LOOK at some of the Keynote Speakers coming to RootsTech Connect 2021! There will be these “live” segments and then HUNDREDS of classes, workshop series and more! An Expo Hall with vendors that you can connect with and the always wonderful Relative Connections that happen when you link your FamilySearch tree with your registration. There are well over 100,000 people registered from all over the world at this point and with FREE registration, there will be more. You could find a breakthrough in your genealogy because there’s a cousin out there in Poland or Brazil or Australia or Sierra Leone who knows something you don’t!
Can you tell that I’m excited? Gads, am I! And please find your way to my presentations – three of them. The virtual setting of this year’s event made us think about what is reasonable for people sitting in on virtual technology – so sessions are about 20 minutes long. So my sessions – The Big Five: Researching the Largest Tribes – is broken into three parts: Part 1 is an overview of Native research generally, and how to think about your families and where the hints may lie. Part 2 is about the Cherokee and Choctaw. Part 3 is about the Chippewa, Sioux and Navaho. Watch one, watch all! And there’s a PDF handout there to give you some resources. And please feel welcome to use the Chat feature that will be with each of these, to connect, ask questions or just meet other family historians who are doing similar work.
Click on the pictures above to register and join the fun! Or click here to register – it’s FREE!
RootsTech CONNECT – RootsTech 2021 is all VIRTUAL!!!!
THE BIGGEST genealogy event in the WORLD! Yeah, really!! AND in 2021 it is FREE!!! Yes!!! Is that amazing or what???
You can get registration information here: www.rootstech.org. There are hundreds of classes, a VIRTUAL exhibit hall, talk with professional genealogists, get tips and techniques to help you, contests, games, activities for families and SO much more! Can you tell that I’m excited?!
YES, I get to be an Ambassador again – my FOURTH year, and this year is the 11th Anniversary of RootsTech, so you can bet that there will be lots of special announcements, people and things going on. So you will want to be there.
Prize: 4-Day Pass to RootsTech 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 26th to 29th, 2020 This is a $299 full price value! CONTEST ENDS December 28th!!!! Enter now!
Pass includes the following: Over 300 Classes, the Keynote / General sessions, the huge Expo Hall, any evening events, Power Hour sessions and thousands of your cousins and networking opportunities!!
No purchase is required to enter. If you have already purchased a 4-Day registration for a RootsTech SLC 2020, you will get a refund.
Increase your chances of winning by “liking” my “Lineage Journeys” Facebook Page, my Twitter Page, and subscribing to my blog. Each one that you do will give you another chance to win.
The prize is a RootsTech 2020 4-day Pass only. It is not transferable as cash. The prize DOES NOT include any RootsTech paid lunches, paid labs or cover other costs such as accommodation and tra.nsportation costs. The winner will be announced on the blog, FB and Twitter. If the selected winner does not reply within a week of being announced, there will be another drawing.
So join in now!!! Enter TODAY!!! CONTEST ENDS DECEMBER 28th!
2020 is the 10th anniversary of RootsTech and promises to be another amazing experience! Here are some of the things I learned in 2019 that may help you in preparing for the RootsTech 2020 ….
Learned a lot this year! Returning for RootsTech for a second year gave the advantage that I knew more of what to expect, knew my way around the building and locations where I could prepare as a speaker and take time to blog, but also to network, meet other professionals and hook up with cousins. SOOOOO fun!
Lessons learned – participants sometimes don’t fully read the descriptions for presentations, so please read the descriptions and don’t mark a speaker down just because you misunderstood what they were going to be sharing. Participants want to take pictures or record our presentations to share with others, and there’s an internal struggle to be honest about how we are working hard to make a living while also being transparent with how that works/doesn’t work when others share our content. This is hard for all speakers but we put in hours of unpaid time to customize content for our lectures – please don’t photograph or record them. And finally, by far the biggest learning is that there are thousands of truly dedicated family historians that want to get it right – to document their families through records, stories, photos and more so that present and future generations can appreciate the blessing of lives well-lived. And some great stories along the way! I learned A LOT from the cousins I met, other attendees that offered me their perspectives.
