Collect the content, then share your project!

You need content for a Life Story project. Not just the content you’ll generate yourself in the recording or the shoe box of old photos you have stashed under the bed. You also need that photo album you’re Great Aunt has stashed away. Or the old Super 8 films Uncle Bob shot back in the ’60′s. But you also want the new digital images your grandchildren are taking on their new fangled smart phones. You have an idea of what you want to create but you have to pull it all together to make it work. Producing the Life Story is for later but how do you collect the scattered information?

Herding Cats

Getting information from relatives is akin to herding cats. Everyone has their ideas of what they want to do. What works for me is to give them clear and concise instructions of what I want depending on the skills of who I’m talking to. For some people you may need to go to their home and scan the photos, while others can use email and online sharing services.

Physical Digital Media Systems …via By Danny Nicholson on Flickr

• What do you want?
• Who has it?
• What form is it in?
• Can it be digitised?
• Can they convert it to digital?
• How do you want it shared?
• Do they have the skills to share it?
• Do others near them have the skills?
• What are the alternatives?

And if all else fails you may need to travel to them and do all the work in gathering the information.

Sharing the finished Life Story Project

Once you’ve finished your masterpiece of this persons Life Story you’ll eventually want to show it to everyone involved so the same will apply but in reverse.

Types of information

First of all you need to decide what information you need, what’s available and in what format…

Physical – Analog

Tapes, cassettes, films, photographs

Physical – Digital

CDs, DVDs, Thumb Drives, Hard Drives, SD Cards, Floppy discs, In built memory in cameras, etc,.

Once you’ve decided what you want, who has it and where it is you have to decide how you’ll get access to it for your project.

Transfer methods

You know what you want and where it is, now you have to get it to you using one of these systems.

Get DropBox for easy file sharing

Physical

Post or hand deliver the physical items to who needs the information.

Email

Limited size of attachments could need multiple emails for a project. Okay for a couple of images.

Digital internet transfers

Digital transfer services for large files such as DropBox etc.

Internet and Web

Place the content to share with others on various sharing services. Some have ability to have private accounts while others are public only.

• Everything – Archive.org, Facebook, Google+.
• Images – Flickr, Panorama, Photobucket & many others
• Video – YouTube, VIddler, Vimeo.
• Audio – SoundCloud.
• Everything – Your own website.
• Everything – FTP. (If you don’t know what it is don’t worry, if you do, consider it)

Using variations on these systems could also be used for sharing your finished project.

Choose the system to suit the personality

Collecting and sharing your project is about communication.
Take the time to consider who you want to communicate with. What do they have in what system. Do they have the skills needed and change your responses to suit the different people involved. Maybe they can’t use the technology but they know someone who can help.

At the end of the day you can always go for a visit, grab a cup of tea, have a chat and share the information you’re after.

Ian’s Preference

If they have the skills (or someone can help them), my preference is the amazingly convenient DropBox. It’s free up to 2 GB (more with this link) and can be used for far more than just sharing a few files with friends. If that’s too much of a struggle then the old email or going for a drive and doing the leg work at least guarantees results but it’s time consuming and nowhere near as convenient as DropBox. WeTransfer is good for a one-off situation but inconvenient if it’s an ongoing situation.

When it comes to sharing the finished project using systems like SoundCloud and YouTube is a great way to get it to people but there is nothing better than watching their reaction when they watch the video with them.

I think the best system to share to the masses is to use the one stop shop in your own free WordPress.com web site where they can get to your production as it suits them.

Action:

• What do you want?
• Who has it?
• Choose the best sharing system to suit the individual.
• Get hold of the information.

Interesting Links from this Post

• Dropbox.com  Up to 2GB of storage then share folder and content to others.
• WeTransfer.com Up to 2GB file size free.
• YouSendIt.com 500 mb file size, 2GB storage, 14 day free trial.
• ShareFile.com Up to 10GB file size, Free 30 day trial.

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Joan Chamorro, Andrea Motis, Bobby Gordon, Sant Andreu Jazz Band
“Lousiana Fairy Tale” (mp3)
from “Joan Chamorro presenta Andrea Motis”
(Temps Record)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Wayman Tisdale
“Slam Dunk” (mp3)
from “The Wayman Tisdale Story”
(Rendezvous Music)
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Benjamin Drazen
“Jazz Heaven” (mp3)
from “Inner Flights”
(Posi-Tone Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Audio as prompts & atmosphere for your personal story!

