Saving Memories Forever Announces New Partnerships

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

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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.

Writing-Related Sessions at FGS 2013

The Federation of Genealogical Societies 2013 Conference will be held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from August 21-24, 2013.  There are just a few days left to save $50 on the full-conference registration (early-bird rate ends July 1).

There are so many sessions available, covering a wide array of topics.  Following are some of the writing-related sessions, many of which I will be attending!  I’ve also thrown in a few preservation topics since many times, we incorporates photos, documents, and artifacts into our stories.

Date/Time (Eastern)	Session	Speaker
Wednesday, August 21 11 AM	Printed vs. Online Publishing for Societies [although this is targeted at societies, I have seen this lecture and Donna presents wonderful information you can use related to your own work]	Donna M. Moughty
Thursday, August 22 5 PM	Research Reports for Ourselves: More Than Just a Research Log	Paula Stuart-Warren
Friday, August 23 11 AM	Image Organization Made Easy	Eric C. M. Basir
Friday, August 23 3:30 PM	Workshop – Scanning+Image+ Editing+Placement [currently full]	Eric C. M. Basir
Saturday, August 24 9:30 AM	Creating Family Histories for Future Generations	Thomas W. Jones
Saturday, August 24 11 AM	Scanning 101	Eric C. M. Basir
Saturday, August 24 11 AM	It Takes a Human: Genealogists and Writing	Jeanne Larzalere Bloom
Saturday, August 24 2 PM	Speak, Write and Publish Safely: Staying Out of Copyright Trouble	Judy G. Russell
Saturday, August 24 3:30 PM	The Rest of the Story: Using Manuscripts to Create a Family History	Laura G. Prescott
Saturday, August 24 5 PM	Family History Writing Made Easier: Cloud-based Tools Every Genealogist Can Use	Lisa A. Alzo

The entire schedule can be found on the FGS Conference website.

Don’t forget, the early-bird rate ends July 1, so hurry on over and register today!

Writing-Related Sessions at Jamboree 2013

The Southern California Genealogical Society' Jamboree will be held in Burbank, California, from June 7-9, with a pre-conference event on June 6. 

Over 100 sessions are scheduled over the three-day conference, and there are plenty of writing- and storytelling-related sessions (I was thrilled to see such a selection!!).  I also threw in a few sessions on the preservation of artifacts, since many times, we incorporates these elements into our stories.

Date/Time	Session	Speaker
Friday, June 7 3:00 PM	Evidence from Material Culture: Using Artifacts in Research and Writing about Ancestors	John Philip Colletta
Friday, June 7 4:30 PM	Recording, Preserving, and Sharing Your Family’s Oral History	Thomas MacEntee
Saturday, June 8 8:30 AM	RootsMagic Demo, Publishing Your Family Online	Bruce Buzbee
Saturday, June 8 8:30 AM	Preserving Digital Files: A Step-by-Step Guide	D. Joshua Taylor
Saturday, June 8 2:00 PM	Turning Genealogy into Family History: Creating Stories from Stats	Jean Wilcox Hibben
Saturday, June 8 3:30 PM	Demo, Family Chartmasters: Beyond Scotch Tape: Charts to Fascinate Your Family	Janet Hvorka
Sunday, June 9 8:30 AM	Demo, Personal Historian 2: New Tools to Write Your Life	Bruce Buzbee
Sunday, June 9 10:00 AM	Creating a Custom Photo-History Book	Richard Humphrey
Sunday, June 9 10:00 AM	Paper or Plastic? Preserving Keepsakes Workshop	Denise Levenick
Sunday, June 9 1:00 PM	The Write Stuff: Using Nonfiction Writing Techniques to Write a Better Family History	Lisa Alzo
Sunday, June 9 2:30 PM	Demo, Use Legacy Family Tree to Create Shareable CDs, Books, Charts and More	Geoff Rasmussen

Not registered yet?  Early bird registration end on April 30, so hurry over and register today!

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

13 Ways to Tell Your Ancestor Stories – Book Blog Tour

Dr. Bill (William L.) Smith recently released the second edition of his book 13 Ways to Tell Your Ancestor Stories, which is available at both Amazon and Lulu.  As part of this launch, Dr. Bill organized a Book Blog Tour where various bloggers will feature the book with either a review, interview, or author guest post.  Today it’s my turn to present a review of the book.

Do you have family history and ancestor stories collected and researched?  Do you want to share them and tell your stories, but don't know how or what venue to use?  This book has your answer.

