Entries tagged as ‘benefits’
In a previous post, 10 Great Reasons to Visit Victoria, BC, I extolled the virtues of my home town as the location for this year’s Association of Personal Historians conference. I know that coming up with the cash to attend a conference can raise questions of getting value for your money. Let me be frank. You’d be hard pressed to find another professional conference that gives you as much “bang for your buck” as the APH conference. I speak from experience. If you’re in the business of being a professional personal historian, you owe it to yourself to attend this conference. If you still need more convincing, here are 20 reasons to head to Victoria this November:
- You’ll learn enough new insights, skills, and ideas to keep you fueled until next year’s conference.
- You’ll meet friendly, seasoned veterans who’ll be happy to share their knowledge and experience with you.
- You’ll have the chance to develop business partnerships with other personal historians.
- You’ll make new friendships that will help sustain you in your business over the years.
- You’ll enjoy the luxury of putting work aside for a few days.
- You’ll be stimulated by dynamic keynote presentations.
- You’ll find your “Tribe” and be energized by its members who have the same passion as you do for personal histories.
- You’ll be able to share your work and experience in a supportive environment.
- You’ll get to taste the delights of “Nanaimo Bars” and “Sidney Slices”. Yummy!
- You’ll get to meet APH members from your region.
- You’ll be able to put a a face to the “stars” who post regularly on the APH listserv.
- You’ll become part of a vibrant group and return home feeling less isolated and alone in your work.
- You’ll get to ask lots of questions.
- You’ll have fun exploring Victoria, one of the world’s top travel destinations.
- You’ll get to take in the “bigger picture” of personal histories.
- You’ll have epiphanies.
- You’ll get to listen to and talk with experts that you’d not normally have a chance to meet.
- You’ll discover new solutions to old problems.
- You’ll have a chance to test out and refine your “elevator” speech because attendees will be asking you, “What do you do?”
- You’ll get to meet me! Just kidding.
But seriously I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the conference.
© Sebastian Kaulitzki | Dreamstime.com
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Categories: Conferences · Inspiration · Personal historian
Tagged: 2010 Conference, Association of Personal Historians, BC, benefits, value, Victoria
My vote for the most unusual item in this Monday’s Link Roundup is the “wireless tombstone”. But if you’re looking for more substance, don’t miss Pat McNees’s comprehensive article on the beneficial effects of legacy work. I’ll admit to a bias, I was one of the people Pat interviewed for the piece.
- Kill Busywork: The One Skill to Focus On What Matters. “Imagine everything you do could fall into one of three buckets: 1. Bad Work. 2. Good Work. 3. Great Work. I’m not talking about the quality of the work you deliver – I’ve no doubt that’s fine. I’m talking about the meaning the work has for you and the impact it makes. Let me explain.”
- New App Integrates Storytelling with Social Media. “Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you type or paste in a whole story and then with a click of a button snip up the story either by line or by punctuation — periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Then you choose a frequency for snips of the story to appear as status updates — daily or every two days.”
- Die-Fi: Wireless Tombstones. “[An]Arizona company Objecs announced today that it has developed “enhanced memorial products” that add Near Field Communications tags to cemetery markers, which allow text and photos to be “embedded” in a headstone and retrieved whenever a cell phone is touched against its surface.”
- How to Write Your Healing Story: Interview with Linda Joy Myers. “In the latest Heart and Craft of Life Writing podcast, Linda Joy explains how writing literary memoir and integrating the story arc of our lives can lead to much deeper levels of insight than we can ever get from a pile of disconnected stories. In this wide ranging conversation she also talks about using our words, our stories, to create art.”
- Fab Forty. “Votes are in for the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs. Come with us into a wonderful online world of family history news, research tips, encouragement and more.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: benefits, busywork, genealogy, healing, Life stories, link roundup, oral history
If you’re thinking of hiring a personal historian, keep reading. If you’re a practicing personal historian, remember that potential clients don’t really care what you do. What they care about are the benefits they’ll get from hiring you. I must admit that I sometimes forget this fact. So as a reminder to myself and to anyone else who needs a prompt about the benefits - here are five important ones. Can you think of more? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
- Your story will get told. This is the most important benefit of all. Countless times people have told me that they started working on their life story or that of a family member but never seemed to be able to get it finished. Hiring a personal historian means the work will get done on time and in a professional manner.
- It’s more fun. Let’s face it, sitting alone with a blank computer screen or piece of paper and waiting for inspiration to strike can be daunting. We are by nature conversationalists. Sitting with a personal historian who is a skilled interviewer and empathetic listener makes telling your story an enjoyable experience.
