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Tell Your Story Productions

Stories are Your Heritage and Your Legacy

Category: Documenting

Preserve and Share Life Legacy with a Life Vault

November 13, 2022 /
Publish a Life Vault

What is a Life Vault, you are likely asking?

I have been helping people collect, create, and publish stories, concerts, projects, and products for many decades.

A Life Vault is a collection of anything a person wants to preserve and share about their life.

It could be family stories and history.

It could be a business story, like Disney, or Ben and Jerry’s. These companies are very good at sharing their stories.

Marketing legends like Dan Kennedy talk about releasing things from their substantial Business Vault. Or selling access to their Business Vault.

I can help you build and publish your own Life Vault.

The Rocket Norton Vault

I have worked with Vancouver musician, author, and course creator Rocket Norton for many decades. He was the drummer in bands like The Seeds of Time, PRiSM, The Rocket Norton Band, H.U.N.N., and more.

I have helped him create, publish, and promote a tremendous amount of content and projects over the years, including his book Rocket Norton: Lost In Space which takes us through his musical adventures with many of the top Vancouver area and Canadian musicians that are still heard on Classic Rock stations today.

His recent F**K Cancer Benefit Concert featured members of Loverboy, Trooper, Chilliwack, Headpins, Streetheart, The Legendary Powdered Blues Band, Lee Aaron, Nick Guilder, and more. The concert raised nearly $200K for the BC Cancer Foundation.

The Rocket Norton Vault contains a growing collection of rare content, including Rocket Norton: Lost In Space, three other books, concert video clips, rare audio recordings, photos, and the entire How to Coach Baseball to Kids video course.

Learn more at https://www.rocketnorton.com/

Why You May Want To Publish A Vault

Even if you do not see a Life Vault for yourself, you may want to create one for a loved one or your family as a way to preserve and share stories and heritage—a way to leave a legacy.

The process of collecting content and stories can be fun and enlightening in itself.

My father and mother have both passed. Our four siblings collectively have a spotty outline of our father’s life with some mysteries that could be the basis of a novel someday.

I have a vague recollection that my father rode the rails during The Great Depression. Perhaps my mother told me that. None of my siblings ever heard anything about that.

Sometimes we don’t know much about the people who are in our lives.

A Life Vault is a way to discover, preserve, and share their stories and accomplishments.

What Can Go In The Vault?

I create multimedia vaults that can contain almost anything digital, including:

  • Text
  • Images
  • Videos
  • eBooks
  • Courses
  • Links to resources like mobile apps and other assets.

Vault Content Acquisition and Creation

There are various ways of assembling content, including:

  • Collecting existing assets and organizing.
  • Conducting interviews in person or online.
  • Collecting stories with a computer, video camera, or smartphone.
  • Researching and writing stories and other content.

One of the first steps is to create a content roadmap for the Life Vault and a plan for how to assemble or create each piece.

Ways to Publish a Life Vault

I use Kartra Memberships and WordPress to publish Life Vaults.

The Rocket Norton Vault is in a Kartra Membership because it supports all of the content we want to include, we are charging for access, and we may want to protect some of the content with special access levels.

Other course publishing platforms could work for you. WordPress and other website builders can work for public information. There are pros and cons for each platform.

I would be glad to discuss options with you. Please book an appointment at https://www.gregdixon.net/

How I Can Help You Publish a Vault

I am working on a book and an online course for people who want to build and publish their own Life Vaults.

I can also work with you to plan, build, and publish a Life Vault for you, your loved ones, your family, or your business.

Please send me a note or book an appointment with me at https://www.gregdixon.net/ to discuss if a Life Vault is right for you.

It could be the perfect gift for the holiday season!

Have a Fun Family Photo Party

April 2, 2019 /
Photo by geralt

Okay.

Admit it.

You have sometimes looked at that mountain of boxes of old family photos and thought the D-Word.

Family photos
Who is that?!?

Dumpster

Who would know? Right?

If asked, you would say something like, “‘Geez, I thought those were boxes of old Playboy (Playgirl, Sweet 16, Popular Mechanics, …) magazines you wanted me to dump.’

Still, you will feel like you have a reservation in that special place in hell next to people who commit atrocities or talk in the theatre.

Why Keep Them?

So you can’t just dump the photos, but why keep them?

