it on WikiTree? Why would I do that? What's great about WikiTree is that we can associate that DNA with the ancestry. In the same way that the DNA is inherited, WikiTree will automatically associate the different types of DNA tests with the ancestry. Okay, and how do you do it? I mean, on your profile, you just say what type of test you took, a description about your test, and there's public databases that where you enter your information, the DNA information is not on WikiTree, it's in a public database. And the public database for the Y chromosome is Y-search. The database for mitochondrial DNA is Mito-search. And for, if you test it with ancestry DNA or 23andMe or family tree DNA, family finder, then you wanna use GEDmatch. And that will allow, and if you put your GEDmatch ID and your Mito-search ID and your Y-search ID into on your profile, then it will associate that information with your ancestry. And you can actually do comparisons of the DNA, your DNA with your cousins and other relatives and- Through those third party sites. Through those third party sites. And those third party sites, when we say that it's GEDmatch, Mito-search, Y-search. And I have a question that comes up a lot. I did my DNA testing in Boyd, does my ethnicity look off? Why does my ethnicity look off when I'm looking at the major testing companies ethnicity reports? They're using different populations. Like family tree DNA, they will use one scientific study of sampling of various populations. And then ancestry DNA is using other populations. So it's a small sample of what does an Irish person look like, what does a German person look like? And so you're actually, and different samples look differently. And plus the way the algorithm works is that it's putting it into the nearest bucket. Right. And so if your real population of your ancestry is not represented by one of those buckets, then it goes into the closest bucket. So it may say you're from Germany, but you may have no ancestry from Germany, the closest bucket is France. And I'm gonna do a shout out here to Brian Sykes in his book, The Seven Daughters of Eve. I can pinpoint my mitochondrial haplogroup because of that book. I know where my original ancestor lived 30,000 years ago in the Austrian Alps area. So, and that's, if you wanna do research beyond that, get some of the books that National Geographic's, what is his name? Oh, Spencer Wells. Spencer Wells has put together Brian Sykes' great books on ethnicity and ethnic origins and the origins of our people, all of us, and when we came out of Africa. I'm gonna move on a little bit to the DNA project. I can throw in a couple of comments if I could. Oh, that sounds great, Julie. Number one, we're being broadcast at our booths, so say hello to Roots Tech. Hey, Roots Tech! Hey, Roots Tech! Secondly, they love your tie, Peter. Thank you. My wife bought it. It's beautiful. And Charlotte would like to know, Kitty, if you'd consider writing a genetic genealogy for Dummy's book. She doesn't know any Dummy, so how could she write for us? Yeah, most of what I write is on WikiTree. I don't have a blog like Mags, and so when I have a bit of information to impart it usually ends up on G to G. There's a, let me give a shout out to ISOG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy. They've got some wonderful resources for beginners, and the information is evolving constantly, and so it's really helpful to see the most current information. Unfortunately, what you write in a book oftentimes becomes outdated. Very quickly, and there are a couple of bloggers that are actually WikiTreers. Kitty Munson Cooper does a great blog about genealogy. Not to be confused with Kitty Cooper Smith. That's correct. Roberta Estes is an excellent blogger. And Blaine Bettinger also does that, and all three of those people are here, and I've only gotten a hug from Kitty Munson Cooper so far, so yeah, so how about any more over there, Julie? Right now, we're clear. I don't know if they can hear me because I was having an echo so I had to shut that off. All right. I'm gonna do some adjustments here. Okay, cool. So, what do you do when you find a profile where you share DNA with another person who shows up in the profile list? You wanna try to answer that? Oh. Or do you wanna ask a question again? Okay, on your profile, when you have DNA, you go back several generations, great-great-grandfather. You see a list of other people who have also DNA tested. What do you do when you see that list? Well, if it's an autosomal match, I will look at their GEDMatch ID, and then I'll compare in GEDMatch. I'll see if we have any shared segments. Go ahead, Kitty. Peter and I have a slightly different approach. My goal in taking an autosomal test with 23andMe was to find genetic cousins. So, the numbers don't really mean as much to me, although I know it's extremely important, but what I do is on each profile is a choice to choose your surnames, and it's a list of all the surnames that are autosomal matches. I send that list to my match, and I say, are any of these surnames on your family tree? If they are, then that's where we start concentrating our research to find our common autosomal ancestor. Well, Ed, I just wanna throw in here in just a minute. Peter worked really hard with the people over at GEDMatch to do some really incredible things recently. Do you wanna touch on that for just a minute? What's really nice is that anyone, if you're in GEDMatch, anyone