The most obvious audio you have, will be the recorded conversation and the most obvious prompts for getting that audio are questions. But there are other types of prompts, including audio.

Old Time Radio Drama Sound Effects

When editing a Life Story there is nothing better than music for setting the tone. In your world you’re immersed in music from the radio, television, records, live performances and now all their digital versions. It’s impossible not be affected by the music that’s around you and often just hearing a snippet will remind you of  your past or that of your culture.

Audio to remind, other than music.

Some families are fortunate to have audio from private sources. These could be tape recordings, film or video of people when they were younger or the atmosphere of events. The audio reminders of you life, like music, can also be the sounds that take you back to the times long ago. Are you lucky enough to have audio of a wedding, a child’s first words or the sounds of an overseas trip?

The audio not normally considered is the background to the home movies you shot decades ago. Stripping out the audio track and using it as a prompt will remind you of things that are missing from the video, then you can build on the video with your stories.

Record your own audio atmospheres …via vancouverfilmschool on Flickr

Record your own atmospheres

Maybe as you wander through your life working on your Life Story project you’ll have access to audio to help explain the era being talked about. If you happen to visit a museum, workplace or performance you could record some contemporary audio to use as background for a historical period. For example visiting a steam-powered machinery day would give you a chance to record the sounds of traction engines to lay under the background stories you tell if relevant. The sound of an old telex machine working in a museum could be used to explain office life. Even a treadle sewing machine or manual type writer could be laid under audio of the relevant story.

Cultural audio to jog your memory.

You’ve been immersed in sound all your life. Consider the sounds about a time you want to talk about.

The internet with the power of search now gives you access to sound recordings to prompt and enhance your Life Story. Search for an atmosphere of a work period of your life, or an event you participated in and use that to create the prompts to talk about. Then you can lay the atmosphere or effect into the Life Story to enhance the audio of the stories as they’re talk about. Audio from your life to consider could be from the following areas.

Recorded Sound Effects …via Jacob Whittaker on Flickr

• Work atmospheres
• Clubs and organisations
• Hobby sounds
• Events and celebrations
• News broadcast
• Film, television and radio broadcast
• Historical events
• Natural atmospheres

Action:

• What historical recording do you have?
• Record some audio of your own – Be creative
• Have a look at the web sites below to discover  available audio.
• Write down your memories when you hear a piece of audio.
• Use those notes as prompts for recording your Life Story.
• Use the audio to enhance the stories you’ve record in the mix.

Do you have some audio for your Life Story? Comment below and share your thoughts.

Links to start discovering available audio…

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Transcribe your audio biography for as little as 20€ per audio hour and help people around the world.

A biography is not a book. A biography is a recorded story of someone’s Life Story using any system that is appropriate.

But a biography can be a book!

Once you’ve recorded your audio Life Story in conversation or as self directed storytelling you may choose to convert the audio into text. The advantage of text is, most people still think of a biography as a book and with the addition of photographs and diagrams you can tell the story in a richer more edited style, instead of the rambling of raw audio. An alternative is to also edit the audio to be more interesting and concise and possibly blending it with images into digital storytelling.

The problems of transcribing

The advantages test is to enable people to follow along with the audio or evolve it into a book with some editing and story structure.

The issues normally start with the process of transcribing the audio. Unless you’re trained, transcribing is time consuming at a rate of about 8 hours per audio hour and  frustrating task. Alternatively you could outsource the work but for most people it can often be prohibitively expensive. Sadly this is where most people stop as there are normally no alternatives.

One day machine transcription will make it possible for any audio to be converted into text but for the moment the best we can hope for is an accuracy of 97% with fully trained transcriptions software. If we use untrained  software on a normal conversation particularly with two people, the performance plummets making it unusable. So for the moment we need to contend with manual, human transcription.

Millions of trained professionals without work.

In the second world there are millions of university qualified people who aren’t using their skills but forced into menial, untrained or manual labour work, just to earn an income. They want to use their skills but don’t have any opportunity. This is like spending 4 years to qualify in something just to end up as a waitress.

