RootsTech 2023 – Day 1

Hello again world, and subscribers. Yes, this blog is still here. I haven’t had much to write about for a while. But I also felt guilty writing for my blog when I wasn’t writing to people who were emailing me.

So quick update, I caught up on old emails just days before the new year. (Some were very, very old. Embarrassingly old.) Then I wrote a blog post, but I was rambling and stuff, so I made it private. And now, I kind of want to blog again. So here we are. A big genealogy event to write about.

Today was the first day of RootsTech. I am a virtual attendee, because it costs less and I don’t really go to the sessions anyway. I watched the keynote. I found the new music video and prefer last year’s earworm to this year’s airline commercial (really, that’s all I could think of) — so yes, I played the old video on youtube. Several times.

Then I went to the expo hall for a few hours. I stopped in, as always, at the MyHeritage booth to say hello to my friends (one far more than the others, but they’re all my friends at some level). I stopped at the Reclaim the Records booth for a while. I walked past the IAJGS booth and said hello to the people who were there. And I returned to Reclaim the Records as a few more friends were there. I strolled around most of the expo hall, but I still have some busy aisles to walk down when it’s less crowded.

It was wonderful to visit with my friends Daniel, Brooke, Jennifer, Tammy, and Alex most of all. I used to see them more often. This is better.

After that, I went to the influencer/speaker social where I spoke to many more friends and met some new people, and met some people whose names I recognized and may or may not have ever met them in person before.

Overall, it was an enjoyable day. Most people have given up wearing masks (there were very few), but that’s true of everywhere in Utah by this time. I brought mine, but didn’t put it on fast enough to really matter. So I predict I’ll be sick next week.

RootsTech isn’t about the lectures for me, and it’s not about the tech anymore like the first few years. Like most genealogy conferences, it’s about hanging out with friends. I don’t learn much at conferences because almost everything is beginner level, or something I know absolutely nothing about and won’t learn just by listening to a one hour lecture, hence, the virtual attendee level.

I’m not expecting much different over the next two days, besides talking to some different people and going to different events, but two more days to go.

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