It is April 1991 and the Texas sun streams through an arched wrought-iron and glass ceiling 70 feet above the heads of six genealogists having lunch in the courtyard of InfoMart—a modern building that looks remarkably like London's Crystal Palace.

InfoMart is the computer technology center of Dallas where about 3,000 computer enthusiasts meet each month for SuperSaturday. Travis Morris, leader of the PAF Users Group, is reporting that the president of the Computer Council of Dallas (CCD) had just asked him if the genealogy special interest group (SIG) leaders needed any more assistance. It seems that these four SIGs are among the fastest growing of the 60 groups that meet there each month.

DeWayne Lener, Preservation Emporium owner and a regular vendor in the huge basement computer flea market, opines that he would like to see an event where software users could meet with developers, and vendors could sell genealogical supplies and services. Now the discussion really gets going. Others present at that meeting are Al Sanford, leader of the General Genealogy SIG; Joyce Jones, leader of the Family Roots Users Group; Art Rubeck, the Genealogy Disk Librarian; and yours truly, leader of the ROOTS III Users Group.

To our surprise, the CCD president strolls by and asks to join in. After we tell him about our ideas for a genealogy event, he allows that the CCD, host of SuperSaturdays, has sponsored similar events for word processing, desktop publishing, and BBSing (precursor to the Internet) users. The group elects Al Sanford to chair the effort and assigns tasks to the others. Everyone agrees to meet each month to monitor the progress.

At this point, we don't have a name and we only have a vague idea of where this venture will take us. However, we fully appreciate that the marriage between computers and genealogy is a good one. Within a few months we've added seven more to the committee and we're off and running. But in our wildest dreams, none of us imagined where this effort would lead.

The group quickly agreed on the need for an event to aggressively address the relationship between genealogy and computers. We knew of no other organization hosting such an event, certainly not in north Texas.

As prices dropped, more genealogists were purchasing computers and discovering how well they helped organize their ancestors and their searches. The problem was learning how to use the things. Most genealogists had little, if any, knowledge of computers and were intimidated by the contraptions. And although most computer enthusiasts didn't even know how to spell “genealogy,” they could now buy software that would “find their ancestors fast.” With little understanding of the genealogical craft, their research was frequently flawed. The genealogical world seemed to be dividing into three parts: those who knew research but didn't know computers, those who knew computers but didn't know research, and a few who knew both. As members of that third group, we felt an obligation to help the other two.

The group selected a name that expressed our mission—the marriage of GENealogy and TECHnology—and decided to hold our event in mid-winter to avoid conflicts with other events in the region. The purpose of our conference would be to attract genealogists to computers, computer users to genealogy, and both groups to the educational opportunities available through the Computer Council of Dallas on SuperSaturdays at InfoMart.

For every silver lining there has to be a cloud. Our dreams were almost shattered that October when the CCD treasurer informed us that the promised seed money for the event would not be forthcoming. Without that sponsorship, it was too late for us to hold our conference on the planned January 1992 date so we recruited two local suburban genealogical societies (Irving and Grand Prairie) to host a scaled-back version called GENTEX92 in Irving; the following year the new GENTECH, Inc., hosted GENTECH93 at the Southland Hotel in downtown Dallas. Since 1998, GENTECH's conferences have been held in cities across the nation.

On 12 November 1991, the group formally voted to establish a non-profit organization called GENTECH, Inc., to pursue educating people on the responsible use of technology in genealogy. Based on our experience with CCD, we added to our bylaws that we would be independent of other organizations. Each of the people at that organizational meeting donated $25 to GENTECH to defray startup expenses. GENTECH was incorporated in the state of Texas with Sanford as the registered agent and Madilyn Crane, Rubeck, and Wylie as board members. The entire group made up the GENTECH93 conference committee. (For years it was difficult to tell the difference between GENTECH, Inc., and the next annual conference committee.)

The initial charter was “to create, foster and maintain … the responsible use of technology in genealogy.” GENTECH, Inc.'s, bylaws stated that it was a non-profit educational organization formed to:

While our application for tax-exempt (501c3) status was still pending from the IRS, we developed procedures to make GENTECH an annual event. Joyce Jones and Madilyn Crane remained supporters but discontinued active involvement due to other commitments. By this time others had joined the effort—Don Raney, Ray Burton, Beau Sharbrough, Jeri Steele, Bill Dow, Dorothy Bruce, and Joe Sissom. Over time the number of people involved rose to more than 50 volunteers. All were genealogists, but not all were technology experts. Our commitment to improve the genealogical craft, especially software, was what bound us together.

Early on, we determined that the event would include formal presentations, labs, and a vendor area. Fees would be charged for lectures so the speakers could be paid, but software demos and the vendor hall would be free. To fund start-up costs, DeWayne Lener approached several vendors who agreed to pay their vendor fees a year in advance. Five vendors had enough faith in GENTECH to take that offer.

We will always be grateful to our GENTECH Angels: Ancestry, Heritage Quest/American Genealogical Lending Library, Automated Archives/Automated Research Inc., Everton's, and Preservation Emporium. Thus was born the annual GENTECH conference.

As early as 1994, as GENTECH began emerging with a national identity, the board of directors decided to expand its board membership. Until then, members on the board and committees were from the North Texas area. Leaders were recruited from across the country, from developers and well-known authors. GENTECH also started to develop a relationship with other leading national genealogical groups. In 1994, three GENTECH officers met with the now defunct Genealogical Coordinating Committee (GCC), an advisory board of representatives of all the national genealogical societies.

Also in 1994, two GENTECH officers met with the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) officials to discuss developing a cooperative relationship with them. That initiative, however, was restrained by our policy of being independent from other organizations.

To us, the most surprising outcome of early GENTECH conferences was that when we got the software developers together to discuss improving GEDCOM, they said, “Why don't you develop standard genealogical definitions? We need these to improve our software and to improve data exchange.”

NEHGS, NGS, FGS, ASG, and APG said, “Go for it.” So, GENTECH gathered a team of leading genealogists and genealogical software developers to tackle the task. The product of this labor is the GENTECH Genealogical Data Model (GDM). Just as GEDCOM has helped, the GDM is another step closer to establishing a lexicon. What will step three be? Whatever it is, you can bet GENTECH will be there continuing its efforts to educate and implement the use of technology to facilitate sound genealogical research.

From that serendipitous meeting in 1991, GENTECH has evolved from a few genealogists in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to a national organization. Following discussions begun by Beau Sharbrough (then president of GENTECH) and Curt Witcher (then president-elect of NGS), it became a division of NGS in August 2002. We still host an annual mid-winter conference and we still facilitate “Tech Meetings” where software developers discuss their common problems and get feedback from computer-savvy genealogists. But that's another story.

Note: This article is based primarily on my personal observations, but some content was gleaned from the files of, and conversations with, early participants in GENTECH. Special thanks to Travis Morris and Kelly Collier for their GENTECH history articles in the GENTECH93 and 97 syllabi.

John V. Wylie, a full-time professional genealogist, serves on the NGS-GENTECH Advisory Board and is an APG Director. He has authored articles in numerous publications including Genealogical Computing and has served on the team that developed the GENTECH Data Model. He has lectured at many FGS, NGS, and GENTECH national conferences. He can be reached at john@john wylie.com.

Return to the July-September 2003 Genealogical Computing Table of Contents.