Here are some of the reasons that may be haunting you:

  • The photos are a record of your life.
  • You have been entrusted to maintain the family heritage and legacy.
  • Ignoring or destroying the photos would dishonour your ancestors.
  • In the age of Ancestry sites and programs, many people would delight to know more about your family members.
  • Everyone has interesting lives and stories worth telling.
  • Some of the photos may have historical value.
  • Many of the photos trigger fun memories.

But I Can’t Store Them Forever!

Yes, just having them take space in your basement or storage unit until left to the next generation won’t fly either.

So you are stuck between a box and a hard place.

You have to do something!

Why not try to make it as fun as possible?

Transform Guilt into Fun!

Have a Fun Family Photo Party

Here are some ideas to turn the drudgery into a fun event for your family.

You can try the suggestions yourself or have us help relieve some of the drudgery and create an entertaining and enlightening experience for you.

Imagine the Party

You and your family members are sitting around a table or reclining in a living room with your favourite beverage in hand.

On a screen (the largest you have available), you are flipping through the scanned and restored photos.

‘Hey, that is Missy Springhorn! she was in my grade one class. She used to blow her nose into her sleave. Yuk!’

‘That is Uncle Bob, I think he lived in Cleaveland and worked as a blacksmith.’

‘That is Grandma and Grampa Gunderson getting married on 1897.’

As you discuss the photos, you can record the session and add titles and descriptions to the photos.

Imagine the Gratitude

You family and friends will love seeing the photos and sharing the stories. They will be glad that you helped make it happen.

What If Your Family Is Spread Around The World?

Zoom is a great way for family and friends from around the world to join the party.

The host of the Zoom session can record the comments and share the screen with the photos.

Your people can join in on a desktop computer, laptop, or mobile device.

Make it a fun family event!

Wait a Minute! There is a Catch!

Yes. There are a few important steps skipped.

How do you transform that mountain of photos into images to view and document at the Fun Family Photo Party?

There is no escaping the fact that it will take some equipment, strategies, and a lot of time to digitize your treasures.

Options For Digitizing Photos

Here are some ways of capturing your photos in digital format for editing and sharing.

  • Do the scanning yourself. You likely have a printer with a scanner built in. Dedicated scanners run from being small and inexpensive to being capable of scanning transparencies and larger images.
  • Take photos of photos permanently stuck in albums or framed on the wall.
  • Hire someone to do the scanning.
  • Have a trusted service do the scanning.

Consider Having a Scanning Party

You might invite your family over to have a scanning party.

Scanning can go quicker if you have someone doing a quick sort and handing the photos to the people running the scanners.

Warning: A few beverages and you might not make much progress on the photos.

Could still be fun, though:-)

How Tell Your Story Productions Can Help

There are a number of ways we can help get your photo party started, starting with free. See Resources For Doing It Yourself below.

Until then, here is how we can help.

Photo Scanning and Organizing Special

We offer a special package where we create a framework for scanning and organizing your photos.

The package includes us scanning your photos, though the framework itself is where most the the magic happens.

The special price is $297 for just the scanning and organizing if you are not yet ready to commit to a Fun Family Photo Party.

See More Information.

Fun Family Photo Party Special Package

We help facilitate your Photo Party from start to finish, including:

  • A Discovery Session with you to see what photos and other materials you have, what you want to achieve, how many family members you want to invite to the party.
  • A Family Photo Party Roadmap that outlines the steps to make the party a success.
  • Setting up a Photo Framework System for collecting and organizing the photos, including:
    • A place on Google Photos where the photos will be stored.
    • Create Google Drive documents for collecting stories and biographical information.
    • Create a Photo Index to list the photos available.
    • Best Practices Guides for labeling and documenting the photos.
  • Scanning and digitizing photos that we can access.
  • Coaching your family members who want to help with scanning. This is perfect if you have family members spread around the world with different sets of photos.
  • Processes for having your photos and possibly video digitized by trusted services.
  • Preliminary organization of the photos in the cloud.
  • Editing, cropping, and restoration of key photos.
  • Planning and Facilitating the Fun Family Photo Party. We will host the party using Zoom.
  • Transcribing the audio from the Zoom recording to collect the names and stories.
  • Update the labels and descriptions with information from the transcription.
  • Make all of the collected photos and information available to family members for continuing the process.
  • Provide sharing links that you can send to friends and family.
  • Provide a Story Production Roadmap to provide some ideas about what you could do next with the photos and stories.

Above all, the end result of preserving and sharing your priceless family photos and stories will be something you will cherish for generations.

