The First Ever Independent Genetic Genealogy Conference was a Smashing Success!

It has been a week now since our history-making  SCGS/ISOGG Genetic Genealogy Conference in Burbank. It was a smashing success in every way. I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the speakers who generously came, often from all the way across the country, to share their knowledge and expertise with us. I was thrilled and honored by the enthusiastic response from all of the speakers to my invitations to participate.

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Dr. Spencer Wells were our headliner speakers and they definitely lived up to their reputations (and more). We would have been extremely lucky to have even one of them attend. For me, having both accept my invitation to speak was nothing short of incredible!

Dr. Wells of National Geographic did a wonderful job encouraging all of us citizen scientists and recognizing our efforts. I had seen him speak before and always love how he makes the science so interesting and approachable, even for the beginners in the audience. Dr. Wells spent the day at the conference, attending presentations and interacting with the community. He even joined us for dinner and socialized with a group of genetic genealogists late into the night. He is definitely one of us!

The packed house for Spencer Wells' wonderful opening presentation

Professor Gates spoke at our luncheon and he was absolutely hilarious! I had no idea he would have us rolling in the aisles with laughter the way he did. If he ever decides that he wants a new career, stand-up comedy should be first on his list! He regaled us with tales of his own family history and his early ventures into television. The Professor was a fitting participant in our history-making day since his PBS shows were the first to introduce genetic genealogy into American homes. He also stuck around most of the day, attending presentations and socializing with the attendees. (I have to tell you that giving a presentation while looking out on the audience of Dr. Wells, Professor Gates, Dr. Mountain and many of my colleagues was quite intimidating!)

Professor Gates entertaining us

With these two celebrities, it might seem easy to forget our other speakers, except that they were all so outstanding in their own right! We had wonderful representation from the companies that our community depends on - Bennett Greenspan from Family Tree DNA, Dr. Joanna Mountain from 23andMe and Dr. Ken Chahine from AncestryDNA all gave presentations packed full of valuable information for genetic genealogists. Their speeches were standing room only. This was a very important part of the event to me. From the beginning of the planning process, one of my goals for the conference was to gather management from all of these companies in one place with the common purpose of promoting the education of the community. This was the very first time that this has happened and it will not be the last time.

Dr. Mountain explaining the finer points

Many of our leading genetic genealogists also generously gave of their time to ensure that our first conference would be a success. The informative presentations from Dr. Tim Janzen, Blaine Bettinger, Judy Russell, Dick Hill, Debbie Parker-Wayne, Alice Fairhurst, David Reynolds, Emily Aulicino and Katherine Borges were essential to this groundbreaking event. Many of these presentations were livestreamed and/or recorded so more people could benefit from these outstanding speeches. Dr. Kathy Johnston and Bonny Cook were also integral to the event and helped it to run as smoothly as it did. Additionally, all of the roundtable discussion leaders and the general volunteer efforts were very much appreciated by us all.

Blaine Bettinger sharing his knowledge

We had a total of 352 attendees, including speakers, which is a very good turnout for the first conference of this kind in the history of our field. We even had attendees from China, Australia and the UK, making this an international event! Thank you all for the tremendous support! The success of this inaugural event ensures that we can hold similar conferences in the future. This has proven that the time had indeed come for genetic genealogy to have its own annual conference. Thanks to SCGS for giving us this trial run, Paula Hinkel for her expertise in conference planning, which ensured a perfectly executed day, and Vicki Hilb for taking such good care of the speakers.

Next year we plan to hold the event on the East Coast, so those who could not make the long trip this year can participate in our second annual conference. I hope to again entice our wonderful Dr. Wells and Professor Gates to join us (they say they will!). We intend to hold a two day event next time in order to allow attendees to see more of the speakers and presentations. I will update everyone once we have dates and a location nailed down. I hope it will be as much fun as this one was!

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of everyone since it was such a whirlwind day, but thanks to Tim Janzen, I have quite a few to share with you all.  (His are the clear ones. :-))

 CeCe and Professor Gates

Tim Janzen Presenting

 

Dick Hill telling his tale...

The Gates Luncheon

 

Confirming My Pedigree with DNA

What the Livestreaming looked like from our end

 

Does DNA Testing Work?

Socializing was fun with Blaine...

...and Debbie Parker-Wayne (with Cyndi Howells of "Cyndi's List" in the background)

I couldn't have asked for a better group of people with whom to share the day! There were so many familiar faces and friendly people that it was impossible to have the time to speak to everyone I wanted to. It was wonderful to be among people who share the same passion for genetic genealogy. Thank you to everyone who made the event so successful. It really was a dream come true!

Update: I received some great new photos from Katherine Borges which I have added, two below and one above in the section about Dr. Well's speech.

