Saving Memories Forever Announces New Partnerships

I received the following email from Saving Memories Forever.  Sounds like great partnerships, especially with Kim Weitkamp.

---

Saving Memories Forever Announces Strategic Partnerships with APPO and Kim Weitkamp

July 2, 2013 – St. Louis, Missouri. Saving Memories Forever, a dynamic online way to create and preserve family memories, is pleased to announce its new alliances with two new partners: the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) and Kim Weitkamp. Both APPO and Kim are well known in their respective fields and are committed to providing their customers with new ways of preserving family stories.

Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO)

Saving Memories Forever is proud to announce that it has been selected as a partner by the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO). As stated on its Partnership page at its website, APPO “continually researches, identifies and partners with the best in the industry to ensure our customers and members have access to the most updated and highest quality service and tools available today.” We’re pleased to be working with individual APPO consultants in offering their clients a new way to record family stories that help bring photographs and other family mementos to life.  See http://www.appo.org/Strategic-Partners for more information.

Kim Weitkamp

We are excited to announce a new partnership with Kim Weitkamp, nationally-known storyteller and speaker. Kim has been brought on as the exclusive storyteller for Saving Memories Forever and will be providing articles, blog tips and audio storytelling tips for the Saving Memories Forever application. Click here to visit Kim’s content at the Saving Memories Forever website - see and hear Kim's quick tips for gathering your family stories. Also visit Kim’s website at http://www.kimweitkamp.com/ and just try to keep up with all her great projects and offerings!

Harvey Baker, co-founder of Saving Memories Forever states, “We’re excited to be working with the consultants at APPO as well as fantastic storyteller Kim Weitkamp. Saving Memories Forever recognizes that there is more than one approach to telling a good family story. Some use family photos to inspire while others try to capture the oral history they remember being shared during family reunions and events. With the help of our new partners, Saving Memories Forever will find the inspiration they need to get started in sharing family histories – one story at a time.”

About Saving Memories Forever

Saving Memories Forever™ provides a new online system to not only create and preserve family memories, but also build legacies through audio recordings. Each subscriber has a dedicated area on the site to upload and manage their recordings. Recordings on the SMF website are categorized, private, secure, and permission based. The basic package is free. Subscriptions with many additional features are offered at just $3.99 per month. A new zipfile feature gives users the option of backing-up their stories at home. A how-to-video provides step-by-step instructions. For additional information visit http://SavingMemoriesForever.com.

Mashable Highlighted 2 Storytelling Apps This Week

It’s so great to see family history in the mainstream.  And for Mashable, a technology blog, to highlight, not one, but two apps related to family history is unbelievable!  What’s better is that I personally had not heard of one of the apps.  In case you missed the posts, here they are:

• ‘StoryWorth’ Records Family Memories to Connect Generations
• Capture and Share Your Life Story Online With StoryPress App

StoryPress: Big News!

I received the following press release from StoryPress and thought I’d pass it along to my readers.  Also note that during the RootsTech 2013 conference, DearMYRTLE spoke with Mike Davis about StoryPress. You can watch the five-minute interview here.

---

AUSTIN, TX - Everyone has an important story to tell, and the free StoryPress app lets you easily save these stories to share with future generations. Since the v1 launch in December 2012, thousands have already downloaded.

Stories are not traditionally thought of as something that can be easily saved and shared. Most are never written down, and are too often forgotten. Use the free StoryPress app to capture your own personal history, or tell a loved one about it – we designed it to be unbelievably easy to use, even for seniors.

There is an authenticity in someone’s own voice that transcends time and carries more weight than any other element, and StoryPress is here to capture these moments – your favorite memories, your successes, and your funny stories – and let you share them with your loved ones.

The user can customize a cover, then either freely talk or choose a topic and be interviewed by our program. (Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.) Then the software automatically turns the audio recordings into an audio story permanently saved on our cloud.

