Saturday, February 8, 2014

Saturday Keynotes at RootsTech 2014

Saturday is the third and last day of the RootsTech 2014 Conference.

It started with two Keynote speakers - Todd Hansen (of The Story Trek show on BYU TV) and Stephanie Nielson (of the NieNie Dialogues blog).  The Keynotes should be on the RootsTech.org website in the next week or so.

Here is a photo of Todd Hansen of stage taking a picture of the audience:


Todd's presentation was about his career - he drops in on people at their homes and films their story.  Then he shows the stories on his TV show on BYU TV.  He showed many short videos of people telling their stories at their door or in the homes.

Todd did a two-minute monologue on his life and family - working backwards in time from doing this talk to his work to his family to his parents to his grandparents to his immigrant great-grandparents.  That sounds like a good blog topic!

He encouraged us to take pictures and videos of our lives, and tell our stories, one at a time.  Todd noted that "Everyone has an amazing story..." and you are important and need to tell your story."  After all, what will you say when he knocks on your door?

The second Keynote speaker was Stephanie Nielson, who suffered the results of a plane crash that burned her over 80% of her body in 2008.  Here's a photo of Stephanie at the podium:


What a beautiful and strong person she is!  Her talk was the story of her recovery and resuming her life as a wife, a mother of four children, and a noted blogger.  They had another child two years ago, and showed a video of Stephanie loving her baby.

Stephanie has written a book Heaven is Here.  She was interviewed by several media people in the Media Center, and signed her book for many other people.

She told us that "It's how we deal with hard times that matters," and "Everyone has a story that needs to be told."

Both of these presentations were inspiring and heartwarming - please watch the RootsTech video when it is available.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/02/saturday-keynotes-at-rootstech-2014.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


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