The Easy Chair Ride Along for us at RootsTech 2025

You've probably heard about the upcoming FamilySearch RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City. Only a fraction of attendees will be there in person, so we thought it might be fun to connect us.

The Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, RootsTech 2020. Photo: Barbara Tien

RootsTech is an extraordinary conference by any measure. Hosted annually by FamilySearch.org, it brings together of roughly 4 million members of the genealogy and family history community from around the globe¹. I participated in the 2020 show as a vendor. It was an experience of a lifetime — one magnified when we came home to COVID-19 closures. 

It’s been a transformational five years since then. After two years of virtual shows, the program switched to a hybrid model in 2023, with millions of participants joining from their computers and mobile devices. This year, as in the past four, I won’t be attending the conference in person. Instead, I’ll attend in my comfy pants from home.² I’ll be using a combination of their online app at RootsTech.org, Relatives at RootsTech³, and YouTube videos.

Robin Stewart, however, will be at the show. You’ve probably seen many of her posts leading up to the program highlighting speakers and special events. We’d been thinking about ways we might collaborate.

In comparing notes with Robin Stewart, my Mission: Genealogy collaborator, we hatched an idea.

Here’s the problem

We realized that this thriving Substack genealogy community could share the RootsTech experience using the new livestreaming features of the platform. We thought it might be a creative solution to an old problem:

• As an on-site attendee: You’re walking miles, exploring booths, and attending sessions. It’s fun, but it can also be overwhelming. You’re exhausted and it’s easy to lose track of what you set out to do.

• As a remote attendee: You’re armed with your laptop, tablet, or phone, so you’re fired up to explore videos, announcements, and booths — without breaking a sweat. You’re comfortable, but you lose that feel for “what’s happening.” The drama feels hollow without special events and the serendipity of meeting someone new.

So, here’s the idea

Let’s do RootsTech together!

• Robin Stewart and I had already planned on a series of Substack Live sessions each day of the show to talk about what we’re seeing, learning, or discovering.⁴

Why not invite our community to join us too!

Why not, indeed? So here we are, inviting all of you to the genealogy and family history community on Substack: Join us, won’t you? Shall we count you in?

To make this work, I envision:

• One or two very short, live programs each day of the show.

  • The show runs Thursday, March 6 to Saturday, March 8 (Calculated in Mountain Time, in North America)

  • We can even start a day or two earlier.

  • We anticipate the two times being convenient to our Atlantic and Pacific time windows, but start at the half-hour to avoid session conflicts. More on that to come.

• I’ll host the program, inviting up to two other Substack publishers to join me on the live stream (whether on-site or remote.)

  • All time slots will have to be booked ahead of time, and speakers will need to commit to joining us.

  • I’ll give special preference to people who will be on or near the show floor.

• Everyone else can participate by viewing the live stream and asking questions in the chat.

  • This is very similar to the program I’m now hosting weekly on Sundays for Projectkin Live.

  • Participants would need to be subscribers of Mission: Genealogy or Projectkin Community Forum. I expect to be able to expand that participants list to your Substack subscribers, but I’m working with Substack’s tech team to verify.

• Live programs will be recorded and distributed as videos within a couple of hours after the programs.

  • When there are two live sessions in one day, I expect to combine the two recordings into one post to be emailed. Posts may be cross-posted.

  • This will be an individual newsletter, configurable at /newsletters so that anyone opt out of the emails too.

Sound Cool? Join us!

Robin Stewart and I cooked up this idea in a brief chat we know it still needs a little seasoning. I’d love to get your insights and include you. If you think it sounds interesting… join us!

Simple rules

Though there may be more, I can think of a few simple rules:

• This program is for the Family History and Genealogy community on Substack.

• Each of the programs will be short, 15-20 minutes is what we have in mind.

• We’ll remain platform-independent and will not allow sponsorships or affiliate links.

I had already planned to be flexible that whole week. We currently have a MissionGenealogy Gathering planned for Tuesday but we may reschedule or repurpose that. Mission: Genealogy members should stay tuned for that.

Is RootsTech new to you?

Here’s the promo video from FamilySearch to tell you all about it.

RootsTech has always created some wonderful opportunities for creativity and collaboration. I expect this year will be no exception. I look forward to your thoughts about how we might make this show fun for everyone.

While I have you, have you seen the FamilySearch “Relatives at RootsTech” program. If you have members of your family tree in FamilySearch, it can be a lot of fun. Since we’re now less than 30 days ahead of the show, it’s live now:

You’ll find us in the Relatives at RootsTech search function as “Barbara Tien” and “RobinLynneStewart,” both in the San Francisco Bay Area .

[Updated Feb 20 to add this follow-up post:]

[Now that Rootstech 2025 has closed, you can explore the complete set of recordings here:]

Projectkin.org/rootstech

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1. Attendance in 2024 per year-end statements from the blog post “FamilySearch Year in Review 2024” (https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/familysearch-year-in-review-2024)

2. With the help of my collaborators last year we pulled off two events per each of the three days of the conference. Special thanks to Denyse Allen, Sindi Terrien, Karen Ray Karla VF Staudt, Victoria MacGregor (Victoria's Press,) and Hilary Blanford for believing in me even when we were just getting started. You can explore those recordings here in RootsTech 2024.

3. ARE you my Cousin? So far, I only have a few thousand cousins, the closest of whom is a 5th cousin. Search for me as “Barbara Tien.” How about you?

4. These would be short and sweet, much like my Projectkin Live Updates each Sunday/Monday.