Organize Your Family History

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Registration open for RootsTech 2023 (in-person and virtual!)

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Interested in attending RootsTech 2023? You have a decision to make. After two years of a virtual conference, RootsTech will be back in 2023 as an in-person event. But the organizers have taken it to a new level: In addition to the traditional in-person conference they will also offer a full virtual experience, with over 200 on-demand classes.

The conference will be held March 2 to 4, 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can register (for either in person or virtual) on the registration page. The fee for the in-person conference is $98 and registration for the virtual conference is free.

I have to admit, I’m torn. I love RootsTech and all the energy that comes from being with thousands of fellow genealogy enthusiasts and attending classes live and in person. Despite my best intentions, I did not take full advantage of the offerings of the last two virtual RootsTech conferences. (The good news is that it’s not too late to see last year’s sessions!)

I attended (and spoke at) RootsTech 2020, which was held at the very end of February right before the world shut down. I didn’t get sick. I’ve had COVID once and am triple boosted. But I’m still a little wary of attending a large conference. And, of course, with travel expenses, attending the conference in person is a bigger financial commitment. So I may register for the virtual event today and give myself a deadline to decide about attending in person.

How about you? Are you planning to register for either option? If I decide to attend in person, I’ll post here and perhaps we can have a meet up.

How to watch RootsTech 2022

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RootsTech 2022 started today! Like last year’s conference, it is completely virtual and completely free. I’ve been traveling today, so I haven’t had a chance to experience a whole lot of the classes, but I’m impressed with what I see.

The great news is that most of the sessions will be available to watch until next year’s RootsTech conference (which may or may not be held in person but is promised to have a virtual component regardless). You can watch as many of the on-demand classes as you want now and save others for later. (I have every intention to watch as many as I can now before life takes over and I don’t make time to watch.) Live keynotes are available on a schedule. The keynotes should be available to watch after the conference.

But there are features that I think are going to be available only during the conference or perhaps the rest of the month. They include:

  • Chat, where you can interact with like-minded genealogists
  • Relatives at RootsTech, where you can see how many people who are registered for the conference are related to you through the Family Search tree. So far, I have 39,833 relatives registered for the conference! (Relatives at RootsTech goes away on March 25.)
  • Searching for your friends who are attending to see how you might be related.
  • The ability to chat with representatives of the exhibitors in Virtual Expo Hall

There are lots of ways to approach participating in RootsTech, but here’s what I suggest (and this is what I plan to do this weekend when I’ll have more time):

  1. Go to the RootsTech website.
  2. Login to your Family Search account. Or create one if you don’t already have one. It’s free.
  3. Click on Menu, then Relatives at RootsTech to find your relatives and see how you’re related. If you want, you can send relatives a message  by clicking on a peson’s name, then Send a Message under their name.
  4. If you’re feeling confused, watch the Website Tutorial by clicking the button near the top of the screen.
  5. Check out the schedule for the Live keynotes.
  6. Click on Sessions and search or browse for on-demand sessions.
  7. Add sessions to your Playlist, so you watch them at your leisure. You can get to your playlist by clicking on the little “play” triangle at the top of the screen, situated between Connection and Chat. (I just discovered that my 2021 playlist is still available! I bet yours is too.)
  8. Explore the Virtual Expo Hall. You can browse or search for particular vendors.
  9. Start a private chat, search for a chat room for a particular group or interest or ask the folks at FamilySearch anything you want through the Chat function. You can get there by clicking on the text bubble icon at the top menu on the main page.

When I’ve spoken at and attended  in-person RootsTech conferences I’ve always been amazed at well organized these conferences are. Last year’s virtual conference was an organizational achievement and they’ve even made improvements this year. These folks are unbelievable. Enjoy!

I want to be clear that I am not affiliated with RootsTech. I’ve been a speaker twice and I’m an enthusiastic  attendee, but otherwise I have nothing to do this amazing conference. I just want to make sure my readers are making the most of it!

 

 

March 30 x 30 challenge starts tomorrow!

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I wanted to give you a one day heads up that I’m starting another 30 x 30 challenge. For the month of March, I encourage you to join me in committing to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or whatever you want to do) each day for 30 days.

I’ve decided that I’m going to spend my 30 x 30 challenge taking RootsTech classes. RootsTech 2022 starts on March 3 but until then I can watch RootsTech 2021 classes. As I wrote in last week’s post, I’m disappointed with myself that I didn’t watch more RootsTech 2021 classes in the year between the two virtual conferences.

My plan is to take at least one class per day, more if they’re short. I hope to spend at least 30 minutes a day watching RootsTech classes. I think this will be a great way for me to make sure I take advantage of at least some of the great education offered!

Please let me know in the comments if you’re interested in joining this month’s challenge. It doesn’t have to be about RootsTech–it can be about anything genealogy related that works for you!

RootsTech starts in 6 days: Start planning now!

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The RootsTech 2022 website is now live! That means you have just under a week to plan your RootsTech experience by creating a playlist of the classes you want to watch. You can also take note of the main stage speeches and mark them in your calendar if you want to watch them live.

While my 2021 playlist is gone, I was excited to discover that the 2021 talks are still available for viewing. You can find them by clicking on Sessions and scrolling down in the Filters area on the left side to “Year.” Select 2021 and you’ll see that there are 1767 talks available to view now.

You can also filter by topic, research location, speakers or other filters and then within those results filter by year. You can add both 2021 and 2022 classes to your playlist (or watch the 2021 classes now). I don’t know  whether the 2021 classes will be still be available when RootsTech 2022 starts next week. As I mentioned in my post last week, I tend to think they’ll be removed.

For sessions that will be presented live, the time is listed for the session on the search result. My understanding is that the pre-recorded 2022 sessions will be made available when RootsTech starts, which is Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 9 am Central Standard Time (GMT -6). That’s 11:00 AM in Rio, 6:00 PM in London; 12:00 PM in Tokyo and 2:00 am [Thursday] in Sydney.

Look for download links for class syllabi at the bottom of each class listing. Based on my poking around, it looks to me like  syllabi for 2022 classes won’t appear until the conference starts. But you can download syllabi for 2021 classes you’re interested in now.

The array of classes available is truly impressive. And I know it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I’ll get past that overwhelmed feeling by planning ahead and creating a playlist. While I know I can watch these classes for about a year, I’m going to try hard to take in RootsTech 2022 content while the conference is going on, so I can be part of the global experience and so I actually watch the classes. I found that I did not watch the 2021 content I intended to watch (though I did watch some last week!) and that disappoints me.

Once the conference starts, I’ll be eager to find my Relatives at Rootstech, visit the Virtual Expo Hall and check out the chatrooms for the classes I’m interested in.

If you have questions about RootsTech, the FAQ has lots of great information. You might find the post I wrote about the 2021 virtual conference helpful. I plan to write something similar once this year’s conference begins and I can check out the features.

If you haven’t registered yet, just go to www.rootstech.org and click on Register. It’s free and easy! Let me know in the conference whether you’re planning to attend. Who knows, we might find out we’re related!

 

 

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.