RootsTech Archives - OnGenealogy

How I’m Using Curt Witcher’s RootsTech class: Five Things All Genealogists Should Do Before They Die

I attended Curt Witcher's RootsTech class "Five Things All Genealogists Should Do Before They Die" because I looked over the handout and knew he was part of my tribe. He is the Senior Manager for Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library. Each of his bullet points is something I'm working on and care about deeply. He is a brilliant, engaging lecturer and has a lot of great ideas.

His bucket list items were:

Tell Your Own StoryInterview as many Relatives, Family, Friends, and Colleagues as possibleOrganize your ResearchDeal with your ImagesExplore new Technologies

1. Tell Your Own Story

I've written a couple of blogs about this and am carving some time in my weekly monthly schedule to record stories of my life. I'm writing episodic stories about specific events and then I'd like to create short Animoto videos to go along with the longer, written version. Both of my parents di…

How to Create Engaging Family Histories

My favorite part of RootsTech was learning different ways to create engaging family histories--family histories our children will be interested in.

Here's one example, from a class taught by Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems. Her class was titled, Video Magic: Creating Brilliant Videos Quickly & Easily. She shared many methods for creating slideshows to tell the stories of our ancestors in digestible snippets.

This was my first go at this type of slideshow, and it was probably overly-ambitious to try to sum up 80 years of life in a 3-minute slideshow (my choice, not her recommendation). I used Animoto Memories with a professional license. They also have a Personal license for $5/month that will leave the Animoto logo at the end of videos and a Business license for $49/month that will give you accounts for up to 3 users.

You can use the arrows in the bottom right-hand corner to enlarge the video…

RootsTech Wrap Up

Today was the last day of RootsTech SLC 2019. It was a great week of classes, speakers, and vendors. Me and my husband taking a quick break at RootsTech. Don't miss out on the fun! Here's a #RootsTech to do list: Check out the free RootsTech Handouts while they're still available.Catch the free broadcast of some speakers and sessions.Watch a slideshow of the view in the Expo Hall to see a sampling of RootsTech vendors this year.

I'll be adding names of vendors to the OnGenealogy Directory in the new few weeks. So check back for the latest resources for researchers and historians.

Can't wait? See some of the vendors in this slideshow and then search for their company name on the internet. A couple of them are Kickstarter projects and don't have official websites yet.

Best in your research!