who has their ancestry in wiki tree, you can automatically see, when you've got a match in GEDMatch, you can automatically see their eight generation tree in wiki tree. That is so cool. That is cool. And just a click of a button. Yes. And does that not include the tier one membership? Right now it's tier one, but there's talk of making that a freebie. That would be good, since wiki tree is a freebie. Yes. And GEDMatch is usually a freebie. It is a freebie, but the $10 contribution that you make to GEDMatch helps GEDMatch keep going, so it's an important thing to do. What is the, Kitty, what is the most common falsehood you have ever heard about DNA? I'm gonna ask you this, too. The most common one is, well, how could they get DNA from my ancestor that's been buried for 500 years? And how do you do that? Well, we don't. We don't dig up bodies. What we do is we look for DNA matches on living people, and that shows us where to look to do our research and find the common ancestors. When you say falsehood, I'm gonna say misunderstanding. There you go. Okay, because the biggest misunderstanding that I see is that people will take a DNA test and they are trying to use ethnicity to find ancestry in terms of the fact that I've got 40% of my ancestry is from Ireland and a certain percentage is from Northern Europe, and trying to use that information for genealogy. And that's kind of fun to know, but it's really the matching segments that's important for on autosomal DNA and the matching white chromosomes and the matching hematocontal DNA that's helpful for genealogy. And when you say matching segments, what you're talking about are, we all have these chromosomes and they're numbered one through 22 and then we have the X and the Y. And when you say segments, it's actually a part of a single chromosome. Yeah, it's sort of like you and I might match on chromosome nine from a stark position to an end position and hopefully it's like more than seven centimorgans. And that segment is coming from a shared ancestor. And the big question is, what is a shared ancestry? And that's the part that WikiTree is really good at. And they've got an incredible program of relationship finder where we can do two to five people. What is their relationship for two to five people? And that's the type of thing that you see, we talk about sometimes about triangulated groups and that's everyone matching each other on the same segment. And they all inherited that segment from a shared ancestor. What is the shared ancestry? Okay, and that's the really good thing about WikiTree is that we can do that for you. We do have another question about the conchonion. I think my audio might be echoing, so I'm gonna make it quick. Charlotte wants to know how the X chromosome, she said spreads out on WikiTree, I'm assuming she means propagates out, right? So WikiTree's got an amazing feature that it will allow you to see which of your ancestors could have contributed to your X chromosome. It can also show you which of your eight and ancestors descendants could have inherited that ancestors X chromosome. When you're in GED match and when you're in 23andMe and also your family finder, you can see who you match on the X chromosome. WikiTree can very easily, you can share a URL of showing a webpage of the people that could have contributed to your X and you can say to them, send them that, you can email them that page and you can say to them, do you have any of these ancestors in your ancestral tree? Because those ancestors are the only ones that could have contributed to my X and you and I are matching on the X. Right, that's interesting. Kitty, anything about the X chromosome? No, Peter's the expert thing. Yeah, and nobody else does that. Nobody else has information on the X like that. And you have to get that at WikiTree. They have it on individual workstations, well, you know, in individual computers, but not on the internet working with the DNA and the ancestry. And back to a very beginning question on DNA and WikiTree, what is, what's the big deal about privacy concerns and DNA and how we do that on WikiTree? First off, when you do a normal DNA test, people are concerned, you know, my DNA is getting out there. We're looking at about 600,000 base pairs. That's, and compared to the whole genome, that's like five inches compared to a 30-story building. We're only looking at a tiny little portion of the total genome. But anyway, so we're only looking at a little bit about, we're only looking at a small amount of the DNA. The thing is in WikiTree, if you need to be private, you can make your parents private. Your tree has to be public. You have to say that your tree is public. You can be anonymous first name, you can use an initial for your first name, but you need to be, your tree needs to be public for the DNA to propagate on WikiTree. And I have that question a lot. And my father has graciously done DNA testing for me, so I know what the Y line is of my surname. And he also has graciously allowed me to post his part of our tree as public, but the rest of his information is private. So he is technically still very protected, even though he does that and I do that. And privacy seems to be a big question. One of the things that I wanted to point out is that WikiTree doesn't take the raw data. WikiTree does not put your DNA specifically on WikiTree. All WikiTree does is take your test information, who you tested with and what kind of test you