Image of a collection of photos, letters, and artifacts. Words written on grey "Photos & letters captured lives lived of generations past. How will your stories be told."

Family historians, hooked on stories

These are stories of a familyā€™s journey. Objects, letters, and voices take them through migrations, tragedy, and triumph to teach family lessons of empathy and resilience. These are the stories that matter to families today ā€” and into the future. They're our responsibility to capture, preserve, and pass down.

At Projectkin, weā€™re here so we can do this together.

This community is a place for family historians of all ages, skills, and interests. We meet in an online forum and virtual events to share ideas, projects, and inspiration. Weā€™re hooked on stories and eager to tell them in ways that will engage not only our siblings and children but also the generations of descendants to follow them.

We invent and refine creative ways to capture and preserve our stories. Re-imagined as PROJECTS we can explore ideas independent of vendors, we freely combining our narratives with media, maps, and more.

Weā€™ve flipped the digital platform.

Instead of examining platforms for features and specifications, we focus on stories to be told and audiences to engage. At Projectkin, platforms, tools, and hacks are shared like tips between cooks. šŸ‘©ā€šŸ³ šŸ‘ØšŸ¼ā€šŸ³.

Once a good solution is found, members share it with the community as a specific, how-to project ā€œrecipe.ā€ These recipes follow a consistent template anyone can understand with ingredients, tips, and lessons learned. Using the Chat platform here on substack, community members can add comments and expand on them ā€” perhaps even adding innovations.

Membership is simply a free subscription.

We welcome everyone at our public events, but only our members get access to recordings, resources, and ā€œproject recipes.ā€ The value here is in the community, connection, and conversations.

Join us, wonā€™t you? Just drop your email šŸ‘‡

Membership is like signing up for a newsletter with benefits.

Dropping your email lets you receive our articles and recordings via email. If you want to circle back to create a password and an a handle, you can join in on the conversation with an authenticated identity. This helps us keep the community healthy and avoid the noise of open sites like Twitter.

The forum uses Substack to manage emails and delivery. We believe the platform is well suited to Family History and have written about it in a section at Projectkin.org/substack.

There are rules, though.

As my mother used to say, ā€œParticipation is a privilege.ā€ In our modern, online world, written guidelines can be helpful so you understand what we see as appropriate here:Ā 

1. Be kind and contribute. Listen to understand. Respond to support.

Our community works best when we're all listening to each other and helpfully engaging with suggestions, tips, and resources. There are no points to score. Respecting opinions, perspectives, and life experiences is the starting point for thoughtful dialog and comments that contribute.Ā 

2. This is no place for hate, threats, or fear.

We've seen how words can hurt, destroy, and undermine ā€” especially online. That kind of behavior is not welcome here. If you engage in it, I'll remove it and block you from the community.

3. My judgment isnā€™t perfect, itā€™s what I have.

I may make mistakes in judgment about what violates our guidelines, and am willing to discuss it offline. My goal here is to build a community and all I have is my sense for what feels right. Kindly respect that. Ā 

Substack is free to us, so itā€™s free to you too1.

After each event we add video posts to the community forum complete with links to resources and, where appropriate, how-to instructions to recreate presented project ideas (we call these ā€œProject Recipes.ā€)

Your membership is bundled with the invaluable kinship of a community of creative family historians taking on the same challenge. Right now, itā€™s all free. Our costs are very low and currently, we donā€™t need a paid ā€œsupporting memberā€ tier. The goal is to ensure that the community is sustainable.

Once you join

Iā€™ll send you a welcome email with background about what we do and how we do it. This often gets filtered by email systems into Updates (Gmail) or something like that. You might need to search on ā€œWelcomeā€ and ā€œProjectkinā€ to find it.

A few tips to get started:
  • I always invite new subscribers to pop over to our exclusive member Chat section and introduce themselves. Itā€™s a great way to get to know the community.

  • Since Substack is new to many of our members and most of the Support section is written for folks planning to write their own Substacks, Iā€™ve pulled together a section just for Substack + Family History. Youā€™ll find background on using this stack, plus a recording of a tour we did for members.

Our Special Events Each Month

All events are hosted online via video conferencing and so far, weā€™ve managed to offer them all for free. You can see a full listing of programs at Projectkin.org/events. Membership gets you a regular calendar update with details on special programs. These are our regular monthly events:

Kathyā€™s Corner
Project Recipes
Project Clinics
Special Topics & Events
  • We host a variety of special topics and events such as our virtual RootsTech Party, Tours, or Tutorials on technical topics. These programs are open to everyone, and sometimes theyā€™re smaller insider events tailored to the interests of our members.

