We arrived in Salt Lake City yesterday and decided to take it a little easy. Coming in from the east coast means early to bed and early to rise when you are on Mountain Time. And it also means a 40-50 degree drop in temperatures. It is below 30 this morning...brrrrrrr. Today will be a day for preparing for RootsTech which starts on Thursday. We will be headed to the FamilySearch Library at 9:00 to take advantage of the RootsTech hours and do a little research on my wife's Walker family. Then head over to the Salt Palace around lunch to get our registration and tour the venue. Then to the Expo Hall to help set up booths. We will be meeting Angela Briedenbach from the International Institute of Genealogical Studies and also try to help The Family History Guide get set up. After that I have a tech check for the rooms that I will be speaking in and then the Speakers Social and Media Social tonight. I will also need to go over my schedule to make sure that I have the sessions on my calendar. That means deciding on attending Forums, General Sessions, or classes.
Thursday at 9:30 is the FamilySearch Tech Forum. This is an opportunity to hear Craig Miller, CTO of FamilySearch and see demonstrations of the new products that will be released. Early word is that the Family Group Trees will finally be released after several years of development. Family Group Trees will allow you to share the private individuals with your family group so you all can work together to update the tree. There will also be some additional new products released that will make family history more productive.
Thursday at 10:00 is the Innovation and Tech Forum. This is the opportunity to learn about the latest innovations in family history from various companies. The features speaker will be Jared Sparato, Corporate Vice President of Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft.
Friday at 9:30 will be The Impact Forum. Speakers will talk about how family history has a positive impact on individuals, families, and society.
Saturday at 9:30 is the FamilySearch Global Forum. FamilySearch will talk about the work being done around the world to promote family history. Some new things that you may learn about during this forum could be the FamilySearch Cemeteries Project, the FamilySearch African American Ancestors Project, individual country and region landing pages, and new collections.
All of these forums will be broadcast online as well as attended in person.
On the other hand, there are so many classes to choose from. Most sessions have 15-20 classes so how do you choose? You can choose to follow a track of classes. They have a track for Beginners and an advanced track that BCG is hosting which focuses on professional development. You can follow a track based on your research interests such as German research or DNA. Or you can mix and match. There are over 250 in-person classes and 150 classes online so I am sure that you will find something of interest.
So, no matter what your interests, there will be something for you. And you also have the opportunity to watch classes from previous years in the archived videos. So sit back, gather your snacks, select your sessions and have a fun RootsTech Conference!
2 comments:
Very informative and well written, Miles. Thank you!
Thank you.
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