My three favorite moments from RootsTech

Besides being able to have a party at our home Saturday night, here are my three favorite moments from the conference last week:My lecture "Advocating Genealogy and Growing the Market: Issues of the New Genealogist" went amazingly well. I told them that this was not particularly the lecture I knew how to give, but rather the lecture that I wanted to hear at RootsTech. I'm passionate about trying to engage new genealogists (that's why we do charts) and I really want to know why so many people are turned off to genealogy. So we discussed some of the brick walls that I see that the genealogy community puts up to new beginners. I had lots of questions for the audience and I wish we'd had two or three more hours to discuss these things. They had lots of great ideas and I can't wait to hear the recording that was made of the lecture. When it is available I'll post it here. As a community, genealogists need to figure out how to stop putting off new people so that we can grow and have the tools we need to become better at this.

Pretend there's a picture here

The next highlight was Saturday morning but you don't get to see the picture. (I'm still not showing you pictures of the kids--but I think we're going to have to give that up soon. They're old enough really--I'm just a overzealous mother.) I took the kids, and Drew Smith came over and asked if he could interview them for the Genealogy Guys Podcast. THANK YOU DREW. I think you put me 10 years ahead on the "Genealogy is Cool" timeline with investing the kids in our family history. It was so fun. He took us in the little glass booth at the center of the hall and told them that lots of people will hear them on the podcast. And the funniest thing happened--when he started asking questions, my self-proclaimed shy one (13-year-old boy) who didn't want to be interviewed wouldn't shut up :) His brother and sister couldn't get a word in edgewise. It was great fun. Hopefully Drew will be able to do his magical editing on it and I'll post it here when you can hear it.

And finally:
And then finally, we all got to sing happy birthday to my sister from another mother ;) Lisa Louise Cooke. I just love her so much, she inspires me like no other. And we got to spoil her for a minute. What a special treat. I get to have her back next month when she is planning to do some fantastic stuff for our spring UGA conference. Come see us there!