 Thank you for joining us for this live cast. We're talking about events and challenges on WikiTree. And we have Betsy Ko here, and you'll join us in a little bit. Thank you everyone. If you have questions, please start the question with a Q, a capital Q at the beginning of your comment in the live chat so that we can see that there and we'll answer your questions. And I believe that Betsy has a presentation. So I'm gonna add that to the stage there. Sure. Yeah. So yeah, we're gonna look at a lot of web pages, but just I love this graphic. We're so excited to be here at Roots Tech. And today, as Azure said, we're talking about events and challenges, which is where I think the party is on WikiTree. It's where we get to know each other better and can collaborate at deeper and deeper levels, all in the process of making the tree healthier and leafier. So we're gonna talk through a bunch of things. Some you may know, some you may not know, and also answer any questions. So please put those in the chat. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about are some of our biggest events, the thons. So there are two kinds of thons. We have connect-a-thons and source-a-thons. There are three connect-a-thons each year and one source-a-thon. So I have the dates there. As you can see, now that we're in March, we can say that we have a connect-a-thon coming up next month. So that's six weeks to get excited. So now you may not know what the thons are all about. We've been signing up a lot of new members this weekend. So the events are for members of all experienced levels. So let's talk about the connect-a-thon. The connect-a-thon is all about creating connections which is one of our favorite parts of Wiki Tree is seeing what our pathway is between two people, between each other, between ourselves and a notable or not so notable. So the way the connect-a-thon works is that you have to build from an existing profile and then the goal is to add parents, siblings, spouses, anything to basically just connect out. And you get a point for each profile that you add to an existing profile and we are organized into teams. So here's where the getting to know you part comes in. As you can see, there's a list here of teams. A lot of them are based on geographical interests. We have Team Austria, we have the Banyan Tree, a newer team from working on Indian profiles, Canadian connectors, but not all of the teams are geographically based. We have, let's see, we have little team on the prairie. Well, that's sort of geographically based. And we have here are non-regional teams. The Globetrotters, which are just embracing the global heritage that we're trying to encompass a wiki tree. The musty-dusty team is concentrated on pre-1500 profiles, really tough stuff. And Team Lekayum, the tree nuts, the toddling tortoises is one of my favorites. They just like to go slow and not be bothered about it. So joining a team, doing the thon and joining a team is a great way to know people. And I'm gonna use this opportunity to tell you that there's going to be another new team coming to the thon starting in April and that's going to be the new team. Newts, yeah, Newts stands for new to wiki tree. So I'm going to be organizing that and it's for people who haven't been on wiki tree for long. I don't have a lot of profiles. It's their first thon. All of those would be perfect qualifications to join the new team. So watch out for more about that. Similarly, we have for Soursathon, we have the same teams. And the goal with Soursathons, which is traditionally in the fall and September, is to sort of find all the profiles on wiki tree that don't have a source and make sure that they have at least one, preferably more sources. Because that's a huge part of what we try and do. And it's part of our honor code. And sometimes profiles get created and the sources get left out. So we just want to try and tidy up those profiles so that everything is accurate. All right, so next we go on to Connection Combat, which is a newer event. Eoin, do you want to, I have, oh, you're letting me do it? Okay. All right, so I don't know if you can see. You probably can't see who's in the booth behind us, can you? Oh, yes, you can. Between Eoin and Azure, it's Henry VIII. Ta-da! And over by me, oh, we have Martin Luther King Jr. So these two gentlemen are part of our current connection combat for kings. And so this is, this is probably, we've just been doing this since January, I think. And so let me talk you through how it works. So the first thing to do is to look at your connection path to Henry VIII and Martin Luther King Jr. So for instance, if I go to this tab and I apologize, for some reason I got logged out. I need to log in to do this, hang on a second. Hopefully. Okay, so now let me go, go back to kings and go to Henry VIII. Okay, now that I'm logged in as myself, I can find Henry VIII's connection to me. And we see that he is 20 degrees from me. Okay, so far so good. And it's always interesting to see the path. In case we often get asked, what are the changes in color mean? And that has to do with a marriage having taken place. So you can see, I've got a couple of marriages in there. Now, if I go to Martin Luther King Jr. and I do the same thing, find connection to me, I'm 24 degrees. So my closer connection is Henry VIII. So now if I go back here, here's how the game is played. I would choose, I would respond to the post and say I'm on team Henry VIII and say that I'm 20 degrees from him. And then what you have to do is you have to verify each relationship along the connection path. So going back to this page, I would wanna make sure that I have something to prove that I am my mother's daughter and she is her father's daughter. And so on each connection, we wanna make sure that there's a birth record or a census that lists them in the same family group and all the way back. And that just makes the tree stronger to have all of us working on these individual connections. And then post a comment in the back, go back to the G2G post and say when you've done