Category Archives: DOABLE approach

six steps to the DOABLE approach to telling your family’s tales

a DOABLE approach to sharing your family stories

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As I’ve contemplated ways to improve my blog it occurred to me that if you are coming here for the first time there isn’t really any help in getting started. Since my goal is to help everyone (including me) to tell their own family stories that situation isn’t a good one. Over the past year or so I’ve written posts about my story projects and other things I’ve come across. While all of that is good I think I’ve missed the mark. Since my rather chaotic brain craves order I decided I’d come up with some sort of system anyone can follow to help them share their family stories. It is still a work in progress but I think it is a good start.

D – decide

O – organize

A – analyze

B – build

L – link

E – evaluate

Decide: the very first step is to decide you want to do a story project and the decide who you want to do it about or what story you want to develop and share. What do you want to do with this project?

Organize: the next step is to organize. This step will focus on the what you already know and what you already have in the way of documents and images etc. that might help you will the story project you are working on.

Analyze: in this step you want to really look hard at your goal. What do you need to do? Do you have all the information you need? What else do you need and where might you find it? What do you need to learn to complete this project? Plan your project out in as much detail as you can and give yourself deadlines along the way.

Build: do the work, follow the plan, keep on moving forward. Keep your purpose in mind and work past any obstacles that get in your way.

Link: share your story project with as many people as you can in as many ways as you can.

Evaluate: the good, the bad and the ugly. What would you do the same if you had to do it all again, what would you do different. Then armed with your new knowledge start the process over with a new story project.

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So what does this all mean? I’ll need to restructure my blog to show the DOABLE approach with the goal in mind that anyone can come here and find what they need to get started or keep moving forward with their own family story projects. Hey, I think this whole DOABLE approach might work for this too. I’ve decided on a new vision for my blog. Next step is to organize what I already have on here with the DOABLE approach in mind. Then I will  analyze what is missing and make a plan for how to fill it in. While I’m working through the DOABLE steps I can learn more about how to improve it too! I’m really excited about my new goal.

How about join me on this journey? Start with step one, decide on a family story project (or even something else) that you want to do and we can test out my DOABLE approach together.

Geneaquilts

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I came across this new (at least to me) way to visualize complex family trees. It looks very interesting. I’d love to put my puppies pedigrees in here to better see their relationships. All of them have at least one common ancestor in less than five generations. I’ve always wanted a way to visualize their relationships better. I think this might do it. I’m going to have to try this out soon.

Do you have any experience with Geneaquilts? Do you have any complex relationships in your family tree?

Here is a few links with more information:

Geneaquilts

Trellis Charts

Online Genealogy Newsletter

Book of the Week – visions of key west

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With my dad’s history and Key West on my mind, I went looking for this weeks book and I found “visions of key west – the folk art of ronny bailey” by Ronny and Stephanie Bailey. Here is what he said about his book:

This book presents a unique style of Folk Art. Ronny recycles salvaged wood and tin from century old Key West houses into miniature replicas of these same old houses. These 3-d houses fool the eye. Thru Ronny’s use of the original patina on his salvaged materials and great detail it is hard to tell what is a real house and what is his miniature reproduction.

I love his work. It is a wonderful way to keep the history of Key West and the lifestyle of the past. His sculptures are amazing. For more on Ronny Bailey click on the links below.

http://artid.com/members/rbailey

http://keywestproperties.blogspot.com/2011/01/ronny-bailey-key-west-artist.html

Do you or your family have folk art like Ronny’s that reflects the history and stories of your family? My grandma learned to paint in her later years. She mostly did landscapes and still lifes. Not sure if that qualifies but it shows me that I have creativity in my roots.

 

Birthday Traditions

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lighting mom's 90th birthday cake

Iris’s 90th Birthday Party video

With my mind being on birthdays recently I started thinking about birthday traditions. A Google search brings up lots of hits on traditions for kids but not so many for grown-ups. As I think back in my life and can see how easy it is to let birthdays slip by without doing much to really celebrate the day. Some people are great at making sure they have fun celebrations in their life. Some families have well-developed birthday traditions. My family isn’t one of them. So this is an area I could use some work on. Maybe it comes from my family culture. My mom is very practical and recently my dad said that he didn’t know how to celebrate. It seems to me that birthday traditions don’t necessarily need to be fancy or expensive but it takes planning and effort to make sure they become traditions. I also think that sometimes birthday traditions need to evolve to meet the families changing needs.

Last year I had lots of fun celebrating by birthday 50 times during the year. I want to do more in the coming years to develop some good adult birthday traditions. With my birthday coming up in May it is time to start thinking about some new traditions. Do you have any suggestions? What birthday traditions do you have or wish to start with your family?

 

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Book of the Week – Birthday Boy

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Since birthdays have been on my mind, I decided to look for a book this week about birthdays. When I found “Birthday Boy” by Tom and Marianne O’Connell, I couldn’t resist choosing it. Here is what the authors have to say about their book:

Marianne and Tom love celebrating all holidays and Skippy’s birthdays were always the best! Skippy partied at home in Sausalito, the “fake” house next door, at his beach house in Pajaro Dunes and Las Vegas.

Skippy biggest birthday was his 10th and he enjoyed it with 35 of his canine pals and their families. Marianne and Tom rented the Marin Humane Society dog park and Skippy worked the crowd like the champ he knew he was. The park’s life size bronze statue of Skippy only added to the festivities.

Tom and Marianne hoped and dreamed Skippy would live to be 17 but sadly that didn’t happen. But for every dog they say there is an angel and you can be sure Skippy and his angel will paint the town every October 21st for all the years to come.

Even if you aren’t into dogs this book has some great ideas that can be applies to other projects. I really like how each year lists some important events in the world and in Skippy’s life. It is amazing how a few photos and two short paragraphs for each year can tell so much about what is important. Even applied to a life history this approach would make a very doable history project.

Take a few moments and ask yourself if you have a project that this format would work well for. I bet most of us do. I’ve just thought of one. I want to put together a book for the dogs that we’ve raised when they retire. This would be a good way to do that. I know, another dog project, maybe that isn’t such a great example but I do think it would work well. Hopefully it will be many more years before any of our pups retire. But I could start each of their books now and add to them each year on either their birthdays or the anniversary of their graduation. Then they would be ready when retirement comes around.

Have you thought of a project? I’d love to hear about your ideas. Maybe your ideas will inspire someone else too.

Photo Birthday Card Book – template

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lighting mom's 90th birthday cake

lighting the birthday cake

Remember last week’s book of the week, “face BOOK“? Well it inspired me to take photos at my mom’s 90th birthday with the plan to put together a birthday card in the form of a book very much like “face Book”. I set up a spot at the party to take photos of all the guests. I brought a notebook for the guest to write a short message with a marker. I’ve set up a template for the book and now I just need to drop the photos in place. It is going to be a wonderful memento of my mom’s 90th birthday party.

If you would like the InDesign template for a 7×7 blurb book you can download it from my dropbox for personal use. These are fully editable templates from InDesign CS6. You can change the colors and text as you would like.

Celebrating Nine Decades Pages Template

Celebrating Nine Decades Cover Template

I’ll post a preview of the finished book soon.

Related articles

Book of the Week – face Book

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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?

Last day of RootsTech

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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

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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

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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.