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This episode is brought to you by VoiceGift. What if your family tree could speak? VoiceGift helps preserve the voices and stories that define your family so they're never lost to time. Record memories from parents and grandparents and link them to photos, albums, and heirlooms. Inspired by museum audio guides and designed to last, VoiceGift Play is an audio time capsule for generations. Find your voice@www.voice.gift. that's www.voice gift. Welcome to the Family Tree Magazine Podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'm Andrew Cook, editor of Family Tree mag. Each March, FamilySearch hosts a massive conference in Salt Lake City that draws expert genealogists, tech entrepreneurs, and everyday family historians from around the world. Together, they share the latest and greatest innovations in genealogy through lectures and demos. But don't worry if you've missed the conference or can't attend in person. FamilySearch makes many of its top presentations free to view online from anywhere. All you need is some time, an Internet connection, and a FamilySearch account. As a reminder, if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, you can see me click through on our YouTube channel. We'll start at the main RootsTech portal, www.familysearch.org en RootsTech that's R O O T S T E C H as you scroll down this homepage, you'll see links to various topics covered in presentations, as well as some recommended popular sessions from recent conferences. And for each, you'll see a title, thumbnail image, speaker's name, and the year the live presentation was given or published. Content in the archive currently goes all the way back to RootsTech 2019. Toward the bottom, you'll find links to keynote presentations, talks from celebrity guests who share their own family stories and reflect on how their heritage has influenced their lives. This year, keynote speakers included actress Marlee Matlin, the Irish dancing Gardner Brothers, and astronaut Jose Hernandez. You'll also see a section for the RootsTech mainstage forums. These are panels and presentations from top thinkers in the genealogy industry who share updates about innovative tech tools that are in development are currently being released. In fact, it was at one of these sessions in 2024 where FamilySearch announced its new full Tech full text search tool. If that gives you some idea now, the videos on this homepage are just the beginning of what's available on the site. Scroll all the way up and go to the menu click Watch Videos. You can tap into the full RootsTech archive. You can either browse the library or search using keywords Browse. The library takes you to a landing page that's pretty similar to the home screen with sessions organized by subject. You can click to view sessions by trending topics, which basically runs a keyword search with that topic as a filter. Or you can select from one of the pre made collections. There's that popular sessions again. Artificial intelligence, DNA, FamilySearch basics. But you'll spend most of your time in the On Demand library, which you can find under watch Videos. Search for a video. The number of sessions here is truly massive. 1500 sessions. 185 topics in more than 30 languages. And it doesn't say it right there, but those are also lectures given over the span of seven years. So this search bar here you can type in the name of a topic or presenter. To see what sessions are available, we'll go ahead and type German website and here are the results. You'll notice that the site automatically applies a language filter for the default language on your browser, but you can add other filters too using the dropdowns at left country or location for place based research session type that is Was the session originally online only or was it given in person in Salt Lake City? Skill level which probably speaks for itself. Beginner, intermediate, advanced or topic. And the topics range from how to research specific groups, say adoptees, how to research specific ethnicities like African American, how to research in a specific place, Asia, Africa or even certain record types. Census shows up here. You can also check out this link for View full catalog. But that'll take you to a really overwhelming page where it shows you all the videos in the roostech archive. Some 5,000. So this search for German website turns up talks on Archaeon, that's a site that has German Protestant parish registers. Two sessions on German records, one on church and the other on digging deeper into German records and research in German speaking regions. It's all pretty relevant to that search query. Note that here the search doesn't respond to elements like quotation marks and it treats this multiple word search term as just one. For example, here it's German website instead of one filter for German and one filter for for website. In Boolean terms that would be German and website instead of German or website, which is what some other engines do. The search definitely isn't perfect. If I type in Ohio, for example, it turns up presentations on a wider variety of topics than just how to research in that state. First result is on entering and settling the Old Northwest territory, which would include Ohio. But it also has sessions about finding unknown parents, genealogical proof like the Genealogical Proof Standard Black Latter Day Saint Genealogy, and finding records on FamilySearch. If you're not finding the kinds of sessions you're looking