ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” went over the basics of the upcoming virtual RootsTech conference, but there’s so much to talk about that it cries out for another column.

First off, the event’s theme is “Choose Connection,” and that seems to be appropriate as we begin a third year with the shadow of COVID-19 hanging around and causing certain levels of disconnection.

With the free registration expected to top last year’s million-plus, that’s a lot of potential connections to be made during the conferences, which runs from March 3–5.

But the superlative statistics of RootsTech don’t stop there.

There will be more than 1,500 prerecorded classes available for registrants to watch (a note about this count: the classes are about 20 minutes long; some are part of a “series” of two or three such 20-minute sessions).

For example, your “Roots & Branches” columnist is doing a three-parter called “Pennsylvania Predicament! Finding Keystone State Ancestry,” since a lot of records across the U.S. point to origins in Pennsylvania, which makes sense since 1 in 4 Americans have at least one ancestor who set foot in the state.

I’m also doing a series titled “German Immigration from Hometowns to Final Destinations,” which targets America’s largest ethnic group and details how searching for them requires some special methodologies because many records in Germany are still kept and stored locally.

The virtual Expo Hall is topped by three Platinum Sponsors: FamilySearch, the genealogy mega-website owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sponsor of RootsTech; Ancestry, the leading for-profit genealogy organization in the United States; and MyHeritage, the Israel-based firm with a strong worldwide presence.

There are six Bronze Sponsors for the conference, including FamilyTreeDNA, GenealogyBank, and VividPix.

 Society Sponsors include such heavyweight organizations such as the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, American Ancestors (the website name for New England Historic Genealogical Society), National Genealogical Society, New York Genealogical & Biographical Society.

Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, the organization for which I’m serving as interim executive director, is also a Society Sponsor, and we’re looking to debut so special projects at RootsTech.

We’re offering attendees the chance to chat through the conference portal as well as “on the sidelines” in speaker- and society-organized Zoom rooms.

The tentative schedule calls for a question-and-answer session on my German series of classes at 9 p.m. EST on Thursday (March 3); a Q&A on the Pennsylvania series at 2 p.m. EST Friday (March 4); and a general Q&A on Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania at noon EST Saturday (March 5).

To receive the society’s eblasts with up-to-date information, go to the website and click on “Join GSP Mailing List” at the URL, https://genpa.org/public-collections/gsp-digital-newsletters/

To register for RootsTech, visit www.rootstech.org.