Are You Ready to Transform Your Photo Burden to a Fun Photo Party?

We are offering a special price of $597 for a limited number of families. Various payment options are available to make it easy for you.

Let’s talk about creating a fun and lasting experience for your family.

Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special.

You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.

Resources for Doing It Yourself (DIY)

We can’t possible help every family who needs help throwing a Fun Family Photo Party, so here are some resources for doing it yourself.

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Want Us To Make Your Fun Family Story Party Happen?

Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special.
You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.

Free Discovery Session and Story Production Roadmap

March 5, 2019 /
who what where why
What is your story?

Want help deciding what kind of story production is best for you and how to go about creating it?

This is one of our Story Productions

Sign up for a free discovery session where we discuss how to create a personal, family or business story production.

As a free gift, we will provide a written Story Production Roadmap report that you can use to create the story production yourself or as a starting point to have us work with you through the process to deliver a stunning story production to share with your friends and family.

Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap..

Book Discovery Session

Story Production Examples

Here are some of the story projects to consider:

  • Personal Story Production. This could be a biography or profile of you, a friend, or a family member. The end result could be a video shown at a birthday celebration, memorial, or other special occasions. Other media can be shared as part of personal history.
  • Anniversary Story Production. Celebrate your anniversary or that of family and friends with a story production. The video could be played as part of the anniversary celebration and shared with friends and family after. S
  • Family Story Production. Every family has a fascinating history with many juicy stories. We can help you collect and present the history and stories of your family.
  • Business Story Production. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s , and Disney all have stories about their origins and values. You probably can recite the stories of many of these companies yourself. We can help you craft and present the story of your company. What is your business mission?

Story Production Starter Package

Here are the foundation elements of all of our Story Production packages. We help you through the process to create stunning Story Productions.

  1. Story Project Roadmap. We create a project plan to cover the process of collecting, documenting, crafting, and producing the story production.
  2. Collecting Media. We help assemble and document photos, clippings, and other media related to the Story Production.
  3. Media Cleanup and Editing. We restore, crop and correct photos and other media for use in the Story Production.
  4. Cloud Based Assmbly Area. We create a special area for the project where we can review and document the assets that go into the project. Some of the online tools include:
    1. A place for family members to review photos, add names, make notes in order to capture the collective knowledge.
    2. A place to brainstorm connections and stories.
    3. A spreadsheet to collect biographical details.
  5. Interviews. We will conduct a series of interviews with people related to the Story Production. This could be in person with a video camera and audio recorder or over Zoom sessions. Zoom is a great way for people around the world to provide information and stories.
  6. Story Crafting. You may already have a good idea of the story you want to tell. Great! We help you craft the story.
  7. Story Production. We do the editing and assembly to create the Story Production.
  8. Story Publication. We make the story production available to you in the following ways.
    1. Video clip on Vimeo. We can put privacy restrictions on the clip or make it public for easy sharing and embedding.
    2. Multimedia eBook. We create an eBook that can be viewed as a flip book that contains the text, photos, and video of the Story Production.
    3. Custom Sharing Page. We can create a page with the story, embedded video, and photo gallery for easy sharing among family and friends.
    4. USB Thumb Drive. We put the video, photos, and other collected information and media on a thumb drive for your use and as an archive.

The price for the Story Production Starter Package is $997.

We take payments in three installments with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. You can cancel at any time during the process and get a full refund.

Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap.

Book Discovery Session

Additional Options

  • Printed Book Production. We can put to in touch with a book design specialist if you you are interested in adding a high-end printed book to the project.
  • Podcasts. We can consult with your to provide the stories in audio format.
  • Gift Packages. We can design a package to give to interested parties. This could be a custom bound package containing the photos, video, stories, and text with a combination of printed pages and a USB thumb drive.
  • Custom Website. We can create a custom website that features the material and stories collected , such as YouFamily.com.
  • Marketing. In the case of a Business Story Production, we can help you make use of social media and other platforms to get maximum promotional value out of the Story Production.
  • Video of Reunions, Anniversaries, or other Special Events. We can arrange to shoot your event with multiple still and video cameras, providing media for the next Story Production.

Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap.

Book Discovery Session

Live Story Workshops at Your Location

January 4, 2019 /
who what where why

We are available for talks to small groups in the Vancouver, British Columbia area.

Also Vancouver, Washington area, and beyond.

We can talk about various topics related to telling your stories.

Popular Topics

Here are two often requested topics.

