Class Schedule—Descriptions

Keynote Track

1. Phillip J. Windley, PhD., Kynetx CTO and former Utah CIO

“ The Catalyst for Interconnectivity ”

Effectively connecting to others and sharing data are at the heart of genealogy. In the past, groups have built large centralized portals to make this easier, but disaggregation is the new norm on the Web. The good news is that building useful systems from decentralized pieces has never been easier thanks to new standards, practices, and technologies. This presentation will explore philosophies, technologies, platforms, and trends in data sharing and interconnectivity on the Web and the effect they have on developers and the applications that they build.

2. Gordon Clarke, FamilySearch Web Services Program Manager

Conference Kick-off and Sneak Peaks

FamilySearch API Track

10:00am Standards Authorities API

Mark Ward and Barry Nay

As genealogy work expands, it becomes critical to understand and interpret what customers are really looking for to provide a successful search experience. To this end, Standards and Authorities is an incredibly important component of genealogy to ensure that data, composing of places, names, dates, etc., used for indexing, searching and researching content, match what customers expect to find and what is known to be correct to the world. By doing so, consumers can better find ancestors and advance their work. FamilySearch has created an extensive catalog of places, names, dates and other controlled vocabulary in excess of 6.5+ million objects, over the past 40 years. The Standards and Authorities API is a way for applications to access this rich dataset for use in indexing, searching, and other projects to speed accessibility and accuracy. This session will address use of the Standards Web Service API which provides access to the authorities catalog produced and maintained by FamilySearch. Discussion will also be had around open source projects of authority’s data and continuous data improvement initiatives.

11:00am Record Search API

Robert Lee

Record Search is a quick and easy way to search millions of historical records for clues about your ancestors. Record Search has been developed using an API between the server and the flex client; an API that is suitable for 3rd party use. The presentation will cover all aspects of the Record Search API, and how to retrieve the rich data associated with the collections.

1:30pm Family Tree API Introduction

Brian Corrales

This presentation will introduce the FamilyTree API which gives access to reading and updating the information contained in new FamilySearch. We will give a basic introduction to RESTful web services, the FamilyTree data model, and perform some hands-on searches and person reads.

2:30 Family Tree Update and Combine

Tim Mullins

Learn how to add information to the new FamilySearch family tree through the API. We will cover adding new person records, creating new information to existing person records, disputing and deleting information, and combining duplicate records.

3:30 Famly Tree API "Down and Dirty"
Ryan Heaton

Take the opportunity to get some face time with the developers of the FamilyTree Public API. This session is intended for engineers and developers who have (or intend to get) hands on experience with the FamilyTree Public API. Ryan will take some time to address the most common problems developers encounter when consuming the API and to introduce some tips and best practices to apply when using the API. A sizable portion of the session will be left open to address questions, comments, and concerns from the audience, so come prepared to take advantage of the opportunity to take your hot issues directly to the people who are responsible for addressing them.

3rd Party Library Track

10:00am Cocoa/iPhone Obj.-C

Logan Allred

Learn how to use the open-source FSKit Cocoa framework to integrate the FamilySearch web service APIs into your Macintosh or iPhone applications. There will be a brief overview of the architecture and core classes in FSKit, after which you will build a simple application to demonstrate authentication, searching, reading person data, caching, synchronization. There will also be a brief demonstration of using the framework on an iPhone.

11:00am Ruby

Jimmy Zimmerman

This presentation will give an introduction to RESTful web services, Ruby, and the ruby–fs–api. It will cover basic operations such as person read, person update, search, match, and combine. It will also unveil the new ruby library which will wrap the family tree v2 module.

1:30pm Microsoft NET

David Pugmire

“FamilySearch Opens the Door to .NET Developers Worldwide” The way is paved from FamilySearch to the world of .NET. Join us for a tour of the .NET API for FamilySearch. In this session you will learn what you can do with FamilySearch using the .NET Framework, and discover everything you need to get started.

Demos of the API in both VB and C# languages.

www.FSAPI.NET

2:30pm PHP and PHPGedView

Brian Corrales

The PHP-FSAPI Library is an open source library which allows developers to interact with the new FamilySearch APIs using PHP. This presentation will discuss how to use the PHP-FSAPI Library in your own projects and discuss the mapping of the API XML into GEDCOM. This presentation will also show how the PhpGedView project uses this library to integrate with new FamilySearch by allowing users to cross-link their data with the data in FamilySearch.

