Family historians, hooked on stories
These are stories of a family’s journey. Objects, letters, and voices take them through migrations, tragedy, and triumph to teach family lessons of empathy and resilience. These stories matter to families today — and into the future. They're our responsibility to capture, preserve, and pass down.
At Projectkin, we’re here to help each other.
This community is for family historians of all ages, skills, and interests. We meet in an online forum and at virtual events to share ideas, projects, and inspiration. We’re hooked on stories and eager to tell them in ways that will engage our siblings, children, and the generations of descendants to follow them.
We invent and refine creative ways to capture and preserve our stories. Reimagined as “projects,” we can explore ideas independent of vendors. We freely combine our narratives with media, maps, and more.
We’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. 👩🍳 👨🏼🍳.
Once a good solution is found, members share it with the community as a specific, how-to project “recipe.” These recipes follow a consistent template that 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—perhaps even adding innovations.
What you won’t find.
We are platform-independent, so you will not receive a pitch on any platform, service, or tool. We are not selling anything. That independence allows us to be objective and creative.
It’s a newsletter with benefits.
Dropping your email allows you to receive our articles and recordings via email. If you want to return to create a password and a handle, you can join the conversation with an authenticated identity. This helps us keep the community healthy and avoid the noise of open sites like X (Twitter) or Facebook.
The forum uses Substack to manage emails and delivery. I believe the platform is well suited to capturing and sharing family history. I’m so committed to the idea that I’ve invested in a collaboration at
to create a “welcome wagon” to support new family historians and genealogists on the platform.There are rules, though.
As my mother used to say, “Participation is a privilege.” In our modern, online world, written guidelines can be helpful so you understand what we see as appropriate here:
1. Be kind and contribute. Listen to understand. Respond to support.
Our community works best when we listen to each other and helpfully engage 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.
2. This is no place for hate, threats, or fear.
We've seen how words can hurt, destroy, and undermine, particularly online. That kind of behavior is not welcome here. If you engage in it, I'll remove you from the community.
3. My judgment isn’t perfect. It’s what I have.
I may make mistakes in judgment about what violates our guidelines, and I am willing to discuss it offline. My goal here is to build a community; all I have is my sense of what feels right. Kindly respect that.
4. Language matters.
I ask that all of our members be respectful in their language and tone. Candor and authenticity are essential, but so is kindness. Language, dialect, and slang matter, as they can help us communicate ideas and feelings.
Please note that I’ve made a policy of deferring to my members’ and guests’ preferred variations of English in Members’ Corner posts and events. You’ll notice Australian, British, or Canadian spellings of our shared English language used throughout the site. That’s intentional, though the complexity does risk errors. It’d be an honor to fix those 😉.
Once you join
I’ll send you a welcome email with background about what we do and how we do it. Email systems often filter this into Updates (Gmail) or something like that. You might need to search on “Welcome” and “Projectkin” to find it.
Here are a few tips to get started:
I always invite new subscribers to our exclusive member Chat section to introduce themselves. It’s a great way to get to know the community.
Since many of our members are new to the platform, I collaborated with,
to create another publication dedicated to supporting Genealogists and Family Historians on Substack, . We host monthly events, and it’s become a fantastic way for all of us to find each other. Join us!
Explore the publication at MissionGenealogy.Substack.com
Our Special Events Each Month
Projectkin events are hosted online via Zoom. So far, we’ve been able to offer them all for free. Everyone is welcome to our events, though a subscription (or membership) is necessary to view Substack Live events. For detail on coming events, please see our Events page:
Even crazier, perhaps, we make recordings of our live events available to everyone for free.
We do this under the unshakable belief that if you see what we’re up to, you will want to join us. Is that crazy?
Hang on, how is this all free?
In the software business, there’s an expression that “if you aren’t paying for a product, then YOU are the product.” This is a terrific reminder that platforms like Facebook or Google offer robust platforms for free in exchange for data about you that they sell at a tremendous profit to advertisers.
We’re not selling your data.
After a career in tech startups, I have focused on protecting privacy. I have no interest in advertising or launching a new platform. I’m not collecting data to sell you something, either. I’ll even show you how tools work — flaws and all. (See platform-independent posts on topics like “tips” here or through my sister publication,
.)I’m here to help you tell your stories.
This is a golden age for storytelling. I’m here to help families make the most of what’s available to help them tell their stories. Family history has specialized requirements like document preservation, material archiving, and future-proofing, to name a few. We’re here to help each other find solutions and encouragement.
Getting to self-sustaining operations
I’ve promised to make this endeavor self-sustaining over time. I’m not charging for my own time. I’ve added mechanisms to support operational contributions when I incur external costs.
Substack gives me extraordinary tools for email, video hosting, and a discussion platform for free.
I’m paying for my productivity software and modest local taxes, fees, and insurance.
We now present all our events on an Events page. My total operational costs are $20/month. That currently covers two platform fees: Zoom for my live events and Tockify, the tool I use to present the calendar.
I accept contributions toward these expenses using a platform hosted at buymeacoffee.com. The platform supports credit card transactions in increments of $5. Your contributions are always appreciated but never required.
The Substack business model is aligned with mine by offering robust paid options. Their tool includes a top-tier level for one-time donations. I have not enabled that yet, though I might in the future. I currently envision simple thank-you gifts. (The “NPR model,” as a member put it.)
About Me
Inside the red “ringleader” outfit, I’m
. Like you, I’m a family historian hooked on stories. Though I’d always been interested in family history, I started getting serious as a byproduct of my previous startup, Ponga. As we wound down the platform, I realized our subscribers were also passionate about telling stories. What brought us together was now my mission, too. So, in a post-Ponga world, I formed “Projectkin.”As I’ve gotten to know community members, I find myself thinking of the community as a collective and my language reflects it. Sometimes you’ll catch me saying “We.” At the end of the day, I’m the one responsible for this content.
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. I’ve learned to rely on your candor.1 More about me on LinkedIn. If you’d like, you’re welcome to grab a time that works for you to speak live over Zoom.
I have two accounts here on Substack: One as
which I generally use to comment and follow personal interests; the other is this one where I’m your “ringleader,” . For Projectkin-related matters, I’d prefer you reach me here:You can also reach me via email at projectkin.org@gmail.com.
Finally, I’ll leave you with some of the extraordinary recommendations I’ve heard from members. You’ll see a selection of three in the current rotation on our welcome page and a few more here. Have more to add? Let me know:
I hope that gives you a sense of what Projectkin is all about. Please feel free to contact me with comments, suggestions, or tips. Again, welcome!
⥐ Barbara
In this highly polarized world, I’ve chosen to not hide my politics. If you know anything about my home in Berkeley, California, you can probably guess which way my politics lean. I occasionally make decisions, such as the position I took concerning our social media strategy, based on this worldview. I value authenticity.
That said, I also endeavor to welcome everyone. Family history can become a common language shared across political, national, and ideological divides. Please let me know if I say or do anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.