for, again, you can add filters from this bar at left. Or to remove filters, you can click the little X by the search term under Active Filters. It's important to note that not all RootsTech presentations are available through this portal. Many weren't recorded and thus weren't added to the website, and the portal also includes in person lectures that aren't viewable online, and FamilySearch will presumably remove those as we get farther away from the event. So now let's look at an actual session. Go ahead and type in the name of the speaker, some guy named Andrew Cook. This pulls up all of the sessions that he I have done, but since I'm on my web browser and not in Salt Lake City right now, I want to filter my results to only those that are online. And that brings up a handful of lectures, including one by an Andrew Redfern who is not Andrew Cook. So again, not perfect. Click the name or the thumbnail images image to view. You can click the name or the thumbnail image to view a presentation. There you can watch the video at your own pace, at double speed subtitles or in full screen. You can see those under here. Under settings. You'll also see icons underneath the viewer that indicate whether the original presentation was online as it was here, or in person, or both, as will be the case sometimes, as well as what year it's from. In this case, it was created for the online version of RootsTech 2025. If you scroll down a little farther, you can read the speaker's biography and you can even click their name to see what other presentations they have in the archive, not just from the same year as this video, but from previous conferences as well. And if available, you'll also be able to click a button to download the course's syllabus or even the presentation slides, which are useful if you're following along with the lecture or want to keep in your research notes, you are not able to download the lecture itself, but you can download the syllabus and present and presentation slides if they're there. If you're logged into your FamilySearch account, you all right, now let's actually look at one of these sessions on each presentation's page. You can watch the video at your own pace, maybe even at double speed, or with subtitles, or on full screen for a more immersive experience. You can lower the video quality if you're having troubles with buffering. And you'll also see icons underneath the viewer that indicate whether the original presentation was online or in person or both, as well as when it's from. This one was published online as part of RootsTech 2025, so that's why it has the 2025 there. Scroll a little farther down to see the speaker's biography. You can also click their name to view what other presentations they've given and that live in the archive from this year or from previous conferences. And if available, you'll see a link to download the syllabus or even the presentations. That's useful for following along with the lecture or keeping in your research notes. You're not able to download the presentations themselves, but downloading a syllabus is sort of the next best thing. If you're logged into a FamilySearch account, as I am, you will be able to take advantage of a couple other features. One of them is creating a playlist. So this groups the videos that you want to watch in whatever customizable group that you'd like. In this case, maybe watch later, or a playlist related to a certain topic. That really helps you cut through all the noise. Again, There are some 5,000 videos in the archive. You'll also be able to see this chat window during the live event, users and even the speaker were able to hop in here, share pictures, ask questions, give feedback. But now, after the original event is over, it's all read only, but you could still find some helpful context in there. During RootsTech, you can also take part in the Relatives at RootsTech project, which you can find under RootsTech event Relatives at RootsTech. And this is a project that links you up with possible cousins who are also attending the conference, either virtually or in person. The portal is only open for a set amount of time before, during and after the conference for the 2026 RootsTech. It closed on April 30, for example. At other times of the year, you can access a similar Are you related tool. So that's an overview of this expansive on demand Library hosted by RootsTech. Hopefully you'll use the library to find presentations that will help deepen your genealogical knowledge and inspire you to find and share family stories. As a reminder, we at Family Tree magazine attend RootsTech each year, and we have a booth in the exhibit hall. Some of our editors even give lectures. So if you happen to come to a conference in the future, we'd love to see you, stop by, hear from you. And as some conference swag. You can head on over to the RootsTech landing page on our website to download a free copy of the March April issue that we handed out at the conference. We're also offering a special RootsTech coupon code for our online store, and I'll leave a link to that in the show Notes. Thanks for joining me in this month's episode of the Family Tree Magazine podcast. You can find the show notes from this episode and all episodes@familytreemagazine.com podcast while on our website. You can also sign up for a free email newsletter where you'll receive free genealogy resources each weekday, including links to new podcast episodes as they're released. Until next time, have fun climbing your Family Tree.