Each year we travel to Salt Lake City to what is the largest family history gathering in the world. Rootstech! where hundreds of classes, demos, presentations, workshops, and other events are delivered to over 25,000 attendees. At the same time, we try to create awareness about who we are and how we can help those with an Irish family history brick wall. As always we were joined in a huge convention centre with several hundred exhibitors. From small start-up ventures, established service providers, large societies to the four major sponsors Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage and FamilySearch (see Sunny Morton’s excellent intro to the Big 4 at Rootstech)
The only exhibit to travel from Ireland this year was us, The Irish Family History Centre operated by Eneclann. Represented by Laura Carroll, Paul Manzor and director Brian Donovan. Brian gave many exciting and informative talks in the main presentation theatres, as well as many more over at the Findmypast booth that were very popular with the attendees. He also announced the very exciting Catholic Heritage Project at Findmypast which is digitising the records of several Archdioceses in the USA & Britain (including Philadelphia, New York & Baltimore). Lots of great information about the Irish diaspora here.
This year was a little different than the others because of the recent rebranding of Eneclann to the Irish Family History Centre. This allowed us to promote our new Visitor Centre in Dublin as part of EPIC Irelands Emigration Museum and our new website www.irishfamilyhistorycentre.com to all attendees.
The enthusiasm and positive response towards this new venture was great to see. The appetite for Irish Family History as always was huge and the overall interest in being able to become a member of this new Irish genealogy hub was very encouraging. We noticed a huge increase in the popularity of DNA this year and the increased number of attendees who had found out they had some Irish roots through DNA sampling.
The buzz this years among all the exhibitors was strong as always, the trip was a huge success and we look forward to spreading the word on The Irish Family History Centre at many more events in the future.