These very special brainstorming sessions will allow anyone with a story to tell to bring their tale to this open lab to sort through the best way to tell it as a family history project. Today’s digital storytelling tools are so wide and deep that they can be intimidating. As a community, we’ll brainstorm and share ideas for tips, techniques, and tools that might make your storytelling effort easier. The idea for this program is to keep it to just an hour so that we can be efficient with time and generous with ideas. Your host, Barbara Tien, is one of the co-founders at Ponga.com and the “ring leader” here in our post-Ponga community. We …

Adoption, divorce, remarriage, surrogacy, and more create winding and uniquely beautiful burls on the family tree. Exploring these burls further reveals the spirit and vitality of these ties we call family. However, decisions about how to create, tell, retell, position, and hold on to family stories for the next generation can be complicated by personal values, an effort to protect those we love, and the sheer messiness of human lives. We’re privileged to have Kerri Kearney, a community member, professor, and scholar at Oklahoma State University, specializing in family narratives. Kerri is also a community member and will join us to share how she’s spun her own experiences into a new digital project recipe. To …