RootsTech2024 Roundup

So that’s it for another year! In the blink of an eye, RootsTech2024 is over and as the dust settles, or should I say snow settles, let’s look back on the last three days and see what caught my eye. I should add at this point that I only attended the show on-line, sadly I was unable to attend the show directly, maybe next time………..

One of the best things about RootsTech, aside from all the wonderful speakers and meeting old and new friends at the world’s biggest genealogy show, is the big announcements by all the big genealogy organisations that come under the umbrella of “What’s new”. Each year I am always amazed and intrigued at the wonderful technological advances that we see in the world of genealogy and RootsTech2024 did not disappoint. Family Search made an extremely exciting announcement. Until now, records held by FamilySearch have only been searchable if they were indexed. FamilySearch has just launched at RootsTech 2024, an exciting new way to find information in historical records that have not been indexed. Full text search uses AI technology to read the handwriting on images and now gives us access to more than 100 million records. To learn more about this incredible new feature, just click the link to watch a FamilySearch video about using Full Text Search . 

I always wait with bated breath for the “What’s new at Ancestry” talk with Crista Cowan. As an avid fan of ancestry, I am always waiting to see what innovative features have been added this year and once again, Ancestry delivered. The new feature called “It’s a Family Thing” allows family groups to collaborate and work on smaller segments of your tree together, but was only one of so many new additions from Ancestry. In the world of DNA AncestryDNA announced an enhanced DNA match list, labelling with shapes and emojis, and improved relationship predictions.

My heritage launched a new feature called OldNews.com which enables genealogists, researchers, and history enthusiasts to search, save, and share articles about people and events throughout history. At launch, OldNews.com includes a huge repository of hundreds of millions of historical newspaper pages from around the world, with millions more added monthly. The website features easy navigation and consists of a diverse range of high-quality publications, from major international newspapers to small-town journals and gazettes. I am still catching up with all the new revelations in the world of photo preservation and storage, there have been so many advances in this area that have been launched at RootsTech, that it’s too early for me to comment other than say that technology is forever advancing in this field so keep an eye out for all the latest news and developments.

Moving onto talks, I still have lots of talks that I haven’t been able to catch up with just yet, but that’s the beauty of RootsTech, you can just add them to your schedule and watch them whenever suits you. I have to confess that I still have talks to watch from 2023! Some of the talks that did catch my eye this year included Lynne Jackson, who gave an inspiring talk about how her enslaved ancestors Harriet and Dred Scott who inspired her to start a foundation in their honour. Another talk that caught my eye was ‘From Research to Draft: ‘Rapidly Writing Your Ancestor’s Story’ by Devon Noel Lee. As a family history writer, this really grabbed my attention and contained some innovative ideas for turning basic facts into a narrative, including the use of AI.

Nick Barrett’s ‘Researching English Industrial Labourers’ was extremely relevant to my own research and anything that Nick presents is always worth a watch. Following on from that, Janet Few’s two talks Tracing your Marginalised Ancestors in Britain and London Calling: Websites for Researching London Ancestry, were both very informative and again relevant to my own research areas. Nicholas Dixon’s ‘Metropolitan Ancestors: finding families in Georgian and Victorian London’, was another talk that I was particularly looking. forward to and contained plenty of useful information on researching your ancestors in London. Cheri Hudson Passey’s talk; Where in the World? Tackling a New Research Location was another talk that I really found both interesting and in formative. I could literally go on and on.

On the negative side and there has to be some negatives to add perspective and balance. I did miss a couple of live sessions due to technological issues and I was not alone on this as the chat within those talks made it apparent that nobody got to see these talks. Frustrating, but one of the risks of presenting a global event like this. There were also some talks that were not available to be viewed as they were an “in-person session is not being broadcast or recorded,” which again I found a little frustrating.

We also have to add a little perspective to all of this. To have some of the leading names in the genealogy world presenting so many different talks on such a wide variety of subjects is mind blowing, then when you add to this the fact that these talks are all ‘free’, it’s pretty staggering. So can I say a massive massive thanks to the organisers and all the volunteers who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring you the greatest genealogy extravaganza in the world!

Oh, and one last plea………………….can we have a RootsTech London again please!!!

Why not visit my new website:

Old Palace School Bombing

All My Blogs For Family Tree Magazine in one handy place

Copyright © 2024 Paul Chiddicks | All rights reserved