Please contact us if you would like us to come talk to your family or group.

info@tellyourstory.productions 
1-833-333-1969 

See:

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Tips for Organizing and Scanning Photos Without Losing Your Mind

December 30, 2018 /
Photo by Sasint

The task before you is formidable.

“Maybe we should climb Mt. Everest Instead, ” asks your sister earnestly. “Seems like that would be easier.”

Bonnie’s mother had 23 boxes of photos. About 4 cubic yards of photos. Many absolute treasures from the 1900s.

Where do you even start?

What Is the Goal of Scanning the Photos?

Do you want to archive and document everything?

Do you want to select the most representative photos for a presentation for her Celebration of Life?

Do you want to tell the Family Story represented in the photos?

Scan Em All!

There are some good reasons to consider scanning them all, especially if you are worried about them being lost or damaged. Or you are tired of paying for storage and no one wants to take the boxes.

Most of the tips here will apply. Just allow a lot of time and try to make it a fun activity you do with other family members.

Select Photos for a Special Occassion

The most likely reason you are wanting the climb Mount Kodak is that you want to create a biography or special slide show for an occasion such as a wedding, birthday, anniversary, or memorial.

Choose An Organization Plan

Adobe, Apple, and others have platforms for organizing your photos, including tagging and adding descriptions.

However, I prefer to avoid these proprietary systems that seem to have a logic that is not always obvious and does not translate across computers and operating systems.

So I recommend simply using a folder system that makes sense to you.

For Example:

  • Simpson Family Photos
    • Homer and Marges Wedding 19xx
    • Bart’s Baby Photos
    • Whatever makes sense to you

Naming Conventions

When you start scanning into the folders or copying photos from digital cameras, will want to give each one a descriptive name.

Eventually.

In order not to lose your mind on the first day, I suggest that your approach sorting and naming in separate passes:

  1. Copy/Scan the photos into the appropriate folders.
  2. Go back and process and name each photo you are interested.

If you try naming the photos as you scan them, they will possibly be working on your memorial before you get through them.

Or you will lose steam and stop.

If possible, get others to do the naming while you scan. Using something like Google Photos will allow family members around the world to help with this.

The naming convention I use is to keep the original scan number or number from the camera and add descriptive text.

For example:

P1922099_aunt_martha_kissing_uncle_bob_1978.jpg

It is up to you if you choose to point out that they were married to different people at the time.

Or not.

Scanning Versus Photographing

An alternative to using a scanner is to use a good camera to photograph each photo.

With attention to lighting, angle, and focus, you can capture images with equal or better quality than scanning.

And sometimes taking photos out of albums is difficult without damaging the photos.

The main reason is speed.

In the case with the mountain of 23 boxes of photos from Bonnie’s mother, it is highly unlikely to ever get her family together to sort and scan.

However, it may be possible for them to sort through and pass to me to photograph. Then I would do some processing and put them online for naming.

You might have someone scanning too, but I think taking photos will be around ten times faster.

However, the one advantage of scanning is you can do some cropping and adjusting in the scanner.

Images from the camera will almost surely need to be cropped and adjusted before use.

You will want to test taking photos and also scanning the same images to fine-tune your technique and compare quality.

Focus will not be an issue with a good scanner. It could be and issue with a camera.

Scan Resolution

Your scanner will have an overwhelming number of resolution options.

If your main intention is to use online and in slide presentations, then 300 dpi will work for most photos.

If you want to print, then perhaps 600 dpi for small photos is better. You will end up with larger file sizes and may need to export to smaller file sizes for use on the web.

If your purpose is to archive for future use, then a higher resolution is a better choice.

You can always reduce without losing quality.

Printing low resolution images large will have poor quality.

Get To Know Your Scanner

Spend some time getting familiar with your scanner and it settings before going into a scanning frenzy. Scan the same image with different settings and check the results.

Its A Miracle!

Some scanners have filters that you can apply when scanning, like scratch removal and automatic balance correction.

Many of the photos will be faded and discolored to the point of looking monochrome. Many scanners have an option to fix that, often nicely balanced colour photos.

And sometimes they will make a photo worse, so you deselect the option for the photo.

We will provide a detailed look at scanning settings in the future.

For now, I hope the suggestions here help make the task seem less daunting than climbing Mount Everest.

Need Help?

We can coach you through the process or some or all of it for you.

Contact us for a FREE Consolation.

info@tellyourstory.productions
1-833-333-1969 Toll Free

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