Welcome to my RootsTech 2023 recap for Friday, March 3, 2023. If you missed my RootsTech recap for Thursday, March 2, 2023, you can read it by clicking HERE. As I mentioned in my previous recap, I attended RootsTech 2023 virtually.
Friday, March 3, 2023
My first class session on Friday morning was Lisa Louise Cooke's "Reconstruct Your Ancestor's Lives with Google." It was a fantastic class! One of the things Lisa talked about was using Google Earth Pro to create a family history tour of our ancestors' lives. I really need to give that a try! She also shared that Google Earth Pro is now free and that it used to cost around $40. Wow! I highly recommend watching this class. It's available on the RootsTech website at the following link: Reconstruct Your Ancestor's Lives with Google.
Next up I watched the General Session featuring Me Ra Koh. She shared her inspirational story of her life. She is a famed professional portrait photographer who taught herself how to take photos. That's incredible!
She said that she didn't find photography, it came and found her (paraphrased). After she finished her presentation, we all got to experience the incredible moment when Tamra Stansfield of FamilySearch presented Me Ra with her family history, including 32 generations of her Korean genealogy.
Me Ra said, "This is amazing." Among other responses to this incredible moment, Me Ra also said thank you and that she was stunned. It really was wonderful to witness Me Ra Koh receiving her genealogy. If you missed Me Ra Koh's keynote address, you can still watch it on RootsTech.org at the following link:
General Session 2
My next class session was "The Anatomy of a Story" by Crista Cowan. Of course, she was fantastic, as usual! She gave us the following (paraphrased) advice called Homework for Life: At the end of each day, write a couple words or a sentence about what happened that day. This is such great advice/homework. She also said that one of the first things she wanted to teach us about being a good storyteller is that we need to capture the information when we can because memories are faulty.
Crista also said "The greatest storytellers are those who listen to other people's stories." There is so much more that she shared in her class. It was a great class and I highly recommend it. You can still view it on the RootsTech website by clicking on the following link:
The Anatomy of a Story
The last class that I watched on Friday was "How to Milk a Source for all It's Worth" by Amy Jonson Crow. This was an absolutely amazing class that was chock full of very helpful information. She said, "...it's a good skill to have to be able to take whatever source we find, whatever source we are using and really be able to pull out all of the information that we can which will also not only help our immediate research but can also give us some wonderful ideas of other places we can look for even more sources." She also said, "We don't want to overlook any clues that are in a record." I highly recommend this class whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced family history researcher. To view this class on the RootsTech website, click on the following link:
How to Milk a Source for all It's Worth.
Well, that's it for this RootsTech recap. I'll share more about my RootsTech 2023 experience in my next RootsTech Recap post.
Thanks for stopping by!
Jana
© 2023 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved
Hi Jana, I am so happy to have found your blog. This was super helpful--I tend to do my genealogy by myself and have been hesitant to attend conferences, like this one and NGS. But your descriptions of the courses made them sound interesting and useful.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
DeleteTY for sharing highlights of your in-person experience at RootsTech. I was at home, and appreciate the recommendations for which sessions to watch or rewatch.
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome Marian! I was actually watching from home too. I was a virtual attendee this year. Thank you for your kind comment!
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