Yesterday was my first time at a RootsTech conference. I had been warned about the crowds and registration, so I decided to wake up early and get down to the registration area in the Salt Palace around 7 am. Everything went well for me as there were not too many people around at that time and I was registered within a few minutes. I was advised as this was my first time attending RootsTech, to familiarise myself with the layout of the Salt Palace and work out where I should be to attend my chosen sessions, which I did while it was reasonably quiet.
As I was not registered for the Innovators Summit, I spent the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon at the Family History Library and continued my research.
During the afternoon I attended Tom Jones session - 'Documentation: The What, Why, Where and How'. Tom described the session as a 59 minute summary of chapter 4 of his book Mastering Genealogical Proof.
There was a 30 minute break before the next sessions started, and I then went to see Amy Johnson Crow present "Best Websites and Apps for Finding Local History', in which Amy stressed that as Genealogists we have to understand where our Ancestors lived. Amy highlighted and demonstrated various websites including Historypin.com, WhatWasThere.com, theclio.com, Field Trip (fieldtripper.com) and she suggested that we follow libraries, archives, historical societies and Museums on Instagram.
Following Amy's session I went back to the Family History Library for more research.
This morning I went to the General Session, the highlight of this session for me was listening to Paula Williams Madison talk about her search for her maternal grandfather Samuel Lowe and the reconnection of her family with 300 of Samuel Lowe's descendants in China.
After the keynote I went and explored the Expo Hall, which is absolutely massive, and of course I will need to go back many times during the next few days of the conference between sessions to visit all the vendor booths. I was pleased to meet a couple of people for the first time such as Crista Cowan, Ancestry's Barefoot Genealogist, and DearMyrtle's Cousin Russ Worthington.
Next I went to listen to Michelle Goodrum present the Non-Scientist's Intro to Genetic Genealogy & DNA. As I had not yet ventured into DNA testing and had just purchased an AncestryDNA test kit,
I thought this session would be of great benefit to me. Following this session I had a quick lunch and explored the Expo Hall again.
In the afternoon I attended a further two sessions 'The Mysterious Life of a Record' presented by the FamilySearch Panel (I have written a separate post on this session), and the final session for the day for me was a Lab, Paul Woodbury's 'Introduction to Chromosome Mapping'. I have to admit this session was a little over my head at this point in time, but the links and material which were made available to the participants, will I am sure come in handy in the future for me.
Unfortunately, the Family History Library was closed this evening due to a power outage, so any research that I had planned to do in the library tonight was not possible, instead I was able to relax and catch up with some email and blog posts.
© Geoff Mulholland 2013-2016
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