{"id":4620,"date":"2019-03-25T04:31:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T04:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/?p=4620"},"modified":"2019-03-25T14:21:37","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T14:21:37","slug":"treasured-takeaways-from-rootstech-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/treasured-takeaways-from-rootstech-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasured Takeaways From Rootstech 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mind is still flooded with the incredible memories of Rootstech<\/a> this year.\u00a0 It is a wonderful experience\u00a0to be on the management team of The Family History Guide<\/a> and to see and experience what goes on in a year’s worth of planning behind the scenes.\u00a0 A big shout out to Bob Taylor\u00a0and 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\u00a0of hours for each company became thousands of hours when you think of the whole conference. Every one of those people is partially responsible\u00a0for making this a huge, extraordinary, and successful worldwide event.\u00a0 \u00a0 If you are an avid genealogist and family\u00a0history\u00a0enthusiast you might want to seriously consider coming next year if you couldn’t\u00a0make it this time. Plan for it early. February 26-29, 2020!<\/p>\n

There are so many options at the conference that you just\u00a0cannot see it all.\u00a0 Rootstech planners are very thoughtful when it comes to things like having a fantastic\u00a0mobile\u00a0app that allows you\u00a0to plan your schedule for weeks in\u00a0advance and to decide what you will do.\u00a0 For people who cannot come, or who work\u00a0at Rootstech as presenters, vendors in the Expo Hall, or in other capacities at Rootstech, you don’t have to miss everything.\u00a0 You can attend many classes, and all of the General Sessions and Keynote Speakers because\u00a0they are recorded on video. Of course,\u00a0not everything can be recorded with over\u00a0350 classes being offered. The free ones are archived on Rootstech.org.\u00a0 Check here<\/a> for all the classes and sessions\u00a0available.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"One of my favorite Keynote presentations was given\u00a0by Saroo\u00a0Brierley in Friday’s General Session<\/a>.\u00a0 I saw the movie “Lion” for the first time in 2016. The screenplay\u00a0was adapted from a memoir that Saroo wrote called “A Long Way Home.”\u00a0 Saroo’s story is one for the most poignant and relevant stories for anyone that loves\u00a0family history. In 1981, at five years of age, he was separated and lost from his family.\u00a0 Through\u00a0a series of unfortunate\u00a0events, he landed up on an empty train looking for his older brother.\u00a0 He never\u00a0found that brother and instead, the doors suddenly closed\u00a0and the train took off with only Saroo and the engineer’s crew onboard. 1500 kilometers later he had traveled from his village in India\u00a0into Calcutta.\u00a0 What an ordeal for a frightened\u00a0five-year-old! For 25 years\u00a0he never gave up trying to figure out where his family\u00a0lived and how to get back home.\u00a0 Even though his memories were vague, certain landmarks stood out very clearly.\u00a0 He used Google Earth to help him!\u00a0 It was difficult,\u00a0to say the least. He had\u00a0all the drive, tenacity, and passion that we all need\u00a0to break through\u00a0that brick wall that keeps us from finding our families.\u00a0 Saroo’s story is so astonishing and will tug\u00a0at your heartstrings throughout the retelling of his story in his own words, on the Rootstech Main Stage.\u00a0 He recounted to a newspaper reporter in Australia, that as he\u00a0read the screenplay for the Movie, “Lion” it brought tears to his eyes even though it was his own story.<\/p>\n

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,<\/a> presented by Gilad Japhet, CEO of My Heritage.\u00a0Genetic genealogy has come so far!\u00a0 If you love learning about DNA see this video<\/a> by Blaine Bettinger at Rootstech. You might also be interested\u00a0in the big reveals\u00a0at Family\u00a0Search\u00a0by Ron Tanner<\/a>\u00a0and Crista Cowan<\/a> of Ancestry,<\/p>\n

My Heritage, FamilySearch,\u00a0and 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<\/a>. Just click on the top of the page to see what is offered for you in the dropdown menus for each company.<\/p>\n

\"\"In my last post<\/a>, I mentioned that we had three incredible, big presentations at Rootstech, two of them given by Bob Taylor.\u00a0 The third one I’d like to feature here.\u00a0 FamilySearch collaborated with two of our Family History Guide, management teams members, Angelle and Scott Anderson.\u00a0 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.\u00a0They 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\u00a0story, as well. We all realize that engaging in activities with our living family members so they\u00a0can learn about and remember their ancestors is very good. It is an effective way to strengthen and\u00a0unify families. See our YouTube Channel for our videos from The Family History Guide.\u00a0 It includes this one shared in the\u00a0video presentation at Rootstech<\/a> that Scott and Angelle recently produced with their grandchildren.<\/p>\n

For our family history community, this was an astonishing week filled with great learning, discovery, networking,\u00a0 connecting and reconnecting with family and friends from all over.\u00a0 It was filled with exhilarating goodness from beginning to end. It just doesn’t get much better than that!<\/p>\n