Organize Your Family History

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RootsTech’s livestream schedule

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RootsTech has announced its schedule of sessions being streamed from next week’s conference. If you can’t make it to Salt Lake City, you can at least watch some of the keynotes and breakout sessions. (Alas, my session on Friday morning, Go Paperless: Digitize & Streamline Your Research, isn’t one of them.)

Here’s the schedule. The sessions will be streamed live on the RootsTech homepage and then afterward recordings will be posted on the website for a limited time.

Visit the Sessions page on the RootsTech website for descriptions of each of these sessions.

Wednesday, February 8

9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. | Innovator Summit General Session
Speakers: Steve Rockwood, Liz Wiseman

10:15 a.m.–11:15 a.m. | Industry Trends and Outlook
Speakers: Craig Bott and Guest Panel

11:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Innovation—Best Practices and Applications
Speaker: Cydni Tetro

Thursday, February 9

8:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m. | RootsTech General Session
Speakers: Steve Rockwood, Jonathan and Drew Scott

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Getting Started in Genealogy
Speaker: Kelli Bergheimer

12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m. | DNA: The Glue That Holds Families Together
Speaker: Diahan Southard

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | DNA Matching on MyHeritage
Speaker: Dana Drutman

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Jewish Genealogy: Where to Look and What’s Available
Speaker: Lara Diamond

4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. | Family History Is Anything but Boring
Speakers: Crystal Farish and Rhonna Farrer

Friday, February 10

8:30 a.m.–10:00 a.m. | RootsTech General Session
Speakers: Levar Burton, Special Guest Panel

10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m. | RootsTech Innovator Showdown Finals

12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m. | Mothers, Daughters, Wives: tracing Female Lines
Speaker: Judy Russell

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Censational Census Strategies
Speaker: Mary Kircher Roddy

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Big 4: Comparing Ancestry, findmypast, FamilySearch, and MyHeritage
Speaker: Sunny Morton

4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. | Cross the Atlantic with Religious Records
Speaker: Jen Baldwin

Saturday, February 11

8:30 a.m.–10:00 a.m. | RootsTech General Session
Speakers: Cece Moore, Buddy Valastro

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Journaling Principles That Work
Speaker: Steve Reed

1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. | Don’t Just Be a Searcher, Be a Researcher
Speaker: Crista Cowan

3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. | Creating Google Alerts for Your Genealogy
Speaker: Katherine R. Wilson

That’s a lot of free information! I hope you can take advantage of it.

Early-bird registration for RootsTech 2017 about to expire

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rootstech2017If you’re planning to attend RootsTech 2017, the giant conference where genealogy meets technology, now’s the time to register. Until Friday, you can get the early-bird discount of $159 for the four-day conference registration. It’s being held February 8-11, 2017 in Salt Lake City. To me, $159 is a huge bargain (but then again, I routinely pay $600 or $700 to register for conferences for professional organizers).

Here’s the link to register. Before you register, you can browse the class selection and see which of the over 200 breakout sessions appeal to you. The keynote speakers haven’t been announced yet, but in the years I’ve attended there have been some big names, like Laura Bush, Ree Drummond and Donny Osmond.  The expo hall is huge.

This will be my third year attending RootsTech. I missed last year and I’m anxious to go back. I go to a good number of genealogy conferences, both large and small. RootsTech is special to me for a few reasons:

  • The huge number of genealogy enthusiasts who attend (there have been more than 10,000 attending the years I’ve gone)
  • The vast selection of excellent learning opportunities, between the keynotes and the breakout sessions
  • The fact that it’s helpful to beginners and advanced genealogists alike
  • The access to all the latest genealogy products at the expo hall
  • There’s musical entertainment (this year it’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing music of Rogers and Hammerstein)
  • How well organized it is (amazingly well organized)

I’m particularly excited this year because I’m co-presenting one of the sessions (Go Paperless: Digitize and Streamline Your Research). So if you’re attending, please let me know. I’d love to meet you and even see your friendly face in the audience!

The registration prices goes up to $189 on Friday, October 14. (I’m not clear what time that happens, but to be safe, I’d suggest registering today or tomorrow.)

I’m speaking at RootsTech 2017!

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rootstech2017I’m both delighted and nervous to announce that my speaker proposal to co-present at RootsTech 2017 was accepted!

I will be presenting with the amazing Brooks Duncan of DocumentSnap. Our talk is titled “Go Paperless: Streamline and Digitize Your Research.” Brooks is the guru of all things paperless–he has amazing knowledge about the process of scanning and digitizing. I’m bringing my organizing and genealogy know-how to the table.

Brooks is a terrific speaker (and knows how to create a great PowerPoint) and I’m  confident we’ll create a fun and informative presentation. I’m really looking foward to it.

RootsTech will be held February 8 to 17 in Salt Lake City. This will be my third year attending and my first presenting. Registration is now open! Until October 14, you can register for the full conference for $159, a $100 savings over the regular price. (The price goes up to $189 on October 14.)

Are you attending? Speaking? Leave a comment here or shoot me an email and let’s meet up!

It’s not about climbing the tree

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It's not about climbing your family treeOne of my takeaways from RootsTech last week was how much one can learn about one’s ancestors by digging deep into the records. I learned techniques for how to use historical maps, military records and tax records to learn more about my ancestors. I can’t wait to dig in.

And that got me thinking: Do I want to learn more about my ancestors or learn about more ancestors? It’s a bit of a quandary. I find myself really excited every time I break into another generation on my tree. I’m anxious to try to verify my initial findings (using unverified sources), for example, that I descend from the Mayflower. I can’t do that if I’m still working in the 19th century.

But I realize that I want to know more about my ancestors than their dates of birth, marriage and death. I’d like to know how they lived, why they migrated, what their military experiences were like, among other things. And that’s going to require locating multiple sources about each ancestor and resisting the temptation to just climb the family tree.

I’m a big fan of spreadsheets and checklists, so I think I’m going to create a checklist of categories of sources to try to find on each ancestor before moving to another. This will also help me when I come back to an ancestor.

I can’t wait to see what I learn!

Photo by Juanjo+Willow via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.