What if there was a way of giving intelligent, qualified and skilled people in developing countries an opportunity to earn a living and help us in the first world deal with the cost of  transcribing our audio.

A cheap alternative to transcribe audio to text.

Stephan de la Peña & Sandro Langholz

Transfair‘s creator Stephan de la Peña tells us in this episode of Create Your Life Story about how he’s developing the market and talent to transcribe your audio for much less than normal costs while helping less fortunate people to have a future closer to their skill base.

What Transfair is achieving is

• Coordinating skilled workers with clients.
• Testing skills before assigning work.
• Assess tasks before assigning.
• Checking completed work.
• Coordinate payment.
• Respect local customs and workloads so as not to impact communities.
• Money back guarantee.
• Assess client satisfaction.
• Cost is from 20€ to 40€ per audio hour.

Action:

When it comes time to consider transcribing your audio look into the services offered by Transfair to see if they suit your requirements.

Have you had any successes with transcription not mentioned here or would you consider using this service? Mention in the comments below

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.

…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Music is from

Jeremy Cohen
“Rose Room” (mp3)
from “Jeremy Cohen: Violin Jazz”
(Violinjazz Recordings)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Kevin Eubanks
“Adoration” (mp3)
from “Zen Food”
(Mack Avenue Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Jeremy Cohen
“Sweet Georgia Brown” (mp3)
from “Jeremy Cohen: Violin Jazz”
(Violinjazz Recordings)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Enhance your skill & confidence while recording your LifeStory.

Getting started is often the hardest part of recording a life story and getting started isn’t all the preparation. It’s starting to record audio. Your Audio!

A good place to get some motivation is with the free Quick Start Mini-Guide PDF.

Record on Phone to AudioBoo & SoundCloud

This useful information will help your overview but if you want more, can get the complete Quick Start Guide which will get you started today while helping keep Create Your Life Story producing all this valuable content.

But what about the actual audio?

What are your excuses?

We often use one or a blend of several reasons not to start recording.

• Don’t know what to talk about.
• Don’t’ know how to tell the stories.
• Don’t know how to use the equipment.
• Haven’t got the correct environment.
• Don’t like the sound of your voice.

Any one of these can be enough to stop you from starting and a few of them is enough to paralyse you.

A simple system to get you started

Like all things in life, be it learning to walk as a child, dealing with the issues of adulthood or recording your Life Story, it’s all about starting and practicing. Here is a system to get you started with recording snippets of your life and with that, you’ll practice and gain confidence to continue.

Getting your confidence in 4 easy steps

1. Get a recorder. Phone with built in recorder or app, computer based recording software or portable recorder.
2. Record your thoughts about one (only one), topic you have on your mind.
3. Listen back to it uncritically but learn from the experience.
4. Pick a new topic and repeat daily or at least 5 times a week.

Repeat and learn until you have confidence and possibly recorded your entire life story and contemporary opinions while your at it. It’s really that simple

To help you with some clarity:

• Choose topics you care about.
• Talk from the heart.
• Explain who, what, where, when and how, but particularly why! (Doesn’t have to be all every time).
• Explain the details but don’t ramble excessively.
• Only make a single point per recording.
• Listen back to note what you like and what to improve.
• Share your sounds with others.

Share your audio

Once you’ve overcome any self consciousness, share your recordings with others. There are several systems where you can share your recording and possibly get some feed back. By sharing your sounds you’ll find the desire to improve your recording technique, storytelling and all general aspects of recording.

If you make them public even a few listens from others will encourage you to improve and comments will motivate you to consider that your stories are worth sharing, helping your confidence immensely.

Systems for sharing

• Record and send via email to friends and relatives
• Record to AudioBoo
• Record to SoundCloud
• Publish on your own website
• Save onto Archive.org
• Start your own podcast

With systems like AudioBoo and Soundcloud you can record direct from your smart phone or from your computer via the built in microphone.

I personally like to record via my iPhone using the Audioboo or Soundcloud apps while strolling the streets. There is something meditative about walking and chatting to a virtual friend that seems to give me more clarity than sitting at my desk in front of my computer but both systems have audio recorders from your desktop computer.

Advantages of online services

The great thing about these online servers is all the technical aspects are looked after. Audioboo limits audio to 5 minutes encouraging succinctness and single topics. This is excellent for disciplining you to make your point clearly. You can upload as many files as you like and over time maybe build up your entire LifeStory in five minute chapters.