that. Now, there are several ways to win the plan. First of all, if you have the closest verified connection, say you're only seven degrees from Henry VIII and you can verify that, that means you're a winner, but there are seven additional ways to win. So let's look at the help page for connection combat. Yeah, and I'll let Eiland take over. What? Okay. You want me to go through? What? To the help page. Okay. I'm on the help page for connection combat. Oh, you want me to move it up? Got it. Like that? Yeah, okay. So like Betsy was saying, the shortest verified connection path wins overall, but there's a bunch of other ways. Scroll for me. Oh, here's the, huh. Scroll for me. There you go. It's okay. Now it works. You have to put it over there with it. Yeah, there you go. Oh, sorry. Oh. Here, look at that, yeah. And now you can scroll. Okay. There we go. Sorry, everybody. That's the stuff Betsy covered. You want me to stop sharing? No, I've got it. I put it there. It's okay. I'm just scrolling. Okay. So the overall winner is the shortest verified path, but we also have silver and bronze for that. So basically the three shortest paths that get verified and cleaned up, get the gold, silver and bronze and are the heroes. We have the veterans. We have gold, silver and bronze for this too. And those are the three players that have the longest weevil free path. So they verified everything. They clean up the profiles. They get the gold, silver and bronze veteran medals. And then the scout is the first person to come back to GDG with a weevil free path. So as soon as you think you have yours, we will free and verified. Come back and post in GDG because if you're the fastest, you're at the scout that week. The medic is the player who verified the most profiles that are weevil free over the course of the week. So that includes how many you verified for yourself. And if you've helped out in the combat aid stations that we have each week for the different people then in discord. So we look at all of that and the person who verified the most is our medic of the week. The double agent is the first player with the weevil free path to both notable. So you can do one or, and then if you do the other one and you're the first to come back and post and say to that you're the double agent. And then the first player to verify a weevil free path between the notables. So like from King Henry to Martin Luther King, you are the peacemaker. So that's another way that you can win during the week. And then we have the international Legionnaire. So the player whose weevil free path goes through the most countries. So if you are doing your path and you happen to notice you're going through a lot of countries, keep track of how many and let us know in GDG when you might be able to be our international Legionnaire. That's awesome. Great. Should we look at the combat Hall of Fame? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because you can live on for infamy and are in our Hall of Fame. So yeah, I'm back. There you go. Okay. Yeah, so I just love this graphic. This is so cute. And we want to get those weevils out of the tree. But this page is really fun. It shows you for all of the connection combats to date, of course, who the two individuals were and then who won in each category. So we've definitely had some fun pairups so far. And you get really cute stickers for your profile. Yeah. Absolutely. So, excellent. So, you know, is that challenge just going on all year, right? That's the plan? Awesome. So jump in at any time. Yeah, they run Tuesday to Tuesday. So just watch for the connection combat post sometime on Tuesday. Okay. And they've been a lot of fun, the interaction between different members helping each other out. And that's, you know, what we've heard a lot here is it's a really social site, WikiTree is. So that's what we love about it. Yeah. So this is another opportunity to get to know other members and collaborate. Right, right. And what some people in the chat were observing is that as a result of everything we're doing with connection combat, people are seeing their connections shrink. The number of degrees get smaller, which is so cool. Yeah. Very soft. Okay. So maybe we could, let's talk about the WikiTree challenge which has been around, I think, am I right, Aya, in three years? Yeah, we're in year four. Year four, okay. And I can pull up the help page if you want, but I just thought we'd just, you know, look at the beautiful logo. There's the logo. Yeah, we actually, so the first year we started, every week we would do research for us, for a professional genealogist. I think we had 48 that year and we broke 800 of their brick walls, if I remember right. The next year we did kind of like celebrity, famous type people. And then last year and this year we've been working on genealogical societies, but we decided that we've had so much fun with the genealogists that we're gonna go back. We're going back to our roots and we've got one more society with the American ancestors in a couple of weeks that we're really excited about and we'll have a registration post up for that soon. But then after that, we're going back to genealogists and instead of focusing on their brick walls, we're gonna do the CC7 treatment for them like we've been doing. And so we'll just see how far we can go out in seven degrees for them on their treatment. Excellent. Great, and now, this is another pretty new event for us. We just had the first one, first wiki games last year, last August and anyone who was involved is gonna remember that rousing bagpipe music that Azure created had for us for our promos. Just could listen to it all day long. It was so inspiring. So we are doing the wiki games again in 2024. We don't have dates yet. And we did get a lot of really good feedback from people following the inauguration of the event. And so we're gonna tweak it a little based on that. It's likely that we'll probably, instead of being three non-stop days, which that was pretty intense, we're gonna split it between two weekends and have two events each