90th Birthday Slide Show – complete

Yeah! I got the slide show done for my mom’s 90th birthday. I would have like to have played around with ProShow more but I did learn a bit more with this project. We had it playing in a loop during her party. Thank goodness that the music didn’t end up being too obnoxious. It helped that it was an instrumental without any lyrics. I hadn’t thought that through before hand, but I think I’ll do that again in a similar situation.

The slide show is about 10 minutes long.

By the way she loved the Mary Taylor book “My Grandma Mary”. We have a few tweaks to do before it will be available for general distribution.

 

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90th Birthday Slide Show – in process

I’m working on a slide show for my mom’s 90th birthday. I love the power of images and music but I forget how long it takes to sort through 90 years of photos even when they are already scanned. I’m planning to put info like who is in each photo in the metadata but I haven’t gotten that done yet. If I had a simple search would have provided me with the photos I had to work with.

I decided to show the photos in reverse order, starting with the most recent and moving back in time. For a sound track I’m planning to use “Sentimental Journey”. I hope I don’t run into any major snags. Time is running short and the power company has a planned outage tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. I sure hope that the electricity isn’t off that long. I was so focused on the photos tonight that I was an hour late for a meeting. Opps! Hopefully I’ll have it finished by this time tomorrow.

I have to find more time in the future to do projects like this. Have you done any slide shows or videos? I’d love to see them if you are willing to share them.

Book of the Week – face Book

I love the simple concept and layout of this book, described on the title page as “a week in the life of a branch library,” by photographer Keith Pattison. I wonder if this same idea could work well for a family reunion or another type of family gathering. Which makes me think, could I do something like this for my mom’s 90th birthday? I love the continuity that the gray backdrop and square cropping for all the photos. I also like how there are three basic page layouts; full bleed, white border and white border with four photos. This gives the book some variety but keeps the focus on the wide variety of people who come to the library in any week.

I also really like the idea of using a simple note-book for writing a message. This would also work for my mom’s 90th birthday. I could let each person write a short note to my mom. The book would then be like a birthday card. I hope I can figure out how to pull this project off.

Do you have a project that would work well with this type of layout?

My Grandma Mary Preview

Fedex tracking say I’ll be getting a proof copy of the book about my great-great-grandmother, Mary Taylor tomorrow. I’m so excited to see it. I’m expecting to need to make some changes before it will be ready but this is a big milestone for me.

 

Last day of RootsTech

Wow! What a conference. This morning’s keynote speaker was David Pogue. He was awesome. They don’t have the videos up yet for today but I’m sure they will be up soon. He was great! My classes today were:

  • Creative and Fun Ways to Cherish Your Family History
  • 365 Days of Story Prompts
  • Beyond Home Movies: YouTube Genealogy
  • Digital Storytelling: More Than Bullet Points Lab

I think my favorite class today was the one YouTube. But all of them had some great information. Digital Storytelling was my least favorite. It was about using Power Point to make a video and I learned some stuff because I’ve never used Power Point. Overall I liked my three hands on classes the least. I think because everyone moves at such a different pace on the computers and so the class has to move at the pace of the slowest person. It felt like I was exposed to the least amount of info in my hands on classes.

Overall it was a great conference and I’m looking forward attending RootsTech next year, on February 6 through the 8th. I can’t wait to start digesting this stuff and applying the things I learned.

 

RootsTech Day Two

Lots more great stuff at RootsTech today. You can catch the presentations on the main stage at RootsTech.org. I must make time to at least see the beginning of the keynote speakers this morning. We got there late and missed the first part. The classes I took today were:

  • Social Media Part 1
  • Social Media Part 2
  • Digital Photo and Document Organization: Understanding Metadata Lab
  • Do Your eBook right: Self Publishing Secrets for the Family Historian

I learned good stuff from all of them but I think my favorites today were the social media classes. I’ve not joined any of the social media things yet but I can’t put it off too much longer and I learned more about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ today which well help me make more informed decisions about where to put my energy when I’m ready to make the plunge. It is tough to choose classes. There are so many great options. Just one more day of RootsTech.

RootsTech: Day 1

Open day of RootsTech is over! At least for me. There was an evening activity at The Leonardo followed by a concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir about the music of Irving Berlin. But I didn’t buy a ticket to The Leonardo and I was too tired to wait around for the concert but I sure it was wonderful.