Soundcloud enables you to record longer individual stories up to two hours allowing you to dig into the topics as much as you like.

Both systems allow you to keep your audio private or public, or a mix to suit your desires to share with others. You can even keep the files on these services then use email and embed on your own site or share on social networks like FaceBook and twitter along with their own communities of people doing the same as you.

Want to hear what I’ve been doing?

Check out Ian on…

• AudioBoo
• SoundCloud

Action:

• Sign up with SoundCloud or AudioBoo.
• Start recording! Keep it private if you’re shy but start recording.
• Use a portable or software recorder if you prefer.

Have you started recording and what have you learnt as you’ve recorded more content? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking here and be underway in just an hour.

It’s based on the value for value model. If you’ve got value from this content here you can return the value by supporting me and getting some additional value for yourself by getting the complete Quick Start Guide to Your LifeStory.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.

…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Nick Rixen Quartet
“Black & White” (mp3)
from “Points of View”
(Art of Life Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Jay Umble
“Falling Water” (mp3)
from “Spirit Crossing”
(Art of Life Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Tony Guerrero
“Dizzy Does It” (mp3)
from “Blue Room”
(Charleston Square Recordings)
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Your Life Story is far more important than you realise.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been travelling through Europe, spending time with family in Megève in the French Alps where you can see a short video I produced at my other podcast at Your Story.

A Journey of Memories

This video and the other content that I’m producing as I travel are all part of the 2012 method of journaling a Life Story as it’s lived. I’m taking photos and sharing them on twitter and facebook with my friends while having discussions. All this content will one day be the story of my life, permanently digitally recorded forever. These are the new prompts that are currently developing to remind all of us of our lives in the future.

During my visit to Megève I had the opportunity to talk with people on topics that have recently been brought up in discussion with me via email regarding what’s happening in their Life Story projects.

Travelling through time.

I’ve realised the stories of our lives, shared as oral history from person to person, or recorded as audio as we’re doing here at Create Your Life Story, manage to take us to their distant past. We vicariously time travel, using the stories as vehicles to hear of another time. Often these stories aren’t written down either because they seem too trivial but they still have great value when heard spoken, not only because of the direct information in them but also through interperation of the back ground information that is too often gloss over. We can get a great deal from the tone of voice, pause and extraneous information that is associated with a story. Far more than what we could get from just the raw information.

There will always be surprises.

The surprises that come of producing a Life Story can’t be anticipated. Time and time again I hear of Life Stories that evolve into unexpected unfolding surprises. I mention in this episode a wonderful story of Keri, here it is.

You have a story also.

Sadly people constantly reference to other’s stories as being of value without realising that they too have stories.

Timeline of stories from the past

Too often people take their own story for granted or don’t think they have anything to say but on reflection (and often a little assistance), the stories start flowing, creating wonder for others in their world as they reference to the stories of their life. Everyone has an amazing story, at least to their family but possible also the greater community.

There are stories in all of us that will interest others. Stories that we’ve forgotten that may need a little help or a prompt to remind us. The people in your life also have great stories but may not think so requiring you to take the action to encourage them to open up. This can be done by taking the time to sit and engage in conversations with them, setting the agenda for collecting their stories or asking for help to get the stories of their life.

If you need help to get underway with your Life Story project check out the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story to help you understand what you need to do to get underway so that you follow through to completion of your project.

Who’s stories have you miss and are you taking your own story for granted? Leave a comment below.

Interesting Links from this Post

• Getting Help for Your Life Story
• Get started today with the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story
• Social Voice Project
• Audio of Florence Nightingale

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Seth Ford-Young
“Dolores” (mp3)
from “Seth Ford-Young”
(Porto Franco Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Nick Rixen Quartet
“Black & White” (mp3)
from “Points of View”
(Art of Life Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Christmas and a time to connect with family

Click to share on Twitter

Christmas and the holiday time that we have at this time of year, is often about family, catching up and talking about what has been happening over the past year. In this episode of Create Your Life Story I want to urge you to spend time with your family members to ask those interesting questions to understand and show your interest in their lives.

Normally we’re too busy with our lives to ask about their’s, but when we’re on task to record their life story we change our attitude to one of interest in them. Why not try the same during this time when you get together for these seasonal gatherings?

