Category: Preserve

Preserve and Share Life Legacy with a Life Vault

November 13, 2022 / Greg Dixon

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!

Story Production Secrets ~ Scanning, Storing in the Cloud, and Video

May 1, 2020 / Greg Dixon

I have produced a series of videos to help you preserve and share your family heritage and your stories.

Learn how to calculate the ideal scanning resolution, store images and documents in the Cloud, and get professional results with your SmartPhone.

How to Calculate Ideal Scanning Resolution

The ideal print resulution is 300 dots per inche (dpi).

That means if you want to print an image on 8 by 10 inch photo paper, the scanned image should by 2400 by 3000 pixels (dots).

This video shows the calculations and a demonstration of importing from a scanner to PhotoShop.

There are many scanners and software for scanning, so the demonstration is to show the calculations and general approach.

How to Store Photos and Documents in the Cloud

Here is a short tutorial on Storing Photos and Documents in the Cloud.

Google Drive, Google Photos, Dropbox, and others a good places to store photos and documents.

We use Google Drive for the demonstration, including creating folders, uploading files, uploading whole folders from local and external drive, adding descriptions, and more.

How to Shoot Video with a SmartPhone

How to get professional results using the video camera built into a modern smartphone.

With careful placement, you can get good results with the phone alone.

I also recommend a few inexpensive additions such as a tripod, external microphone, and lighting to get even better results.

How We Can Help

Our business was mostly to visit people and interview them in person to make a story production.

Now that is not possible during the Coronavirus lockdown.

We can still work with you to make stunning Story Productions.

The Story Production Secrets can help you to much of the work yourself.

We can offer coaching through the process and also take the images, videos, family documents, and interviews to create Story Productions featuring you, your loved ones, or your business.

Contact me at greg@tellyourstory.productions to discuss your project.

See:

Poll: Tell Us How We Can Serve You Best with Story Productions?

March 4, 2020 / Greg Dixon

A personal story that you want to preserve and share?
Tame a mountain of photos that you want to organize, preserve, and share?
Celebrate life together for an anniversary.
Commemorate a life milestone like a graduation or wedding?
Collect and share your family stories?
Present a life story, perhaps your own, at a memorial?

Many of your Story Production projects have come to us in surprising ways.

Some are people wanting to put together their life stories in photos, music, and interviews to share with family members at special events or memorials. One presentation for a birthday was expanded a year later for a memorial.

We want to know what you are interested in? What kinds of story productions would appeal to you?

Please Complete Our Poll

You can select more than one option for the multiple-choice selections and there is an open question at the end to tell us what you are looking for that may not be in the questions. Thank You.

powered by Typeform

See:

Story Production Special

Share a Living Legacy with a Story Production ~ Webinar Replay

July 31, 2019 / Greg Dixon

The best time to capture the stories and history of your loved ones is while they are still alive.

The best time to capture your stories and legacy is while you are still alive!

People will make up stories if you don’t and you may need to come back to haunt them.

No one wants that!

Bonnie’s Family Photo Story

Here are some things you can do to preserve stories and legacy:

Collect, scan, and organize photos.
Collect and scan clippings, history, and stories.
Conduct video or audio interviews to capture stories.
Assemble and share.

We can teach you how to do this yourself.

Or we can do some or all of it for you, especially the assembly into a stunning Story Production.

Webinar Replay

Story Production Special

We can work with you to create a Story Production.

Create a Cherished Memory Box for Personal and Family Stories

June 19, 2019 / Greg Dixon

Memory Box for personal and family mementos. — Gift personal and family memories in a beautiful wooden box.

Do you have an elegant wooden box in your family that holds photos, or fine silverware, jewelry, special keepsakes, or other treasures?

Would you like to create a new Memory Box to give to someone special or family members?

In the digital age, often photos and video exist only in the cloud and on devices. A memory box could contain the video, photos, and other keepsakes to take a proud place on a mantle.

Preserve Stories and Legacy

We can help you create some or all of the following Story Productions to go into a Memory Box and also shared online:

Video Interviews
Photo Collections
Video Story Productions
Audio Recordings
Photo Book
Family or Personal History Book

The box can contain a combination of digital and printed resources, along with other keepsakes.

Perfect For Special Occasions

A perfect Anniversary Gift.

The perfect Graduation Gift.

A lasting gift to family members at a Memorial.

Can you think of other special occasions?

Recommended Sources or Memory Boxes

Etsy.com is a great source of memory boxes of different sizes and styles.

Many can be etched, painted, or engraved to create a special keepsake for your loved ones.

We Fill Your Memory Boxes

We offer a wide range of Story Productions to go into your special memory Box.

Contact Us To Discuss Your Memory Box Projects

Greg Dixon
gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions
604-762-6410

Great for Memorial and Estate Planning

What a perfect gift to leave for loved ones.

For Memorial Service Providers and Estate Planners, a Memory Box can expand the range of services you offer to clients.

We can brand for your company and provide marketing and sales materials.

Wholesale pricing and terrific margins available.

We would love to work with you. Let’s talk.

Preserve Family Stories and Photos

May 14, 2019 / Greg Dixon

As time passes, family photos and memories are at risk of being lost.

Unexpected events such as earthquakes, fires, or floods can lose them forever.

The time to have loved ones share their memories and stories passes away sooner than we expect.

Bonnie Dixon recently talked about her personal experience with family photos when a fire destroyed the entire neighbourhood where her mother lived.

Every house.

Except hers.

Here is her presentation.

