Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

RootsTech 2021 will be virtual (and free!)

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Have you heard the news? RootsTech has announced that next year’s conference–rebranded RootsTech Connect for 2021–will be entirely virtual. To be held February 25 to 27, 2021, has a wonderful global vibe. Perhaps the best part in terms of inclusivity? It will be free of charge! You can read details of the announcement here on the RootsTech website. And you can register on the spot with a little bot in the right corner of the screen. It took me less than a minute to register.

So what does this virtual conference look like? The organizers say it will be unlike any virtual genealogy conference.

RootsTech Connect is different than any other virtual event—no boring speakers or falling asleep at your computer screen. Rather, enjoy dozens of inspirational learning sessions, uplifting messages from celebrity keynote speakers, and hands-on activities to help you celebrate your heritage all year long.

I’m intrigued, especially by the hands-on activities! I know the capabilities of the smart people who organize this conference and I am confident they can pull it off. I’m delighted that content will be available for viewing for a year after the conference. (I don’t know if that’s selected content, as usual, or if it will be all the content.)

This multi-cultural video, on the RootsTech landing page, made me feel great.

Since everything is so uncertain right now in this world of COVID, I am so happy to know what’s happening with RootsTech. It’s on my calendar and I can’t wait to attend! How about you?  Have you/will you sign up?

Avoiding the paralysis of perfectionism

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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might know that I co-host a podcast called Getting to Good Enough. Every week, my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I publish an episode aimed toward helping listeners let go of perfectionism so they can do more of what they love.

This week we’ll publish Episode 113, but way back in Episode 20, which was published on October 11, 2018, we focused on genealogy. (I blogged about it at the time.) So far it’s our only genealogy-focused episode, though the principles we discuss every week can be applied to genealogy.

It occurred to me that some of the readers of this blog might not be aware of the podcast, or that we had a genealogy-focused episode, so I wanted to draw your attention to it. You can listen on our website or on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher.

Letting go of perfectionism has become one of my passions and it was the subject of the RootsTech talk I gave in February, as well as the Zoom presentation I did for the North Hills Genealogists in May. I am indebted to the readers of this blog who helped me craft that presentation by responding to my request for comments on how perfectionism has been a problem in genealogy.

I urge you to give it a listen. Feel free to let me know in the comments if perfectionism sometimes gets in the way of your genealogy research and whether you’ve come up with any strategies to get past it!

Stacy Julian reopening her 20in20 online course (for a good cause)

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I became a huge fan of Stacy Julian when I heard her speak at RootsTech. After RootsTech, I shared details of her talk Do Something with that Box! here and I referenced it in my own talk, The Imperfect Genealogist.

Stacy is all about helping people tell stories, particularly family stories. I’m on her mailing list and I received an email this week that she is her reopening her yearlong online course, 20in20. Here’s a short video about the course.

In a nutshell, participants will create 20 projects over the course of a year. It was originally intended to take place in the calendar year 2020. Enrollment closed months ago. But that changed this week. Stacy wrote in her email:

“As I have contemplated current events—especially those that have exposed racial inequality in the United States—I have made the decision to reopen 20in20 and donate ALL of the proceeds to organizations and efforts making a difference for people of color.”

I was very impressed by this and I asked her if I could share the information here. Here’s another great piece of news. The price has been cut in half–to $60–to encourage enrollment. See the 20in20 page on Stacy’s website for where and how she’s donating the proceeds and to sign up.

This strikes me as an amazing opportunity to create some wonderful projects, with the help of an amazing teacher, at a big discount and to do good at the same time. I just had to share.

NGS 2020 virtual family history conference recordings available for purchase

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The National Genealogical Society made some serious lemonade when it figured out what to deal with their conference, which was to be held in May in Salt Lake City, in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than cancelling it, they made it virtual. As I understand it, this is what they did. (It’s relevant today because you can now purchase recordings of the presentations that would have been made at the conference.)

Registrants for the conference could watch five featured presentations live. Well, sort of live, on May 20. The presentations from Judy Russell, Blaine Bettinger, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Thomas Wright Jones and storyteller and re-enactor Stephanie Raff, were pre-recorded (to prevent technical snafus) and streamed on May 20. The presenters monitored the live chat during the streaming of their recorded presentations so that registrants had a more live, conference-like experience.

There were also three sponsored sessions that were presented as part of the live event on May 20. And another 18 sponsored bonus sessions were recorded.

See this page for a list of the NGS Live! presentations and sponsored presentations.

The rest of the conference presenters–a total of 85 presentations–recorded their lectures, which will be available for streaming. See this page for a list of those presentations.

If you’re interested in watching the NGS lectures, there are three streaming packages available. They all include the 26 above-mentioned featured presentations and bonus sessions and the syllabus.

  • Light package: Your choice of 10 sessions, plus the 26 additional sessions for $150 for NGS members/$185 for non-members.
  • Full package: Your choice of 20 sessions, plus the 26 additional sessions, for $215 for members/$250 for non-members.
  • The Works: Your choice of 45 sessions, plus the additional 26 sessions, for $395 for members/$430 for non-members.

These are available for purchase now; you can choose your OnDemand sessions on June 15 and on July 1, the OnDemand sessions will be released. Once purchased, the subscriptions run from 1 July 2020 to 15 May 2021.

I applaud the ingenuity of the conference planners! They managed to make the content available for the registrants as well as those hadn’t been planning to attend the conference. The presenters still had the chance to create their content for an audience. And I love that people can choose from among all the classes.

I’ve attended the NGS conference twice and both times the classes I took were top notch. I think this is a great opportunity to learn some great stuff at your own pace.