In doing so you’ll give them the opportunity to be heard in ways that people rarely are and what a wonderful to gift to give someone, that of being genuinely heard for a change.

Ask and listen

• Ask inquiring questions
• Listen intently
• Be genuinely interested in their stories
• Know that you’re giving them a gift with your attention

Thank-you from Ian

Merry Christmas everyone! Please feel free to make a comment below.

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Music is from

Seth Ford-Young
“Dolores” (mp3)
from “Seth Ford-Young”
(Porto Franco Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Kevin Eubanks
“Adoration” (mp3)
from “Zen Food”
(Mack Avenue Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Kermit Ruffins
“Hey Naa” (mp3)
from “Livin’ A Tremé Life”
(Basin Street)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Hindenburg makes editing your Life Story simple so you can concentrate on the Story

Click to share on Twitter

I know the feeling of getting bogged down on the details of Creating a Life Story. There are so many things that can take you attention away from what a project is all about… The Story.

One of the things that people get far too hung up about is, editing the raw audio. Nick Dunkerley of Hindenburg Systems gives us a bit of the background philosophy on Hindenburg and why it’s perfect audio editing software for our Life Story projects. Go and get your free 30 day trial version of Hindenburg to see what it’s all about.

Why edit?

We all know that the most important thing is to get the conversations of your Life Story recorded, but then what!
Yes, it’s paramount to record but ultimately, it’s about having the stories heard by others. What’s the use of the whole recording exercise, if afterwards they aren’t listened to?

Easiest Editor – Hindenburg

You should at least consider editing the audio to remove the unwanted interruptions to make it an enjoyable listening experience for others.

Within every conversation there will be distractions that are unnecessary for the listener to hear and spending some time to remove these will improve the listenability significantly. Then if you want, you can go as deep down the rabbit hole as you like, all the way to a full radio documentary if you choose.

Which editing software to choose.

There are many audio editing programmes available, from the expensive high end professional programmes to free systems possibly already on your computer. All have there place to suit specific applications but until now there hasn’t been a programme that is all about getting the job done for editing voice, for use in telling the story. This is exactly what we’re about with our Life Story.

Most other programmes are designed to be all things, to all people and are bloated with too many bells & whistles, making them a challange to find the few functions that we need to edit the voice, tweak the quality a little and add additional audio (music & effects), making it a listening pleasure.

I’ve mentioned Hindenburg in the past, as my preferred audio editing programme but it’s worth having an understanding of the philosophy that has gone into it’s design and how well that’s in sync with our task of creating audio biographies, using all the skills of storytelling, while still having all the technology necessary to get the job done ,while not getting in the way.

What I love about Hindenburg

Originally I used Garageband but found, as it’s designed for music production, to be more complicated than I needed. Hindenburg is designed for what we do, without the fat that is unnecessary.

• Fast editing – Removing stammers & pauses is a breeze.
• One click voice profiler – Makes you sound good without having to be an engineer.
• One knob compression – More or less compression is so simple it’s obvious when it’s right.
• Easy to view timeline to see exactly what’s going on.
• Beautiful interface that’s easy on the eyes.
• Level & fade graphical controls that make sense and are easy to use.
• All the back end control and manipulation if I need it – Rarely do I use these.

To try out Hindenburg for 30 days go to Hindenburg Systems

***Note: I’ve received no free samples, affiliate links or favours for this review.

Edit of this episode on Hindenburg

Have you used Hindenburg or do you prefer another editing programme? Comment below.

Click thu to iTunes

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Music is from

Christian McBride Big Band
“Brother Mister” (mp3)
from “The Good Feeling”
(Mack Avenue Records)
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Music from Free Music Library

There is help nearby for your Life Story

Click to share on Twitter

Your great idea of recording a Life Story requires one major achievement. You to actually do it! That’s obvious and with all the content available here on Create Your Life Story you can get the knowledge to start and complete a project but you may need more.

Help for your Story …via Rainier N. on Flickr

The help for your Life Story project

Depending on what your project is and what you intend to create will determine any help you’ll need.

If the project is about yourself you may be self motivated enough to record your stories, edit them and have them in a final form for everyone without any help or if you’re going to record someone else you may know the topics you want to talk about, feel confident to have a conversation, then move onto the editing and publishing without any outside help.

