The Turning of Generations: Friday at RootsTech 2016

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Friday at RootsTech 2016

Friday was another exciting busy day at RootsTech. I started off in the exhibit hall with Maureen Taylor, aka The Photo Detective. Recently, I received three photos from a family member and wanted to see if I was estimating the time period they were taken correctly. I was in the ballpark for two of them. One of the subjects was a civil war veteran and it looks like the photo was taken in the 1860s. Yeah! The third is turning out to be a mystery because the time period the picture was taken conflicts with the age the person would have been. So now I have to wonder if the person in the photo was correctly identified. My 15 minutes with Maureen was incredibly educational. I just love listening to her reason her way through these old photos. I'll be writing more about what's coming up with Maureen in a future post.

The talk I gave today, Digging for Ancestors at the Bureau of Land Management, was well attended. One attendee followed along online, on her ipad, while I did the "tour" of the BLM website. She found an ancestor and was very enthusiastic to follow up and order the land entry case file. Yeah!

One thing that is a big improvement this year is the wifi in the Salt Palace. It is functioning great with all of the thousands of RootsTech attendees. Like the lady who followed along on the BLM website during my presentation, I was able to do the same in the sessions I attended.

The two sessions I attended were:

Finn Karlsen's How to Search the Norwegian Digital Archive
Kitty Cooper's How to Do a DNA Triangulation: Case Studies

I'll have more about those classes in a future blog post.

RootsTech is great for connecting with other GeneaBloggers. This week is no different. Jill Ball from Australia is one of my favorites. I met Jill several years ago when I won her RootsTech pass contest. She writes the GeniAus blog.