With RootsTech Connect 2021 happening over the last three days, it’s been a really, really busy time. Fittingly, Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge is all about this year’s RootsTech experience.

1) Did you attend the free and virtual RootsTech Connect 2021 this week?  What was your favorite moment, experience, session, and/or feature?

Favorite Moment – It took more than a moment, but like Randy, I enjoyed listening to all the song contest finalists. Quite honestly, it was the only relaxing moment I’ve had since Wednesday night. I’m looking forward to hearing who won in the Youth, Amateur and Professional categories and to learn how my People’s Choice candidate did.

Favorite Experience – Learning about Name and Place, which has intrigued me enough to subscribe and start a project about Hajtovka, Slovakia. My grandmother’s maternal village is a good place to start a project as only a few hundred people have ever lived there at any given time.

Favorite Session – I’ve watched so few sessions that this is tough. I spent hours writing blog posts about Live Events and the Expo Hall, since they closed on Saturday. I enjoyed Thomas MacEntee’s Exploring Family History Tech with Thomas , Elsie Churchill’s How to Find English Sources for the Long 17th Century and Norwegian Farm Books: Norway’s Special Research Tool by Forrest Emmett

Favorite Feature – My favorite features were the demo videos in the Expo Hall. I needed a quick way to learn about many new-to-me companies for my blog posts. Those demo videos were life savers. I found that the response time from vendors was at least 30 minutes, if not way longer. Given that there were half a million attendees from around the world, that was not surprise, but it made quick questions impossible.

I’m sure I will be able to add many more sessions to my “favorite” class at RootsTech this year, but I have well over 100 in my playlist, so it’s good I have at least 365 more days to watch them all.

Thanks, Randy, for this week’s SNGF challenge!