If this is the case you need read no further however not everyone can do everything and sometimes we need a little assistance.

Maybe you need someone’s help for various reasons.

• Take on the whole project from preparation to publishing.
• Record a relative for you, as you’re too close.
• You know what to talk about but you want a conversational partner.
• Help with the technology once it’s recorded.
• Transcribe the audio for use in publishing a book.
• Edit the audio into something listenable.
• Edit images with music and stories to create a digital story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re recording your own story or someone else, you may need help with some aspect of the project. Chances are the information to get you started is here on Create Your Life Story but maybe you need someone a little more hands on. By working with someone on this project you don’t have to know or do everything that’s necessary but can concentrate on what you do best and allow someone else to pick up on where you struggle.

The important thing is to get started on your project then move methodically through to completion and having help at strategic points will enable your Life Story project to avoid the stagnating that can bring on despair and possibly missing the opportunities you have. Handballing parts of the project means you’ll keep focused and have someone the help you keep moving forward.

People who can help you

We all live in communities and within yours there are people who can assist you with your project. Depending on your needs you can consider help from various sources.

Your community may help you …via betsyweber on Flickr

• Family members
• Local community
• Friends
• Students
• Professional

Family members

Anyone in your family could be suitable to assist but the advantage of having someone at least one circle of influence away from you, like a niece/nephew, grandchild or other relative will helps to make sure that shared knowledge isn’t taken for granted and all the interesting topics are covered. Also the issues that families have tend to be lessened once you’re a little more distant.
Possibly a combination of close and more distant relatives could bring an interesting comparison of topics from the intimate to the more general and may be well worth considering.

Local community

WIthin the local community you may know people who have the skills to sit in conversation or deal with the more technical aspects of a Life Story. These people could be part of your network or within groups like History and Oral History Associations. If you have a story associated with a particular activity, maybe there are people within that organisation who would be able to assist you.

Friends

Within your circle of friends maybe there is someone who has the conversational or technical skills to be able to assist you.

Students

If you have access to a college or university you may be able to find assistance from students who need topics for their studies.
Many students of journalism, film making and history need people to interview as well as those studying the more technical aspects of video and audio production.

Professional

Assistance from a professional enables you to have a one stop shop in getting your project completed. Within every community there will be someone who can assist you for a fee with the end result suiting your budget and requirements. From a fully produced documentary, to ghost writing your biography, there are people who can help. Or maybe you just need someone for an aspect of the project. Maybe someone just to sit with you to engage in the conversation or possible someone to edit the audio into something that’s more interesting.

With the new era of digital internet based technologies it may even be possible to consider a professional who is not in you local for some aspects of what you require. Transcription, editing, writing, video & audio production is all able to be transferred over the internet to whoever can assist you.

Cost of a Life Story

What you spend on a Life Story is entirely up to you but before you start to consider what you may invest in capturing and producing it consider a few things.

Just ask for help …Dimitri N. on Flickr

What is a Life Story worth?

The amount of effort, meaning the amount of skill and time that goes into a Life Story will vary depending on all the different aspects of the person, the information, how it’s to be recorded and assembled and how it’s to be published but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What are all those experiences of a life that has been experienced worth. You spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions having experiences. You would spend it all again if you could I’m sure. You’ve earnt, shared, pruchased and given away many times more than anything you would consider spending on this project.

Consider this…

What if you discovered your Grandsomeone’s Life Story?

Imagine the local library contacted you to say they had discovered, in storage your distant relative’s Life Story including audio recorded before they passed. How would you feel?

But storage fees need to be paid in order for you to access it and if you don’t they need to dispose of it to create space in the archives. How much would you pay to recover that Life Story?

I’m not asking what you think is fair storage fees but how important is it to you to recover this Life Story to prevent it being lost forever?

This Life Story is about to be destroyed

The truth is your Life Story is about to be trashed unless you act and cost is part of the equation. If you’re hesitant to spend any money realise that like my analogy above, the librarians are about to dispose of your Life Story and it could be at any time.

Action:

• What aspects of a Life Story do you need help with?
• Who do you know who could help you?
• What organisations could help you?
• Are there any professionals available to help?
• What is a price you’d be willing to pay for professional help?
• How important is this Life Story?

