The RootsTech 2025 Conference started today in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a huge conference with thousands of people attending in person and even more thousands watching classes, presentations online for free, not to mention shopping in the Expo Hall. The online choice became available in 2020 during the pandemic, and I have always attended this way. It is way more economical for me, and due to my circumstances, it is just nicer to be able to participate from home.
I had signed up for a total of 8 classes today. The beauty of RootsTech is all of the classes/presentations will be available after the conference ends. I believe they are available for a year. So I can go back later and watch all the ones I missed. I have already gone through and downloaded the handout/syllabus available for all the classes I have interest in, including the in person only classes.
I was able to watch all of my scheduled classes today. I left space in my schedule to get lunch for Mom and me and feeding the cats. Let me tell you a little about the classes I attended today:
* First thing this morning (8:30 am!), I listened to Robyn N. Smith's two part presentation entitled, Mining the Census, Are You Finding Every Clue? Part I and Part II. This was a very informative class, and I am now ashamed of all of the information I have been missing on the census.
* My next class/presentation was by Alice Childs, entitled Intersecting Lines: Pedigree Collapse Helps Identify an Ancestor's Parents. Ms. Childs went over a case study of finding the parents of a client's ancestor. I have pedigree collapse in my family tree; probably all of us do, and I was hoping to learn how to work with that situation. The information on how the DNA can expose the pedigree collapse was interesting and hopefully useful to me one day.
* My last morning class was with the enthusiastic and amazing Diahan Southard, How Does DNA fit into Your Family Story? Identity. Connection. Answers. Diahan is always great to listen to, and I learn something every time I do. Today I learned that just because someone is on your DNA match list, does not necessarily mean I am related to them. People can have DNA just from a location; she used the example of Ireland. If your ancestors were from Ireland, they may have just Ireland DNA and not necessarily DNA from your family. Soooo interesting. I had no idea!
* After lunch, I picked back up with Kathryn Grant's Best Practices for Working in FamilySearch's Shared Family Tree. Kathryn has a very soothing voice and she explains things well. While I have not participated in shared family trees, it did help me understand the mindset required.
* My next session was with my favorite girl, Christa Cowan of Ancestry.com, and her What's New at Ancestry in 2025. Christa announced the new Ancestry Network in Pro Tools in which you can branch out and include friends, church members, neighbors and any other person our ancestors may have come in contact with, in order to enrich their stories. Christa also told some wonderful personal stories today, tying in the idea of using Ancestry Network to enhance our research. She spoke of her favorite thing on Ancestry.com - the card catalog. I take a lot of the classes Ancestry.com offers with Christa, and I always enjoy her presentations and never leave without learning something.
* My first evening class was Mark Thompson's Learn Genealogy Faster and Easier with Artificial Intelligence. There are several AI classes being shared at RootsTech this year, and I wanted to get involved and learn how to use it. The biggest thing I took away from this session was that while AI can be very helpful and get us a lot of information quickly, it is imperative that we VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY.
* My last class for Thursday was another AI class, How Can Artificial Intelligence Assist Family Historians by Andrew Redfern. I loved this class. Andrew explains things so clearly, gave great live examples, and made AI less scary. I am most excited about using AI to do transcribing of old documents. I put it off because let's face it, the handwritings back then were terrible; a lot of times they are bad copies, thus hard to read; and it takes a lot of my time to go letter by letter to figure out every single word! I can see AI completely streamlining this process for me so I can share these documents more on this blog.
I also checked out the Expo Hall. I made note of a couple of items I may purchase; signed up for a couple of giveaways; and found an Etsy store (Family Tree templates) full of fun genealogy-related products like shirts, tote bags, and so much more!.
At the end of the day, I was reminded to check on my RootsTech Relatives. I have 50,296 relatives signed up! The top match is my 2nd cousin, 1x removed on my Tapley line, who I know (waving at Paula!). My second match is a 3rd cousin, who I do not know personally, but I do know we are related on my Claxton line, and I know exactly how!
It's been a long day, but I am actually not finished yet. I have a class at midnight! Since that is technically tomorrow, I will tell you about it then!
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