My mind is still flooded with the incredible memories of Rootstech this year.  It is a wonderful experience to be on the management team of The Family History Guide and to see and experience what goes on in a year’s worth of planning behind the scenes.  A big shout out to Bob Taylor and Bob Ives for the hundreds of hours of hard work, along with the rest of the management team for the Famly History Guide. Hundred and hundreds of hours for each company became thousands of hours when you think of the whole conference. Every one of those people is partially responsible for making this a huge, extraordinary, and successful worldwide event.    If you are an avid genealogist and family history enthusiast you might want to seriously consider coming next year if you couldn’t make it this time. Plan for it early. February 26-29, 2020!

There are so many options at the conference that you just cannot see it all.  Rootstech planners are very thoughtful when it comes to things like having a fantastic mobile app that allows you to plan your schedule for weeks in advance and to decide what you will do.  For people who cannot come, or who work at Rootstech as presenters, vendors in the Expo Hall, or in other capacities at Rootstech, you don’t have to miss everything.  You can attend many classes, and all of the General Sessions and Keynote Speakers because they are recorded on video. Of course, not everything can be recorded with over 350 classes being offered. The free ones are archived on Rootstech.org.  Check here for all the classes and sessions available.  You can also go to YouTube and search for Rootstech presentations by name for 2019, as some presentations that have been uploaded there, do not appear on the Rootstech list of the free classes.

One of my favorite Keynote presentations was given by Saroo Brierley in Friday’s General Session.  I saw the movie “Lion” for the first time in 2016. The screenplay was adapted from a memoir that Saroo wrote called “A Long Way Home.”  Saroo’s story is one for the most poignant and relevant stories for anyone that loves family history. In 1981, at five years of age, he was separated and lost from his family.  Through a series of unfortunate events, he landed up on an empty train looking for his older brother.  He never found that brother and instead, the doors suddenly closed and the train took off with only Saroo and the engineer’s crew onboard. 1500 kilometers later he had traveled from his village in India into Calcutta.  What an ordeal for a frightened five-year-old! For 25 years he never gave up trying to figure out where his family lived and how to get back home.  Even though his memories were vague, certain landmarks stood out very clearly.  He used Google Earth to help him!  It was difficult, to say the least. He had all the drive, tenacity, and passion that we all need to break through that brick wall that keeps us from finding our families.  Saroo’s story is so astonishing and will tug at your heartstrings throughout the retelling of his story in his own words, on the Rootstech Main Stage.  He recounted to a newspaper reporter in Australia, that as he read the screenplay for the Movie, “Lion” it brought tears to his eyes even though it was his own story.

One of the things that makes Rootstech so exciting is that many new and innovative things are unveiled at the conference. One of my favorites was a DNA reveal about, The Theory of Family Relativity, presented by Gilad Japhet, CEO of My Heritage. Genetic genealogy has come so far!  If you love learning about DNA see this video by Blaine Bettinger at Rootstech. You might also be interested in the big reveals at Family Search by Ron Tanner and Crista Cowan of Ancestry,

My Heritage, FamilySearch, and Ancestry along with Find My Past are all companies that you can learn to use on The Family History Guide in our Projects found on the Homepage. Just click on the top of the page to see what is offered for you in the dropdown menus for each company.

In my last post, I mentioned that we had three incredible, big presentations at Rootstech, two of them given by Bob Taylor.  The third one I’d like to feature here.  FamilySearch collaborated with two of our Family History Guide, management teams members, Angelle and Scott Anderson.  You can see them slightly on the monitor on the photo. They presented an outstanding array of family history activities and videos that have been produced to enhance family experiences for all ages. They shared some recent and tender moments about when Angelle’s father and Scott’s mother passed away. Merrill White, of FamilySearch, also presented some wonderful new activities added by FamilySearch and some of his own personal story, as well. We all realize that engaging in activities with our living family members so they can learn about and remember their ancestors is very good. It is an effective way to strengthen and unify families. See our YouTube Channel for our videos from The Family History Guide.  It includes this one shared in the video presentation at Rootstech that Scott and Angelle recently produced with their grandchildren.

For our family history community, this was an astonishing week filled with great learning, discovery, networking,  connecting and reconnecting with family and friends from all over.  It was filled with exhilarating goodness from beginning to end. It just doesn’t get much better than that!