RootsTech 2019 - Saturday - 2 March

Last Day of RootsTech

Well, RootsTech 2019 is now over. It was a great week and the crews did a wonderful job of keeping everything running. Since I was speaking today I decided to take it easy on the classes and try to get a few things done before I left.

Today I attended a joint class by FamilySearch and The Family History Guide called Discover, Gather and Connect Your Family Together. This presentation focused on activities we can do with our families and others to encourage family history. It has been found that children with a knowledge of their family history have greater self confidence, self worth, sense of identity and belonging, and can handle stress better. As they learn about their ancestors they gain a better understanding of their world and the trials and celebrations that have come before them.

Elder Bradley D. Foster said "We want everyone to have that discovery experience, because that is what changes their hearts."

So, how do we get our families excited about family history? FamilySearch and The Family History Guide have provided a variety of activity videos to help us. FamilySearch's activities can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/discovery. The list of activities on The Family History Guide can be found at https://www.thefhguide.com/act-index.html. These activities are designed to be age appropriate and suited to any size family, from the individual up to multiple generations. Families can do simple activities such as recording their ancestor's recipes at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/recipes. Or they can take on more complex projects such as recreating a part of an ancestor's life (https://www.thefhguide.com/blog/creating-ancestor-connections-fun-ideas-from-the-family-history-guide-childrens-activities-section). Check out the activities pages and see which ones are designed for your family.

I also attended the BYU Family History lunch. The presenter talked about the Family History program at BYU and some of the innovative projects the students are working on. These projects included the Tree Sweeper and Virtual Family Tree. Information about their projects can be found at https://fhtl.byu.edu. They also discussed the Family History degree program and the conferences and webinars they produce.

Tear down of RootsTech 2019

My talk on the Tour of Online European Archives went well. I had good attendance considering the location of the classroom and it being the last class session of the conference. The audience had lots of questions about their favorite archives and seemed to be genuinely interested in the topic.

Now the crews are taking down the conference and getting ready for the next event. We will all have to wait another year for RootsTech 2020 which will be held on February 26-29. I hope to see my friends, both new and old, there next year.