March 12, 2025
Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega – who has been to RootsTech many times in person and online – gives her final thoughts on RootsTech 2025. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”
The in-person RootsTech 2025 conference is over and what a conference it was! From the presentations to the live performances, to the new products and the giant tree swings, there was a lot to see and do. Here are my three takeaways from attending RootsTech this year.
Everyone Can Learn Something New
I took some time to visit the GenealogyBank booth and talk to the staff. Conferences are excellent opportunities to learn more from the staff of products and services you use.
I asked the staff there about questions that attendees were asking. One of the most common was about what GenealogyBank offered. It’s easy to think that GenealogyBank is just a digitized newspaper website – but we have much more to offer, including government publications, an obituary collection, the U.S. census, the Social Security Death Index, and historical books. Aside from reading past blog articles and watching our videos on YouTube, I suggest you spend some time just exploring the various collections you can find on the website.
I also learned a new way to search thanks to Melony Young, GenealogyBank’s Director of Consumer Support. She gave a presentation at RootsTech on the topic of “Solving Mysteries with GenealogyBank.”
She shared with me one mystery she solved about her mother-in-law by using the first name box in the search engine to search a keyword and then using the keyword box to search her mother-in-law’s name. She knew that her mother-in-law had been in a beauty contest so she entered that beauty contest in the first name box “Miss Wings” and then her first name in the Keyword box (“Charlene” ) She reminded me that you are not restricted to only searching a name in the name boxes, and you can use the keyword box to add a name.
That’s what I love about going to conferences and talking to the GenealogyBank staff; they have creative ways to search for historical newspaper articles.
There’s Not Enough Time to See and Do Everything
I mentioned in a previous RootsTech article on the GenealogyBank blog the need to prioritize. There’s so much to see and do that there’s no way you can do it all. If you are planning on attending next year, make sure to prioritize those activities that can only be done at the event. These include performances, in-person only presentations, and talking with vendors in the Expo Hall. Three days seem like enough but there’s some parts of the Expo Hall I never saw.
Start planning now if you want to go next year. Nearby hotels fill up fast. The FamilySearch Library is open for extended hours during the week but there are a lot of people taking advantage of that opportunity. Some of my friends arrived a few days early or stayed extra days just so they could get their research done.
It’s Not Over: You Can Still Learn from RootsTech
You may feel like you missed out by not attending RootsTech – but the great thing about the conference is that you can still watch presentations that were recorded. In fact, the RootsTech Digital Library includes previous years’ recordings. You can search the On-Demand Library to find presentations on topics that will help your research.
Not all presentations were recorded this year, but you can still find many that will be beneficial. The best part is that those recorded presentations include the handout.
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Note on the header image: a past RootsTech genealogy conference. Credit: mormonnewsroom.org.
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