In 1996 there was an FGS Genealogical Conference held in Rochester. I was the chair for Exhibits (vendors). At the RootsTech 2020 Conference the Expo Hall was at least 6 times as large as the conference in 1996. The 2020 Expo Hall had lots of demo areas. There was a large area that was the demo theater. It had many short demos of everything from software, websites and other genealogy products.

Besides the large general demo theater some of the larger genealogy companies had their own demo areas. There were so many demos going on that you could easily just stay in the Expo Hall and never go to any of the regular genealogy sessions.

FamilySearch Demo Booth

FamilySearch had demos on various topics. They usually ran about 20 minutes. They had topics like a getting started demo, “Getting the Most from Search,” organizing memories, and fixing indexing mistakes. They also had a demo of their cell phone App.

Ancestry Demo Theater #2

Ancestry had two demo theaters. They had demos running about 15 to 20 minutes at both at the same time. Some of their demos dealt with the main search. Other demos were about their AncestryDNA including their health data that is now available. They also had demos of their other websites; Fold3, Newspapers.com, and Find A Grave.

MyHeritage Demo Area

Bruce Buzbee from RootsMagic

I didn’t watch any demos at the MyHeritage area. Their schedule included sessions with a couple of famous bloggers; Dick Eastman and Lisa Louise Cooke. I think that may be Lisa Alzo in the picture who has given talks to the Rochester Genealogical Society in the past.

A couple of genealogy software products also had small demo areas. Bruce Buzbee, the lead programmer for RootsMagic seemed to be giving demos all day by himself. At the Family Tree Maker booth there were a couple of people giving demos including “Cousin Russ” who is a cousin of Dear Myrtle and often heard on her podcasts.