Friday the exhibit hall opened at 9:45 a.m. and was busy from the first minute of this exciting day! The first general session featured Paralympian Kadeena Cox and FamilySearch International CEO Steve Rockwood. The evening special event was “Connecting Through Music” with the talented group Tre Amici at 6 p.m. in the auditorium. Since we worked our booth straight through the day, we are grateful that these events were videoed and can be watched here. In addition to all the main sponsors (Ancestry, FamilySearch and Find My Past) there were booths from a myriad of organizations including additional well-known family history sites, family history societies and those launching new products. Along with the various exhibitors’ stands, the Demo Theatre, the Cyber Café where you could get caught up on emails and social media or do some research, a DNA Basics Learning Centre where there were regular classes, a Coaches Corner where you could seek help on specific topics, Ancestry and Family Search also provided a myriad of free mini sessions in the Exhibition hall.

As it turned out, MCM Comic Con was also in ExCel London from October 25 – 27 which was confusing to us at first when we kept seeing people in costume inside and outside of the Excel Center. Did these interesting people really come to learn about family history at Rootstech? It all made sense once we discovered the scheduling overlap and it was entertaining, to say the least! We even heard that the DLR got in on the act and played Harry Potter music when the train doors taking people to and from the conferences opened!

So we had a sweet moment when this 14-year-old English boy was being introduced to more of The Family History Guide on his second visit to our booth. We opened up the Come, Follow Me Companion (family history activities correlated to the Latter-Day Saint New Testament 2019 Curriculum) and before he realized that we were going to show him to these activities, he announced that his mom teaches the family Come, Follow Me, and began to describe how there is a lady who adds family history activities to the lessons and that they love doing them. When I told him that lady was me he about fainted and immediately texted his mom to tell her he met me! He wanted my signature and a picture, haha! He went on to say that his mom has printed all the activities and keeps them in a huge binder. This kind of feedback makes it all worth it!

During the day we made so many new friends and also met up with some old friends! It was so fun to meet up with Mike Sandberg from FamilySearch and to hear what he has been doing lately to help get more people doing family history worldwide. We have had the privilege meeting with him several times over the last year to talk about this subject and the role of family history activities in helping that goal along. He is an amazing person with a brilliant mind! Mike presented at RootsTech London on Saturday: Family History That Won’t Put Your Kids To Sleep. Mike is the creator of the In-home Activities on FamilySearch and knows what he is talking about! It was interesting to see the games and activities that FamilySearch set up for this conference and hear the reports of how fun they were. There is no question that The Family history Guide knows the value of family history activities! See what is new in activities for families, individuals, youth, and children. So many times we were able to show these great activities to patrons who came by our booth. They were surprised and delighted that these are available. We showed many of the families we met the activity videos on our YouTube Channel. Believe it or not, we got to teach Dan Debenham of Relative Race and we have the photo to prove it! It’s not every day you get to meet someone so famous and get to share something he previously knew nothing about and is excited to explore!

Bob Ives signed us up for a presentation on the Demo Stage in the exhibit hall in the afternoon and it was such fun!  We gave an overview of The Family History Guide, and the audience was great!

Friday was an incredible day at RootsTech London. We watched our piles of pass-along cards dwindle and the list of those who wanted to correspond with us after the conference grew longer. Many attendees felt that they “discovered what they came to learn” at our booth. What better reward for a long day of sharing our site than that?!