RootsTech 2018 Highlights

We’re back from RootsTech 2018 and we had a wonderful time! Thousands of genealogists from all around the world gathered at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah to attend the largest family history conference in the world.

Throughout the conference, the Geni booth was packed with people eager to learn more about collaboration  and Geni’s World Family Tree. Several users stopped by to say hi and tell us how much they enjoy using the site. We also had success connecting several brand new users to the World Family Tree.

This year curators Randy Stebbing, Ashley Odell, and Randy Schoenberg joined the Geni team at the booth. They were incredible helping to answer questions about Geni, getting people started with their trees, and connecting them to the World Family Tree. One visitor had found his second great grandfather’s profile on Geni and came to the booth to ask for help contacting the person who added the information. He told us that he had never before found information about his second great grandfather anywhere else. After helping him create an account and send a message to the profile manager, we were able to successfully connect him to the World Family Tree. It was then that he learned that the manager of that profile was his 6th cousin. The next day the man returned to the booth to let us know that the profile manager had responded to his message and said he had loads of information about the family and was happy to share it with him. He was beyond grateful for all the help were were able to provide.

On Friday, Randy gave a session on “Collaborative Town Projects,” in which he shared how genealogists can utilize Geni’s genealogy projects to work collaboratively on genealogies and community histories related to a specific location. We heard much praise after Randy’s presentation and many comments that Geni was exactly what they were looking for. Others were impressed by how global Geni’s projects are, which is thanks to our amazing community of users.

Our new pocket-sized Geni notebooks with post-its were a huge hit at the conference. Several people came in search of these giveaways, including one woman who saw someone in a class with it and declared that she tracked us down because she “just had to have one.” These were so popular that we were all out of them well before the end of the conference!

Friday night, MyHeritage held what has become their annual RootsTech After-Party. This year’s party theme was the Roaring Twenties and many people came dressed in costume! It was great to see so many genea-friends having fun dancing, getting crafty making hats and headbands, and even playing giant checkers!

Check out more RootsTech photos on Facebook!

RootsTech is always a wonderful and successful conference and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year! Save the Date – RootsTech 2019 will take place February 27 – March 2, 2019. Hope to see you there!