Registration Now Open for RootsTech 2016

I received the following press release today:


SALT LAKE CITY, 15 September 2015—FamilySearch announced today that registration for RootsTech 2016 is now open. RootsTech is a highly popular and growing global conference where people of all ages celebrate family and are inspired to share their memories and connections. The annual event attracts tens of thousands of participants worldwide. RootsTech 2016 will be held February 3–6 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The website for registration is RootsTech.org.

Attendees can expect a full lineup of inspirational keynote speakers, over 200 educational classes, exciting hands-on activities in the expo hall, and entertaining evening events, all designed to help celebrate families across generations! Exclusive early bird discount pricing is available now for full passes starting at just $149 and $169 for the RootsTech plus Innovator Summit pass.  Passes for the Getting Started track start at $19 for a limited single day and $39 for a limited 3-day.   

An exciting change comes to the class schedule for RootsTech 2016. Classes will now start earlier in the week, on Wednesday February 3, with the first class beginning at 1:30 p.m.

For RootsTech 2016, attendees can now use a new scheduling tool to build, edit, and print their class schedule at RootsTech.org. All RootsTech and Innovator Summit classes, including speakers, class titles, and descriptions, are now available within the scheduling tool. Attendees can begin to create and edit their schedules, and continue to edit them after registration. The online tool will sync with the mobile app available later this year.

As part of RootsTech, the Innovator Summit returns to offer developers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs access to the latest content and resources that provide insight on family history data, services, and inspiration for current and future projects. 

Along with the Innovator Summit, the Innovator Showdown also returns to RootsTech 2016 and is even bigger than before. Innovators of all kinds in any industry are invited to compete with their latest hardware and software apps and services. The top six finalists will be invited to demo live onstage for over 23,000 people. The audience and a panel of renowned judges will decide the winners!

Registration for Family Discovery Day is also now open. The event takes place on Saturday, February 6, 2016, and is designed for families and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of the LDS Church are invited to register as families and  groups up to 10 at a time. . This free one-day event includes devotionals, classes, interactive activities, and entertainment to help families and members discover, preserve, and share their family connections. Event details, including speakers and classes, will be made available soon at RootsTech.org. 

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About RootsTech
RootsTech, hosted by FamilySearch, is a global conference celebrating families across generations, where people of all ages are inspired to discover and share their memories and connections. This annual event has become the largest of its kind in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants worldwide.

RootsTech Live Streaming Schedule

If you are like me and are unable to be in Salt Lake City this week for RootsTech, then you may like to watch some of the sessions LIVE on the internet. Here is the schedule of sessions that will be streamed live on the home page of RootsTech.org. After the conference, recordings of these sessions will be posted on the website for a limited time.

Day	Time	Class Title	Speaker
Thursday:	8:30 a.m. -10:00 a.m.	Thursday General Session
	11:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m.	30 Pieces of Tech I Can't Live Without	D. Joshua Taylor
	1:30 p.m. -2:20 p.m.	You've Mastered the Census and Basic Search, What Next?	Karen Auman
	3:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m.	What's New at FamilySearch	Devin Ashby
	4:30 p.m. -5:30 p.m.	Getting Started in Genetic Genealogy	Diahan Southard
Friday:	10:30 a.m. –11:30 a.m.	Innovator Summit Challenge Event
	1:00 p.m. -2:00 p.m.	Building a Genealogy Research Toolbox	Thomas MacEntee
	2:30 p.m. -3:30 p.m.	Bring Your Ancestor Back to the Future	Anne Leishman
	4:00 p.m. -5:00 p.m.	The Write Stuff. Leaving a Recorded Legacy: Personal Histories, Journals, Diaries, and Letters	Valerie Elkins
Saturday:	8:30 a.m. –10:00 a.m.	Saturday General Session
	10:30 a.m. -11:30 a.m.	Finding the Living among the Dead: Using the Internet to Find Your Living Cousins	Amy Archibald
	1:00 p.m. -2:00 p.m.	Family History on the Go Using Phones and Tablet Apps	Crystal Beutler
	2:30 p.m. -3:30 p.m.	Personal History Triage: How to Tell the Best Ten Stories of Your Life	Alison Taylor
	4:00 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.	Finding Your Family on Newspapers.com	Peter Drinkwater

Streaming Help

The stream will automatically refresh at the beginning of each session. If it does not, you will need to refresh the page manually by clicking the Refresh button on your browser.

RootsTech Sessions to be Streamed Live

I am excited about the RootsTech announcement about 15 of their sessions being streamed live over the internet. I just returned from Salt Lake City last week where I attended the APG Professional Management Conference and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. As much as I would like to attend RootsTech in person, I cannot leave my family again so soon. I will be watching some of these sessions from home, and hope that you are able to as well. Thank you FamilySearch!

