RootsTech is the conference where family history and technology meet – so lots of stuff for genealogists and geeks alike.
No, I wasn’t able to attend RootsTech in person, but I did get to watch some of the presentations that were streamed live. In fact, they’re being re-streamed over the next week, so there’s still a chance to check them out. I loved being able to watch a presentation, and then follow the feedback on Twitter. Over 90 geneabloggers were there in Salt Lake City, and it’s been fun reading about some of their experiences, either via Twitter or their blog posts.
The list of streamed presentations doesn’t appear to be on the site now, so here are the ones you can view at www.rootstech.org (currently showing as daily recaps, individual videos to come soon):
| Thursday, 2 February | |
|---|---|
| Session | Speaker |
| Keynote: Inventing the Future, as a Community | Jay Verkler |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Do I Trust the Cloud? | D. Joshua Taylor |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Effective Database Search Tactics | Kory Meyerink |
| Presention for Intermediate Users: Twitter – It’s Not Just “What I Had For Breakfast” | Thomas MacEntee |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Eleven Layers of Online Searches | Barbara Renick |
| Friday, 3 February | |
|---|---|
| Session | Speaker |
| Keynote: Exabyte Social Clouds and other Monstrosities | Josh Coates |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Publish Your Genealogy Online | Laura Prescott |
| Presentation for Intermediate Developers: Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines | Robert Gardner |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Genealogists “Go Mobile” | Sandra Crowley |
| Presentation for Intermediate Users: Google’s Toolbar and Genealogy | David Barney |
| Saturday, 4 February | |
|---|---|
| Session | Speaker |
| Keynote: Making the most of technology to further the family history industry | Tim Sullivan |
| Presentation for Beginner Users: Genealogy Podcasts and Blogs 101 | Lisa Louise Cooke |
| Presentation for Beginner Users: Future of FamilySearch Family Tree | Ron Tanner |
| Presentation for All Users: Privacy in a Collaborative Environment | Noah Tutak |
You can view the full conference schedule, plus check out any interesting individual sessions and see if they have a syllabus available to download – useful for links and tips, and main topics of the presentation.
I managed to catch most of the presentations and learnt something from each. Most enjoyable? Josh Coates and the zombies Cloud. Most useful? Quite a few, but the one that most interested me was Robert Gardner on how to optimise your genealogy website so that your content is properly indexed by search engines, and therefore found by users.
RootsTech 2013 is scheduled for 21 – 23 March next year.
Attendees reports:
- Jill Ball (Geniaus)
- Nick Barratt (The Family History Show)
- Amy Coffin (The We Tree Genealogy Blog)
- Audrey Collins (The Family Recorder)
- Missy Corley (Bayside Blog)
- Dick Eastman (Eastman’s Online Genealogy Letter)
- Randy Seaver (Genea-Musings)
- James Tanner (Genealogy’s Star)