So, if you haven’t attended RootsTech, DO!! Stay tuned ….. FREE pass for registration will be offered next month … watch for it!
There is SO much to do at RootsTech, I thought I’d give you some ideas from my perspective of attending for the last two years! So here we go!
First, if you are “into” DNA, there is no other place to be than RootsTech! Why? Because all of the vendors of the kits will be there AND they give really awesome discounts for buying at the conference. Yes, really great discounts! AND there are free, exhibit hall “classes” that are offered by all of the vendors – in their booths, with experts and company leaders, who give you the latest and greatest of what they have developed and new tools for your to use to find that elusive ancestor.
Second, cousins! Yes, you can find many of your cousins from among the THOUSANDS (yes, you read that – there are more than 15,000 that attend this conference!) of people attending. The key is that you need to post your family tree on FamilySearch …. and the mobile app at RootsTech that you can use to track what classes you want to take, etc. ALSO can help you to find those who connect with your tree! YES! It’s so cool – that each day, as everyone is attending classes, walking around the exhibit hall, eating lunch, whatever … the app (you have to set it up, allow it to show you and your tree) will scan those thousands of people and let you know who is there. Then you can send them a message and meet. I’ve done it and met gobs of cousins (I descend from lots of French Canadian and Acadian people so most of my connections are with them!).
Third, the classes. Internationally known speakers who have interesting topics, give you the benefit of their many years of study, and are offering you the opportunity to gain insight into how best to find your people. There are hundreds of classes! DNA, migration, ethnic groups, records and how to find them, geographically-focused, lineage societies, techniques, tools, technology and so much more! Yea, your brain is going to explode! Really ….
Fourth, people. Lots of really nice people! You will meet genealogists from all over the world who don’t roll their eyes when you start talking about how your great-great-great grandmother survived a horrible flood and got all of the kids into a boat and …. well, you get the idea! You get to talk about genealogy and your family for DAYS and everyone will get it, and you will have SO much fun!
THE BIGGEST genealogy event in the WORLD! Yeah, really!! Hotels are selling out fast, you can get registration information here: http://www.rootstech.org. There are hundreds of classes, a HUGE exhibit hall where you can buy DNA kits, talk with professional genealogists, get tips and techniques to help you, jewelry and t-shirts with family history themes, book publishers for those of you who have created your family story and need to share it, contests, games, activities for families and SO much more! Can you tell that I’m excited?!
YES, I get to be an Ambassador again – my THIRD year, and this year is the 10th Anniversary of RootsTech, so you can bet that there will be lots of special announcements, people and things going on. So you will want to be there.
Ambassador day – Getting into the classes, Exhibit Hall, luncheons, keynHiotes, activities and more of RootsTech 2019!
Wow, the end of Day 2 of RootsTech and has it been a ride!!! I’m exhausted, happy, excited and needing some rest.
The day started with joining my fellow Ambassadors in the Media Hub and crazy, fun people like Mr. Thomas MacEntee from High Definition Genealogy.
The Media Hub – morning of Day 2 at about 10 a.m. An hour later, there were no seats available and people were standing. At least three interviews were happening and friends meeting up!Crazy fun Thomas MacEntee of High Definition Genealogy is such a joy to be around. With mad skills in promotion, marketing, networking and all around sharing guy, his workshops are fantastic!!
I was able to observe some interviews – Patricia Keaton was one of those I listened in on. She was the Keynote Speaker this morning, sharing her career story and what she knows about her family. Patricia had the benefit of the work of Family Search and AncestryDNA and learned more about her family live on stage – it was very fun, touching.
Lunchtime was VERY special as I had the pleasure to meet Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the host of Finding Your Roots on PBS. We watched a new movie, initially shared at the Sundance Film Festival, entitled Railroad Ties. Following the meeting and interconnections between a group of people whose ancestors knew each other at a key time in American history (I won’t spoil the story line)…..get out your tissues!
