At RootsTech in February, Nicole and I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with the executive director of the family history department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Elder Kevin S. Hamilton. Among the topics he discussed was a new FamilySearch feature called Learn About Your Family. It’s built right into the FamilySearch home page. You will see it prior to login. This tool is available on the desktop version as well as in the Family Tree app. Just remember you have to be logged out to access it. How to use Learn About Your Family...
Did you attend RootsTech 2020 or watch the live streams? If so then you know that the overarching theme of the conference was “The Story of You.” Besides the excitement of the keynotes, expo hall, and presentations – I was impressed with the small and simple things that make up our stories. Do we get so involved in finding the stories of our ancestors that we forget to record our own? Nicole and I started our RootsTech story in 2016, so this was our 5th time attending this massive conference. Each year has been different depending on our activities. 2016...
Are you going to be at Rootstech 2020 in Salt Lake City? If so, we’d love to visit with you in person. For the first time, Family Locket Genealogists will have a booth in the Expo Hall for the entire conference. We have some exciting things planned to help you in your genealogy and family history endeavors. Research Like a Pro Meet-up and Research Like a Pro Ribbons Collecting ribbons for your conference name tag is a fun way to add a little bling to the week. We’ll have green Research Like a Pro ribbons for anyone stopping by the...
Rootstech 2020 is coming quickly and if you want to get the most out of the experience, you’ll want to prepare. With exciting keynote speakers, multiple class offerings, and an expo hall buzzing with activity, how do you choose to spend your time? Can’t travel to Salt Lake City, you’re also covered! Live streaming and virtual pass classes give you the opportunity to participate from anywhere in the world. Key Note Addresses The keynote addresses at Rootstech never fail to energize the crowd. Each speaker will have some connection to family history and you’ll leave feeling excited to make your...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about genealogy education opportunities, including attending genealogy conferences like RootsTech. Our guest, Amberly Beck, talks about her first experience at RootsTech in Salt Lake City and how Tom Jones’ classes impacted her. She also shares about her experience speaking at RootsTech London and some of the classes she liked there. After recording the episode, Amberly shared a great thought with us. She said, “Sometimes we love researching so much that we don’t want to give up any of our research time to genealogy education. But every minute of research time we give...
Diana’s giveaway is over and now it’s my turn to give away a free pass to RootsTech! The RootsTech 2020 conference in Salt Lake City is themed “Discover the Story of You.” Many of the classes are focused around this theme. It is a great conference to bring your non-genealogist friends and family members to, with many beginner classes and fun keynotes. It’s also a great way to gain intermediate to advanced knowledge of family history research. Many of the presenters are experienced genealogists, including professional genealogists and accredited genealogists. There will also be talks by developers who are on...
Is 2020 the year that you attend RootsTech in person? Maybe you’ve been watching the live stream or recorded videos and thinking it would be exciting to take in the RootsTech experience. 2020 is the perfect year to attend. It marks the 10 year anniversary of this unique conference and if I know the RootsTech team, they will have some very special events planned. As a RootsTech Ambassador, I’m giving away a free pass. Why shouldn’t you be the lucky winner? Contest details below. If you’d like to try out RootsTech in a small dose, I have a special promo...
The recording of “Families Discovering Family History Together,” my RootsTech 2019 presentation with Olivia Jewell and Jana Greenhalgh was just released on the RootsTech Video Archive page. I loved preparing for this class and presenting it with two other moms who are just as passionate about sharing family history with our children and families as I am. Check out Olivia’s blog here: Liv’s Treehouse and Jana’s blog here: The Genealogy Kids. I talked about my five-year-old daughter’s experience finding strength from her brave female ancestors during an ER visit, our farmer ancestor role play experience, and making felt family trees...
If you’re like me, you keep your family’s current photos on a cloud site like Google Photos, but you also have old family videos on YouTube, genealogy documents on Google Drive, and ancestor memorial pages on FamilySearch, Ancestry, and Fold3.com. At RootsTech, I met Stan Kinsey, whose new tool, Collectionaire, can help you build a hub or table of contents which acts as an web portal to all your family’s online content. Isn’t this an innovative idea? Instead of feeling like your content is scattered across multiple cloud sites, you can organize links to it all in one handy website....
D. Joshua Taylor gave an excellent lecture at RootsTech about how to resolve conflicts in genealogy research. He said that if you are not finding any conflicts in your genealogy research, you may not be doing reasonably exhaustive research. During his lecture, he reviewed 8 methods for resolving conflicts, and gave several helpful examples. It was a great lecture. I’m sharing the first few steps that he suggested. Bio: D. Joshua Taylor is the President of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, host of Genealogy Roadshow (PBS), and a frequent speaker on family history at venues across the globe....