Bonnie talks about her mother’s photos

Available To Talk About Preserving and Sharing Family Legacy

Learn how to preserve family stories and photos. — Every person in this photo has a story

Learn how you can preserve family stories and photos.

The Four Steps While Parents Are Alive

Rescue
Rescue those misplaced family photos today, before they’re lost.
Preserve
Preserve those precious and fragile paper photos for 300 years.
Commemorate
Transform those photos and family memories into video stories.
CelebrateSpread the joy! Share these precious stories with friends and family.

Book a presentation for seniors groups and other groups interested in preserving family photos, stories, and heritage.

Contact Bonnie Dixon at bonnie@tellyourstory.productions to talk about your family or group.

See Also:

Have a Fun Family Photo Party

April 2, 2019 / Greg Dixon

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.

Google Drive is a great place for collecting and sharing family information. There are other services available, but Google Drive is a good place to start.
Zoom and Google Hangouts are good for hosting the Photo Party and also for collecting stories one on one.
See Tips For Organizing And Scanning Photos Without Losing Your Mind.
Epson and Canon Scanners

See:

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.

Photo Scanning and Organizing Special

March 11, 2019 / Greg Dixon

Family Photos

Do you have boxes of photos and shelves full of photo albums that you want to do something with even if you are not yet sure what?

We help with process of scanning and organizing your photos.

Once you have a better sense of what you have, you can plan what to do do with them.

Once digitized, you can decide of you have the space to store the photos or not.

Here is how we can help with this Special Offer

Review to see what photos and clippings you have.
Create a Scanning and Organizing Roadmap to help guide the process.
Scan up to 100 photos and clippings. Additional photos are $1 each. We will come to your location if possible.
Do minor photo editing such as cropping, color correction, and some restoration. Some photos may need a lot more restoration than offered here. We can revisit once the whole collection is available for review.
Upload to a place in the cloud grouped by galleries where you and family members can view the images, add titles and descriptions to the photos. This will allow use the collective knowledge to fill in the gaps for everyone.
Provide instructions for your friends and family to upload related photos they may have.
Provide a Story Production Roadmap about what to do next with your photos and stories.

Special Price ~ $297

We can offer this in areas where we are located, which is currently the regions of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Vancouver, Washington.

Other locations possible with some planning.

Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Scanning and Organizing Special.

See:

Live Story Workshops at Your Location

January 4, 2019 / Greg Dixon

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:

Four Steps We Need To Do To Preserve The Memories of Our Loved Ones as Our Family History

January 3, 2019 / Jerry Smith

Photo by WikiImages

When my father was diagnosed with Cancer, I was confronted with a sense of urgency. I had not yet “rescued” all the stories about that suitcase of photos he had given me. After making this a priority in our family, we now have many hours of commentary on his life and our family history that will make a family legacy to last for generations. Now I have made it my mission in life to urge everyone with aging parents and other loved ones, to act with urgency. Future generations will thank you if you begin the four steps below NOW.

Jerry Smith, Heritage Biographer

What’s your greatest heirloom?…your family heritage!
When considering what your heirs will inherit,
don’t forget their greatest heirloom – their family heritage.

The Four Steps

Rescue
Rescue those misplaced family photos today, before they’re lost.
Preserve
Preserve those precious and fragile paper photos for 300 years.
Commemorate
Transform those photos and family memories into video stories.
Celebrate
Spread the joy! Share these precious stories with friends and family.

Rescue

Rescue those misplaced family photos before they’re lost.

Help your loved one (mother, father, spouse, etc.) to collect their precious photos from hiding places in attics, basements, boxes and buried albums.

As I worked with my father and mother to gather the family photos, we found a treasure trove of memories that may have been lost. When you’ve “rescued” those photos, videos, and old 8mm films, now you can preserve their images.

Preserve

Preserve those precious and fragile paper photos for many generations.

Here’s where the fun begins!

When my father gave me an old suitcase of photos he had inherited from his mother, most of them were faded and damaged.

Many of them were unidentifiable because his mother postponed passing down the heritage of who these people were in her family tree.

For those photos he could still identify, I used my laptop and connected a portable “scanner” to digitally capture these fragile photos.

Then I restored and preserved these photos to share digital copies with all of our family.

Commemorate

Transform those photos and your memories into video stories.

A mute photo album can never tell future generations about the person in it.

Over the years I interviewed my loved ones to “get the story behind” the photos through the wealth of their memories.

The interview process has brought me much closer to my parents and grandparents.

As a result I have several hundred questions organized to prompt recollection process. Planning family interviews to narrate those photos and then recording those memories on a digital audio or video device is the best way to identify the Who? What? and When? of those untold stories.

who what where why of stories

Celebrate

Spread the joy!

Share these precious stories with friends and family.

The greatest reward for my efforts was to Celebrate these video stories with my father, while he was yet with me.

Now that you’ve captured and preserved some of your own family memories and transformed them into fun DVD’s, have your own “premiere party”.

Invite your friends and family together with the guests of honor to celebrate their lives and family history.

These “video stories” can then easily be copied to DVDs—to share with all the family.

Sharing DVD copies of video stories make unforgettable gifts.

You can also post these on YouTube or Vimeo for convenient viewing anywhere in the world!

We can also create a special website to present the family stories and video productions.

Need Help Preserving Family Stories?

Contact us to discuss preserving your family memories.
info@tellyourstory.productions
1-833-333-1969
We can come talk to your group or family within a reasonable distance.

See:

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