Adam, Spencer Wells, me, Lennart, Leo and Alice's infamous gold hat

At the Jamboree ISOGG booth, Back Row: Emily, Bonny, me, Kathy
Front Row: Linda and Katherine

More on Geno 2.0: Third Party Resources and Images from a Second Set of Results

It turns out that an additional correspondent of mine received her National Geographic Geno 2.0 results in the last batch and she has kindly given me permission to share them. I have also received word that several third party tools are ready to accept GenoChip (Geno 2.0) raw data.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS
Mitochondrial DNA researcher James Lick's mthap tool (mtDNA haplogroup predictor) is now capable of processing the new GenoChip raw data. In fact, his tool returns an even more detailed subclade for the K1a1b1 result (shown below) than Geno 2.0 currently reports (K1a1b1f). This was also true for a K1 sample that was extended to K1e with Jim's tool.

Happily, reversing his earlier statements, Dr. Doug McDonald has successfully adapted his admixture analysis program to be able to work with the Geno 2.0 files. However, as expected, he reported that the results are inferior when compared to using 23andMe and Family Finder files due to the lower number of SNPs that he is able to incorporate in his program.

Dienekes announced today that he has created a converter to run Geno 2.0 files on his DIYDodecad tool.

After working with a raw data file, Mike Cariaso, cofounder of SNPedia, tells me that versions of Promethease 0.1.149 and later will be able to read the Geno 2.0 files directly.

Leon Kull reports that he is accepting Geno 2.0 files for inclusion in his HIR Search autosomal DNA matching database.

Y-DNA researcher David Reynolds compiled a list of Y-SNPs on the GenoChip from the raw data file. He explains on the ISOGG Facebook page, "While we don't know the exact location yet of most of the 12,000+ (e.g., the CTS, F, PF SNPs), this will answer the questions about which DF/L/Z etc SNPs are included."

Dr. Tim Janzen, 23andMe Ancestry Ambassador and ISOGG Y-SNP Tree Committee Member, is currently working on creating a file that will include the SNP positions for all of the SNPs on the GenoChip that are also found on the 23andMe v3 chip. I will add the link here when it is completed (probably tomorrow).

Dr. Ann Turner (we all know who she is and needs no introduction from me!) has informed me that she is ready to share the spreadsheet method that she has been working on to facilitate Geno 2.0 raw data usage with third party applications. She tells me, "GenoConvertTemplate.xlsm contains a macro to convert the GenoChip raw data download to the format used by 23andMe, which many 3rd party utilities can handle. It uses Build 37 numbers for the chromosomal locations of the SNPs." She would like to test it with additional Geno 2.0 data files, especially from people who have also tested at 23andMe and are willing to share both files with her. Please contact Ann directly for access or to donate your raw data (you can write to me for her email address if you don't have it).

Mitochondrial DNA researcher and mtDNA Haplogroup K Project administrator  Bill Hurst has spent quite a bit of time examining the data as well. After working with two files, he commented (in agreement with Jim Lick) that so far he "was impressed by the full coverage of the test, even while testing only 19% of the mtDNA."

I had full confidence that our amazing community of researchers/citizen scientists would come through for us and they have, even more quickly than imagined! Thank you to all those who have contributed so far to this groundbreaking project. (There's a long way to go yet!) I would be remiss if I didn't note that this expedient work could not have happened without the generosity of both Sharon and Anna in sharing their early data. Thanks go out to both of them from all of the community!

The researchers listed above are still looking to examine more raw data files, so if anyone reading this has received their results and would like to contribute to the cause, please contact me or any of the researchers directly. If you have a third party tool that is accepting Geno 2.0 raw data and is not listed, please comment below or email me to be added. I will continue to update this list as I receive more info, so please check back periodically.

**To access your Geno 2.0 raw data for use with these tools, go to "Expert Options" under the Profile tab and download the .CSV file to your desktop.**


MORE RESULTS FROM GENO 2.0:

YOUR MATERNAL LINE
Here are the newest set of mtDNA results:

WHO AM I?
These are her autosomal results:

Note: Clicking on a percentage brings up information about that population

National Geographic has recently clarified that the matching reference populations listed as first and second (shown in this screen shot) are not in order of closest matching, but simply the top two.

Interestingly, her Denisovan ancestry component is significantly lower than the other account that I reviewed.

OUR STORY
It looks like there are a few more "stories" in the community section now:

There are a total of 30 as of today (more than when I looked yesterday!).


TRANSFERS
I tried to transfer her data to Family Tree DNA (found in Expert Options under the "Download Data" button),

but I got this:

"The kit you entered already has a Population Finder, new PopFinder data cannot be transferred"

It appears that if you already have a Family Finder test from FTDNA (which includes the Population Finder feature), then you cannot transfer your Geno 2.0 results at this time. I'm surprised by this since Family Finder (PopFinder) and Geno 2.0 are very different products. Further, this customer does not have a mtDNA test in her FTDNA account, so she should be able to transfer her mtDNA results at the very least. One project administrator has already reported that a woman has transferred her results into an FTDNA Project, so contrary to earlier reports, women are not automatically blocked from transferring their Geno 2.0 results to FTDNA. I'm quite confident that National Geographic or FTDNA will clarify this issue for us soon.

MORE TO COME...
I'm sure this will be only one of my many future posts on Geno 2.0, so stay tuned.