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. – Host of Finding Your Roots on PBS; Harvard professor in African American Studies.
Talking about Railroad Ties, a new movie first released at the Sundance Film Festival.
And the fun continued as a met up with others at the Family History Library for a follow up conversation about my Wednesday “Mobile Apps for Genealogy” session.
The evening ended with some appetizers and conversation with the Genealogy Business Alliance group at the Marriott. Networking with other business owners, I wanted to learn more about ways to share Lineage Journeys with others.
Just the first day .. not as many people yet, but by Friday and Saturday, there will be probably 14,000!!
From RootsTech 2019, where there will soon be over 14,000 people taking hundreds of classes and networking, finding cousins and having fun!
My first workshop, You CAN Take It With You: Mobile Genealogy Tools for Genealogists, went SOOO well and there must have been over 600 people in the room. Great questions, energy – we even did “stand up, sit down” exercises. AND cousin meet-ups! How fun!
In the midst of the “stand up if you ….” exercise with over 600 people in the room!
Today felt like a day of healing and reconciliation … certainly, there is much more to do, but a beginning and significant movement in the right direction. Friend and fellow GeneaBlogger Tribe member Cheri Hudson Passey offered a workshop “Discovering Slave Owners in the Family Tree” that was so impactful that people were crying, and not bad tears but those tears of recognized loss and finding common ground for healing. We also learned about the incredible donation of $2 Million to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, announced at the Opening Session! Wow! There will be a family history center within the museum that will help anyone seeking information about their family, especially focusing on the African diaspora and records that will help in tracing those that were enslaved. An incredible opportunity for everyone to learn, share, grieve, and hopefully gain some healing, pride in the strength of ancestors.
Part of the magic of RootsTech is the networking, mingling, meeting cousins. Also having opportunities for growth from those synchronistic meetings or information that those of us long in the genealogy field know to expect. My research time at the Family History Library on Monday and Tuesday led to some really great information for my clients (one in French-Canadian and another in Native research) AND some perfectly wonderful experiences for myself.
Met another wonderful French-Canadian cousin! Meet Amberly Peterson Beck!
As I have just begun the research on the Polish family on my
dad’s side, I had recently found the name of the village that my
great-grandparents immigrated from – Gorlice, Malopolska, Poland (it wasn’t
always Poland, as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). The Niemczyk, Niemiec, Nimer, Nemshak family
(yes, they changed the name a number of times) immigrated in about 1880 but no
one in the family knew where they came from.
The family worked hard to fit into their initial American community in
Chicopee, Massachusetts and later in Detroit, Michigan but not many stories of “the
old country” apparently were shared. Reaching
out to cousins, there was much to go on.
So, I went down to the International section of the Family History
Library and, wonder of wonders, there is a specialist FROM POLAND who is a
Missionary there. She was awesome! AND introduced me to two young men,
themselves Polish and here doing research.
AND …. Wait for it … they are from the Malopolska region!! Yes!! So they are going to take the information
that I know about my family and see what they might find when they are in the
Polish archives. :::::::::::::::crossing
my fingers::::::::::::::::::::::::
Hopefully the pictures here will show you just how great RootsTech 2019 is and what a great experience it is. And it’s only the beginning of Day 2 as I write this. Stay tuned for more!
Leaving Salt Lake City after an incredible, intense, really fun week at SLIG – Salt Lake Institute for Genealogy. I took the course “Exploring Native American Research”. Learning about the records of the Native tribes of the United States was so interesting, varied and we learned at depth. We each received a different person to research, based on our personal request about learning about a particular tribe. I had a very interesting man, Edgar L. Powell, a Choctaw man who was a long-time Methodist minister in Indian Territory. Three marriages, five children (at least that I found) and frequently moving to serve congregations that asked him to come.
