We’re Back From Rootstech 2020
We’ve just returned from RootsTech 2020, and what an experience it was! Every day was packed with opportunities to learn, share experiences, and a lot of fun too. We’d like to give you some of the highlights from this year’s incredible conference in Salt Lake City including some of our recent announcements.
Exciting announcements
On Friday, Aaron Godfrey, our VP of Marketing, addressed a full room of eager conference-goers and shared the latest exciting news from MyHeritage. He introduced our new MyHeritage In Color™ feature and invited attendees to get their free colorized photo magnets, highlighted the important addition of our new U.S. City Directories collection, and announced the all-new Fan View.
MyHeritage Fan View Color mode
He showed heartwarming videos of special family reunions that took place this year thanks to MyHeritage, highlighting that 20,000 kits have been donated as part of the pro bono DNA Quest project to help adoptees find their biological families. Aaron also hinted at some upcoming developments, such as Genetic Groups, which will take the Ethnicity Estimate to a whole new level, drilling down to the specific place or community where your ancestors were from. Watch the full clip here.
Later that day, attendees enjoyed the sold-out MyHeritage sponsored luncheon with MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet. Gilad spoke about the launch of our new products, particularly In Color™, Fan View, and U.S. City Directories, and described what makes them exceptional. His talk generated a palpable excitement about the MyHeritage feature announcements in the RootsTech halls and beyond. You can watch the full video of Gilad’s address here.
At the MyHeritage booth
From the moment the expo hall opened on Wednesday night throughout the 4 days of the conference, we had a jam-packed schedule of demo lectures running every 30 minutes from expert genealogists and MyHeritage staff members. Attendees had a chance to learn, ask questions, and get practical, hands-on advice to boost their research. The lectures were standing room only!
Geoff Rasmussen speaking at the MyHeritage Booth
We had lines out of the expo hall door for our immensely popular Virtual Reality Mayflower experience, which took conference-goers back in time to sail across the Atlantic on the legendary ship.
There were many winners for our Match & Win game — attendees tweeted and made new friends while searching for their Matches!
But they weren’t the only winners. Our daily raffles drew some very large crowds and delighted winners!
Our Support staff was on hand to answer questions, and they helped clarify concepts and give tips and tricks for utilizing MyHeritage for family history research.
MyHeritage In Color™ magnet mania
To celebrate the launch of our highly popular new colorization feature, MyHeritage In Color™, conference-goers were presented the opportunity to colorize their own black and white photos — and we printed the results on magnets for them to take home and treasure.
Main sessions
The sessions offered by MyHeritage were well-attended and much enjoyed. Attendees learned the basics of building their family trees and DNA, and in the more advanced sessions, took a deeper dive into resources for family history research. There was also a session describing the MyHeritage pro bono initiative Tribal Quest, a project to document the family histories of tribal peoples all over the world.
Daniel Horowitz, Ran Snir and Mike Mansfield deliver a well-attended panel session
The Missing Piece
On Thursday night, there was a screening of MyHeritage’s first full-length documentary, The Missing Piece. Though a smaller room was reserved for the screening, quite soon the organizers realized they’d have to move the event to a much larger room as over 600 people packed into every seat — there were even people sitting outside!
There was not a dry eye in the house as viewers followed the story of two sisters from Korea abandoned as infants and sent to different parts of the world to their adoptive families, who found each other thanks to a MyHeritage DNA test. Everyone present was in tears, and when the sisters — the subjects of the film — walked in at the end, they received a wholehearted standing ovation.
Attendees were truly inspired and spoke with the sisters after the screening
Summary
What an incredible conference. We had an amazing time and we hope you did, too!
If you missed it, no worries — we will be posting some fantastic interviews with renowned genealogists and DNA experts over the next few weeks.
And of course, don’t miss out on the opportunity to attend MyHeritage LIVE Tel Aviv in October! Take advantage of our special Early Bird discount. We hope to see you there.