weekend. So just sort of pace it because we want everybody to have good life wiki tree balance. It is a thing, definitely. So please watch out for that. It has connecting just like connect-a-thon and sourcing just like source-a-thon. Those will definitely be back. And then we're gonna tweak the other two events. So, and again, we have teams for the wiki games, but they were not the thon teams. We thought it would be very, it might be fun to mix people up and give them a chance to get to know some other wiki trees outside of their, maybe they've been a tree nut for 10 years. So they'll shake things up a little bit. And so we had these wonderful trees. They were all like the remarkable redwoods or the excellent elms. I know that's quite bright. Magnificent maples and so on. And they were randomly, randomly distributed. Yeah. So I just wanted to mention while we're kind of talking about timing, there was a question in the G2G about scheduling. So I just wanted to just highlight that real quick. Let's see. The leave, the question was asked by Judith Fry. Is there easy way to see what challenges are going on each month? And I found a few for this month while schooling through G2G. So I just wanted to point out Aowyn does a monthly post about what's happening each month. And she lists there all the challenges that are gonna be going on. And it looks like Betsy's gonna share that with you. Yep. So I know it's March, the March post will be coming soon. But this is your one stop shop for seeing all that's going on during wiki tree. Whether it's an ongoing thing or a one week thing or, so make sure that you are following, if you follow announcements and wiki tree events, you'll get this in your feed. And make sure you favorite it so you can come back to it for reference. Good question, thank you Judith. Okay, so the next series of events that we wanted to talk about, they all have to do with what I think of is one of the wonderful parts of wiki tree, wiki tree love. So these events are all centered around helping being generous with our time and talents to help others with their genealogy and growing their branches. So the first of the is, is the We Will Rock You event, which is something that I've been involved in. It's been going on for a year now. And I think we just wrapped up, well, we just wrapped up one last night at midnight. And that was the 7th, 6th, 6th or 7th, we do them every other month. So yeah, the way it works is we call out for nominations of a wiki tree that you think would be a good candidate for having a whole team work on their branches to increase their CC7. It could be because they're just really giving to wiki tree, it could be because they're new to wiki tree. We've seen all kinds of reasons come up for nominations. Then close to the start of the event, we do a random drawing. So we randomly select five people from the nominations to get rocked. And what we've just decided to do is in order for people not to have to keep renominating people, we're going to throw people back in the pool. Like say someone was nominated last August for last August and they didn't get picked. They're gonna get tossed back in the nomination pool and they're gonna be eligible for the random draw. So the next rock is happening in April. And sometime in this month, we'll have a reveal video of what was discovered. I can tell you that the February rock was enormously successful. As a group, all five rockies had 3,300 and plan change profiles added. So they all got a bump in their CC7, like that would get them a badge. Three of them bumped over a thousand and two of them bumped over 2,000. So really, really inspirational work on the part of the team. And the rock team, we have many repeat people, team members. So we'd love to see that. Next, we have Secret Santa, which I believe has been going on since 2021. I know this is the design for 2021. And it is just grown each year. Spearheaded this past year by Greg Clark, Christine Daniels and Kathy Nava. This year's ELF team was 128 strong. That sounds great until you realize that the 128 ELFs got 339 wishes from WikiTrubs. Things like, can this person have some parents? Or can we know about where they came from, brick walls and they really came through. I think, of course, they could not solve all of them, but it was a very, very heroic effort and they did topple quite a few brick walls. And then we have another, another newest event that is a particular favorite of mine. And this is the Dash of Love profile makeover challenge. So this is a challenge that is a month long challenge and it's up to you to, you'll see the G2G post Donna Bauman is running this. And so if you, again, if you follow the WikiTree events tag, then you will be sure to be informed about this. So as we know, sometimes there are profiles that need a little love. They're just someone to brush out their hair and add some photos and spruce them up, add a bow tie. So that's what we do, add some sources. So, you know, I've been telling people who stop by the booth all weekend that one of the things I love about WikiTree is how richly we can tell a story of an ancestor or just anyone. And that blank white space of the WikiTree profile is just waiting for creativity and some energy and determination into making it something, you know, beautiful that the descendant might stumble across from someday and just be really, really moved by. So, and then finally, I just want to mention that a number of our projects do challenges as well. And I just, I see these pop up all the time. I can't show them all, but this one came to my attention this morning through the England project. And as many of you know, I'm a musician, so it caught my attention. This is an example of a smaller project-based challenge where what they're doing is they're collaborating with the Royal Societies of Musicians in Great Britain. And there are 258 members of this organization. Only 15 of them have WikiTree profiles. And their goal is to get all 258 members into WikiTree. The society has given permission for WikiTree to use the photos