Preservation and interpretation of your ancestor stories will occur most effectively if you use multiple approaches to telling your ancestor stories to your family and interested others. Showing you how to this is the purpose of this book.

The content of you telling of ancestor stories includes your life as well as the lives of your two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents, etc., and their siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. Ancestor stories include the social context in which these folks lived, their clothes, their farms or ranches, their religion (or not), their occupations, their loves and antagonisms, their education (or not), their friends and neighbors, and the mundane details of their daily lives.

13 sections suggest a variety of ways to tell your ancestor stories; each section has a Planning Worksheet to assist you in doing it most effectively.

The main point of 13 Ways is to encourage people to tell their stories, regardless of how this is actually done. Oftentimes, people want to share their stories, but they do not know where to start, what tools/technologies/media are available, or what option(s) work best for their particular goal(s).  This book is broken up into 13 chapters, each presenting a different idea that can be used to tell your family stories.

You probably have heard of or seen each of these mediums in everyday life.  But you may not have thought about how they could be applied to family history and sharing your family stories.  13 Ways puts some perspective around this and lends some ideas in the context of family history.

At the end of each chapter, the author offers up some pros and cons, as well as additional resources.  There is also a planning worksheet for each chapter to help you get started and determine if the idea is a viable option for you.

To be clear, this book is a high-level introduction to various tools/technologies/media to help you tell your family stories.  It is not necessarily an instructional guide on how to implement each type of project, although additional resources are provided to point you in the right direction.  Think of this book as an inspirational tool to get you thinking about how you might go about sharing your family stories.  I myself found some motivation to explore some options I had not previously considered for sharing my family stories.  Perhaps you will find the same motivation—remember, it is really about telling the story.

For a chance to win a PDF version of the book, visit:

• Anglers Rest (contest ends April 3)
• Trials and Tribulations of a Self-Taught Family Historian (contest ends April 6)

13 Ways to Tell Your Ancestor Stories.  By Dr. Bill (William L. Smith).  Published by Lulu, 2013.  ISBN 978-1-300-79789-0.  77 pp.  Appendix, worksheets.  Paperback.

About Dr. Bill:  "Dr. Bill enjoys telling and sharing ancestor stories and related family history social context. He has published four family histories, to date, with more in progress.  For the latest on Dr. Bill, his writings, and stories, see his complementary blog Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories.

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Disclaimer:  I was provided a complimentary PDF version of this book as part of my participation in the Book Blog Tour.

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.

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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.

Writing-Related Sessions at NGS 2013

The National Genealogical Society Family History Conference will be held in Las Vegas, May 8-11, 2013.  Over the course of four days, genealogy experts will come together and speak on a variety of topics from records to technology to methodology and everything in between.  And, as always, there are some sessions related to writing and sharing stories/research that I thought I’d highlight for my readers.

Date/Time	Session	Speaker
Wednesday, May 8 2:30 PM	Genealogical Writing Made Easier with Scrivener	Kimberly T. Powell
Friday, May 10 4:00 PM	Publish Your Genealogy Online	Laura Prescott
Saturday, May 11 9:30 AM	ePublishing	Barbara Ann Renick
Saturday, May 11 9:30 AM	Magnifying Glass, Wide-Angle Lens, or Telescope? Charts to Visualize and Share Your Family Tree	Janet Hovorka
Saturday, May 11 11:00 AM	Go Beyond Words: Dress Up Your Family History Publications	Barbara A. H. Nuehring
Saturday, May 11 2:30 PM	Who Will Read Your Family History? Writing for Your Audience	Linda Coffin
Saturday, May 11 4:00 PM	Breaking into Magazines: From Idea to Query to Success	Leslie Albrecht Huber

Not registered for the conference yet?  There’s still time, but hurry, pre-registration ends April 22, 2013.  Registration and additional conference details can be found here.

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!

Story@Home Instagram Photo Contest

Story@Home is a new addition to RootsTech this year.  Story@Home offers class sessions with award-winning storytellers, performers, and speakers to help attendees explore ways to use the power of story to connect with their family.  You can learn more about Story@Home on the RootsTech Conference website.

Story@Home is running an Instagram Photo Contest.  Here are the contest details:

Prize – Story@Home + Getting Started pass ($79 value), which is access to all Story@Home classes and Getting Started classes all three days of RootsTech 2013.

