Highlights from RootsTech 2016

By Esther

February 9, 2016

This year’s RootsTech conference — the biggest family history event in the world — which takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah, has come to a close. It was the largest audience ever recorded, with an estimated 25,000 people attending and over 150,000 watching classes online.

We had a great time participating in the event, introducing MyHeritage to new people and demonstrating new features to existing users.

The crowded MyHeritage booth at RootsTech 2016.

The MyHeritage team ran a busy schedule of live demonstrations at our booth every 30 minutes, along with an array of well-attended classes and workshops throughout the event.

Noam Kovacs kicking off our MyHeritage sessions with Instant Discoveries™.

Vanessa Post demonstrates using MyHeritage to break down brick walls.

Jason Oler spoke to a packed crowd about our Danish and Swedish records.

Jason Oler speaking to a packed crowd about our Danish and Swedish records.

One of our many highlights was the keynote address by MyHeritage’s VP of Marketing, Aaron Godfrey, attended by thousands in-person and live-streamed around the world. He screened a video (soon to be shared on our blog) of people around the world getting Instant Discoveries™ for the first time. After showing the technology in action, he explained that bringing families together is the inspiration for all of the technologies that MyHeritage creates. He then shared a second video of an emotional reunion that MyHeritage facilitated.

Aaron Godfrey addresses the crowd in his keynote.

During the conference, we made two significant announcements. We released Audio Recordings in the MyHeritage Mobile App, which lets you interview relatives directly from their profile in your family tree, and store the interviews for future generations on your MyHeritage family site. We also released the newest version of our beloved software, Family Tree Builder 8.0. The new version of Family Tree Builder includes all the well-known and loved features of previous versions, with a completely rewritten internal infrastructure that adds support for very large family trees (up to 500,000 individuals), and delivers faster performance.

A big Thank You goes to our MyHeritage employees and guest speakers who provided informative sessions at our booth. Guest speakers included Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers presenting “Smarter Genealogy Research Using MyHeritage;” James Tanner of Genealogy’s Star presented “Managing your Record Matches Effectively;” and Dick Eastman of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter demonstrating our free software, Family Tree Builder.

Dick Eastman presented "Family Tree Builder."

Dick Eastman demonstrating Family Tree Builder.

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings spoke at the MyHeritage-sponsored lunch — with over 200 attendees — on “Finding Genealogy Treasure with MyHeritage’s Matching Technologies.” Following Randy’s talk, Daniel Horowitz, MyHeritage’s Chief Genealogist, provided an overview of other important MyHeritage technologies. The session concluded with a question-and-answer session — and dessert.