and they're going to try and connect them. And the Society of Musicians is going to talk about WikiTree. So, you know, getting the word out, I mean, it's just a win-win all the way around. So- That's great. Yeah. What have I forgotten? Have I forgotten anything? Oh my gosh, you're brilliant, but probably but only because there are so many things going on. Yeah, I definitely had to pick and choose. So if I have omitted your favorite event, sorry, and keep enjoying it. Yeah, like Darren says, so many challenges that everyone can find something to help with. Absolutely. There's really something for everybody. For sure. Do we have any other questions? Yeah, how's your start of youth? Okay. Oh, the games? Will there be random teams again? Yes, A-O-N's nodding. Okay. I know that not everybody loved that, but that's why we have the marathon teams is because those are the ones where everybody gets to kind of stick with the same team. And then we just have this one where they're just fun random. We are going to try and keep them a little more in the same time zones. Like we have some plans for how we're going to randomly assign them that should help them function a little bit better, but still random. Okay. Very good. And so our answer is due to this question, I think, about when we keep our teams from last year because it's going to be randomly assigned and we're going to kind of go about that, that assigning a little bit differently based on where you're at and what communication preferences you have, basically. Go ahead, Betsy. Oh, yeah. And I just, thanks for pointing it out, Kathy. So you don't like, if you see something, if you find out about a project that you are not a member of and say you're a musician and you just are really excited by the idea of helping with this particular very targeted challenge, jump in. And I know that they would love to have the help. Thanks, thanks, Kathy. Darren asks, who can set up a challenge? What do people need to do? Asking to encourage others. Yes, that's a great question. If you have an idea, the best thing you can do is to send a message to Aowyn, Azure, or me, or Greg Clark, because we're all on the events committee together and we can help get your idea going. We can talk about logistics and how practical it is. So please let us know your ideas. That's the first step. Is that, I hope that's the right answer. So Darren has made a comment and makes me think about something that Darren and Tanaia are leading is the 16 for 16 for this year. We did it last year, 15 for 15. So there's the list of things that you can do in earned badges. So that's a year long challenge that's really kind of fun to take part in. So that's another one. And then Chris Wine is asking the question about, is the roundup tomorrow? So there will be another live cast tomorrow at noon Eastern, 10 a.m. Mount and Standard Time here in Salt Lake City. And we're taking the opportunity of having different Wiki Tree members here to chat about these different things. So we had the tech team Q and A this morning. We had Notables yesterday, DNA yesterday, like this one. We're taking that opportunity to really talk about that with the Wiki Treeers that are here and you all out there online. So tomorrow's roundup is going to be for the U.S. Black Heritage. We're gonna talk about the 1880 census project that they have going with Denise Jarrett, I believe is gonna be joining us virtually. Emma McBeth, also virtually, Amy Johnson-Crow I think is gonna be able to join us here because I believe she's here in Salt Lake City along with Lane, Martin is here and Judy Bramlage is also here. So it'll be kind of a hybrid. We'll be online with all of them talking about that and answering any questions you all have about that project. Right, and just to clarify, that's not at the normal roundup time. So if you, it's got it's the YouTube description clearly linked as- Yes. So that they know that what it's USPH. Yeah. Yes, the title of it. And it's on there, so. Yeah. Yep. All right. Yes, Amy is here. Great. Alice asked, is the wiki tree game, are the wiki games likely to be in August and September-ish again? Hello. Yeah, probably. It'll probably be the last two weekends of August is my tentative guess right now. But definitely, we don't wanna go into September because September's when we start registering for the source of thought. And we can't go too much earlier because we're into connected on, yeah, in the end of August. Yeah. Is there bingo tonight? I think so. Yes. Okay. Okay. Great. Do we have any other questions from the chat or does anybody wanna share anything else? So nice of you. I think we can go ahead and wrap up here. Here's Karen Lowe. Hi, Karen. Hi. Yes, we are getting new people. Elaine actually walked somebody through signing up just before lunch, so that's really fun. Lots of questions at the booth. We're having a lot of fun. Yeah. Hope you all are. Oh wait, we do have one question from John Gissner, but what is the question? Yes, tell us the question. Oh, how do I get started with doing challenges? Oh, okay, that's a great question. Well, the first thing is to look at that post, any post, like what's going on in February, what's going on in March, and just see what captures your interest, what sounds like fun to you. And then sign up. I know people often feel intimidated, like, oh, I don't know enough. I have to gain more experience, but really the group of people who are already doing challenges are very friendly and helpful, and always excited to see a new face. So I just, I can't encourage you enough to just jump in. And no one will let you, you know, sink. You know, we'll welcome you. All right, well, I think that's it then. Yeah, we can go ahead and wrap up. Okay. Yeah, oh, I just wanted to say Kathy does have a good comment. Challenges are a great way to learn and connect with other members. So yeah, definitely. That's a recommended way now. Bingo is tonight, Dan, for today. Okay, we'll see you all. Hopefully you all can tune in tomorrow for the USB-H livecast, and we'll see you around. Okay. Bye.