Friday was another early start. Friday was the very first African American Day at RootsTech. The Keynotes started off with an announcement from Findmypast. They have updated the US Marriage Collection. It is the largest collection of US marriages ever published. There are nearly 70 million records available online.
Findmypast have partnered with Twile who have created a family history infographic. All you have to do is upload your gedcom to the Twile website. It is free.
The last announcement from Findmypast was the Catholic Heritage Archive. They are digitizing the records from the Archdioceses of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. There will eventually be Catholic records from Ireland included in this database.
The Keynote speaker today was LeVar Burton and everyone wanted to hear him speak. We weren’t disappointed. His keynote was eloquent and emotional. He had the audience in tears. You could feel the power of his passion in the room. His Mother was a huge influence in his life and when FamilySearch presented him with his Mother’s family history he was visibly moved.
The Ambassadors has an opportunity to interview him but his keynote will not be available online due to contract restrictions.
The Innovators Showdown Finals were held right after the General Session on Friday. The winner was OldNews USA. Second place went to QromaTag and third place went to Canada’s own Double Match Triangulator. The People’s Choice was Kindex.
The lecture I attended today was “Go Paperless: Digitize & Streamline Your Research” with Janine Adams and Brooks Duncan. Janine Adams writes the Organize Your Family History blog and Brooks Duncan is from British Columbia and dealt with the technical side. It was a very interesting lecture and I am starting to get things in place to get some of my family history digitized. I will not go completely paperless as I like to be able to touch and read documents. I have difficulty reading some digitized documents.
In the Evening it was the Culture Celebration: Celebrate Your Heritage in the Expo Hall. It was open to 7 pm and the place was filled with music from many different countries around the world. I went to the Genealogy Gems booth and watched Journaling and Scrapbooking with Amie Tennant. Got some great tips from this one. You can watch some of the demo hall lectures on the Genealogy Gems Podcast Facebook page.
Friday night was the MyHeritage After Party and I had heard great things from people who had attended last year. It did not disappoint. This party was a lot of fun. They had games to play in order to win tickets for the door prizes. Things like bouncing pencils into cups and using a straw to pile up bolts one of top of the other just to name a few. Some of these were really hard and after a few tries they gave you a ticket for trying. If you did it you got extra tickets. There was karaoke and they had some wonderful mock cocktails. There was a picture booth where we could have a little fun with props and when we were leaving they gave us a neck cushion for the plane ride home.
I spent most of Thursday and Friday walking around the Expo Hall. I knew that there were a lot of attendees expected for Family Discovery Day and that the Expo Hall would be busy. I was able to wander and talk to vendors about their products and ask questions. I will talk about the Expo Hall in another post.
Friday Live Streaming Sessions
© 2017 Blair Archival Research – All Rights Reserved