I just got back from an action-packed week in Salt Lake City, Utah, where DNA Painter was an exhibitor at this year’s RootsTech conference. Before I continue:
I’m extending the show special ($10 off) until March 17th
During the conference I offered $10 off DNA Painter subscriptions. I am extending this offer until Monday March 17th and you can access it by clicking on the image below. You can find out more about the benefits of subscribing in my previous post.
After a freeze of over six years, the price of subscriptions will increase slightly in the near future, so this is a good opportunity to save money.
Travel
Although I’ve exhibited several times before, this trip felt a bit different. I spent the preceding two weeks working flat out to release the new places feature in ancestral trees, and was still releasing updates the morning before the flight! I’m really happy with how this feature turned out, but wow, that was a lot of work.
Flying to Salt Lake City from the UK is easy once you get to London, since Delta flies direct. If you can do this, I highly recommend it, since it avoids having to clear immigration at another airport before catching your connecting flight. There’s then inexpensive light rail transportation from the airport to downtown Salt Lake City.
My assistant James and I stayed at the Plaza, a highly functional hotel that’s right next to the light rail stop and the Family History Library, and just a couple of minutes’ walk from the Salt Palace Convention Center.
Leisure
We had a free day on Wednesday, and I did something I’d never managed before in five previous trips: a hike! We walked one hour due north from the hotel and eventually reached Ensign Peak. The view was incredible. I then had time to visit the Family History Library with my laptop, where I got to see some original baptism records for ancestors.
Work
The conference started on Thursday March 6th, and as always, we were very busy.
I enjoyed meeting everyone who came by and want to say thank you in particular to all the existing users of the site who said hello. It’s great to put names to faces. I did countless demonstrations of the new places functionality, and I was gratified that people seemed to like it.
Connie Knox of Genealogy TV also visited, and you may spot me in her RootsTech 2025 Walkabout Interviews.
Huge thanks to Barbara Lenz for her help on the booth! And thanks again to everyone who came by and chatted. After your feedback, I have lots of ideas about what I should work on next. If you weren’t able to come by but have strong feelings on this, please feel free to email your suggestions to me.
Other vendors
I didn’t get too much time to visit other booths this year, but enjoyed chatting at BanyanDNA, Arkiv Digital (where I met Cici Lofgren for the first time), Gedmatch, Legacy Family Tree Webinars (thanks again Geoff for the loan of your monitor!), Ramapo College, The Holocaust Reunion Project and WikiTree.
Fixes
Finally, I want to thank everyone who has given me feedback on the places functionality. Here are a few fixes I’ve made based on user comments:
- If your places map featured both the UK and New Zealand, a lot of the pins might have been hidden behind the zoom buttons. This is now fixed (apologies to my NZ-based friends!)
- Improved the geocoding, which initially accidentally included street addresses, leading to some surprising results
- Prevented notes for the wrong person incorrectly showing in the person overlay
Mailing list
I’ll cover updates from the big players at the conference in this month’s DNA Painter newsletter. If you’re not on the mailing list, sign up here.
Contact info: @dnapainter.bsky.social / jonny@dnapainter.com