“Line of Succession” Talk by Dave Cross

Speaker:

Dave Cross

Overview:

Dave Cross discusses his work on a website that lists the line of succession to the British throne. He explains the rules of succession, the challenges he encountered in gathering and presenting the data, and his future plans for the project.

Key Points:

1. Dave Cross is a self-proclaimed Republican who believes there are better ways to run a country than by hereditary succession. Despite this, he runs a website that tracks the line of succession to the British throne.
2. Cross developed an interest in the British monarchy due to answering questions about it on the Q&A platform, Quora.
3. The rules of succession include being a close relative of the monarch, not dying before the monarch, being legitimate, and not being a Catholic. These rules have evolved over time, with gender and marriage to a Catholic no longer being disqualifying factors.
4. Cross faced several challenges in developing the website, including handling vast amounts of data, dealing with individuals who held multiple titles, and handling individuals who were excluded and then included again due to changes in the law.
5. He used a variety of technical solutions to handle these challenges, including caching, structured data, and adding a canonical tag to handle duplicate content.
6. Future plans for the website include adding more data to cover a longer period of history, developing different views of the data, and enhancing the site’s marketing efforts.

Personal Thoughts:

Cross’s talk was engaging and illuminating, providing a unique perspective on the British monarchy. His project is a fascinating intersection of history, genealogy, and technology. Despite the complexity of the topic, Cross presented the information in a clear and humorous way. His use of technology to handle the challenges of the project was impressive and offers valuable lessons for other data-intensive projects. It would be interesting to see how the website evolves in the future and how it could be used to explore other aspects of history and genealogy.