RootsTech 2023 Roundup
After months of preparation, a whirlwind trip to Salt Lake City, and three jam-packed days meeting fellow genealogists and MyHeritage users from around the world, we’re back from RootsTech 2023! Watching our community reunite after three years apart was quite the experience, and of course, lots of fun! Here’s a recap of our product announcements, classes, and other highlights from the largest in-person genealogy conference since 2020.
The MyHeritage team setting up the booth
Lecture hall sessions & booth classes
Each day of the conference included a full lineup of product demos and fascinating classes from industry experts and senior MyHeritage staff. Among the many outstanding MyHeritage sessions were daily lectures from the people who develop our products. They dove into our new features and provided hands-on tips for leveraging existing MyHeritage features to further your family history research. There were even a few spoilers of what’s to come!
On Thursday, our SVP Product Maya Lerner presented at the Innovation & Tech Forum about AI Time Machine™.
Maya Lerner, SVP Product, at the Innovation & Tech Forum
Later that day, Tal Erlichman, our VP Product Management, presented about recent MyHeritage photo features.
Tal Erlichman, VP Product Management
On Friday, Senior Product Manager Gal Zrihen addressed the crowd and shared more about the latest research tools for analyzing DNA Matches.
Gal Zrihen, Senior Product Manager
Product announcements
Every year at RootsTech, MyHeritage announces exciting new features, and this year was no exception.
On Friday morning, Aaron Godfrey, our VP Marketing, delivered his main stage address, where he announced color coding for family trees. Color coding paints the branches of your tree and is a great way to visualize your tree while making it even easier to navigate and understand family relationships.
Another exciting announcement was cM Explainer™, a game-changing feature that predicts your relationship to your DNA Matches with high accuracy. cM Explainer™ uses the centimorgan value and the ages of the individuals to fine-tune its predictions — making it the most accurate and detailed feature of its kind. It’s fully integrated into the MyHeritage platform so you can use it with any DNA Match on MyHeritage, and it’s also available as a free standalone tool to benefit consumers who have tested with other DNA services.
Finally, with tremendous excitement, Aaron announced the third installment of DNA Quest, MyHeritage’s pro bono project to reunite adoptees and their birth families through genetic testing. Since its launch in 2018, DNA Quest has led to life-changing discoveries and countless reunions.
As part of this installment, 5,000 DNA kits will be donated to adoptees and family members searching for people who were adopted. To learn more or to apply, visit dnaquest.org
Watch the full clip of the keynote here:
On Friday afternoon, conference attendees enjoyed an exclusive session with MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet. Gilad shared one of his most recent family history discoveries and highlighted the features released during the conference. He even treated the audience to a sneak peek of products and features that we’ll be launching soon. Watch the full video of Gilad’s session here.
Booth activities
The MyHeritage booth was certainly the place to be! Attendees enjoyed daily raffles with great prizes, and had the chance to try our incredible photo feature, AI Time Machine™, for free!
We invited everyone to visit our pop-up AI Time Machine™ photo booth and receive a free print of their favorite time-travel image.
Anyone passing by the booth also had the opportunity to test out our historical themed Snapchat lenses. We invite you to try out the male and female lenses yourself!
Members of our team were on hand to answer questions and help people make the most of their research on MyHeritage.
Attendees were also welcome to visit the MyStory van, where family history enthusiasts from all over could stop in and share their genealogy discoveries on camera.
The MyHeritage swag was a huge hit: the coolest accessories of the conference were the reusable MyHeritage tote bags, and everyone loved our new MyHeritage card game!
RootsTech is one of the highlights of the year, and this year more than ever, we were grateful for the opportunity to meet up in person, reconnect, make new friends, and create new memories that will last long after everyone has returned home. Looking forward to seeing even more of you at RootsTech 2024!
