Texas: FamilyTreeDNA.com conference, Oct. 30-31

FamilyTreeDNA.com's annual genetic genealogy conference for group administrators is set for October 30-31 in Houston, Texas.

Tracing the Tribe attended a few years ago and it was one of the highpoints of my involvement in the field with two family projects and as co-founder and co administrator - with Judy Simon - of our fascinating IberianAshkenaz DNA Project.

The increasing popularity of genetic genealogy is seen at genealogy conferences, some of which even have program tracks dedicated to the numerous presentations.

This will be the company's sixth conference and will be held at the Sheraton North Houston.

Each year, world renowned experts in genetics and science present cutting-edge developments and exciting new applications at this two-day educational forum which draws attendees from Family Tree DNA's Group Administrators from around the world. This year's conference will focus on the new Family Finder test which allows customers to find relatives across all ancestral lines.

As most of us in the genetic genealogy community know, the company was founded in April 2000, and was the first company to develop the commercial application of DNA testing for genealogy. Until then, tests were only available for academic and scientific research.

Ten years later, it remains on the cutting-edge of the growing genetic genealogy field.

Importantly for those who believe in how DNA assists genealogists of all skill levels - confirming or disproving or providing more clues to follow in their quest - FamilyTreeDNA has the largest DNA database in the field. What this means is that those who test with the company have more probability of finding genetic matches for recent and distant ties. The database grows daily with more than 300,000 individual records, 95,000 surnames and some 6,000 lineage and geographic projects.

Since 2005, it has also been the designated testing company for the Genographic Project, run by National Geographic and IBM, to study mankind's migrations. It has processed more than 300,000 tests alone for that project.

The names of FamilyTreeDNA-associated researchers and scientists are known to many genealogists, such as Dr. Michael Hammer, Dr. Doron Behar, and Thomas Krahn.

For more information on the conference, click here.