Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Day Zero (Tuesday) at RootsTech 2018

We arrived in Salt Lake City on Monday afternoon, and were in the Radisson Hotel by 3:30 p.m.  We went to dinner at JB's - only a block away but slightly uphill.  We met my cousin, Dave Robison, at the restaurant and had two hours of conversation.


On Tuesday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel (a free buffet for RootsTech attendees) and I went off to the library at about 8:30 a.m.  I decided to go to the British floor B2 and searched the South Petherton, Somerset parish records on digital microfilm.  I found several baptisms and burials that I had not found before.  I saved images of all the records to my flash drive and made notes.

Then I went up to the U.S. Microfilm floor and looked for the 1861 Wisconsin marriage record for my 2nd great-grandparents, Devier Smith and Abigail A. Vaux (but the names on the record are David Smith and Abigail Vanse).  I took a photo of the microfilm machine display with the image on it.

After putting the film away, I gathered my stuff and walked around the second floor and saw several friends, including noted San Diego geneablogger Diane Gould Hall and her friend, Pam from Colorado.  We took a picture together (that's Pam in the middle and Diane on the right):


I headed back to the hotel at 11:30 a.m., and Linda and I headed out at 12:15 to the Blue Lemon restaurant for the geneabloggers lunch.  Only about 20 showed up, but we great discussions with many of our friends, and made some new friends too.

Several of the attendees went to register for RootsTech at 12 noon when it opened.  There were thousands in line, and it took one to two hours to register.  Linda and I headed down at about 3 p.m. and I was able to register in about five minutes as a Media person.

Then it was back to the hotel, where I worked on a blog post and took a short nap.  At 5:20, I escorted Linda down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, but I had to go to the FamilySearch Media dinner, which had about 100 attendees, including FamilySearch personnel, industry leaders, and media (including many genea-bloggers).

My table had Peggy Lauritzen, Linda Stufflebean, Alex Cox of Find mypast), Amie Tennant and Sunny Morton. After dinner, the program was a blend of Relative Race highlights, RootsTech highlights, and a game of "Relatives at RootsTech."  Those of us who are in the FamilySearch Family Tree could see which RootsTech attendees were our cousins from the Family Tree mobile app.  Here is the top of my list:


Look who's #1 on my list of cousins at RootsTech - the Chief Genealogical Officer of FamilySearch.  My dear friend, Dear MYRTLE (Pat (Player) Richley-Erickson, is #5 on my list.

After the meeting was adjourned, there was much greeting and picture taking.  A relatively large group of geneabloggers gathered and took photos, and here is one photo I took (so I wasn't in the photo).


This was a really fun time for me, because I was able to renew friendships with many geneabloggers, industry leaders and FamilySearch staff.  However, my poor Linda had to eat dinner by herself.  I came back to the hotel and wrote this blog post.

The formal conference starts on Wednesday, with classes all day from 9:30 a.m. on, and the Opening Keynote at 4:30 p.m. with Steve Rockwood and the Innovation Showcase.  The Expo Hall will open from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. but I doubt that I will go to that because we need to have dinner someplace other than the Radisson.

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Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

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