I travel often, as has been mentioned before in this newsletter. However, this week I am trying something new: I interrupted travel in order to travel someplace else.
For the past month, I have been living in a motor home. However, today I will park the motor home in a storage lot, drive to a local airport, and fly to Salt Lake City. I will spend the next few days at RootsTech 2012, the largest genealogy conference in North America. The event will be held Thursday through Saturday, February 2 through 4.
I have been told that the organizers already sold 3,000 tickets in advance of the conference and also expect to sell a few more tickets at the door.
RootsTech is the premier "technology for genealogy" event of the year. It brings developers and users of technology together in one conference. I have downloaded and installed the RootsTech app onto my smartphone and will have the complete schedule, and maps of the venue and exhibit hall with me at all times. The app also allows RootsTech attendees to create their own personalized schedules and to add friends, track the Twitter conversation, and get up-to-the-minute alerts on room changes at the conference. Who needs printed brochures that are instantly out of date?
RootsTech 2012 will also feature three keynote speakers, one per day:
Josh Coates is currently CEO of Instructure, an education-focused software company, and founder of Mozy. Mr. Coates has over 10 years of impressive technological and entrepreneurial accomplishments, including Utah Entrepreneur of the Year, vSpring Capital Top 100 Venture Entrepreneur, and one of MIT Technology Review’s Top 100 Young Innovators.
Tim Sullivan and an Ancestry.com Panel together will offer a keynote presentation. With technology available to surface the 7 billion records and 29 million family trees on the site, Ancestry.com has the sophisticated engineering and systems in place to take on the challenges of the fast growing family history industry, while also creating an avenue for users to weave search results into an edifying and meaningful family history story.
Jay Verkler is President and CEO of FamilySearch, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He previously served in various executive positions within innovative Silicon Valley companies such as Oracle Corporation, inCommon Inc., TIBCO Software, Vitria Technology, and Sales.com.
You can see a schedule of the dozens of other events at http://rootstech.org/schedule
Since I often write about the use of technology for genealogy, I expect to be fully immersed in this conference. I plan to be up early every morning, attend as many sessions as possible, and then fall into bed late every evening. There is also a little dinner I will be attending on Saturday evening with 111 other genealogists. See http://goo.gl/sfoSL for details.
As a result of this busy schedule, I am not promising to write many new articles in the next three days. However, I should be able to obtain enough information to write dozens of new articles in later weeks.
If you are also attending RootsTech, I'll see you there. If not, you can read about much of the technology presented in future articles in this newsletter.
