Finding Family Connection in the Past, Present, and Future: Steve Rockwood, FamilySearch CEO

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the last day of rootstech connect it's been such an honor to host you it has been amazing to see how many connections have been made in such a short period of time this year is not just roots tech it's roots tech connect and while yes it's incredible to see hundreds of thousands of people gather together the most important connections are the connections you have been able to make one by one with new friends new helpers and maybe even newfound relatives at family search we'd love to create connections we were created over 125 years ago primarily to connect our patrons that migrated from their homelands in the east united states and in europe to the wild wild rocky mountain west today we love it when we successfully connect you to your homelands to your families and to each other no matter where you live and no matter where your families are from let me share with you two additional types of connections we strive to create they are simple and both will give you an indication of where family search is heading in the future first we at family search want to help you create your own story by connecting you in the present to all of those who preceded you in the past and to all of those who will follow you in the future the technology and access to information that we enjoy allows all of us to live a more fulfilled connected life as we have the past present and future all connected at our fingertips second our individual stories aren't complete until they're connected to the stories of everyone else one by one our stories connected to each other become the story of mankind one story one family all found in one family tree a storybook of humanity family history is all about stories it's not just a journey to the past it's a story that's continuously being written with pages from the past combined with moments of today that continue to live on in the future this is why at family search as we strive to create inspiring experiences that bring joy to each of you as you discover gather and connect your families past present and future we don't just search for the past in fact the past is only one-third of what we do we also seek ways to capture your story and your history as it unfolds every single day in the present that's the second third of what we do and we do both not just to dwell on yesterday and today but always with an eye towards the future the third of our efforts let me illustrate we love to jump into the past where our passion for family and our passion for history converge this is why we scour the globe creating partnerships with archives societies libraries commercial providers clans and tribes to unlock the records of your families in order to help you build your family trees the framework of your story some of the past is readily accessible but a lot of it has to be researched and unlocked by skilled and enthusiastic genealogists and family historians i call them heart specialists as they combine their brilliant minds with their sensitive hearts and act as our guides through our personal journey of discovery they truly do turn change and even heal hearts as i discover my ancestors one by one they often just start as a name and as i use the combined resources of family search with those of our partners and all who contribute roots to connect i find so much joint excitement transforming that simple name into a real person that transformation takes place with every new hint every new record every new photo every new bit of information no matter how small that adds to a vital new ingredient to my ancestors story with one pinch of this and one dash of that the story gets fully baked and what started as a name transforms into a real person a person i can know a person i can love and a person i can even serve by making sure their story is always remembered always honored and never forgotten now i'm a very simple-minded guy so i have learned that a story can emerge from any solitary name when i seek to answer three very simple questions how did they live who did they love and what did they learn i answered the question how do they live when i find out the details of their lives this is where records dates and places come in when they lived where they live what they did as an occupation hobby or cause tells me how they lived for many if i can't find specifics about them personally i then learn what life must have been like at that time in that place to gain a general feel of how they might have lived even more important to me is who did they love that simple question allows me to place them accurately within our family tree it drives me to seek out and make sure i account for their parents their siblings their children and their grandchildren i go on to ask who else did they love which takes me to their extended family and even to their friends seeking the answers to this simple question has helped me to learn that for all of us each 100 billion of us who have ever lived on this earth all have the same opportunity and even obligation to love to love god and to love our family and fellow men we all get the opportunity to live and go through the ups and downs of this mortal existence we all get the opportunity to love to refine our natures and find ourselves when we love others how we live and who we love leads us to what we learn and ultimately become so finally i want to know what did they learn discovering what a person learned in life is often the most difficult to determine but it can also be the most rewarding unless they somehow recorded what they learned in words we should then surmise what they must have learned from how they lived and who they loved for example my grandpa brown was a man of little words but i can still see him sitting there quietly patiently in the department store waiting for his sweetheart my grandma while she tried on new clothes there he was with a patient loving smile content that his wife was enjoying herself i've learned how to love my sweetheart by the quiet example of my grandfather and by the examples of the other fathers and grandfathers in my life i've learned that i can learn life's most valuable lessons through my own experiences but also by proxy or by learning from the experiences of my loved ones i don't have to go through every experience myself especially the hard ones if i can leverage what my ancestors learned before me if our ancestors learned the tough effects of substance abuse hopefully we can learn to break that cycle and learn what we need to know but by proxy if our ancestors learn the value of faith education hard work and integrity hopefully we can honor what they learned and live our lives full of faith education hard work and integrity their story and our story can be beautifully told as we discover how they lived who they loved and what they learned now let's jump in the present i promise you that family search will continue to diligently unlock your past and help you write the first third of your story in the past but the real challenge that we are inspired even obligated to pursue is to figure out how to help you capture your story as it unfolds today and as a result you and i won't