What a privilege to bring The Family History Guide to this historic event!  The Exhibition Hall opened at 9:45 a.m. Thursday, and was busy from the onset with attendees from various places all over the world stopping by our booth to find out what we are all about. Some were experienced genealogists and most were beginners or those with a good amount of expertise with family history. There is something for everyone in The Family History Guide, so all who came by left with a new tool, or became informed about updates and additions since our site is current and innovative! We arrived early and geared up for the opening of the doors. Although much smaller in size than what we experience in SLC, there was a wide variety of booths and the layout seemed well-planned. FamilySearch had prepared a lot of games (for children and youth especially) and they definitely took up the most real estate with Ancestry coming in at a close second.

The general session began with a welcome from the host of the event, Nick Barratt from Who Do You Think You Are. He introduced the session keynote speaker, popular television personality and historian Dan Snow, who shared stories of connection, loss, reconnection, and gathering loved ones to strengthen bonds. Dan shared, “If you’ve done the archival work, the next step is to get out and walk the ground. The picture is not complete unless you’ve seen it yourself.” Not everyone can actually visit the homelands of their ancestors, but technology allows us a virtual experience on so many levels. While we shared The Family history Guide, we were amazed at how many people are really desiring some direction to discover more about their ancestors and are seeking new ways to find connections. The final count for Rootstech London was nearly 10,000 patrons!

We stayed busy and miraculously the two of us were able to keep up with the nearly constant flow of patrons coming by. A highlight was meeting up with one of our international church leaders Elder Kopischke and his beautiful wife who came by. Sister Kopischke absolutely loved The Family History Guide and kept saying to her husband, “We need to do all this!”  Elder Kopischke was enthralled as Scott gave him a detailed description of our mission. It was great to see these wonderful people!

We met  Melissa Dalton-Bradford executive director of Their Story Is Our Story. She is an author, poet, essayist, blogger and public speaker who has lived in Paris, Vienna, Hong Kong, New York City, Munich, Singapore, Geneva, and Frankfurt. For years her work has explored the role of community in the face of major personal loss and “globility“ which has connected her in very real ways to the people she met as a volunteer in the camps of Frankfurt. She now uses her talents to tell their stories. Melissa loved The FHG!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

The Hadfields –  Eugene and Debra are from Plano, Texas but are moving to Arkansas. They are some of our certified trainers and are doing a fantastic job of sharing The Family History Guide!

It was fun to meet up with the Meyers from Florida  – some of our greatest supporters and certified trainers! He presented at RootsTech London about exploring European archives online. He is a frequent presenter at various conferences and will be speaking at RootsTech SLC in 2020. 

People from 42 countries attended Rootstech and many of those countries were represented by attendees who stopped by our booth!

We met so many great new friends and wrapped up our day at ExCel around 7 pm. Although our hotel did offer a nice breakfast restaurant-style and that saved us for all three days we were pretty hungry on Thursday night. A long day and the granola bar diet was getting old, so we did a little more investigative work and found fish and chips across the street from our hotel on the way home! This little hole in the wall place took credit cards but also took a long time to cook our meal – not exactly “fast food.” We also had to deal with a very sloppy and messy shirted (no apron) cook who wanted to know if we gave Trump a “thumbs up” or not. He was a hoot! But this was real food and it was yummy! 

We count the first day of Rootstech a huge success for The Family History Guide!