For Kindex, RootsTech 2017 promises to be bigger and better than ever. Since our debut in RootsTech last year, we’ve worked hard to solve the challenges that come with owning records. As the first dedicated indexing web software accessible to anyone who wants to create an organized, searchable archive, Kindex offers a collaborative solution to gathering, transcribing, and sharing records. We’re excited to present these solutions at RootsTech—in our booths, in labs, and in the Innovator Showdown. Here’s where to find us.
A startup funded largely by the bootstrap efforts of founders Kimball Clark and Cathy Gilmore, Kindex is a unique and innovate solution in the family history tech market. A successful run in the showdown will enable Kindex to meet the growing demands of families, organizations, and societies who require a solution for at-risk, inaccessible, unsearchable archives.
Your continued support means so much to us as we navigate the challenges of building something altogether new in the family history market. We hope to see you at the Innovator Showdown and invite you to cheer us on!
Innovation Alley is area of tightly-packed booths where industry innovators meet with a non-stop stream of attendees excited to experience the latest in family history tech. Last year it was one of our favorite areas in the Expo Hall. There is definitely a different buzz in the Alley, and we are excited to join other innovators there again this year.
Expo Hall
You’ll not want to miss visiting our Expo Hall booth for hands-on demos if our indexing software, conference-only specials, giveaways, and a special appearance from the “Archive Monster”. Tells what’s in your archive and you’ll have a chance to win a free Kindex Family Archive subscription. Look for us in booth #1433, right next to the Demo Theater and Show and Tell area.
Lab: How to Index & Search Your Own Records
Join Kindex co-founder Kimball Clark as he teaches an add-on lab, Beyond Digitization: How to Index & Search Your Own Records. Taught Wednesday at 4:30 p.m, and Thursday at 11:00 a.m.(251B – LAB), discover how to create a searchable archive of your own family or group records through collaborative gathering and indexing efforts.
Follow Us
We invite you to support us in the “Record Rescue” effort, both at RootsTech and beyond:
If you’ve followed Kindex for very long, you’ll know that we frequently post about our Grandma Dorothy Smith Clark. Today I want to share with you why her story is so important to us.
As a child, I asked Grandma Clark what she would like for her birthday. “Tell me a story,” she answered. This voice speaks to me still. As a young teenager she encouraged me to create and write. A visit with her hardly went by without her suggesting, “Write me a poem.” That encouragement speaks to me still. Today, when I read her letters and diaries, I see her notes in the margins revealing instructions for a personal history—a project she never completed before passing away. Those notes speak to me still.
A marked-up page from Dorothy’s life history.
When my cousin Kimball and I decided to launch Kindex, our aim was to create a solution for the enormous body of work our grandma left behind. While it was impossible for Dorothy to envision the type of indexing tool we are building today, I like to think she had a sense of what was to come. She had the gift of foresight, the ability to anticipate and address needs. In a sense, building Kindex will finish the work she started, while also helping us tell her story.
And what is her story? I’ll share just a part. While still a young mother, Dorothy completed her Book of Remembrance. A work of art in its own right, its pages reveal her deep sense of ancestral belonging, records of her parents’ and grandparents’ spiritual gifts, and a recognition of her own divine purpose and talents. As Dorothy developed her own spiritual gifts, her ability to discern the needs of others and act in faith became a catalyst for ministering to others, notwithstanding the fear and shyness she often felt. To the question posed to the Savior, “Who is my neighbor?” Dorothy could answer: the plumber, the piano tuner, the refugee, or the outcast—anyone in her path in need of help.
A watercolored page from the Dorothy Smith Clark Book of Remembrance
Dorothy’s 1964 poster sketch titled “We Believe in Sharing” affirmed the scope of her desires: to give all she had—her talents, testimony, labor, food, and possessions, bringing “more happiness, enrich[ing] the world, sharing all that has come to us as a church and as individual members.”[1] Often overcome with social anxiety or limited by her heath, Dorothy preferred personal visits to projects, created art to share the gospel, and wrote hundreds of inspired letters that today stand as a witness to bear one another’s burdens. Without prejudice or judgment, her nurturing influence reached beyond her own nine children when she became a foster mother to two Navajo children and a personal advocate for many Southeast Asian refugees who affectionately called her “Mother Clark”.
Dorothy Clark with husband Ellsworth, foster son Cody Black, and Cody’s family.
While Dorothy’s art was never exhibited, her painting of Paul Wildhaber’s “The Armor of Righteousness” was the centerpiece of her home. Unlike others who traditionally depicted male religious figures, 20-year-old Dorothy changed the painting’s subject from hero to heroine, thus broadening the view of those who are “armed in righteousness”. From her childhood fairy gifts to the ministering of the needful and forgotten, her visionary example of what a woman can do endures through her depiction of this righteous and strong heroine.