SALT LAKE CITY - January 29, 2014  

RootsTech, the world's largest family history and technology conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 6-8, 2014, announced today that 15 of its popular sessions will be broadcast live and complimentary over the Internet. The live broadcasts will give those unable to attend in-person worldwide a sample of this year's conference content. Interested viewers can watch the live presentations at RootsTech.org. The fourth-year conference has attracted over 10,000 registered attendees in-person, and leaders expect over 20,000 additional viewers onli

 
The streamed sessions include a sampling of technology and family history presentations. Following are the broadcasted sessions and speakers. All times are in mountain standard time (MST):
 
Thursday, February 6
10:30 to 11:30 a.m., Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch by Tammy Hepps
1 p.m. to 2 p.m., FamilySearch Family Tree: What's New and What's Next by Ron Tanner 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Intro to DNA for Genealogists by James Rader 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Genealogy in the Cloud by Randy Hoffman
5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sharing Your Family with Multimedia by Michael LeClerc
 
Friday, February 7
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Storytelling Super Powers: How to Come Off as Your Family's Genealogy Hero by David Adelman
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Tweets, Links, Pins, and Posts: Break Down Genealogical Brick Walls with Social Media by Lisa Alzo
2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com by Crista Cowen
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Finding Family and Ancestors Outside the USA with New Technologies by Daniel Horowitz
5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Do It Yourself Photo Restoration by Ancestry Insider

Saturday, February 8
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Become an iPad Power User by Lisa Louise Cooke
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results by Josh Taylor
2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., A Beginner's Guide to Going Paperless by Randy Whited
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History by Tom Taylor
5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Five Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep by Deborah Gamble

About RootsTech
RootsTech is a global family history event where people of all ages learn to discover and share their family stories and connections through technology. The first annual conference was held in 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hosted by FamilySearch and sponsored by leading genealogical organizations, the conference includes hands-on demonstrations and forums to provide a highly interactive environment and accelerate learning. Content is geared to young and old, beginner to advanced levels.

Recent News on Genealogy Conferences and Institutes

There has been a lot of news regarding genealogy institutes and conferences recently, so I complied this list for the ProGen Study Group participants, and thought I would share it here on my blog as well.

National Archives Virtural Genealogy Fair – September 3-4, 2013

• For the first time ever, the National Archives will host a virtual Genealogy Fair with live lectures available on the internet and a call-in genealogy help line
• The schedule and handouts on are now available on the NARA website

APG Professional Management Conference -- January 10-11, 2014

• The Association of Professional Genealogists will host a two day conference in Salt Lake City, Utah right before the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. The conference schedule will be released soon, but mark your calendars now so you can attend two genealogy events and only have to travel once. 

Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) – January 13-17, 2014

• SLIG has added a new course for 2014 on Utilizing Social History in Your Research
• SLIG has opened a second section of the Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum course – there are spots for 15 more people to attend
• For details on SLIG 2014 and registration information click here. The early bird discount rate is good until October 31^st. Space is still available in the following courses:

o   American Research and Records: Focus on Families

o   Advanced Research Tools: Land Records

o   Credentialing: Accreditation, Certification, or Both?

o   Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum

o   Problem Solving

o   Utilizing Social History

o   Researching in Eastern Europe

RootsTech 2014 – February 6-8, 2014 in Salt Lake City

• Registration is now open with a discount until September 9^th.

The Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh

• Announced a new GRIP on the Road program for August 3-8, 2014 in Orchard Lake, Michigan
• GRIP in Pittsburgh will be held July 20-25, 2014
• Registration will begin February 12, 2014 for GRIP and February 25, 2014 for GRIP on the Road

Federation of Genealogical Societies

• FGS announced the 2015 FGS Conference will be Combined with RootsTech, February 12-14, 2015, in Salt Lake City.

Note: This is not a complete listing of programs, just recent news.

Federation of Genealogical Societies Announces 2015 Conference

I am excited about this news! As the press release below states, the annual FGS conference will be held in conjunction with the RootsTech event hosted by FamilySearch in 2015. I love visiting Salt Lake City and may be able to attend both events if they are held together. I am putting these dates on my calendar.

 

 

FGS and RootsTech Events To Be Held In Tandem

February 12-14, 2015 in Salt Lake City

22 August 2013 – Austin, TX. The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced today that its 2015 National Conference will be held February 12-14, 2015, in Salt Lake City, Utah in conjunction with RootsTech, hosted by FamilySearch. RootsTech is held each February in Salt Lake City and helps thousands of attendees from around the world discover and share family connections, stories, and history.

With the Salt Palace Convention Center as the common venue, both FamilySearch and FGS are committed to producing a one-of-a-kind genealogy event addressing the educational needs of the family history, technology and genealogical society communities. As the logistics of this sizeable event are still being worked out, both FGS and FamilySearch will work together to share resources and provide cost benefits for all parties, including attendees and exhibitors. Attendees can expect to see familiar elements of previous FGS and RootsTech events including keynote presentations, a Society Showcase and Expo Hall.

Registration for both events will begin in August 2014, six months prior to the February 2015 dates. FGS will also hold a smaller national event for its members in late 2015, with details to be announced at a later date.

FGS President D. Joshua Taylor states, “FamilySearch has been a valued partner and sponsor for FGS during its past conferences. It only makes sense for both organizations to work together and produce what will be the most talked about genealogy events of 2015.” Taylor added that such an event brings the best of RootsTech and FGS conferences together under one roof and will offer genealogists and family historians a wide array of activities and educational opportunities.

About the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS)

The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) was founded in 1976 and represents the members of hundreds of genealogical societies. FGS links the genealogical community by helping genealogical societies strengthen and grow through resources available online, FGS Forum magazine (filled with articles pertaining to society management and genealogical news), and Society Strategy Series papers, covering topics about effectively operating a genealogical society. FGS also links the genealogical community through its annual conference -- four days of excellent lectures, including one full day devoted to society management topics. To learn more visit http://www.fgs.org.