Have you registered for RootsTech Connect?

 RootsTech in 2021 is going to be a bit different. It even has a different name – RootsTech Connect. In case you have been living in total isolation (hang on, hasn’t everyone?) and haven’t heard the news, RootsTech Connect will be 100% online and 100% free. All you need to do is register at https://www.rootstech.org/. This new online conference will mean no crowds, no jetlag and no expensive hotels.

Since this conference will not involve a trip to Salt Lake City in person, I won’t tease you with pictures of the Family History Library.

As the Expo Hall will be online, pictures of the Expo Hall in previous years won’t be relevant. But rest assured, there will be Exhibitors.

Neither is it relevant to show you pictures of the people I could catch up with at the conference.

So what can I show you to whet your appetite and tempt you to attend RootsTech Connect in 2021?

Well, there will still be speakers.  Even more of them than we’ve had in the past. We have had some really great speakers and really great talks in the past, and this year will be no different.  The speakers haven’t been officially announced yet, but I have heard some whispers and there are some fantastic speakers, many of which have never spoken at RootsTech before.

Myko Clelland - always interesting

A panel from FamilySearch telling us what is new

Nick Barratt - speaker, and MC
for RootsTech London 2019

We might be lucky, and get some new announcements, like that of Ancestry's Genetic Communities back in 2017, or the indexing of the 1940 US census in 2013

And, of course, there will be Keynotes. Saroo Brierly, who was lost as a little boy in India, adopted by a Tasmanian couple, and found his birth family via Google Earth, told a wonderful story. Jake Shimabukuro’s was so proud of his family’s background, but it was his ukulele playing that blew us all away.

Read my reports of their sessions here.

And who could forget Donny Osmond, who appeared at RootsTech in Salt Lake City in 2015 and in London in 2019.

But my absolute favourite keynote was LeVar Burton. I wrote about how his story brought us all to tears here.

Make sure you join the 130,000 who have already registered for RootsTech Connect 2021. Register for free at https://www.rootstech.org/.