March 11, 2025
RootsTech 2025 has now ended, and presenters and attendees are still bubbling with the warmth and excitement this special conference brings every year. Melony Young, our Director of Consumer Support, sent along these photos to show some of the fun she and her two staff members, Tashua Pouliot and Renee Guest, had interacting with visitors to the GenealogyBank “booth” this year.
The word “booth’ is in quotation marks for a specific reason: Due to a shipping error at the very last minute, the GenealogyBank booth did not arrive at the conference this year! Melony and her staff rose to the occasion, scrambling to get signs, furniture, equipment, etc., together in time for the conference’s opening – and they succeeded admirably!
First, let’s begin with the entrance to the Expo Hall. FamilySearch immediately set a tone of fun and inquiry (the conference’s theme, after all, was “Discover”) with a tree house (for people pursuing their family tree, of course) flanked by swings simply for the pleasure of it. This photo was taken on Wednesday, March 5, the day before RootsTech 2025 began.
Opening Day! It’s Thursday, March 6, and Tashua Pouliot (on the left) and Renee Guest are standing in the area they (along with Melony) created to replace our missing booth. To the right is our presentation area, and to the far right is one of the tables used for the three book signings we held. We were pleased to partner with Genealogical.com to provide books for both sale and as prizes.
Here is one of the book-signing tables. We featured three authors:
- Sunny Morton, author of How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records;
- Roberta Estes, author of DNA for Native American Genealogy and The Complete Guide to Family Tree DNA; and
- Drew Smith, author of Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques.
Here are two of the book signings underway. The lines for both were quite long, and the people were patient and enthusiastic. In the foreground is Renee seated next to Roberta Estes, while in the background Tashua is assisting Sunny Morton.
One of the entertaining aspects of RootsTech each year is wandering the Expo Hall to see various booths and display areas. Here we see the presentation space for BillionGraves – who, appropriately enough, created a mock graveyard!
A big hit at this year’s conference were the GenealogyBank newspaper dresses! Here we see Tashua (left) and Melony showing off their fine attire. Stylish, yes – but also perfect for a site featuring extensive Historical Newspaper Archives!
These dresses (and our staff’s cheerful demeanor) generated many kind remarks. Here are two of them:
- From Tashua: “I have a sweet story to mention. After leaving the conference, I met a lady in the bathroom who had stopped by our booth earlier in the day. She was gushing about the newspaper dress and asked if I wanted her to take a photo so I could keep a memory of it! I told her sure and after taking the photo she said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that people were drawn to your booth because all of your workers were genuine and kind.’”
- From a visitor after the conference ended: “Such a pleasure meeting you last week. GenealogyBank was by far the best dressed of any of the booths we visited!”
The last day of the conference, Saturday, March 8, was Family Day, and we tailored our presentations for children to get them interested in genealogy. Tashua talked about how to become your family’s history detective, giving the children family trees and discussing questions to ask family members to fill in the trees. Renee conducted a family history bingo game. All the children were given stickers and candy.
In this photo, Renee is hosting the family bingo game.
One of the highlights for our staff was Gena Philibert-Ortega stopping by for a visit. Gena has been a writer for the GenealogyBank blog since 2014, as well as producing many of our GenealogyBank videos.
Along with meeting all the attendees, a highlight for Melony was giving her presentation “Solving Mysteries with GenealogyBank.com,” in which she gave helpful search tips for discovering information about your ancestors in historical newspapers, breaking through brick walls and finding family details you’ve not uncovered before. Although she was given a challenging presentation time (8:00 Friday morning!) her talk was well attended, and she received much favorable feedback.
The three days went quickly, with our staff busily answering visitors’ genealogy questions, providing search tips, and giving advice on such topics as women’s changing names, and military research.
When it was all over, Melony, Tashua and Renee finally gave themselves some relaxation time, sinking gratefully onto the FamilySearch swings for some gentle swaying.
Reflecting on the three-day whirlwind, Melony said:
“I loved connecting with our existing customers and with potential new customers. Most of all, I enjoyed the excitement of helping people find the information and stories about their ancestors they didn’t think existed. Being able to help someone find a missing link in their family history is an incredible joy: you get tears, high-fives, even delighted squealing. It’s truly a connection to our genealogy community, and this is a beautiful thing for us to experience and share.”
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Note on the header image: a past RootsTech genealogy conference. Credit: mormonnewsroom.org
