The RootsTech 2025 Conference continued today live in Salt Lake City, Utah with thousands of persons in attendance, and thousands more watching some of the conference classes online for free. I chose to be an online viewer rather than an in-person attendee due to my physical restrictions.
Over the past week, I have selected online classes for "My Schedule" and have downloaded syllabus articles for many of the online and in-person classes. You can see the current list of RootsTech 2025 online and in-person speakers and presentation titles in https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/schedule/.
Here are the classes that I watched, either partially or completely:
Lisa Stokes’ class on Genealogy Source Citations 101: Getting Started. She discussed purpose, three main types, consistency, color coding, and templates. Excellent discussion and examples.
Mindy Taylor’s class on Analyzing Evidence: A Research Game Changer. She discussed the evidence analysis process – question, exhaustive research, analysis, correlate and weigh, and write. This class is based on Evidence Explained (EE), Mastering Genealogy Proof (MGP), and the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS).
Rebecca Whitford Koford class on Becoming Betsey: Find Female Ancestors with Cluster Research. Use the FAN club to discover them by finding historical and social context, identify family/associates/neighbors, persevere to find answers, and log your research. Excellent case study.
The panel for RootsTech Innovation and Tech Forum 2025 with:
Steven Nielson, Director of Product Development of Adobe, spoke on Adobe Express (free), Lightroom, and Photoshop (image editor) with generative AI tools.
Uri Gonen, Sr. VP of Product Management of MyHeritage, spoke about Smart Matches, Cousin Finder (NEW! Like Theory of Family Relativity without DNA).
Laryn Brown, CEO of Storied, spoke about Storied Assistant (app that questions user and adds data to family tree); acquired Memory Lane to tell stories on app at nursing homes.
Paul Allen, CEO of SOAR, spoke about new FamilyScribe.ai (AI powered tool for audio/video stories)
Charlie Green, CEO of Remento, spoke about easy to capture and preserve life stories – a Remento book from voice input to the app. Recordings to transcripts to book. Family memory hub broadcast to family members, into book, including recordings in person’s voice. See https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/expohall/remento
Hunter Cannon, Product Manager of Ancestry.com, spoke about AI tools to preserve and enhance family artifacts. The Ancestry app has a new photo and document scanner and image transcript features.
Gal Zrihen (of MyHeritage) on Uncovering Your Story with MyHeritage DNA. She covered Ethnicity Estimates, Genetic Groups, and Ancient Origins.
RootsTech 2025 | General Session 2 | Dana Tanamachi. This keynote included a preview of the Ndaba Mandela Keynote address. The MyHeritage platinum sponsor summary featured Aaron Godfrey, who spoke about additions in the past year: MyHeritage added 14 billion records, added OldNews.com newspapers collections, collaborated with FTDNA, acquired of MesAieux.com, introduced LiveMemory on app, introduced MyStories book creation, DNA ethnicity update, introduced DNA Ancient Origins, and introduced Cousin Finder (uses family trees of MyHeritage members with common ancestors). The celebrity keynote speaker was artist Dana Tanamachi who spoke about her business, her artwork, and her family stories about World War II Japanese internment.
- Steve Little class on Beginning with AI Genealogy: Getting Started with Generative Artificial Intelligence in 2025. He discussed foundations, responsible use, and basic AI transformations (including summarization, extraction, generation and translation). This very basic with not many examples.
- Diahan Southard cgass on How Just One Match Can Help You Find Missing Ancestors in 2025. She discusses defining a research goal for a 3rd great-grandparent or later; use Ancestry ThruLines, MyHeritage TOFR, or 23andMe Family Tree tool; use a “Best Known Match” strategy; sort your DNA matches to find a Best Known Match with that goal person; create a genetic network of your matches descended from the goal person; use the Shared Matches of Matches (SMoMs) tools to do genealogy.
- Julia Anderson’s class on Utilizing AI and Full-Text Search to Advance Your African American Research. Julia summarizes how to do African-American research, and also the AI tools on FamilySearch, including the AI Research Assistant and Full-Text Search features. Full-Text Search may find records (especially probate and court records) that identify enslaved persons, slaveholders, free people of color, and Freedmen records.
- Robert Raymond class on The New FamilySearch Catalog. This talk covered the Catalog history and the development of the new catalog.
- CeCe Moore’s class on Telling Stories with DNA: Case Studies from PBS' Finding Your Roots. CeCe told stories about her genetic genealogy journey, Henry Louis Gates’ ancestry (finding his Gates 2nd great-grandfather, fascinating!), and showed a Finding Your Roots segment about the results. If you like genetic genealogy, you have to watch this class!
Disclosure: I am a RootsTech 2025 "Influencer" but will receive no remuneration for my support or posting of RootsTech information. I will be an online participant this year because of my health issues.
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Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver
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