Above the Trees

In less than 72 hours, the doors of the Salt Lake Family History Expo will swing open, and the fun will begin. If you plan to go, here’s a few booths to put on your “Must Do…” list:

PHOTOLOOM [Booth 313] (Well, of course you need to stop at our booth!)

We love to meet people at the Family History Expos. We learn so much from the folks we meet, and are inspired by their experiences. This week, we will be rolling out a couple of exciting new Family Photoloom features, and we hope you'll stop by to take a look!

I’m excited to announce our Expo Special – we will be offering our Family Photoloom Premium Start-up Kit for just $19! (Reg. $39) Our Premium Start-up Kit is the perfect way to get started with Family Photoloom, and includes:

• One full year of Family Photoloom Premium (including unlimited image uploads & unlimited guests)
• Tutorial DVD
• Start-up Guide
• Friendly, Personalize Tech Support

Save even more! Buy a second Start-up Kit to give as a gift and get both for just $30! At that price, you can even get one for your favorite Aunt.

Can’t attend the Expo? Tweet or email me (renee@photoloom.com) and I’ll reply with a code that you can use use online to get same great price of just $19 for one year of Family Photoloom Premium. (Online offer does not include Start-up Guide or DVD.) Offer good Aug. 28 & 29, 2009.

Be sure to mention this blog when you come by our booth to receive a cool free gift!

Lisa Louise Cooke, the producer and host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast, is one of the warmest, most generous people you can hope to meet. Lisa provides genealogical resources and education through a variety of mediums, including video podcasts, and Genealogy Gems News blog.


Photoloom founder Scott Huskey talks with Lisa Louise Cooke at the Mesa FHExpo.

Lisa is also a “Blogger of Honor” at the Salt Lake Expo – be sure to follow her on Twitter, and tune in to her blog Genealogy Gems News for live updates from the Expo.

Stop by the Genealogy Gems booth ask for your free "I Listen to Genealogy Gems" badge ribbon to embellish your Family History Expo name tag. Then keep an eye out for others wearing the ribbon and give them a shout out as a fellow listener.

Flixify is dedicated to helping people preserve, watch and share their home movies and digital photos. They don’t sell software – instead, they teach you how to get control of your stacks of home movies by showing you how to capture, edit, and burn them onto DVDs or share them on the web, all from your own computer. The entire process down has been broken down into easy, bite-size pieces, making the overall process very simple.

Flixify is offering a great Expo special – stop by their booth to learn more!

When I met Jean Wilcox Hibben awhile back, I was taken first by the fact that she holds a Ph.D. in Folklore (why didn’t I think of doing that?), and second, by her amazing dedication to preserving the music and traditions of our ancestors. As a collector of traditional folk music myself, I was fascinated by the depth and breadth of her knowledge, and I am looking forward to learning more from her at the Expo this week.

Jean, together with her husband, Butch, will be doing short demonstrations of the music of our ancestors, and offering a variety of great CD’s for sale. They also have something new this year: downloads of MP3 files onto a CD (or your own flash drive) so you can purchase just the songs you are most interested in.

Jean will be presenting a number of classes at the Expo, including “To Zion in Song," which documents the Mormon trek from Nauvoo to Salt Lake with the songs sung by the early Saints. According to Jean, “One of the most interesting songs we present is one that was written in 1946 by Myron Crandell. Crandell titled his song "This is the Place," after the prophetic statement Brigham Young made when he viewed the Salt Lake Valley for the first time. In its original form, this song consists of 7 verses which detail just about every major event from the departure from Iowa to the settling of Salt Lake City.”

Let’s face it; times are tough, and we, like many people, are pinching our pennies. This year, even our family reunion fell victim to the economy. Every two years, we hold a Hughes family reunion, gathering the descendants of my great-grandparents, Willie and Effie Hughes, to swap pictures and stories, collect and correct genealogy information, and generally catch up since the last reunion. However, out-of-control fuel and travel costs forced the family as a whole to forego the reunion and hope for better days on the horizon.

But all was not lost: our reunion instead became a virtual (that is to say, an online) reunion. And it wouldn’t have been the same without Family Photoloom. Family Photoloom enhanced our online reunion by creating a virtual family reunion for our pictures. We have over 350 pictures focusing on Willie and Effie Hughes, spanning six generations. The face tagging and relationship indexing data stored in our Family Photoloom account connects our pictures exactly the same way that a family is connected. You can browse generation to generation or sibling to sibling. You can focus on a single person and see ALL the portraits for that person, or flip over to the relationship tab and see all the pictures of the complete family group. Family Photoloom enhanced our “Virtual Family Reunion” and enabled us to stay connected, even as we pinched pennies and stayed at home on our “stay-cation.”

FAMILY PHOTOLOOM – The Ultimate Family Deal

While we’re talking about saving money, let me take this opportunity to describe the financial benefits of our Photoloom business model for you. In addition to being family-friendly, Family Photoloom ‘pocket-book’ friendly as well. This is because one Premium Family Photoloom Account is all you need to support your entire family organization.

Here is how it works: The account sponsor signs up for the Premium Account, and everyone else signs up for a free trial account. The account sponsor invites all other family members to the family’s Premium Account. That’s all there is to it – a whole family that shares one Premium Account. (It is important to note that the sponsor of the Premium Account has control of not only of who has access to the account, but who has edit (or author) privileges.)

From a business standpoint, it may seem like a wild and crazy idea to allow people free access to a shared Premium Account, so let me explain why it makes good business sense to Photoloom LLC. Two words: Viral Marketing! Every core family is really a combined family: the husband’s family and the wife’s family and at each generation it doubles again. For example, the Willie and Effie reunion site does little for my mom, who is not from this family line; nor does it really meet the needs of my wife, who married into this group of nuts. Both are a potential new Premium Accounts for us. So while you see Free Accounts for all family members, we see Free Viral Marketing.

Times are tough, but we’ll get through them; we always have. We’ll come out stronger as we valiantly do our best to serve one another and help our families stay connected. Don’t let the economy ruin your family reunion – and let Family Photoloom help bring you closer, with a Virtual Family Reunion for your pictures.

Sincerely,
Scott Huskey

Coming next time: Learn about quick and easy Family Photoloom email invitations – it takes just one step to invite and add a new member to your account.