This weekend is a weekend that I look forward to every year. For the last several years, and possibly for many years to come, the first weekend in February is the annual RootsTech conference. RootsTech is a family history conference focused on researching through technology. With a strong emphasis on using technology and emerging technologies in family history research, the conference also provides many interesting sessions on developing individual family histories. The wonderful aspect of RootsTech has always been the fact that they stream some of their live sessions over the internet.
This weekend is the RootsTech weekend and I plan to spend a good part of the weekend viewing the available live sessions as well as going back and catching the live session that I missed during the day. The live sessions are recorded and placed online line for a short period of time following the conference.
This year’s sessions that I will be watching will be:
“My Ancestors Are from Britain—What Do I Do Next?” with Myko Clelland, Partnership/Outreach Manager at FindmyPast.com. Actually, I have already watched it this evening and it was a wonderful talk about the records that can help in researching British ancestors. Mr. Clelland gave a great presentation that I took away three pages of notes!
“Become a Master Searcher on Ancestry” with Anne Mitchell, Senior Product Manager at Ancestry.com. I am looking forward to this on Saturday. I am an avid user of Ancestry. I am looking forward to learning how to dig even deeper with the software.
“Using the Genealogical Proof Standard for Success” with James Ison. The Genealogical Proof Standard is an interesting topic for me. I always want to make sure that the records that I connect to my family history are as true as possible. I may make a mistake once and awhile, but I want to make sure that I have done everything possible to prove that those records are true to the ancestor that I am researching.
RootsTech weekend gives me a great opportunity to stop whatever projects that I am working on and take some time learning the techniques that make further discovery possible. I hope to be able to travel to this conference one day, but until then I certainly enjoy the benefits that come from watching the sessions online.
—–
Photo from RootsTech