Saturday, February 14, 2015

And the Crowd Went Wild at RootsTech 2015

Not for genealogy - for Donny Osmond at the FGS/RootsTech 2015 Keynote session on Saturday, 14 February.  He sang, he showed family pictures, he told stories.  He was fabulous - and the crowd loved it, especially the young ladies who grew up as fans.  I sat in back of my geneablogger colleagues Valerie and Cherie, and they were whooping and waving, and singing along, and taking pictures and videos, along with thousands of others in the packed Hall D.  Here he is walking on stage:


Some quotes from Donny:

"The more you discover about your ancestors, the more you find out about yourself."

"My entire history has been recorded.  How about yours?  You need to document your life for your descendants."

"We inherit traits and attitudes from our ancestors."

There is a free Donny.com app with free music on it.  This presentation should be on the RootsTech.org website - I encourage readers to watch it when it becomes available.

In the first Keynote talk, A.J. Jacobs, the creator of the Global Family Reunion, gave a great presentation about his own life experiences and the Reunion that will occur on 6 June 2015 in New York City.  At the Keynote today, each seat had this poster for the attendee to keep:


A.J. took a selfie with all of the folks in the Hall holding up their signs:



The first part of A.J.'s talk was about his work, and the projects he has undertaken while writing for the New York Times and other media.  This was very funny!

In the Family Reunion part of his talk, he told about getting the email that said "you don't know me, but I'm your 12th cousin" from a farmer in Israel who had a family tree with 80,000 persons.  A.J. realized that he was "connected to something bigger than myself" and resolved to work on it, and the Global Family Reunion was born.

He noted that Geni.com, WikiTree.com and FamilySearch Family Teree are all online connected trees - "mega-monster trees" he called them - where researchers can collaborate to share information about ancestors and family.  Some quotes:

"We are all related - by blood or marriage.  Researchers say we are all at least 70th cousins."

"I can't believe what my ancestors went through to get me here today."

"The Global Family concept can lead to a kinder world."

A.J. came by the Media Hub just now and I got a picture with him (thank you, Daniel Horowitz for taking the picture!):



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Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver



1 comment:

Dana Leeds said...

Oh, how I wish I was there! It sounds wonderful!