The Management Team of The Family History Guide Association is excited welcome David Aird as its newest member, acting as our Show Booth Technology Specialist. You can learn more about David below, as well as on the web page for The Family History Guide Association.

David has been involved in the A/V and theatrical world most of his life. As a live event technician, he has worked in many venues around the Salt Lake Valley, including the Salt Palace, the LDS Conference Center, and Rice Eccles Stadium.

He studied film production and communications at the University of Utah. It was there that his love of storytelling really took shape. 

David puts it this way: “The most interesting stories to me are not the most popular heroic ones. The most interesting ones to me are the stories behind the unnamed, everyday people – the nurse at the hospital or care center; the checker that helped you at the market. Every person you see walking or driving down the street has a story.  Those unnamed, normal, everyday people were the source of the stories that most interested me.”

David’s interest in family history started in 2003 after the unexpected passing of his mother. At that time many of his family friends shared with him their stories and experiences with her. Some stories he knew, but many he did not know. Those stories have been a light to his through the years as he has raised his own children.

The fusion of his love of storytelling with family history came in 2015 when he was asked to assist in setting up a memories preservation center at the Granite Family History Center in Sandy, Utah. It was his job to figure out a way to take old legacy media; (still slides and photos, video and cassette tapes) and convert them to a digital format for easier sharing and archiving. 

Since the center opened, he has had the privilege of assisting in recovering thousands of images and hundreds of hours of video for many people who have not seen these images or heard these video clips in many years. “I have been blessed to share many tears of joy with people as they listen to and remember those that went before them,” David says.

For the last several years he has worked with The Family History Guide Rootstech team providing design and setup for the A/V and technology used in the show booth.