RootsTech, which is FamilySearch's big online expo, kicked off today and will be officially open all day Friday and through Saturday afternoon. There are hundreds of live talks about genealogy and how to use modern genealogy tools, as well as virtual vendors, a speaker's bookstore, and other features.
RootsTech is also completely free. You can sign in using an existing FamilySearch account, which is also free.
Besides the announcements from many of the major genealogy companies (FamilySearch, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, Ancestry) Here's a quick rundown of some highlights from the official schedule:
Friday, March 4
- Associating Autosomal DNA Segments With Ancestors
- Tracing your British Ancestors
- Workshop: Start Telling your own and Family Stories
- The 1950 US Census Effort—A Q&A with the FamilySearch Team
- Photo Clues that Reveal Family History
- Who Ya Gonna Call? Myth Busters!
- Boring Farmers No More
- Searching for Close Relatives with Your DNA Results
Saturday, March 5
- No Empty Chairs - Locating Your Ancestors' descendants
- Telling the stories of 421,000 US World War II fallen
- Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in an Online World
- Genealogy Youtubers Live Panel
- Surname studies
To see what's on tap at RootsTech, visit the calendar page and select main stage, session, or product demo. Most open in YouTube, some require Zoom. Roberta Estes also has a helpful rundown on how to navigate and select RootsTech sessions.
Note that some sessions take place late at night and early in the morning. In addition, many of the sessions are available on-demand, or will be available as an archive after the live session is over. In fact, if you use the RootsTech search interface, you can watch many of last year's session, such as Tracing Ancestral Lines in the 1700s Using DNA, which we watched yesterday.
