Recap of RootsTech 2019

Wednesday, March 27, 2019


Another RootsTech has come and gone, and it was a wonderful conference. Elder David A. Bednar from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commented in his keynote speech for Family Discovery Day Saturday, “RootsTech is the premier family conference in the whole world.” I agree. Deseret News reported that there were estimated to be 25,000 attendees in person and another 100,000 viewing online. Wow! Since I was one of the 100,000 that viewed online, I will give a recap of the broadcasted classes. Rootstech.org already has the streamed classes online ready for you to watch. They have twelve more classes recorded, but not streamed that need to be added to the list.

First, I have got to say that there was not one online class that I watched that I did not think was great. RootsTech did a great job in streaming popular classes. Even though I missed the energy that you get from attending RootsTech, I enjoyed watching it from the quiet comfort of my home, and I found that I could focus better. Hopefully, next year they will stream more classes considering many people who took advantage of learning from the online classes.

Wednesday’s favorite online class was “What’s New at FamilySearch” by Ron Tanner. Keeping up with FamilySearch can be a daunting job. Ron Tanner does a great job in keeping us posted on what to expect.

Thursday’s favorite was “What You Don’t Know about Ancestry” by Crista Cowan. This class included the new twists that Ancestry has added such as tags and DNA improvements.

Friday, I enjoyed “Why and How to Put Yourself into Your Family History.” Curt Witcher did a great job in showing how the chemicals in our brain change for the better with exposure to family stories.

As usual, the big genealogy companies had big announcements. Ancestry announced MyTreeTags where you can add tags to people in your family tree, New and Improved DNA Matches, where you can sort, group and view your DNA matches any way you like, and ThruLines that is replacing the DNA circles making it easier to find those with whom you have common ancestors. MyHeritage announced the Theory of Family Relativity that will show the relationship between DNA matches and AutoClusters that groups and visualized shared DNA matches. FindMyPast announced that they would publish and digitize the 1921 England and Wales census by 2022.



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