Do you need help with your Life Story? Comment below and let us know your thoughts.

Interesting Links from this Post

Click thu to iTunes

• iMovie for Mac
• Movie Maker for Windows
• We Video
• Animoto
• Screenflow
• Camtasia

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To get a kick start, get the Quick Start Guide to Your Life Story by clicking hereand be underway in just an hour.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Music is from

Kermit Ruffins
“Hey Naa” (mp3)
from “Livin’ A Tremé Life”
(Basin Street)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Pink Martini
“Hang on Little Tomato” (mp3)
from “A Retrospective”
(Heinz Records)
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Find something simple to start today.

The huge amount of content here on Create Your Life Story has created an issue of overwhelm for some people. I know that feeling from personal experience of starting on these projects and I want to help you.

Where do I start?

To help you cut to the chase, I’ve created this Free Quick Start Mini-Guide to Your Life Story. Not everything is here to know, but it’s a quick easy referenced overview to get you started.
More importantly, it’s designed to help you think of something today, to get you underway. Then once you’re started, it’s just a case of choosing another topic to maintaining the momentum.

The quick start mini-guide to Your Life story is…

1. Designed to give you an overview.
2. Links to valuable content to learn more.
3. Layout the basics of recording a Life Story.
4. Topics to start working on today.

In just a few minutes you’ll have an overview and possibly decide where to start.

Get Your Free Quick Start Mini-Guide

Just click on the above image to have it downloaded to your computer now.

Check out the detailed quick-start guide.

Depending on your browser you may need to…

PC:    Right-click – “Save Target As”
Mac: Control-click select – “Download Linked File”

Here’s another link to download the Quick Start Mini-Guide to Your Life Story.

To go deeper and discover the Single, Simple tip to do today, to start your story, check out the Detailed Quick Start Guide →

Are you fearful of telling your story, or just a little shy?

In this episode of Create Your Life Story I want to open a conversation about the reasons for people not wanting to tell their stories, particularly when they say that they are interested.

In recording conversations for Your Story, I’ve noticed several, sometimes contradictory reasons why people avoid wanting to have their story recorded.

What do you fear? …from shallowend via Flickr

• Private personality.
• Too long to think about it prior to recording.
• Not enough time to think about it prior to recording.
• Get bored with the idea.

I also realise that some of the stories aren’t told because of the feeling of the possible judgement by others. But have you noticed that you don’t have those same judgements of people of previous generations.

Something happens with the passing of time that removes that sting of judgment and evolves it into historical knowledge. If we consider the issues that we’re concerned about, is it possible for us to have the same attitude now of, not judging others and allowing ourselves to tell some of the more delicate stories, knowing that time will also remove any judgement?

I mention in this episode that fear is something that is always about the future and when it comes time to do the thing that we’re fearful of it’s never as fearful but often a positive experience or at least something that is just dealt with.

…from 2thin2swim via Flickr

I also realise that there could be impacts on people who are now involved with this information, making it necessary to be careful of harming others. This is why there are often delayed release of information so as not to cause this harm but still allow the historical knowledge to be shared into the future.

This is a huge topic that I would love your advice on, to help us understand why people don’t want to share information despite saying that it’s something that they want to do.

How can we help people to feel comfortable enough to open up, not be fearful and share their stories? Please share your thoughts below in the comments, I know I don’t have the answers but maybe you do…

Interesting Links from this Post

Click thu to iTunes

• Grab the free Quick Start Mini-Guide to your life story, (soon to be released)

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you with your Life Story project. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

To automatically receive this free podcast, click on the iPhone image to the right or search in iTunes for “Create Your Life Story” or Subscribe in iTunes by Clicking here. If you use another Podcast software Get the feed here.

Support Create Your Life Story by using one of these services from the top navigation bar, commenting on this episode with social network sites below or writing a review on iTunes.

← If you want to hear some other great stories about the interesting lives that people have, listen to my other podcast at Your Story or on iTunes.
…Or have a look at some other great shows available at LifeStyle Pod Network→

Music is from

Kirk Whalum
“Fit To Battle” (mp3)
from “The Gospel According To Jazz – Chapter III”
(Rendezvous Music)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Kermit Ruffins
“Hey Naa” (mp3)
from “Livin’ A Tremé Life”
(Basin Street)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album