PhpGedView Web Site

http://www.phpgedview.net

Java and GedLync

GedLync is a new Java open source project developed by students at Neumont University which will allow users to synchronize a GEDCOM file on their local desktop with data in new FamilySearch. This tool simplifies the way users can upload and synchronize their GEDCOM data with new FamilySearch. http://www.neumont.edu GedLynk is a new Java open source project developed by students at Neumont University which will allow users to synchronize a GEDCOM file on their local desktop with data in new FamilySearch.

This tool simplifies the way users can upload and synchronize their GEDCOM data with new FamilySearch.

http://www.neumont.edu

3:30pm Flex Library

Ben Whitaker

The asfslib project is a set of classes in ActionScript 3.0 to help developers interact with the FamilySearch API services. This presentation will demonstrate how to use the asfslib in your Flex and AIR projects. As well as techniques to use Flex to create nice looking front ends for display data coming from the FamilySearch API. Link: http://code.google.com/p/asfslib/

FS Chat

FS Chat is a project that provides a simple to use Flex based chat client that talks to the "Open Fire" real time communication (RTC) server which has been modified to authenticate using New FamilySearch credentials. This client leverages Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and XIFF API projects. Come learn how to add and chat with buddies in FamilySearch family tree.

Emerging Models, Technology and Tools Track

10:00am Catalog API

Brett Stubbs

Over the last few years we have seen social media revolutionize the way we interact, share, and find information. We have witnessed the birth of user generated content, metadata, and mashups that have resulted in smarter data, faster searches, and an improved overall experience. The Family History Library Catalog houses millions of global primary source records of historical and ancestral importance. This data is vital to the research of all genealogists, and yet obtaining the precise information it contains has proved to be a most daunting and time consuming process. GenSeek.com is taking this collection to the next level. It is attempting to tame the immense quantity of the catalog through the simplicity of social media. Essentially, GenSeek is Family History Library Catalog 2.0.

11:00am Timeline API

Tom Welch

For over two years, the Church has actively been building a community of technologists from around the world to assist the Church on various technology projects. One of these projects, currently called The Church History Timelines project, involves the ability to create timelines of events with a very easy to use and innovative user interface. Many timelines, such as Church history, world history, or personal ancestral history can be supported. Based upon the popular Simile open source timeline project originally developed at MIT, the project will enable participants to create and overlay a variety of timelines and link historical events to external sources. Come learn how you can get involved in the creation of this project from product definition, developer API's, user interface designs, translation services, and even submitting content for timelines. Also learn what the Church is doing to enable the development of this and other Church sponsored projects.

1:30pm Family Tree Flex Framework and Components

Tim Cross and Jason Butterfield

The Family Tree (built on top of the FamilySearch API) is quickly becoming the web client for FamilySearch. Come hear an update of the FamilySearch Family Tree project and learn tips, tricks, and best practices for integrating Flex apps with the FamilySearch API.

2:30pm Persistent Identifiers

Tom Creighton

Almost everyone who has used the World Wide Web is familiar with the infamous 404 Error indicating that a requested resource (typically a web page) can't be located using the URL that was submitted. While there are any number of ways that a web site can respond when a client makes request for a resource that can't be located, some can be quite humorous.

Humor aside, as we begin to provide object IDs for items that our users might expect to see remain available for a long period of time, we need to do better than the traditional web pages with broken links. Some studies estimate that 3% or more of web links become broken each year. Some of these are due to web sites going out of business, but often it happens when internal changes to the layout of resources within a web site cause links to become stale. Clearly we need to do better than this.

This presentation describes how Family Search proposes addressing persistent or long–lived identifiers. After examining a number of approaches such as the Handle System, Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), URN, and others, we have made a decision on how to go forward that we feel will facilitate interaction with all of our partners in the genealogical community.

3:30pm Robert Raymond

The Interoperable Citation Exchange (ICE) Initiative

This session will introduce attendees to the Interoperable Citation Exchange (ICE) initiative, an effort by FamilySearch to establish a model allowing citation information to be exchanged between multiple parties without loss of information. Robert will give a progress report, including terminology, challenges, principles from Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained, and an embryonic view of the direction the ICE model is heading.

Combined