After the keynote speakers I went to the welcome for the Story@Home part of the conference. I went to the first Story@Home conference last year so I’m excited that they are now part of RootsTech. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on the story telling aspect of family history which I love. I wanted to go to “The Future of Genealogy” panel but since it was being streamed I decided I could always watch it later.

All of the presentations that were streamed live today are not available to watch on RootsTech.org. I’m looking forward to watching all the videos over the next few weeks. After lunch I went to three more classes.

  • Simple HTML/CSS for Weebly
  • The Cool Parts of Genealogy: Engaging My Teenagers Case Study
  • Content Planning for Genealogy Bloggers: How to Stay Organized and Never Be Without Post Ideas Again

The last class was my favorite of the day. Implementing what I learned there should help make this blogger better. I’m exhausted now and looking forward to good night sleep and all the learning opportunities that tomorrow will bring.

If you can jump over to RootsTech.org and pick one of the videos from today to watch. If you like a good storyteller, I’d try “Tell it Again” by Kim Weitkamp. She is very entertaining as well as informative.

 

 

Tomorrow is RootsTech!

I’m so excited for tomorrow (except having to get up way earlier than I normally do). For the most part I think I’m ready. I’ve made arrangements for a puppy sitter for Dune. She is not ready to be at work all day with Bill and way to young to handle an event like RootsTech. Zodiac will go with me. It will be a great socializing opportunity for him. I’ve gone through the classes and narrowed down my options. Some sessions it wasn’t hard to pick a couple but other hours I had trouble and only got down to seven options. I’m signed up for one hands-on workshop each day so that will be cool. I’ve got clothes picked out to wear so that is covered. I still need to coordinate with my friend, who is going to RootsTech too. Her very dear aunt died on Sunday afternoon and the funeral is today. So her life is in an upheaval. But we will get that worked out. I wish I could figure out how to pick up my registration materials tonight instead of in the morning. But I can’t justify the time it would take to make the trip downtown just for that. I should probably download the RootsTech mobile app to my phone. I’m still new to the smart phone thing and it would be good for me to learn a new way to use my phone. I don’t have a data plan on it so depending on how well the WiFi functions might decide how useful it is.

In a perfect world I’ll get posts written every night about RootsTech. But I might just be way too tired to get anything posted. So don’t hold your breath. I know I’m going to learn lots of great things in the next three days. I’ll try to pass on as much as I can here.

Two Days to RootsTech

One of the keynote speakers at RootsTech is Jyl Pattee of Mom it Forward. She put together a book called “Family History – 40 Ideas for Capturing your Family’s Story”. You can download the eBook for free on her website. It has lots of great ideas. I can’t wait to try some of them. Jyl says that “preserving your family’s life story doesn’t have to be a daunting or overwhelming task. The project can be as easy as capturing simple yet meaningful moments every day.” And I agree!

 

Three Days to RootsTech

Even if you aren’t attending RootsTech you can still enjoy some of the speakers. Each day of RootsTech there will be free live streaming available. Go to RootsTech.org to join in the fun.

Live Streaming Schedule (Mountain Time)
Thursday
8:30 AM Keynote – Dennis Brimhall, Syd Lieberman, Josh Taylor
11:00 AM The Future of Genealogy – Thomas MacEntee and panel
1:45 PM Tell it Again (Story@Home) – Kim Weitkamp
3:00 PM The Genealogists Gadget Bag – Jill Ball and panel
4:15 PM Finding the Obscure and Elusive: Geographic Information on the Web – James Tanner
Friday
8:30 AM Keynote – Jyl Pattee and Tim Sullivan
9:45 AM Researching Ancestors Online – Laura Prescott
11:00 AM FamilySearch Family Tree – Ron Tanner
1:45 PM Google Search… and Beyond – Dave Barney
3:00 PM From Paper Piles to Digital Files – Valerie Elkins
Saturday
8:30 AM Keynote – David Pogue and Gilad Japhet
9:45 AM Using Technology to Solve Research Problems – Karen Clifford
11:00 AM Digital Storytelling: More than Bullet Points – Denise Olson