have to be researched in the future in fact our gift to the future generations is our story of today and as a generation you know we're actually are doing quite well in this department even if we didn't realize it the fact that more than half of those seven and a half billion people are capturing at least some elements of their life on their devices and online is amazing we're we are either intentionally or unintentionally leaving a digital footprint that can be shared today and preserved for the future technology is allowing us to be the most journaling people in the history of the world now of course that comes as a double-edged sword with risk stewardship and accountability but the potential of how we can bless each other now and those in the future compel us to save and share our stories and unfolds each day so as we snap billions of photos and make billions of posts we are indeed chronicling how we live who we love and hopefully what we've learned i love that with family search we're enabling our patrons to take a look at that vast amount of personal and family history information and curate it down into the most meaningful and most valuable elements of their story that they want to be remembered for generations to come we do it with the family search apps and with familysearch.org literally allowing each of our patrons to have a personal family archive and they're their own private archivist i love that my children and grandchildren can literally carry their story past and present in their pocket 24 7. i love that as they face the trials and triumphs of the day they can immediately learn from the experience of their family members from the past my ancestors are literally on my phone's home screen with the new family search widget every day i can see what happened in my family on this day in history no matter what my day may bring i know that i'm literally never alone i know that i can live love and learn with my family members past and present every single day and i know that they're always with me rooting for me and in my corner and isn't that what you want for yourself isn't that what you want for your kids and grandkids now some of us might make the mistake of saying who would ever want to hear my story my life is mundane compared to others that i see in movies or online but don't you see that's the point as you capture your own story of a good normal night life not with the glitz and glamour in the extremes we see online these are real normal everyday experiences that normal life becomes beautiful in simplicity in fact one of the greatest misnomers in popular culture today is reality tv there's nothing less real than the extremes that seem to sell but it's your life that has lasting value especially for those who love you now and who will love you in the future which takes me to the third element of what we do at family search and that is connect the past and the present for the benefit of the future we feel our vast efforts for the past 125 years primarily in north american europe have simply been a rehearsal to prepare us for the other two-thirds of the world in a very general sense if you want to know where family search is going in the future just think south and east and us sitting on a beach south as we devote more of our resources and focus to find more partnerships in the southern hemisphere of this great globe of ours east as we move from the western world and dive head first into africa the middle east and asia and make sure we don't fly over the wonderful isles of the sea rich in culture and story but we will land in those aisles and make sure we capture their history as well we also see the future in the young people of the world you probably even saw this here at roots tech connect where we've had tens of thousands of children teenagers and young adults not only participating but actually hosting and serving many of you during the conference this rising generation not only is interested in family discovering family history they bring life and vitality to the whole effort the young people of your family are those who will make sure you are never forgotten and always remembered and that your story not only matters but will bless the lives of those who follow you connecting the past with the present pointed towards the future and doing so with the assistance of the young people the world is exactly where we see this industry's heading which now brings me to the second vision of connecting our individual story to the stories of everyone else so that together we can create the story and family tree of one family of humanity at family search with the help of all of you we know we will be able to create the family tree of mankind it's not simply a vast pedigree chart but a storybook of how each individual lived who they loved and what they learned that tree with those stories will be one of the greatest blessings that the world has ever seen we know especially in the past year how much the world needs to be connected and i'm not talking about the number of followers and likes i'm talking about deep meaningful connections connections of understanding connections of civility connections of kindness and connections of love when we see how we and our stories are connected we will see and treat each other differently connection of family transcends all borders all races all prejudices all different societal philosophies and beliefs and can unite us as one human family the pandemic gives us an unprecedented opportunity because this common experience has touched absolutely every single one of us in one way or another now we've often heard and even asked the question where were you when or what were you doing when you fill in the blank in your own part of the world when man first worked walked on the moon when world war ii ended when the berlin wall came down or when that hurricane or tsunami first hit so here's our opportunity how can we collectively capture each of our own individual stories of the last 12 months and then help others in our family and our community capture theirs and the questions are simple during the global camp pandemic how did you live who did you love and perhaps most importantly what did you learn is it fascinating that as in the pandemic as the pandemic hit in 2020 most of us knew very little if anything about that pandemic that occurred over 100 years ago with the spanish flu and while this was a first experience for many of us we actually learned that the world had been through this before let me just give you one recording of a grandmother of a friend of ours who did indeed give us a feel for how she lived who she loved and what she learned during world war 1 and the 1918 spanish flu pandemic when we went to high school the next year the great flu epidemic broke out and in those days they knew so little they had no wonder drugs they just treated my guests and by gosh and so they closed down all the schools and gus and i went home in the days when the great first flu epidemic came 18 and 19 i would sing to as high as four funerals a day paul the brother just older than i by two years was in the army and went as far as bardo france but never did have to get in active duty clive had a sad thing happen to him the girl he was engaged to marry died