RootsTech Keynote Presenters Announced

RootsTech just announced their keynote presenters for the upcoming conference in February.  Some highlights from their bio's are listed below.  This is going to be a superb conference! 

- Shane Robison, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, HP

Shane Robison is responsible  for shaping HP's corporate strategy and technology agenda and function. He is instrumental in steering the company's mulitbillion dollar research and development investment.

Overseeing the senior chief technology officers and the director of HP Labs, Robison drives the development of the company's global technical community and its research initiatives.

Shane also has responsibility for worldwide corporate marketing activities, including brand strategy, internal and external communications, digital strategy and hp.com, environmental sustainability, social innovation and customer intelligence. Shane received bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from the University of Utah.

- Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive and digital librarian

Brewster Kahle has been working to provide universal access to all knowledge for more than twenty-five years.

Since the mid-1980s, Kahle has focused on developing technologies for information discovery and digital libraries. In 1989 Kahle invented the Internet's first publishing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) system and in 1989, founded WAIS Inc., a pioneering electronic publishing company that was sold to America Online in 1995. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive which may be the largest digital library. At the same time, he co-founded Alexa Internet which helps catalog the Web in April 1996, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999. Kahle earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982.

- Curt B. Witcher, Historical Genealogy Department Manager, Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana

Curt is chair of the American Library Association's Genealogy and Local History Discussion Group and participates in other genealogical and historical committees of that organization. Curt is a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society and is the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society.

He is co-editor of the 1987 through 2005 editions of the Periodical Source Index. In 2000 he authored, African American Genealogy: A Bibliography and Guide to Sources. He also co-authored the "Native American Research: chapter of The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy. Curt was a research consultant for the PBS series Ancestors and, since 2003, is on the Genealogy Publications Committee of the Indiana Historical Society. He served for eight years as the National Volunteer Data Input Coordinator for the Civil War Soldiers System. He has received many awards for his work over the years.

- Jay L. Verkler, CEO, FamilySearch International

Jay Verkler began programming for a bank in Salt Lake City at the tender age of 12! After high school he served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan and returned to the United States to earn a degree in electrical engineering from MIT.


Jay joined Oracle in 1987. Six years later, at the age of 33, he left Oracle and cofounded "inCommon", a "push technology" startup company in San Mateo. Just two years later the company was acquired by Reuters Holdings Plc for its Tibco Software Inc subsidiary, to add its push technology to Tibco's multicasting broadcast technology. Jay Verkler is a driven man with a proven success in building enterprise software organizations from the ground up.