RootsTech 2026 Day 2 started with good intentions. I was up and ready by 8:30 (I’ll give myself credit for trying for 8:00 after staying up too late finishing my last blog post). Before my first session started, I took a few minutes to get organized. I made sure all my syllabi and slides for the morning sessions were downloaded, opened Obsidian, and set up a new folder in my Education section for RootsTech 2026 — Friday, with individual notes for each session, including the slides.
That kind of setup pays off. When you’re bouncing between sessions all day, knowing exactly where your notes live makes the whole day run more smoothly.
Morning: A Strong Start
I kicked off RootsTech 2026 Day 2 with Andrew Redfern’s Practical Digital Strategies for Family Historians — a session from Thursday evening that I hadn’t had time to watch until now. It was packed with good tips, and it has me rethinking my file organization system. (Note to self: that might be a future blog post.)
Next up was Peggy Lauritzen’s session on Finding Substitutes for Vital Records. Peggy is one of those presenters I make a point not to miss, and she did not disappoint. Finding workarounds when vital records don’t exist is exactly the kind of practical skill that serves every research project.
Choices, Choices
By mid-morning, the scheduling decisions started getting harder.
I moved Judy Nimer Muhn’s session on Acadian and French Canadian research to another day. My son’s paternal side is Acadian, so that session will absolutely come in handy — just not yet. And David Ouimette’s FamilySearch Full-Text Search session looked very interesting, but I decided to save it for a day when I had time to actually practice alongside the presentation. I’ve already found records through full-text search, but there’s always more to discover.
For in-person sessions, the Power Hour: The Power of Proof looked like more of a beginner-level session, so the slides will serve as a handy review. Michael Lacopo’s Tax Records session is good reference material for future client work, but since all of my immigrant ancestors arrived between 1860 and 1910, U.S. tax records don’t factor into my current research much.
At 11:30, RootsTech 2026 Day 2 handed me a genuinely tough choice between Jana Greenhalgh and Mindy Taylor’s Avoiding Research Pitfalls and D. Joshua Taylor’s From Chaos to Clarity: Deciding What to Research When Everything Feels Important. Both sounded fantastic. I went with the research pitfalls session because it was the more advanced option, and I moved the other to later in the day (or another day entirely). The RootsTech Innovation and Tech Forum 2026 also went on my replay list.
If you’re attending in person in Salt Lake City, you faced some impossible choices around this time too. Karen Kowallis’s session on Arriving at the Port of New York, 1890-1924 looked very promising. Loretta Evans’s Bachelors, Maiden Aunts, and Childless Couples was right up my alley — very few of my Irish great-grandparents’ siblings married or had children, and they deserve to be remembered too. Steve Little’s session on user-created AI tools and Liz Snow and Molly Peterson’s Using AI to Write and Share Compelling Stories are both on my must-watch list for later. And Roberta Estes presenting on Y-DNA results? I need that one. I wish it were available online.
The Afternoon Gets Heavy
At 74 degrees outside today, I gave myself permission to step away after my last live morning session and run some errands. It was a good call. I came back refreshed and settled in for The More, the Merrier! Collaborating with Your DNA Cousins. I’ll be honest: most of the content wasn’t new to me. But my alternative, Cards, Clevises, and Calomel: What Probate Files Can Reveal about Our Ancestors, was also territory I know well, having spent 13 years as a probate and estate paralegal. So I bounced between the two for a while before landing on the DNA Cousins session. The Probate session goes on the replay list.
The real highlight of RootsTech 2026 Day 2 was Alice Childs’s session: Using Autosomal DNA Analysis to Identify an Ancestor’s Likely Parents. I watched this one alongside fellow Ride Along partners Bill Moore and Lisa Rex, and we had a great conversation during the session. We all agreed on the same thing: this was the first Advanced/Professional session that actually felt advanced. That’s not a criticism of the others — it’s a recognition that Alice’s content operated at a genuinely different level. I’m looking forward to another watch party on Day 3.
The 5:00 session, Planning and Organizing Findings, was also billed as Advanced/Professional, and it earned that label. I’ll need to rewatch this one to capture everything. The same goes for Stephanie O’Connell’s Crafting a Genealogical Proof Argument — watch once for the main points, then watch again later when I have time to fully digest the content.
A few in-person sessions that I’ll be tracking down later: Diana Elder’s AI-Powered Research Logs (I’ve already taken a version of this, so I felt okay letting it go), Jonny Perl’s Using Shared-Match Grids and Matrices (I would have loved this one), and Beyond the Prompt: Take Your AI To The Next Level (another for the wish list, though Steve Little’s session last year covered similar ground).
Where the Day Count Stands
Seven sessions on RootsTech 2026 Day 2. But “seven sessions” doesn’t capture it. Most of these were Advanced/Professional level, and advanced content takes more out of you. My running total through two days:
- Beginner: 2
- Intermediate: 5
- Advanced/Professional: 9
- All Levels: 6 (includes the General Session and What’s New at Ancestry)
There is one more session tonight — Unveiling Hidden Branches: A Genetic Study of George Washington’s Extended Family Tree — and it looks genuinely fascinating. But the screens need to go dark for a while. The hubby has been patient, and some things matter more than one more session. I’ll watch it first thing tomorrow morning before the main sessions begin at 10:00.
Day 3 is a shorter day — only four sessions on my list, including the George Washington one I’m moving from tonight. I’m already looking forward to it.
This post is part of the RootsTech Ride Along, a collaboration between Geneabloggers and Projectkin designed to increase visibility and encourage community connection during RootsTech. Members are sharing their blogs, vlogs, and opinion pieces at RideAlongPartners.org. I’ll be posting here throughout RootsTech as part of the Ride Along — proudly as a member of the Bunny Slipper Brigade.
Are you watching sessions alongside me this week? Drop a comment below and tell me which sessions are knocking your bunny slippers off.
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