took. So nobody's running around WikiTree with your DNA. We don't wanna clone you. That's a big deal. We don't wanna clone you. We might like you, but we don't want two of you. So going on from that, there are 464 members in the DNA project. That's a huge project to lead. What does a member of the DNA project do? They usually agree to put their information about their DNA tests on their profile so that it is propagated down the line. It includes setting the privacy level to include a public family tree so that that information can be propagated. It also provides for joining the, some people joined the WikiTree project on family tree DNA, which we're collecting basically a list of each one of the haplogroups and who's tested in each haplogroup. So each section of that program is sorted according to haplogroup. And there's a Google chatroom thing. Not what do you call it? Google, it's a Google community. Google. Thank you. Thank you, that one. The common groups where I come from. Okay, Google groups. Is for the DNA members of the project on WikiTree. What would be really great is to get more of the project members involved in terms of actually volunteering to do certain tasks. Like we've got a lot of people in WikiTree that added all of their DNA information, but they're red private. And when it's red private, nothing happens. And so they need to make their tree private. And a lot of times they don't realize because the public, the default setting is private. And so they need to change the default setting so that their tree is public. So it'd be great to have people. And here's an announcement for you. Kitty could make the announcement if you wanted to. That over the weekend, we have talked about creating some tasks and having somebody come on to help lead the project that is a good person at getting tasks delegated or put out for people. So I am joining the project as one of the project leaders, along with Kay Wilson and Kitty Cooper. So there are gonna be some changes in the DNA project coming up. And hopefully we'll get some of these 464 people more involved in some of the 37,606 people who have been DNA tested, also more involved in the project. Because that's one of the great things about WikiTree is that our projects really, really drive some of the most incredible work that we do beyond just adding trees to WikiTree. How many projects are you involved in? Three or four, I got the 1776 project, which is for anyone, any of our ancestors that were involved in the American Revolution. I have the early Pennsylvania settlers, which are any settlers in Pennsylvania before 1700 and the DNA project and a couple of one name studies. Smith. God Smith. God Smith. How many projects are you involved in? I'm the leader of the Bahamas project. I'm also involved in the, well, I'm also a member of the Scottish Clans project that I haven't been doing anything much active in that, but I wish they were more active. So being the leader of the Bahamas project, do you get to go down to the Bahamas to do research for the project? There's a lot of great people that are in the Bahamas that are doing research for me. But occasionally they ask me to come down and speak at various cultural festivals. Do you need somebody to carry your bags? Oh, I have my wife that does that. So back to the DNA project and just showing that you're active in other projects was really a good thing because people, we really love Wiki Tree and we like working in our projects. Wait, the 464 members of the project, were there any requirements that needed to be met before they could join the project? Do they have, have your DNA tested? Yes. Absolutely, to join the project? Well, I don't know, I would like them to be DNA tested. No, no. Okay. No, if you join the project, Peter will send you a note. To ask and turn off your red privacy. Where's your DNA? Where's your DNA? So you don't have to be, are there any other prerequisites? No, pretty much an interest in DNA and the future of DNA testing will is about your only calling card that you need to join the project. Just send me an email, say I'd like to join the DNA project and I'll be glad to give you the badge. And we have another quick question. Right. What type of tasks are there that other, that people can do when they join the project? Peter. One of the, one thing could be, would be a lot of people have entered like capital group information and they've made a typographical errors and entering it. Some people have entered mitochondrial DNA and YDNA result information. We've got a little bit of confusion and just this general easy correcting that needs to be done to make and the privacy setting obviously. But then an encouraging people to, some, a lot of people have, if you go to Y-search, you can find people. A lot of people have a Y-search ID but it's not in wiki tree. And it's possible to actually find those IDs and tell the person, this is your Y-search ID, please add it to your account in wiki tree. I've also run into somebody that has, they're on JED match, but they don't have their JED match number listed. And they actually didn't know how to list their JED match. They were, they were really interested in wiki tree, but didn't know some of the nuances about doing that kind of thing. And so, having people in the DNA project stop by and help people that we know are on JED match, but don't have the information up, it would be great to do that. And there was also another thing that we were