#rootstech 2017

My first time at RootsTech did not disappoint! Utah is beautiful with picturesque snow capped mountains and the weather was quite nice most of the time I was there. 

              In front of the Salt Palace during RootsTech 2017

The Innovator Summit kicked off on Wednesday morning  with an inspiring keynote by Liz Wiseman. I could have done without the find a partner and discuss your life bit, but overall she was a good speaker. I wound up skipping a lot because the chairs were very uncomfortable and the pain sent me back to the hotel to rest before lunch. There were some interesting sessions, related to the Tech side, some genealogy related uses of 3D printing were presented by Joey Skinner of White Cloud. 

RootsTech sessions were numerous, over 200! It was very difficult to choose. There were a lot on DNA, and I went to one on triangulation by Kitty Cooper which was excellent. Since I’ve been through a lot of DNA classes, I skipped the rest. Most speakers were very good, just a couple that were on the slow side, and I don’t have the patience for that. There were not too many advanced topics, and it did seem that the majority of attenders I spoke with were beginners, although there were quite a few at least at an intermediate level of research. 

My own presentation went well from my point of view. The room with seats for 700 was mostly full and I heard positive remarks from attenders for days afterwards. 

                                   Room 150 before people arrived to listen to me.

Most of the rooms held a lot of people and seats were close together, but it wasn’t overcrowded. I had been concerned that I’d feel overwhelmed by that many people, but the rooms were large enough, there were aisles and we not were sitting right on top of each other. It was comfortable that way, for my back not so much.

The Expo Hall was filled with just about every genealogy company you can imagine. My favorite was the Arkiv Digital booth where the CEO gave me a short lesson while finding the birth records of my Swedish 2G grandparents who were born in the 1840s! I did not know the names of their parents, now I know 3 more of my 3G grandparents. This was really the highlight of the trip for me.

Arkiv Digital CEO, Mikael Karlsson found my Swedish 3G grandparents for me!