What was the best about the research on Edgar, and the
Choctaw, was that the same or very similar records exist for my Lakota
family. My Métis family in Québec have
different records and some the same so I’ll look into some of that later, but
in the meantime, while I was at the Family History Library, I took advantage of
the time to also look into some of the Lakota records. Interesting, impactful and fun!
We had to write a short report on the person we researched, and we received some instructions from one of our instructors, Rick Fogarty (he was a great teacher!!), apparently none of us heard them!!! LOL! Rick said that we were all over-achievers because we went well beyond what he asked of us. Too funny ….. the challenge of working with, teaching a group of skilled researchers who are used to doing client work and having the professional passion to do anything we do with the same attention to detail that we give to our clients. LOL!
Rick and fellow teacher/researcher/mom Billie Fogarty gave us SO much to think about! Sharing about record groups, examples of ways to analyze the records, information about the kinds of records that were created for the various ways that the government and tribe would document the people. We heard from Paula Stuart Warren about her many years of research and work in the Native/tribal research area (she had been one of my first teachers at lectures I attended back in the 1990s!), sharing many examples from a wide variety of tribes including her experiences working with tribal enrollment offices.
Last night was the final banquet with awards, door prizes (wish I would have won!), and a really great keynote by Dr. Tom Jones, one of the early teachers that I learned from back in the 1990s. I had the privilege of learning from him at my first institute last summer – GRIP: Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. I took at documentation/citations course from him to improve my ability to cite my research.
Classmates from SLIG 2019 – Native Research at the Family History Library, ready to finalize our homework; from our course with Rick and Billie Fogarty, Melissa Johnson, Paula Stuart-Warren & Paul Graham
All in all, it was both overwhelming, exciting, hard, challenging and engaging. We had the “challenge” of a really cold room so we all were drinking hot beverages, wearing layers. The hotel eventually figured it out and the room finally was better on Thursday and Friday. I was so impressed with SLIG! I really want to attend again – not sure about next year, although there are always DNA courses so that may be what I sign up for. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn from such high-quality, nationally-recognized speakers. Such a memorable week!! The work of Lineage Journeys, the content that I provide to my clients will be better thanks to these great instructors – Rick and Billie Fogarty, Paula Stuart-Warren, Melissa Johnson, and Paul Graham! In the Lakota language, wopila – thank you.
There is A LOT that is fun at RootsTech beyond the genealogy research, learning and cousin-connections happening …. it’s ALL fun, right? But the general sessions take it up a notch with some content that is inspiring, with music, prizes, and lots of enthusiasm.
A really great feature of the RootsTech website and team is that they produce a bunch of great videos that share about aspects of the conference. Here is one about the plans for the keynotes/speakers and entertainment that will be happening: RootsTech 2019 video. As an overview, on Wednesday, Steve Rockwood (CEO of FamilySearch) will start things off with updates, what’s coming and the opening of the vendor hall. Thursday, Patricia Heaton, star from Everybody Loves Raymond, will be sharing about being a “real life” mom and a book she has written about family, motherhood and her experiences. Friday could be really emotional as star Saroo Brierley, from the movie Lion (have you seen in?? Boy becomes lost from family, is taken in by another family, later in life seeks out his birth family … very cool film!), will offer his perspective on family, belonging and connecting. Friday night is a special evening event that includes dancer Derek Hough, who will encourage everyone to get on their feet and learn some dances (…. lots of music, motion and fun!). Saturday’s closing general session will feature Jake Shimabukuro, an incredible Hawaiian ukulele artist who is fun, entertaining and VERY skilled (can you imagine Bohemian Rhapsodyon ukulele!?!!!).
I was SOOOO wowed by the content of these general sessions that the energy carried me through long days. The excitement of it all is infectious and, if you are going, you will SOOO want to be in the room. They are moving these to 11 a.m. this year – so that there are workshops before these keynotes and then you go out for more after. Really great stuff! Are you coming? Let’s meet up – Lineage Journeys are gearing up!!!!
Lineage Journeys 