Tag Archives: family stories

StoryCorps – Great Questions

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  • What was the happiest moment of your life?
  • What are you most proud of?
  • What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?
  • What is your earliest memory?
  • How would you like to be remembered?

Have you every visited StoryCorps.org? It is a great site dedicated to recording everyone’s story. One of their resources is list of great questions to help uncovering someones story. You can use their Question Generator tool to help you create a list of questions to take to your StoryCorps interview. Then you can print the customized list or have it emailed to you. It takes about 15 minutes and it helps you to pick areas to cover in your interview. They also have list of questions that you can just look at and use or get inspiration from. Here are the basic areas of questions:

As we were driving home from taking Bill’s mom out to eat for her birthday it occurred to me that maybe I should start asking her some questions about her life to start a history for her. I was thinking of doing it by email. Do you have someone who you would like to interview about their life and their story?

 

A Little Bittle of Summer

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image from Blurb.com

I came across this writing exercise from Blurb’s August Newsletter today and wanted to share it here. They suggest writing about your summer but you could also use this approach on any subject or person you having been wanting to do a story project about.

Here’s a brand-new writing exercise to help you capture the summer of 2013 and inspire a bit of a creative energy. As the season fades and we head indoors to hibernate for the winter, this exercise can help you get the most from your memories and make sure they’re not lost forever.

Visual references can be powerful catalysts for writing; photographs, illustrations, and visuals can often help to overcome writer’s block. A train or bus ticket, a menu, a business card, an eye-catching flyer—these are just a few examples of the visual references we collect as we move around in the world. When combined with the images we deliberately record with our cameras, these accidental souvenirs can serve as powerful reminders of particular moments in time.

Using visual cues like these in your writing exercises is a great way to get started on a book—or to just ignite the spark that gets your creative fire burning.

  • Select several of your most treasured objects, accidental souvenirs, and images from your summer activities.
  • Play with some ideas. Will this piece of writing document an event or set of events? Is it a poem, a short story, or something else? Decide on your approach, process, and genre.
  • Write for a fixed amount of time, say 20 to 30 minutes, and see where it takes you. Repeat until you feel you’ve captured what’s in your head on the page (or screen).
  • Refine the results. Keep editing and refining until you’re satisfied with the words and then dive straight into making your book. Now is the time to weave in your visual cues. Get your photographs, drawings, artifacts—whatever inspired you—into digital format and import them into your book project.
  • Explore different layouts to create the best combinations of your words and images

It may take it a week or two—or if you’re incredibly efficient, an hour or two—but once your Summer 2013 book is finished you’ll have secured some special memories in print. (You can also create an ebook version in a flash.) After all, as Henry David Thoreau once said, “One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.”

Now I just need to carve out a few minutes and try this exercise. It’s a good friend’s daughter passed away and they are asking for memories to put together for her brand new baby so that he will know about his mother. This would be a great things to do for that project.

Are you up to a writing challenge too? If I can do it so can you. Writing is one of my big mental blocks.

 

RootsTech 2014 – registration now open

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Registration is now open for RootsTech 2014, which will be held February 6­-8, 2014 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. This annual family history conference, hosted by FamilySearch, is a unique global event where people of all ages learn to discover and share their family stories and connections through technology. Over the past three years, RootsTech has grown in popularity with attendees to become the largest family history event in the United States!

Whether attendees are just beginning their family history, an avid hobbyist, or an experienced researcher, RootsTech has something for everyone:

  • Classes and Computer Labs —Over 200 classes and computer labs taught by knowledgeable experts and enthusiasts in family history.
  • Getting Started Track —A track of over 30 classes designed to help beginners start their family tree. Passes start at only $19.
  • Developer Day —A preconference event on Wednesday, February 5, for developers to innovate and collaborate with other engineers and family history industry experts.
  • Expo Hall —A huge expo with over 100 informative vendors and interactive booths where attendees can record a family story, scan a book or photo, or create a visual family tree.
  • Family Discovery Day —New! A day of free inspirational classes for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to learn more about strengthening family relationships across generations through family history.

Pass Pricing and Discounts

Various pass options are available, with pricing set to make RootsTech an affordable experience. Early Bird pricing discounts for a Full Access Pass ($159) and a Getting Started Pass ($39) are available until January 6, 2014.

An additional $20 discount is available for a limited time. Attendees can get a Full Access Pass for just $139 simply by using the promotional code RT14EXCLSV before September 9, 2013.

