We Had a Great Time at RootsTech 2017!

The annual RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah has just come to a close. Some 30,000 people visited the conference, while live-streamed sessions reached 100,000 viewers around the world.

Thousands of people came by the MyHeritage booth for live demos and to meet our team. We really enjoyed seeing old friends and getting to know new faces.

Here are some highlights.

Our RootsTech booth, all ready to go!

MyHeritage was proud to be the RootsTech General Session Sponsor on Thursday, February 9, 2017.

During the opening session, MyHeritage VP Marketing, Aaron Godfrey, gave a keynote address. He spoke about what an incredible year it has been for MyHeritage including the introduction of MyHeritage DNA and the launch of our unique Founder Populations Project.

The enormous audience for Aaron’s keynote address.

Aaron screened three videos to the audience, the first focused on testimonials by MyHeritage DNA users describing how the test has changed their lives, another introduced the new MyHeritage DNA ethnicity report experience, and the third covered an emotional reunion that MyHeritage facilitated. He illustrated the life-changing emotional value that MyHeritage offers by bringing families together.

Watch Aaron’s full speech here:

Here are some reactions to the family reunion story that Aaron shared:

Wow, crying watching the brothers meet their biological mother using @MyHeritage #DNA #RootsTech2017

— Patricia Greber 🇨🇦 (@treesrch) February 9, 2017

So the waterproof mascara was a good choice for #RootsTech today. Thanks for sharing the touching story @MyHeritage

— Ellen Anderson (@MlleAnderson) February 9, 2017

Vanessa from the MyHeritage Utah team gave a live interview from the MyHeritage booth to the keynote hall.

Thursday also featured the MyHeritage sponsored lunch, where Gilad Japhet, MyHeritage Founder, and CEO, spoke on some exciting stories he’d worked on and reunions he’d made possible, as well as MyHeritage DNA and the world’s largest Founder Population project.

Gilad also introduced, for the first time ever, two brand new technologies, now live at MyHeritage: Photo Discoveries — brings you photos of your ancestors and relatives that you may never have seen before, allowing you to add them with just one click to your family tree; and our new Consistency Checker for online family trees, which scans your family tree data for errors and inconsistencies, making it easy to fix them.

During the conference, MyHeritage gave many on-booth presentations. Here’s Dana, presenting MyHeritage DNA’s matching and ethnicity capabilities in a live booth demo. 

Dana also gave a RootsTech class on DNA Matching at MyHeritage, that you can watch here:

Genealogy expert and blogger Dick Eastman was a guest speaker at our booth where he discussed “Finding your family history in Online Newspapers.”

A booth demo by genealogy expert and blogger James Tanner on “Making the Most of MyHeritage.”

On Friday night we hosted a party for invited guests. More on that to follow in a later blog post.

During each day of the event, raffles for MyHeritage DNA kits attracted huge crowds.

Here are three lucky winners from Saturday’s draw.

On Saturday, we showed the full version of the movie “Aida‘s Secrets” about the story of two brothers, separated as young children in post-World War II Europe, who were reunited by MyHeritage after 65 years. The viewing was attended by a full house, and everyone loved watching the amazing story unfold.

Saturday was also family discovery day at RootsTech, aiming to strengthen families across generations, and we prepared a kids’ scavenger hunt to mark the event.

It was a pleasure helping people throughout the conference start their DNA journey with MyHeritage DNA, guiding them through the simple process of swabbing their cheeks for a DNA sample that we sent directly to our lab from RootsTech.

Here’s the CEO of FamilySearch, Steve Rockwood, receiving a MyHeritage DNA kit.

We had a fantastic time at the conference. Thank you to everyone who joined us in person at RootsTech, and to those who watched from home.

We look forward to seeing you at RootsTech 2018!