London First Day As A Tourist

My visit to London was for the purpose of helping with the vendor booth at the Who Do You Think You Are-Live. Of course time afforded me a bit of being the tourist. I took a London Big Bus and got a feel of being a guided tourist going over the London Bridge and seeing lots of sights like the Parlaiment Building and Big Ben. Got off the bus and toured Westminster Abbey.

No photos allowed inside but got a few good outside shots.

Was so tired after thirteen hours on my feet. Really on sit down was on the bus and when I took in a matinee play entitled "Billy Elliott". Good music and dance by some very young talent.

Ending of Rootstech 2011 in Salt Lake City

This initial Rootstech Conference was a first of its kind and was very well attended. It was a joint effort by many sponsors such as Ancestry.com, Family Search, BrightSolid, Microsoft, and Dell to pull together members of the genealogy community and the software techies in order to get a greater understanding of the need for both to work together for the greater good.

I was able to attend programs on the great features of Google, document preservation, and new inovative software. There was so much brought to the forefront by each of the opening speakers my head almost ached from trying to store it all.

I am looking forward to the second Rootstech Conference right here in the Salt Palace on February 2-4, 2012. What has been learned from this experience will be used to make the second conference much better.

I have been told this conference attracted a number of attendees in excess of 3,000. The Expo Hall was crowded wall to wall when classes were not in session.

One speaker which really made me sit up and take notice was Mr. Brewster Kahle the Digital Librarian for Internet Archives in San Francisco. His presentation told of the wildly high numbers of bytes of stored data, images, and video at Internet Archives. It was almost beyond mental comprehension.

Just as the day was drawing to a close several of my friends joined me in the Expo Hall to discuss some of the things we had absorbed. In this photo above is Alvie Davidson, Drew Smith, Kim Harrison, and Lou Szucs of Ancestry.Com.

Rootstech in Salt Lake City 2011

It was a very exciting and anticipatory time while making my way to the opening of this first Rootstech Conference. The crowd began to push and gather around the doors for the opening of the intro speakers. Some commented that it was almost like the push to join a rock concert hoping to find a great seat.

The auditorium was very colorful and filled with four gigantic screens - two on each side of the speakers podium. There were many guesses about the number of attendees ranging from 2,000 to 3,000. Since I am not good at this sort of thing I will leave it up to others. I got my seat near the front and directly in front of one of the huge screens.

The two opening speakers were introduced by Ann L. Roach, AG, CG, the chair of the 2011 Rootstech Conference. Ann gave a very rousing welcome when she introduced Shane Robison who represented Hewlett Packard and Jay Verkler, CEO of Family Search International. Both speakers were assisted by spectacular video presentations which showed the foundation of the future of electronic genealogy.

When the opening session was concluded everyone bolted into the expo hall where they were greeted by a vendor area unrivaled by any genealogy conference in the past. Vendors such as Dell, Ancestry, Hewlett-Packard, and FamilySearch greeted the attendees with well staffed booths.

I got my first hour of browsing all the vendors and the display area. While I was walking in the area of the very large media booth I was greeted by Lisa Louise Cooke producer of "GenealogyGems.Com". I had never met Lisa in person but had been interviewed for her podcast via Skype several months ago. She immediately asked if I she could do a video interview for a later premium program. Of course, I agreed. The videographer positioned us inside a large clear booth which kept out the noise of the area. Lisa conducted about a 10 minute interview on camera and when it ended I dashed off to attend some of the presenters at the conference.

While passing through the vendor floor I met with Matt Wright, editor of the APG Quarterly. As we chatted the president of APG, Laura Prescott, stopped by and greeted us. At the time she asked to take our picture. A great job was done by her expertise on the IPhone Camera.

As the day ended everyone moved to the free offering of a "Night at the Planetarium" at the nearby Clark Planetarium. One of the Rootstech sponsors, BrightSolid, provided this along with an endless supply of food and drink. We got to see a 3D IMAX movie about the rescue of the Hubble Telescope and a laser light show. By this time everyone was tired and ready for a good nights rest.