Your Living Family Tree: Keeping your family together forever through print, photos, sound, and video

Your Living Family Tree creates a genealogical flip-flop, turning the usual family tree upside down, making it explode upward with 21st-century interactivity and fresh growth rather than digging downward for ever more questionable roots. Here, Gordon Burgett describes a vital new living family tree that brings every family member, living or yet to be born, into a stirring, magnificent adventure of creating a unifying family website tree onto which each member shares his or her personal history and experiences. Starting with a founding director and beginning just a generation or two back, the website would electronically draw every member together by print, photo, sound, video, and much more, making every member's shared information, musing, memory, and hope instantly available at any time and from any place. As important, here is a living family tree that will continue to grow and expand for a year, a decade, or 100 decades. The stored collection could last forever and the old-fashioned family tree would be a welcome extension appended as foundational information providing much-wanted starter roots! In Your Living Family Tree, Burgett explains the revolutionary new concept in the opening chapters: The Idea, The Parts, The Ways, The Director, and The Future. Then he describes 17 possible sections of the tree in an immediately usable format. Those sections might include a Personal Information Repository; Family Directory; Family Registry; Tip of the Hat Acclamations; In Memoriam An-nouncements; an Annual Family Summary; Family Treasures in Print; Family Treasure Box; Family Flashes; the Ancestral Family Tree; Journals, Diaries, and Memoirs; Unforgettable Recollections; Scrapbooks; DNA and Health Concerns, and a list of Other Attachments. Why confine our genealogical curiosity to the past when we can create the future s past in digital permanence today, tomorrow, and for as long as our families share and grow? See the do-it-yourself process explained step by step in Your Living Family Tree. This is the Table of Contents of Your Living Family Tree: Introduction Dedication and Acknowledgements Section 1 / The Idea A Great New Idea, a Vision, and the Benefits Section 2 / The Parts The Parts of Your Living Family Tree The nuclear website Friendly software How might your living family tree appear? Do you have a say in how the website looks? Section 3 / The Ways The Ways Your Family Information is Shared Words Photos Sounds Video Artefacts Section 4 / The Director Your Living Family Tree Director Finding that heroic first seed planter Equipment needed A Family Tree Board? Family reunions Getting the whole family involved Focussing on the oldest and the youngest first Money and bill paying What do you do right now? Section 5 / The Future Your Living Family Tree and the Future If somebody doesn t plant this tree now? Keeping it going far into the future... And if it disappears for a while? Your living family tree for 200, 500, or 1000+ years Appendix Personal Information Repository Sample Personal Information Birth Sheet Sample Personal Information Age 15 Sheet Family Directory Sample Family Directory Key Date List Sample Key Date List Family Registry: Birth, Baptism, Marriage, and Death Sample Birth Registry Tip of the Hat Acclamations Sample Tip of the Hat In Memoriam Announcements Sample In Memoriam Annual Family Summary Sample Annual Family Summary Family Treasures in Print Family Treasure Box Family Flashes Ancestral Family Tree Journals, Diaries, and Memoirs Unforgettable Recollections Scrapbooks DNA and Health Concerns Other Attachments Index