A dedicated Membersā€™ Corner

Soon after launching in May 2023, the idea of a community of family historians started to attract a growing number of committed members. Most engaged in programming that focused on ā€œhowā€ to share stories. As we moved to Substack, many members wanted to share their stories using the platform but were intimidated by the burden of creating their own Substack newsletters.

In March 2024, we expanded with the addition of the Projectkin Membersā€™ Corner, a dedicated section for publishing the family history stories of our members. New cohorts of guest writers are added each month. Learn more and join us!

Hang on, how is this all free?

In the software business thereā€™s an expression that ā€œif you arenā€™t paying for a product, then YOU are the product.ā€ Thatā€™s a reference to platforms like Facebook or Google who offer robust platforms for free in exchange for paid advertiser access to you and data about you. Iā€™m not doing that here on Projectkin.

After a long career in startups, I have no interest in launching a new platform. Instead, I want to help more people be productive in capturing, recording and sharing these important stories. Today, we have a remarkable array of tools at little or no cost why not take advantage of them to the benefit of a community.

Getting to self-sustaining operations

Iā€™ve promised to make this endeavor self-sustaining over time. Iā€™m not charging for my own time. When I incur external costs, Iā€™ve added mechanisms to support operational contributions.

  • Substack gives me email, video hosting, and a discussion platform for free.

  • Eventbrite was the first platform to charge us, so I started leveraging their donations mechanism, but it was frankly awkward and the platform wasnā€™t serving us well. Contributors, however, were generous.

  • In moving our events from Eventbrite (and Google Meet) to our own Events page (and Zoom,) Iā€™m now incurring fees of about US$22/month.

  • Iā€™m personally contributing funds to cover productivity software and modest local taxes, fees, and insurance.

To manage these modest monthly costs, I now welcome ā€œtipsā€ or contributions when you feel like it using a tip jar platform hosted at buymeacoffee.com. They accept credit card contributions on my behalf in increments of $5. Tips are always appreciated, but never required.

Drop me a five-spot at Buymeacoffee.com/projectkin

Substack also offer a robust paid options, including a top tier ā€œsupporterā€ level for one-time donations above $50. I will hold off on leveraging this until I have a gift I can offer in exchange for such large contributions. While Iā€™ve considered branded items like mugs, tee shirts, or jackets, Iā€™ve resisted the temptation. Have a compelling idea? Iā€™m open to gift suggestions šŸ›ļøšŸ›’.

Who is this ā€œweā€?

Iā€™m

. Like you, Iā€™m a family historian, hooked on stories. I started wading into this community with my previous startup, Ponga.com. As we wound down the platform, I realized that our subscribers had become my friends. What brought us together was now my mission too. So, in a post-Ponga world, I formed ā€œProjectkin.ā€ More about me on LinkedIn.

As Iā€™ve gotten to know community members, I find myself thinking of the community as a collective and my language reflects it. At the end of the day, Iā€™m the one responsible for this content, however. In an online world, it can be hard to tell when a phrase or topic lands poorly, offends, or is inappropriate. If you have concerns or suggestions, please reach out to me. Iā€™ve learned to rely on your candor. I appear personally here on Substack as both myself,

, and as the. You can also reach me via email at projectkin.org@gmail.com.

I hope that gives you a sense of what weā€™re all about. Weā€™re pretty transparent and eager for feedback. If you have some comments, suggestions, or tips, feel free to reach out to me as your ringleader at projectkin.org@gmail.com. šŸ‘‹

1

Read more about our plan to become self-sustaining without fees to users in the section above ā€œHang on, how is this all free?ā€

Subscribe to Projectkin Community Forum

We invent and refine creative ways to capture, preserve, and share our family stories. Won't you join us in FREE events, shared resources, and online conversations?

People

I'm @barbaratien and your "ringleader" for Projectkin.org, a community of family historians hooked on stories. Together, we explore capturing, curating, and collaborating on family history stories in a modern digital world. ā®• Join us?
Retired Professional Photo Manager working on her own family legacy and stories, and helping others do the same
Ringleader at Projectkin.org, a community of family historians hooked on stories. I'm the one tossing packets at the Projectkin forum hosted on Substack at Projectkin.Substack.com. Join us?