I think the program chair for this year's NGS conference decided to "load up" on the first sessions of the conference. I looked in the schedule to see which presentation I wanted to attend first and found that Elizabeth Shown Mills, Craig Roberts, David Rencher, John Humphrey, and Josh Taylor were all scheduled to speak at the same time. These are some of the "heavy hitters" amongst today's genealogy presenters and they were all scheduled to speak at the same time? Which one could I choose?
Actually, I decided to go with none of the above. Jordan Jones is not as well known a speaker on the genealogy lecture circuit, but he was presenting on a topic that is near and dear to my heart: Cloud Computing and Genealogical Collaboration: How Technology Can Help Us work Together.
In addition, this was part of the GenTech track and was the Birdie Monk Holsclaw Memorial Lecture as well. I selected Jordan Jones' presentation and I am now glad that I did.
Jordan started with an introduction of cloud computing terminologies. He then gave practical examples of how genealogists can use the cloud. His comments included (but were not limited to):
- Digital Memory (don't take notes on paper, keep notes in Evernote on iPhone, iPad, laptop, desktop, tablet computer, or whatever device you prefer, while at the courthouse, at the cemetery, take a picture of the gravestone and upload it immediately, share your info or keep it private as you prefer.
- Collaborative authoring
- Remote backups
- Free voice calls (Google Voice, Skype, and others)
- Even a complete operating system in the cloud
I won't repeat everything he said here, mainly because I don't type that fast so my notes are woefully inadequate. However, if you have an interest in learning about Cloud Computing, I'd suggest you look at Jordan Jones' handouts on page 31 of the syllabus. He also made his PowerPoint slides available at www.genealogymedia/talks/
Finally, you can purchase an audio CD of his presentation from JAMB, the company that is recording most of the lectures. I suspect the audio CD by itself will not be useful but the combination of that audio CD plus his PowerPoint slides of Cloud Computing and Genealogical Collaboration: How Technology Can Help Us work Together should be great.
I also think that Birdie Holsclaw would have approved of the selection of this lecture.
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