To get more information and register, visit rootstech.org.

 

Ancestry by Heir Line

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What a fun video about family history. At first it was rather hum-drum but then it takes a fun twist so don’t give up.

 

Ancestry by Heir Line's avatarAncestry by Heir Line - Blog Page

The only Heir Line that whisks you away into your past 🙂

Visit www.heir-line.co.uk for more information about our professional, personalised services.

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Have a Workflow Plan

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One of the important things in planning a story project is the workflow. This in an area that I still need lots of work and disciple. Even though I know that I should get the text done for a book project before I start all the other stuff, I keep finding myself moving forward with the design and layout when the text isn’t done. I’ve made it all work out in the end but I’m sure it would be faster and probably more effective too if I had followed a better workflow instead of jumping ahead.

So my tip for the day is figure out what needs to be done for your story project and the order it needs to be done in. Somethings can happen in parallel because they aren’t dependent upon each other. But other things need to wait until the right time in the project. My goal is to do a better job of planning my workflow and then actually stick to the plan. I’ll report back here to let you know how I do.DOABLE Sidebar A

Here is a post from a year or so ago about Workflow for publishing with Adobe Creative Suite. There is some good information here.

Planning an Oral History Project

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I’m finally admitting to myself that my allergies have spawned a cold, but I don’t want to miss another post of doing story projects. So here is a link to some detailed information on doing an oral history project on the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center.

Here is a brief outline of the planning part:

  1. Determine the goals of the project.
  2. Learn about the work that is required for a typical oral history project.
  3. Determine the scope of the project.
  4. Conduct preliminary research.
  5. Determine who will work on the project.
  6. Determine what will happen to the recordings and other documentary materials after the project comes to an end.
  7. Create a release form.
  8. Determine what equipment, supplies and other resources are needed.
  9. Develop a timetable for the project.
  10. Develop a budget.
  11. Identify sources of funds.
  12. Publicity.

Off to Girl’s Camp

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I was hoping to get some post done ahead for this week but I didn’t even come close to making that happen. I’m heading off to girls camp for the week. It is for girls 12 to 18 from our church congregation. I’m co-director again this year and I think we are ready but there are lots of little things that are still a bit up in the air. I’m trying to have the attitude that I’ve done what I can so now I just have to adjust to things as they present themselves.

On the family story side of things, we have asked the all the girls and leaders to be ready to share a story at camp. It can be from their own lives or their family or a distant ancestor. It is going to be interesting to see how that works out. I hope it will be a powerful thing for everyone. I’ll let you know how it goes when I get back.

Labeling Digital Photos

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I started working on adding metadata to my photos today! I used Adobe Bridge which comes with any of the Creative Suite products. It was pretty slick. You have the ability to set up templates to fill in info that is the same over lots and lots of images. I put information in the template like contact info and copyright stuff. Next step was the keywords. Bridge has a hierarchical method of organizing keywords with keywords and sub-keywords. It already had keywords like people, places and events. I added dogs and things as additional keywords so far. Under dogs I put the names of all the puppies we have raised. Then I had some photos of other puppies in training, like Redding that we puppy sat a few weeks ago. I put him as a sub-keyword under Dune. I’m not sure if that is the right way to handle it but that what I’m doing for now. In Bridge you can select a whole bunch of photos that need the same keywords and add them all at the same time.

I found a really detailed article about labeling digital photos by Ken Watson. It talks all about the technical stuff and different software that helps with the metadata and metadata standards. It has very good reference information.

One thing I was disappointed about was that Windows xp doesn’t show all the metadata information that I added to my photos when you right-click on the image and pull up properties. You can add metadata in the fields that Windows provides under properties but it would be a very slow task and it doesn’t follow XMP standards (read Ken Watson’s article if you don’t know what that is). I’m pretty sure that newer operating systems do a better job on that score.

One disappointment is that Windows xp can’t see the all the metadata I added, like the keywords. But I’m happy to have gotten started on adding metadata to my photos. Tons more to do. A goal I’m making now is to add metadata as I save new photos to my machine. At least then I won’t be loosing more ground.DOABLE Sidebar O

“My Grandma Mary” on Amazon!

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I just checked on Amazon and “My Grandma Mary” is there and available for sale! It is amazing to see it there for real. I Just had to share this milestone in family stories here. Plus we got it done by Pioneer Day, which is July 24th. The day that Brigham Young and the first batch of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. I seems like a fitting day to complete this step of my journey to learn about Mary Taylor and share her story.