The FTDNA Admin Conferences were usually every year before the pandemic, but after 4 ? years, it was great to see old friends, now older, of course!??There is a lot that is new in terms of both people and lab equipment, including robotics.??It¡¯s interesting that robots are analyzing human DNA, but who is analyzing the robots¡¯ DNA?
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Despite the long time gap between conferences, there weren¡¯t any dramatic announcements of new tests, as sometimes would happen during the pioneering years of the previous two decades.
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I wrote down a few notes, but other U106 attendees should feel free to add or correct anything I¡¯m reporting here.??My notes are in the order of the presentations.
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They are planning to increase collaboration or merging of the Customer Service and Group Projects (ie ¡°Groups¡±) support groups. From my standpoint as an Admin, this sounds a little ominous, since the Groups support has been very helpful to me over the years.??But trying to send a consistent message to admins and customers is a good idea.
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With respect to Ancient Connections in Discover, they now have 6,100 of about 7,500 male ancient extractions in their system.??268 Big Y customers¡¯ closest match in the system is actually one of the ancient remains samples.??
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Our own Dr Iain McDonald¡¯s name was cited in multiple presentations, and always very favorably.??We all know what a tremendous asset he is to U106, and as we also know, he was very involved in helping the Discover team get the ball rolling on the age analysis of the haplogroups.
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For admins, there is (already I think) a place to in effect put up a Help Wanted sign on the Project Banner.
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Undoubtedly the worst news from the weekend, perhaps at least partly due to the recent 23andMe incident, is that a ¡°forced password reset¡± is coming soon.??They will send out warnings, and the Admins access to the Admin system known as GAP, will go first.??But all accounts will be forced to reset the passwords.??If you manage accounts of other sample donors, living or deceased, and your own email address isn¡¯t on the account, you¡¯re going to most likely be out-of-luck ever being able to access it again. I don¡¯t understand the details, and other attendees or other computer geeks might be able to help with the discussion, and this pending nightmare should probably have its own thread here.??But my simple thought is that you should try to make sure ASAP that your own current email address is on every account that you manage, because they are going to email the password reset instructions to the email address on the account, and nobody else will be allowed to reset it.??You should also make sure your accounts have Beneficiary designations.??They mentioned two-factor authentication as a distinct possibility in what they¡¯re planning.??Another idea is that since the Fall Sale is on now, you might want to go ahead and order new tests for some of the kits you manage before the chaos begins.
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Some good news is that Family Finder and Transfers will be given whatever Y-DNA or mtDNA designations can be obtained from these tests, similar to what you get from Ancestry or 23andMe.??It wasn¡¯t clear to me where this will be displayed???Maybe other attendees understood better, but it sounded like it would go where the current red or green haplogroup labels on the Y-haplotypes are now, EXCEPT OBVIOUSLY it won¡¯t over-write an actual Y-SNP test result, unless it¡¯s downstream from such a Y test.
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They have an idea to add yet another feature to Discover, along with Ancient and Notable Connections, which would be Connections to results from Academic/Scientific Studies.
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They are working hard to get a Mitotree up and running for mtDNA, which would be built from scratch from their mtDNA database and which will create new branches and update mtDNA haplogroup designations.??Beyond that, they will also have an mtDNA Discover tool.
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I think people will take this next item as partly good and partly bad, but here goes.??They are going to replace their traditional genealogical family tree feature with the much better one from MyHeritage.
I think I understood there will be some free and hopefully not too difficult way to get your current tree into the MyHeritage system before they toss the current system overboard (for the second time).
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They have some Wish List ideas, including moving to whatever future T2T Reference system replaces the current ¡°Build 38¡± reference, an mtDNA Block Tree, and WGS tests if they can get the cost down.
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It was fun at the lab today watching the test kit vials being filled by robots instead of lab techs who can do ¡°more important things that robots can¡¯t¡±, and presumably less boring or monotonous.
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There are now over 100,000 Big Y tests in the system.
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With respect to the new owner from Down Under having a positive influence on getting more Aussies tested, they said actually Australia is one of the better tested countries.
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They don¡¯t currently have plans to arrange Y-DNA Transfers for a fee from other Y labs, but it didn¡¯t sound like they were opposed to it (a non-answer answer).
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Long-Read testing is still too expensive.
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There were a number of long, entertaining presentations such as a racially-mixed (and mixed-up) adoption situation, whereas the news items I¡¯ve mentioned here were spit out too fast for me to do a decent job with my notes.??I probably can¡¯t answer your questions.??Fortunately, there were multiple other U106ers there, so I hope they won¡¯t be shy about adding, correcting, and discussing these items with y¡¯all.
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Charles?
