***RootsTech is the world’s largest genealogy and family history conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is a four day conference hosted by Family Search. RootsTech 2020 was held February 26 – February 29, 2020.***

I got a good night’s sleep and was feeling somewhat refreshed Friday morning.  I looked at today’s schedule and changed the sessions I want to attend at least three times before I arrived at the Salt Palace this morning.  I thought it would be a good idea to look and see what sessions would be recorded to ensure I didn’t attend a session that I could later watch from home.  I arrived at the Salt Palace just after 9am for my first session of the day.

Today’s general session was just before lunch at 11am.  The keynote speaker was White House photographer, David Hume Kennerly.  He spoke about his photography adventures for the last 30 years and the power of the photos we take, share, and treasure.  Like yesterday I decided to watch the general session in the expo hall.  While walking around the expo hall I made my way to Family History Magazine, which I love, and as I was signing up for their newsletter, the gentlemen behind the table looked at me and said “You have a podcast, right? Journey Through the Generations”.  I looked up at him surprised, to say the least, and said yes.  Well if I’m being completely honest I screamed.  He said he listens to my podcast and that he really likes it.  So this is the point in this blog that I give my husband some credit.  He insisted that I wear t-shirts my the website (Journey Through the Generations) on it instead of the usual genealogy t-shirts I wear.  And he was right, many people recognized the website name and stopped me.

I decided to attend a session sponsored by Ancestry in the expo hall.  I had about an hour before it started, so I decided to just hang out in the expo hall until the class started.  I stopped by the Genealogy Gems booth, and Lisa Louise Cooke was doing a live interview with Lisa Lisson for her podcast, so I stayed for the rest of the interview.  After the interview, Lisa saw me and remembered me from last year’s RootsTech conference.  We got a chance to chat for a few minutes which was great.  After that, I just happened to literally walk into the Blue Team from Relative Race season six.  They were kind enough to take a picture with me even though they technically weren’t at RootsTech yet because they had just arrived at the convention center.  To say I was super excited to see them is an understatement.  One of the things I love about the expo hall is that you never know who you could run it too.  So after all of that excitement, it was time for my session at the Ancestry booth presented by Nicka Smith of BlackProGen Live.

I spent some time back at the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society booth.  There I was able to meet Dr. Deborah Abbott.  She is a professional genealogist, lecturer, and genealogy instructor for Salt Lake Institute Genealogy.  She is a true genealogy jewel and an expert in African American genealogy research.  I was just happy to be in her presence that I didn’t bother her to ask for a picture.  I left the convention center around 6pm and headed to the Family History Library.  I had a lead on an Alabama ancestor that I wanted to get back to from Wednesday night.  I was able to find some additional information and was satisfied with my findings by 8pm, so I packed up and headed back to the hotel. Once there I quickly put my feet up and realized that there was one more day left of RootsTech 2020.  So I wanted to take a look at my tentative schedule on the RootsTech app to ensure that I made the most of my last day.

Sessions I attended:

• Discovering the Records of the Enslaved presented by Sharon Batiste Gillins and Cheri Hudson Passey
• African American research Post-1870 presented by Nicka Smith
•  The Imperfect Genealogist presented by Janine Adams 
•  The First Documented Africans and Hear Their Stories presented by Ric Murphy

Click HERE to read RootsTech 2020 Day 1 Recap

Click HERE to read RootsTech 2020 Day 2 Recap

Click HERE to read RootsTech 2020 Day 4 Recap