Kickstarter Campaign

A 30-day Kickstarter campaign starting April 1 hopes to raise $15,000 to fund development of v2, which will integrate photos and music into completed audio stories.

Tell It Again – See the RootsTech Session Recording NOW

All I can say is, wow!  Kim Weitkamp gave a fantastic presentation today at the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The presentation, Tell It Again, was streamed live via the internet and had a lot of buzz on Twitter. 

Kim is an excellent storyteller; I was truly fascinated (and it takes a lot to fascinate me!).  Instead of lecturing and telling you why you should tell your stories or how to tell them, she used the power of storytelling to illustrate her points.

It’s hard to explain here in writing, you just have to go and watch the recording for yourself.  You can access the recording of the session here or by clicking the image above.  I’m sure you will walk away with the motivation to tell your stories!

It really is a must-see!

Writing-Related Presentations at RootsTech 2013

RootTech 2013 will be held March 21-23, 2013 in Salt Lake City.  Over those three days, attendees will have plenty of lecture sessions to choose from.  I though I’d share a list of presentations that may be of interest to you that relate to writing your family history.  I’ve also included presentations related to sharing your family stories in ways other than writing.

And since RootsTech has incorporated Story@Home into their conference, there are plenty of offerings to go around.  I’m sure you’ll find a few that will suit your fancy.

Thursday, March 21

• Digital Recording Tools for the Family Historian, Nancy & Biff Barnes
• The Timeline Grid: Visualizing a Family Through Time, Kathryn Grant
• Recording and Preserving Family Stories Using Your Hand-held IPad, IPhone, IPod, or Android Devices, Susan Kitchens
• Transform Your Note-taking and Remember Everything With Evernote, Tonia Kendrick
• Life Is in the Details, Leigh Anne Wilkes
• Mapping Ancestral Migration Trails and Their Stories, Laura Prescott

Friday, March 22

• Interest in Pinterest for Family History, Valerie Elkins
• Lab: Publishing, Shantal Park
• The Blog Blitz: Create Your Own Genealogy Blog in One Session Lab, Lisa Louise Cooke
• Being Present in Your Own Story, Ken Craig
• Do Your E-Book Right: Self-Publishing Secrets for the Family Historian, Lisa Alzo
• Turn Google Street View Into a Time Machine: HistoryPin and WhatWasThere, Amy Johnson Crow
• Wikis for Genealogists, Thomas MacEntee

Saturday, March 23

• Creative and Fun Ways to Cherish Your FamilyHistory, Valerie Elkins
• Storytelling With Kids, Amy Price
• Family History Writing Made Easier: Cloud-based Tools Every Genealogist Can Use, Lisa Alzo
• Taking Your Family History Electronic - Creating Your Own Amazing Ebook, Luana Darby
• Digital Storytelling: Beyond Bullet Points, Denise Barrett Olson
• 365 Days of Story Prompts, Jenny Eckton
• Writing for a Publisher, Christopher Robbins
• Publish Your Genealogy Online, Laura Prescott
• Authentically Telling Your Story, Stephanie Sorenson
• Live Your Stories, Increase Your Joy, Nicole Carpenter

Start a New Christmas Tradition

There’s always reminiscing at Christmas time, especially during family gatherings.  Why not start a more “formal” tradition and collect these stories to preserve your family’s history.  Here are some ideas:

• Over dinner, have everyone share a story about their favorite past Christmas.
  
• If you take turns opening presents, have each person share a story about a living family member before they begin opening their presents.
  
• Gather in front of the fireplace, cup of hot chocolate in hand, and share memories of family members who have passed on.

Be sure to record these stories, either with a digital voice recorder (or a tape recorder), a video recorder, or simply write them in a notebook.  You could even make gifts out of the stories for the following Christmas…get creative!

And although this post was written specifically for the Christmas holiday, you could do this at other holidays, such as Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Easter, and birthdays.  You could also do this at family reunions or a family BBQ in the summertime.

Make it an annual tradition, one that will stay in the family for generation to come!