talking about doing, which was getting people available to help with the adoption angels project a little bit because doing DNA testing in the adoption angels project is a huge thing because it's a huge thing because sometimes you don't have any information at all and you want to do that. So getting some helpers started to have the task of helping new people with their DNA information and also with those adoption angels, that would be a big deal. That would be a big deal. We've got some more, we've got some more guests that have arrived and we're going to shuffle them in here in just a few minutes. But we wanted to, I wanted to go on to the DNA questions that pop up in G to G. Is there a single question that you can think of that is the most asked question in G to G? How do I add my DNA to WikiTree? And the answer is you don't add it to WikiTree, you add it, you often add it to JED match. Right. And you add your JED match ID to WikiTree. And that's the secret there. So we don't want your DNA again, we don't want to clone you. What kind of outside projects are you two guys interested in? I know that you've written some articles, Kitty. I did. I wrote an article about a particular brick wall in the 1600s that was broken down on WikiTree. And other than that, somebody asked me, what do I do outside? There's something other than genealogy. It's pretty much what I do for all the time. I have now a brand new club that I've just started in my community of called Ancestor Hunters Genealogy Clubs. Oh, that's fun. And you, Peter? So outside of the DNA project, I'm very involved in the Bahamas project at WikiTree and also a Bahamas DNA project, which is using all labs. And I'm encouraging the members of the Bahamas DNA project to have their ancestry in WikiTree so that it can be a collaborative effort of all the DNA test takers. So your outside hobby actually goes back to WikiTree? Well, I found WikiTree through my Bahamas DNA project. I need a good charts, descendant charts and ancestral trees to use in my Bahamas DNA project. Kitty, did you have something else to add? I do want to add that I encourage everybody that's tested with family tree DNA, whether it's a wide DNA or mitochondrial or autosomal, I encourage you to find the project on family tree DNA that your surname would be involved with. A lot of people don't know that they can just search for a project and surname and find the project that's associated with that name. Okay, that's a great, great hint. I'm part of a couple of surname DNA projects. And I relate them to the surname projects that I have on WikiTree as well. So that's a really good loop there as well. What is, do you have a day job, Kitty? No, I'm retired. There she's retired. And Peter, do you have a day job? My day job is an archivist, but I'm retiring soon, very soon. Oh, and so you're gonna be- And I want to become a genetic genealogy consultant. Cool, are you gonna move back to the Bahamas? Not anytime real soon. I don't think people realize that he's actually a Bahamian. So we gotta get him to get a place down there so we can all go visit him. In your families, I know your families are a huge part of your life. If I can say your daughter's name. Erin. Erin is a huge travel partner with, is she also involved in genealogy? No, she really isn't. But my mom was the beginning of my interest in genealogy I often kid that we would go out for family picnics and quaint little cemeteries, because we never, you know, we only went to the cemeteries. We had no reason to go to the parks. And I want to point out that Peter here, sorry, Peter's wife. Peter has this beautiful brand new pen. It's Peter, Peter's Peter pen, that his daughter gave him. And it's a double helix just before he came on this trip. So your family also is very important. Yes. I've got a wife and three children. Oh wow. And I also have a dog from the Bahamas that I DNA tested. Oh no, you DNA tested your dog. That's taking it a bit far, just in my books. Well, I have one more question. The last question is, what is your favorite color? Orange. Orange. There you go. Thank you so much both of you for being here. Great to have you. Great to talk about DNA. And we're actually gonna get together the three of us and Kay Wilson and we're gonna be putting together some helpful videos with screenshots and information to help people get their DNA up on WikiTree and move forward with that. So be looking for that here in the future. And thank you very much both for being here. Thank you, Meg. Thanks, Meg. Yeah, great. We're gonna bring in our next guests. We'll be just leaving. We slide it down the couch, guys. What's that? I'm gonna talk to you, push people down the couch. Yeah, we're still alive. I know that. We're joined now by WikiTree Forest Elf and Chris Whitten, our founder and chief, our CEO, our president, our chief honcho. I was teasing him this morning. I said, no gorillas, swing from trees, we could name you the WikiTree Gorilla. He didn't like that. I just put that out here. Yeah, I thought that died this morning at breakfast. Apparently it didn't. Apparently it didn't, it was in my brain. So we're so excited to be here. We're all so tired and just exhausted and my tongue doesn't even wanna move. I'm so tired from talking. I'm surprised I still have a voice. Every year that I've been, on the last day I lose my voice. Yeah. How's your voice going? So far my voice is just fine. And you? It's okay. Yeah, it started a little hoarse. So