Contest Dates – February 20th-24th

How to Enter – Snap a picture you think tells a story.  Examples include family, friends, places, events, mementos—anything that has meaning for you.  Upload the photo to Instagram and share with Story@Home what story your photo tells. Include the hashtags #tellyourstory and #storyathome.

The winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced on the Story@Home Facebook page Monday, February 25, 2013. "Like" Story@Home on Facebook to find out if you've won.

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

4 Reasons to Convert Your Genealogy Research Into Writing

Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is a daunting task for some people.  But taking the time to turn your genealogy research into something more than facts in a database can be very rewarding and beneficial to your research endeavor.

Here are four reasons you should convert your genealogy research into writing:

1. Organize & Analyze – Writing out your genealogy research provides a means to organize your research in order to perform a thorough analysis.  In doing so, you are able to find gaps in your research (from missing records or events, to having used only secondary sources) and recognize when something doesn’t fit (a child born after a mother died, or a melding of two people into one, for example).
2. Prove It – Once you’re satisfied with your analysis and conclusions, you can document them as proof arguments/summaries to defend your research.  Proof arguments also help you keep track of your conclusions and why you reached them in the first place.
3. Solve Another Problem – Sometimes when you write about the research process or records you used for one person, you may realize the same strategies can be applied to solve other mysteries in your family tree.
4. Tell a Story – Let’s face it, our non-genealogy family and friends won’t get much from a database file, family group sheet, or pedigree chart.  But putting your research in written form, with some narrative and social context…now that they can sink their teeth into.  Plus, it helps you as the researcher see your family as more than just names and dates.

Give the Gift of Family History

One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much over here is because I’ve been working on some gift projects for the upcoming holiday season.  And I’ve been having way too much fun with my Flip-Pal™ Mobile Scanner (I received the product as part of my commitment to the Simple Gifts Blog Hop).

Part of this Simple Gifts gig is to write about simple gifts that you can make while using your Flip-Pal scanner.  I just finished writing a post about creating a digital scrapbook and thought it would be nice to share it with the readers of this blog:  Flip-Pal™ Simple Gifts Blog Hop – Digital Scrapbook.

Start Writing Your Life Stories – A Free Webinar from FTU

Family Tree University is offering a free webinar entitled Start Writing Your Life Stories, “where Sunny Jane Morton, author of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal For Collecting Your Stories, shares tips and ideas for capturing the stories of a lifetime—whether they’re your own or those of a loved one.”

The one-hour on-demand webinar can be accessed here.

The Future of Memories

Denis Barrett Olson put together a digital book that offers up advice and ideas for digitally publishing your family stories.  The Future of Memories “introduces you to these new technologies and shows you how to take advantage of the opportunities they offer to produce quality histories at a reasonable price.”

Currently, you can purchase the book for $2.99 in PDF format through Scribd or as an Kindle eBook through Amazon.  eBook versions for iBook and Nook will be available soon.

4 Resources for Writing Your Family History

Following are four great resources that can assist you in writing your family history.

You Can Write Your Family History

A great book to set you on your course is You Can Write Your Family History, by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack.  One of the questions I struggle with the most is answered in this book:  How much research is enough?  Sharon also defines the various types of family histories and provides creative strategies for the writing process.  This book can be purchased on Amazon for under $20.

Producing a Quality Family History

Patricia Law Hatcher gets into the nitty-gritty of writing and publishing a book in Producing a Quality Family History.  While Patricia does discuss the writing aspect, the most valuable piece of her book is the several chapter dedicated to putting the book together in terms of what elements to include, the layout and design of the book, and publishing considerations.  I’m glad I got this book awhile ago since it appears to be out of print; it’s certainly worth checking to see if your local library or genealogical society has a copy.

Ready, Set, Write! Share Your Family’s Story

Lisa Alzo did a great webinar in June called Ready, Set, Write! Share Your Family’s Story.  The webinar was done through Legacy Family Tree.  Lisa’s presentation was very informative and extremely inspirational.  A 13 minute preview is available here.  You can also purchase the CD from this link as well; it’s worth the $9.95 price tag!

For All Time:  A Complete Guide to Writing Your Family History

For All Time:  A Complete Guide to Writing Your Family History, by Charley Kempthorne takes a different approach than the previously mentioned books.  Charley really focuses on the writing and shows you how to make the story interesting.  He gives a lot of examples and even has small challenges throughout the book to put what you’ve learned into practice.  There are also chapters on the types of family histories and publishing.  This book can be purchased on Amazon for under $15.