Reflections on Rootstech – Rootstech One Week On

Was that ever a busy time? Rootstech was great, and many of the Geneabloggers who were there have written in depth about there visits. I didn’t, my head was quite simply spinning with all that there was to see and do as a genealogist on their first visit to Salt Lake City, and to Rootstech. Now we’ve been home again for almost a week, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on where I’ve been, what I saw, who I met and what I did.

I didn’t spend enough time in the Family History Library. Next time I visit I must spend more time there with my research.

My visit was clearly much to short to spend too much time researching in the library, but nevertheless, I managed to make some significant genealogy research breakthroughs in the part of my family that I know the least about. My research successes were all in the part of my family that didn’t come from Germany, but from Chernivtsi, Ukraine. My paternal grandfather, whom I knew as Opa Markus, was born in Czernowitz, Rumania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I know very little about his part of my family because records access has, until recently, been much more limited. So I had decided as part of my preparation for the visit to concentrate my research time on the records from there, because they have fairly recently become available after filming by the LDS. I’m still sorting through the copies of records that I located, but I know that my family tree will have grown significantly. Much more importantly, I have now got a few more lastnames to search for than before my visit, this is important, because three of my four Czernowitz Great Great grandparents were born with the lastname Rosenberg!

I should have attended more Rootstech talks, but I didn’t, I spent my time talking to people in the exhibitor hall.

It’s funny, every year that I’ve been to Who Do You Think You Are? Live (WDYTYA-Live!) I’ve always been there as JGSGB’s stand manager, and so have been “tied” to the stand, which has tended to mean that I’ve not been able to attend any of the talks, so being “off duty” and on “on holiday” should have meant that I could go to all (as many) of the talks as I wanted to. In the end, I went to a few of the talks, but spent much of my time taking to exhibitors, many of whom were not the same people as I would meet in London. Next time, I will reverse this and spend more of my time in talks.

Retail therapy – I’d expected to buy more genealogy “stuff”

I was glad to browse my way through the bookstore at the back of the exhibitor hall, but somehow I’d expected more things to buy at the show – books and info-wise. I’d even left space in my suitcase for more purchases, but in the end, my purchases were quite restrained. We didn’t even have excess baggage on the flight home!

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This blog post was published on 29 March 2013 and is © Jeanette R. Rosenberg