- Your story will be richer in detail. Because of the familiarity with your own story, you can easily miss details that others would find fascinating. You need a personal historian who is fresh to your story and has the skill to bring out the richness of your life’s journey.
- A personal historian relieves you of the burden of producing your book. Putting together a life story is an overwhelming undertaking for most people. From start to finish it requires a set of skills that include – interviewing, editing, research, photo enhancement, design and layout, and printing. A personal historian takes on these production tasks and ensures that all are handled professionally.
- A personal historian has the time. Are you someone who simply can’t find enough hours in a day to devote to working on your own story or that of a family member? Hiring a personal historian relieves you of the guilt of not putting in the time you need to get your life story or that of a family member told.
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Photo by iStockphoto
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Categories: Marketing · Personal historian
Tagged: benefits, hiring a personal historian, life story, Personal historian
The Association of Personal Historians 2009 Annual Conference is being held in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania from Oct. 21 – 25, 2009. If you can get to only one conference this year, this is the one to attend.
Warning: Early bird registration ends on July 31st. If you want to save money click here. Non APH members can attend the conference but if you’re not yet a member, I’d encourage you to join the APH. The Conference fees are lower and you’ll receive a wealth of benefits that are well worth the membership fee.
I attended my first APH conference in Portland, Oregon, in 2006. It was a great experience. Here’s what it did for me:
- Recharged my batteries: Meeting with and listening to the varied experiences of APH members got me excited about my chosen profession.
- Honed my skills: From workshops on marketing for introverts to making demo reels to the therapeutic benefits of life stories, I soaked in new and valuable information.
- Inspired me: The keynote speakers and workshop leaders helped me see my work in a larger context and made me want to do more.
- Made new friends: I found personal historians are “my kind of people”. They’re good listeners. They’re enthusiastic. They’re helpful. I still keep in touch with several colleagues I met in Portland.
- Created a sense of community: Working on our own can sometimes feel daunting and lonely. I left Portland knowing that I was now part of a very vital and enriching community.
Revolutionary Perspectives is the theme for the 2009 APH conference. Paula Stahel, APH President, writes:
… this year’s conference theme, is designed to help you transform and expand your awareness. The wide array of educational workshops and enlightening speakers will open your eyes to opportunities you can take advantage of immediately. Access to new information, ideas, technology, and connections will offer fresh insight on how to make your business thrive, not just survive, harsh economic times.
I really encourage you to go to this year’s APH conference. It’s an investment you won’t regret. I wish I could say that I’ll see you there but I’m caring for my 91 year-old mother and she’s my priority right now. One day I’ll be back at an APH conference. See you then!
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Categories: Conferences · Personal historian · Resources
Tagged: APH 2009 Annual Conference, Association of Personal Historians, benefits, membership, Pennsylvania, Valley Forge
Memoir writing, gathering words onto pieces of paper, helps me shape my life to a manageable size. By discovering plot, arc, theme, and metaphor, I offer my life an organization, a frame, which would be otherwise unseen, unknown. Memoir creates a narrative, a life story. Writing my life is a gift I give to myself. To write is to be constantly reborn. On one page I understand this about myself. On the next page, I understand that.
~ from Sue William Silverman’s Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir (U of Georgia, 2009)
If you’ve been contemplating the writing of your own life story, this observation by Sue Silverman may convince you to start. The effort it takes to craft the work is more than amply rewarded by seeing your life, often for the first time, as a coherent and intricate pattern.
Photo by Colin Campbell
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Categories: Life stories · Memoirs · Quotes · Writing
Tagged: benefits, life story, memoir, narrative, Sue William Silverman, Writing
Newsflash: Spending money on things will not make us as happy as spending on experiences. This is the conclusion of recent study conducted by Ryan Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. You can listen to Professor Howell in a 7 minute interview here on NPR. According to SFU’s February 7 press release, the study, “demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.” Professor Howell explained in an interview,
Purchased experiences provide memory capital. We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object…it’s not that material things don’t bring any happiness. It’s just that they don’t bring as much…You’re happy with a new television set. But you’re thrilled with a vacation.
This study got me thinking. It brought to mind some of the great experiences in my life – being a volunteer teacher in Ghana for two years, snorkeling over a coral reef in Tobago, meeting my partner 35 years ago and volunteering at Victoria Hospice every Tuesday morning.
I was particularly struck by the studies link between long term happiness and social connectedness. For me, this again speaks to the importance of helping people record and preserve their life stories. Whether we’re sitting down with a family member, friend or neighbor, we are not just collecting stories. We are connecting with people and in the process bringing a little happiness into the world.
What are some of your great life experiences?
Photo by Ben Tubby
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Categories: End of life · Interviewing · Life stories · Personal historian · Preservation
Tagged: benefits, happiness, life story, listening, research
