This year I had the fantastic opportunity to attend RootsTech in Salt Lake City, Utah for the third year in a row!

RootsTech is the largest genealogical conference in the world and it is an amazing experience to be able to get together with people who speak my language. (Talk to any normal human about genealogy for more than five minutes and you can see them start looking for the nearest exit.)

For me it's basically Genealogy Disney Land and I love it so much! I aspire to be a professional genealogist as my major is Family History and Genealogy, so it's a great time to network with possible future employers and friends.

I also had the opportunity to meet with some fifth cousins who I got a picture with! Fifth cousins may not seem like such a big deal but when you are all in one place it's a ton of fun to meet up and swap family stories!

RootsTech also brings some AMAZING speakers to the conference. This year wasn't as good as years past in my opinion but the speakers were still amazing. One of the speakers was Patricia Heaton who starred in Everybody Loves Raymond. I'm going to be 100% honest.

I had no idea who she was. Absolutely zero clue. However, people around me from the older generations were extremely excited and one happily filled me in on who she was. However, us younger folks got our revenge on Thursday.

After the main conference on Thursday, they had a special musical night for about an hour featuring BYU Ballroom Dance and Derek Hough. The Derek Hough from Dancing with the Stars. I managed to get seats in the middle with a friend and oh my gosh. He started walking through the guidance and got to the point where he was only seven feet away from me and my friend!

SEVEN FEET! The picture is proof! He turned around right before I took the picture.

After it was over an older gentleman walked up to me and my friend and asked us who Derek Hough was and why so many people seemed to be excited about him. My friend and I gladly explained and then commented that we had had zero ideas who Patricia Heaton was so I guess it worked out.

Seriously was amazing. Plus BYU's Ballroom dance team is just incredible. And I'm not just saying that because I attend BYU.

The Expo hall. For me this is what makes it feel like Disneyland!

Now back to the main parts of the conference. Probably one of my favorite parts is the Expo Hall. It is incredible just how many vendors they have and all the things to see, learn, and do! Every year I learn about amazing companies and new innovations in Genealogy that make me super excited for the future!

The classes this year were also fantastic, however, I have found that as a Family History major it is getting harder to find fifty-minute classes that I haven't already taken an entire semester on. For example, there were a ton of Germanic Family History classes offered this year.

Which is amazing! I'm not complaining at all because it is something that more people need to learn how to do as several thousand people in this country, including me, can trace their lines back to German Immigrants.  However, being that I completed my Internship in Vienna, Austria a lot of the beginner classes just did not appeal to me.

The best class I took there was one on City Directories. I have always kind of discounted their usefulness but have realized that they can be an extremely important source for tracing your family. I now plan to examine them for every family I research going forward.

All in all, it was an incredible conference and I can not wait till next year. Especially as next year I will no longer be a student.

I will be a graduate.

Here's to December 2019!