Dorothy Smith in Paul Wildhaber’s studio.
Dorothy Smith’s completed “Armor of Righteousness”
Dorothy continued her talent of creating and sharing family histories well into the last years of her life. In 1980 she participated in the World Conference of Records in a booth of her own design.
Dorothy at the World Conference of Records in 1980
As I think about her life, I see a patterns emerging as her children, grandchildren, and beyond strive to finish what she started. Kindex is just a small part of a larger effort to emulate the kind of woman she was. Sometimes, when I feel overwhelmed at the pressures of launching a startup while still raising a young family, I look at the binders and boxes of her records and think, “Soon, we’ll know your story. Not long yet.”
Dorothy and Ellsworth in New Zealand, 1974
[i] Dorothy Smith, Sketches. “We Believe in Sharing”, 1964
We are in the thick of RootsTech and are frankly amazed at the encouraging support we have received from family historians here who are excited about our indexing product. Although we learned we will not be moving forward to the finals, we are amazed at the progress we’ve made in just four months! Let’s recap:
October, 2015
Kimball Clark and Cathy Gilmore decide to form Kindex LLC and begin to sell the software and hosting to family organizations
November 2015
Kindex uses bootstrap funds to begin software development
We meet with FamilySearch for the first time to discuss the FamilySearch API. We are encouraged to enter the RootsTech Innovator Showdown
Using props, clothing, furniture, and voice work from our own family members, we write a script and submit a video
December 2015
Software development begins in earnest, amidst continual and improving iterations.
Business models are explored and refined.
Business plan and proforma drafted.
Social media and content marketing begins.
Meet again with FamilySearch to discuss API
January 2016
We learn we are semifinalists in the Innovator Showdown.
Kimball and Cathy spin the plates of marketing literature, wireframing, front end html and CSS, back-end project managing, preparing two booths for RootsTech, preparing the Innovator Showdown presentation, indexing our use case, writing social media content, selling our product to raise funds, looking for investors and backers, refining business models and pricing, and meeting with FamilySearch during API development.
Wednesday, February 3rd.
The morning of the Innovator Showdown, Kindex becomes Family Search Certified
Kindex competes in the RootsTech Innovator Showdown
Kindex released Kindex Beta™, an MVP product with limited features
We are so thankful for the encouragement of our FamilySearch associates, especially Gordon Clarke, who enabled our certification. And, to the RootsTech Innovator Summit team who provide this great opportunity for startups like us. Without the ever-present deadline of February 3rd, 2016, we would not be where we are today.
To our supporters, Beta testers, and future users: thank you for catching our vision. Kindex Beta will introduce new features in the coming days and weeks, and we encourage your patience as we roll it out.
And finally, a big thank you to our spouses and children, for their constant support and patience in our efforts to help other families find what is lost.
(l-r) Vladimir Canro (one of developers), Colleen Fitzpatrick (consultant), Cathy Gilmore, Kimball Clark.
Kindex™ is excited to make its debut at RootsTech 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. As we work to prepare all that is needed for the Innovator Showdown, it’s been instructive to pause and reflect back over the last few months and express gratitude for all the support of family and friends.
When my cousin and I started Kindex™ last October, we couldn’t have anticipated our wonderful and wild trajectory that has landed us in the semifinals of the RootsTech Innovator’s Showdown. As we discussed our idea with those in the genealogy industry, we were encouraged to submit our idea to the RootsTech Innovator’s Showdown. We are grateful to them for their encouragement and advice.
To prepare our submission we quickly wrote a video script incorporating mementos and records from our own family history. The hand-beaded silk dress worn by “Dorothy” (a niece) was actually a dress made by Dorothy’s mother June Bushman Smith. The couch is an antique from the historic Ezra T. Clark home in Farmington. And of course the letters, journals, and papers were belonged to our grandparents. The narrators are also family: a mother, a brother, and a cousin.
Our family has also given encouragement, advice, and financial help. Their support has been invaluable to us as we grow Kindex™ into the great tool we know it will be. We’ve already experienced great things within our own extended families through indexing and sharing our family’s records, and can’t wait for other families to have this same experience. Grandchildren are amazed and touched reading their grandparent’s letters. Aunts and Uncles have experienced tender reminiscence. One niece even wrote a song based on one of her great-grandmother’s poems.
These experiences have touched us immensely, and reminded us that indeed, family is everything.