I'm all right. Curtis Rogers today from Jedmatch came by and he was waiting for Chris to come back to our booth. And Curtis actually accused you of not doing any work while you're here. He said, every time I come by the booth, Chris is not there. So. Yeah, I don't do any work. No. No, I do work when I'm home. Now here, WikiTree is totally virtual. You guys know. Right. I work in the headquarters. There's no office. I work from home. You guys work from home. So this is the one time of the year I get out and I spend some time with other people with other WikiTrees. Really, it's the only time. And other people in the genealogy industry. So I've actually had a lot of great conversations talking to Curtis Rogers at Jedmatch. I mean, you know, we're doing more and more with Jedmatch. They're busy guys. They've always got a lot on their plate. And so it's been sort of on the to-do list for years to do some WikiTree Jedmatch integration. And the fact that some of this is final and coming together is really exciting. And, you know, just to know Curtis, you know, one of the principals there to meet him in person. That's about it. He's a nice guy. Yeah, we were talking about the integration earlier with Peter and with Kitty. And that's something that's so exciting. And what's really exciting is to talk to somebody with Jedmatch who I can't imagine anybody being more excited about WikiTree than we are. But he's just excited as can be about getting the integration that we've gotten going. Who's the most favorite person you've met while you've been here this weekend? My favorite person? Besides me. Well, who else is there? Really besides you. You know, we had a really awesome WikiTree come by our booth. We did a sourceathon a few months ago and she actually won the Roots Tech Prize. And Sarah, Sarah, I'm gonna butcher her last name because I don't know if it's Heine or Heine, but she's just a great member of the WikiTree community. It was cool to get to meet her and chat with her and hear about all the cool stuff that she's just working on on her own. So, yeah, she's my favorite. I really liked meeting Sarah. I thought that was great. That's one of the cool things is when you can get members that you've never met in person. Just hear their perspective, spend a little time talking to them, it's so valuable. It's so fun. And we're also taking pictures and putting stuff up on Instagram of people who are WikiTrees or not and doing draws for free cools, t-shirts and sweatshirts. We also have a banner, a WikiTree banner out on one of our tables and we have WikiTreers coming by and they're signing it with their WikiTree ID. Does anybody have any idea how many names we have on it so far? About 30. About 30? Cool. It's been pretty awesome. Yeah. Is there somebody that you've met that just kind of floored you this weekend or? Well, just now I've talked to Dallin Quass, who's the founder of We Relate. Some people might know that as another genealogy Wiki, same basic idea as WikiTree started around the same time, maybe even a little bit earlier. So I've known Dallin for a long time, many years now and I think every root stack, that's the opportunity we get to spend some time talking and I just think he's a genius. I love talking, brainstorming with him. We might be doing some cool stuff. His new product is Roots Finder, which is a complete tree management system, a way to manage your tree privately, for those people that don't want something totally collaborative, that do want to manage something. Some family members on their own. And it's really cool. It's really slick. The UI is terrific. It's got some really innovative features in it and so I really enjoyed that conversation. That is, that's fun. And it's also fun the, they have, Roots Tech is very technically oriented and there are a lot of people here who did a competition this week for the innovators summit and so there are a lot of people walking around with big ideas. And that's also a lot of fun to see when we're walking around. The other thing about Roots Tech is all of these giants of the genealogical industry are having breakfast with us in the mornings. We've had Dick Eastman and Randy Sieber come over and talk to us and break bread with us. And that's fun. And you see people walking around, Josh Taylor and Judy Russell, all these people are walking around like normal people, the people there, the big hitters like Chris Whitton. You run into Chris Whitton on the floor all the time. Speaking of Josh, anyone said that Josh mentioned us in a presentation. All right. Yeah, I was pretty happy to hear about that. Yeah, he was talking about the online cloud entries and a lot of people came to the booth after that and said that he had talked about us. That's great. It's pretty awesome. I know that there's a media hub center where a lot of the well-known bloggers are in. I've seen Maureen Taylor with Photo Detective is here and Kirstie Gray, who is an honorary Ottawa in the city I'm from because she went to the university there. So Ontario as well represented and OGS thrown the plug. Anybody else wanna throw in a plug for their genealogy society? I guess not, really. OGS conference 2017. I think the population here has diminished a bit. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it. Julie, do we have any questions from the gallery for Chris or for Aowyn? Right now Charlotte wants to know what all your flags are on the bottom of your badge there, Aowyn. She said that's really long. So at the booths, they like to give out things for people to have to represent. And so these tags are very popular. There's a wiki tree. We have a wiki tree dot com one that says where genealogists collaborate. And then I just have a little collection like the surname society and dear Myrtle's friend. She's a genealogy blogger and Queen B. That's me. I've got the exhibitor badge and I'm a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. I've got my wiki tree badge of the surname society. And one of the most important people that I wanted to meet while I was here was the Low Country Africana. And she writes blogs about South Carolina and a lot of the Low Country Africana stuff, which is really just so cool. And my friend, Kirsty Gray, gave me my favorite badge and I wanted to make sure I shared this with you. It says Troublemaker. I am so innocent. There are people walking around today with a payload. Yeah, nobody knows you. And now everybody knows. Yeah, I'm a Troublemaker. Yeah, I don't do the ribbons because I kind of feel like once you start, it's a slippery slope. And if you don't, I cut mine off this year because there are people walking around that they dragged to the floor. They have them down the sides now. And I cut off this year. People keep trying to give me their things that I take them and say, oh, I'm going to put it on later. Sorry, I didn't. Secrets out. So anything specific that you guys wanted to see that you haven't been able to see this year here? Kitty Munson Cooper, right? Oh, you know, we went to her presentation, her triangulation presentation last year. Yeah, I wanted to catch it again because she does such a great job and it slows things into my brain about junior triangulation. And so I think if there was anything on my list to do, it was to see her presentation. The other Kitty Cooper. Yeah. Not the Kitty Cooper who was present. Yeah, I wanted to see that too. But time flies. I forget to eat lunch when I'm here because it is so busy and it's so much fun. Just so much fun to be able to talk to people and to explain wiki treat to people and to bring people in. Julie, we could probably talk about wrapping this up unless you guys have something else that you wanted to. I do have one more question. Great, great. Question from the chat room here. Jude is asking, you know, there's a few people that come into wiki tree and they have a hard time getting started and trying to figure out how to keep people from getting frustrated and try to help them mount that learning curve a little more effectively. And Chris or Aowen, do you have any ideas on how we could do that or anything that's in the works? So I can comment on the technical side of that. A little bit. There's always a lot more we can do. Sort of embarrassing. Our help pages aren't searchable. They just kind of hit me this morning. God, that's embarrassing. So okay, we'll fix that soon. That's going to move to the top of the priority list. We do have the index. Yeah, we have an index. And of course you can then search. You can go control F or whatever and search. And you can search all of wiki tree using Google. But so we really should make the help pages searchable. A lot of what searching, I mean a lot of what usability problems are all about is not delivering the right information at the right time. And that is difficult. Would that be correct for the table of contents? For the help pages? No. No, okay. Sorry. Just now. No, back. No, nice. Okay. Do you want to maybe talk about what the future is for wiki tree? I'm sorry. Julie, could you say that again? Sure. Along the lines of some of the changes you're making for the help pages and all that. Do you have, would you like to comment on maybe what the future is for wiki tree, maybe five years from now? I... No. I don't know. I mean it, I think it's clear the direction we're headed in. Like there's no secret agenda that the wiki tree grows with its community. We don't make major changes without this being what the community wants. You know it's not like there's something on the other side of the curtain. No. No. It's community driven. Yeah. Everybody who's really involved knows me and knows how wiki tree evolves and others on the tech team. And the other side of that is what the future of wiki tree is. What do you want the future of wiki tree to be? Your wiki tree. Well, no. Bring it on. No. Just no. No. No. No. We have a mission. I'm teasing you, but I think this is an important point because there are some people that start organizations and they do just sort of let it blow with the wind. And no, wiki tree, we know what we're doing. I think everybody that's involved knows that we're growing one tree where we're connecting people and we are collaborating on genealogy. And so we always have to know what our mission is and stay true to that. Right. But it's how we do it. You know, what we have to do. What tools we need to do that that evolves and changes and we always get better at. And community input is a part of that. It's a big part of the process. Essential part of it. Yeah. Anyone, do you want to make a comment about that as well? Not about that because he answered it perfectly. Perfectly. He is the wiki tree. And she's a cheerleader for me. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Thank you, everyone. And Chris is the cheerleader for all of us. I promise you that. Except you. Except you. No. We have a mutual admiration society going on. You guys need to send me some love here. I'm not getting it. I know Max is needed. Okay. You were going to say something. No, I wanted to go back to Jude's question. Okay. Yeah. We do have a lot of things in place to kind of try and help members because there is a learning curve and wiki tree is different than pretty much any other genealogy site. You would try and go to. So when you first join, you're welcomed and you're greeted by an actual human person. And so you have an initial point of contact with somebody that you can reach out to. And if you have questions, they can answer them or they can get you going in the right direction or help you find someone who can help you. We also have amazing mentors. Yes, we do. Who just freely give them a lot of their time to help members get situated and help a lot of questions of sourcing or how do I get started or what are duplicate. And on wiki tree, we have a help menu. You can find the mentors there. That's one way to contact them. And then we also have an amazing forum. It's our genealogist to genealogist forum and members can go there and post questions and get help. And I'm just always amazed at how often and how quickly people in our community jump in to answer questions and to help guide people. And it's amazing. The wiki tree community is amazing. Do we have any more questions from the chat? No, everybody is really enjoying the conversation here. And it's our primary cheerleader here. Charlotte. I wanted to say that the numbers as of about just a few minutes ago for we have 13 million 255 238 profiles currently on wiki tree. And those are all managed and cared for and tended and loved by 398,594 volunteers. Wow. That's just great. We're going great. Wanted to move on really quickly and we can all enjoy this to our G to G post for this week that we found. And the one question that always gets bumped up to the top of the list is Julie's question of the week, which is what one or more genealogically related statement would you like added to your obituary? That was a fun one. Julie. We had some really good ones. I'd like to start with Rhys Haywich. She wrote a poem for us. She said, here lieth Rhys genealogist because though heaven bound where angels sound, her sources say she was. And then we had a couple of people who Chris Hampson said that he's gone to check his profile, profiles in person. So he's going to be able to make sure you get all the data. Dorothy Barry chimed in and said, I'm sorry if I got your information wrong on wiki tree, but you didn't leave me much to go on. And one of my favorites was from Christina Adams. She said, when you cut out this obituary to save, please record the date and name of the newspaper. So the next generation of genealogists has a little less trouble attaching me to a tree. Those were some of our premieres. That's good. Did you have any more that were spectacular you wanted to throw in? I think those were our top answers. All right. The genealogical tip of the day from your grandma is what is the genealogical conference. And I've added to this list, Advil. Good walking shoes. Camera. A bag to put all of the swag in. Because all of these booze have grays. We have the best swag. We have great armbands. And we do pictures. We've got great ribbons. And t-shirts. We have great ribbons. We have great ribbons. We have great ribbons. And t-shirts. We're selling these wonderful t-shirts. And we can be spotted from anywhere in the place. Also, ten a note paper. Because you run into people and people want to make notes. I've had so many people ask me if we have note paper. Or is there a note place? And people start writing on the strangest things. You'd be surprised. Breath mints. Oh, now that was just a dream. Oh, it was a dream. It was just a dream. I wasn't insinuating it. I think we should bring in the sooths to do foot rubs. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Lots of stuff. So there are lots of things. Do you have something special you bring to the conference? How do you bring the swag? You bring the swag. I bring anyone. You guys are not helping me. Okay. We've been here a while. I want to thank... You cannot laugh. We'll get slapped. Yeah, no. You don't want us to do that. We want to thank Peter and Katie for being here to help us and to talk to us about DNA. And of course, look for the help video that we're going to be putting together soon with some screenshots and all sorts of information. For beginners to be able to see the next genetic people. I want to also thank, I think, AOMN and CRISPR stopping by to share just our smile and our kind of punch-drunk happiness here with you. And I want to tell you that next week we're going to have Patrick Barnum on with all things Latin America. I think Karen Togo is going to stop in and be with us as well. Talk about the Puerto Rico Indigenous Project. So all things Latin America next week with Patrick Barnum. And unfortunately, I won't be anywhere near where Patrick Barnum is. I would love to be able to, but I'll be back home in Ottawa and we'll be doing the chat from there. Julie, thank you so much for moderating the chat. And AOMN has something else to say. I just want to give a shout out to the people who we left behind at the booth. Oh, yeah. They're awesome. So Karen and Michael. Thank you so much, you guys. Have a great, great week. I said the mouse is not working. So you guys just, can you, maybe say goodbye again? Bye. Bye again.