with the flu while he was gone and in those days the only way they could notify them was to send a telegram and that would be put in their postal box and then when they eventually got around to getting their mail they found out the news sometimes i think we take for granted our wonderful modern things nowadays like it's been with us always but it was not so now is the perfect time for us to capture our own individual story and connect it to one global story as the clouds of the pandemic begin to clear the details are still fresh in our minds with the learnings emerging with time our stories can be captured in words pictures poems and even song they can be short and they can be long let's look i love spending time with four of my most favorite people in the world my oldest son sean his brother connor his brother ryan and then mark well hey guys it's wonderful to be with you hey i want to ask you a question what have you learned from the pandemic that you wouldn't have learned otherwise if we hadn't gone through this the last the last year that i was supposed to wash my hands for 20 seconds [Laughter] probably the biggest thing um is prioritizing relationships to where when everything else was gone like that was the only thing that mattered i know for us we didn't see people for weeks when it all first hit the immediate feeling was just recognizing how much that connection was necessary as we started to adapt and figure some stuff out it was cool to see that i actually felt like i was talking to people more once we adapted i asked you what you've learned from the pandemic what and how will you make sure that your children and your grandchildren learn or benefit from what you've learned in this incredible time of 2020 and 2021 i'm really bad at writing my journal i sit down ready to write a novel every night and then i write an introductory sentence every day and that doesn't mean anything and so it's kind of been rough but albert perry rock was kind of our hallmark pioneer ancestor but something that hit me is he did live a really remarkable life and especially as a pioneer and and all that he did to build up salt lake but but something hit me is like for the most part he he was just the guy that wrote it down and and i think that that was really cool to realize as as like his life was probably just as remarkable as anyone else's um and i don't want to discount anything that he did but but uh the most remarkable thing that he did was just write down his normal life and used the medium that was most available and most prevalent and and now it's different and so i think we should recognize that with the pictures that we take and and the videos that we take and and be able to pass those on and social media and stuff is kind of our medium just as just as writing a journal uh was was there so i have a really good friend um and she's really good at writing in her journal and so i made that a goal for me to be able to do and so i actually went into the memories app and i've been doing an audio one every night and so that's been really really cool for me just to be able to see just like how i voiced it and how i felt in the moment and how i explained everything and i'm actually able to get a lot more genuine thought out of it because it's me actually explaining it instead of like writing it and like being able to like erase what i said like all of it is actually like there as i experienced it i feel like the audio is almost more i guess um it is more personal and it makes it more human you know when you hear these stories they're great and but to to really tie it back to a voice i think really does make it a little bit more personal you feel like you know the person that much more whether it is on a tick tock that's inherently creative or an instagram or some other platform and there are a lot of other platforms that most people aren't even aware of but a lot of these it's just giving people a tool set to say like tell your story in whatever way you want to there's such a cool opportunity for this rising generation to capture these stories whether it is of ancestors or the stories they're experiencing right now or whatever um and i think the way that we record things now just as a society it can feel like i don't need to write anything down it's you can google this you know my kids are gonna be able to google this but i think what's what we've recognized as being important is there's a difference between like history as it's told and how we felt it and how we it was impactful to us to have somebody really talk about their experience and how family life was affected how you know every facet of their life was changed i think just getting that fresh perspective and then applying to our own minds and and seeing what does change and how we adapt to those changes but also things that don't change and how we can learn from those people from before and that it could be a cheat code for us in the future i want to get this stuff down so i can remember what did it feel like in march when this all hit and then what did it feel like five months later when we're sitting here like wait we're still here and this might be continuing for a while and just to record what that felt like and what it looked like i think has been really important to us so that down the line when it's all resolved whatever that looks like and you look back and it's like oh that was no big deal then when you read you remember like oh actually this is what it was like um and so that's that's been a big thing for us is just trying to record those things in our journal less about what happened and more about how we felt or how it's impacting our lives your story your real story matters it's needed your story connected to the real stories of your fellow men and women tell the true complete story of the pandemic i invite the rest of us those of us who usually don't have the microphone in front of us or the camera on us who don't have the media outlets to capture our story and if we can only share it with our own family and our own private media then it's worth sharing that way or we can put it on social media and share it with the world our story is this very in this very unique time can bless those who need it most well there you go as we connect our past our present and our future in creating our own stories and as we connect our stories to each other we will indeed create the story the accurate and real story of our generation a story that will bless and edify you and those who will follow you because you matter your story matters and your story deserves to be remembered you

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 3,415

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Family Connection, family conection, rootstech, rootstech connect, family history, genealogy, family tree, family, stories, family connections, family stories, history, search history, research, resources, storytelling, familysearch.org, family tree maker, ancestors, my history, ancestry, family heritage, my family tree, free ancestry search, free genealogy websites, my ancestry, family background, family history research, family history activities, Family history conference talks

Id: 3cmj5kGm2Xw

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021