I was delighted to welcome Projectkin member, genealogist, and storyteller, Karla Von Fumetti Staudt (
) as our speaker this morning.Karla described her own journey from the boxes of her grandfather’s papers to a modern system of shared archives. Her story touches on familiar stones:
That moment when her dad looked at her and said, “we have to do something,”
To the point when after she’d collected a room full of archives her husband said, “what are you going to do with all this stuff.”
The answer, as you’ll learn, came to her after a thoughtful evaluation of requirements and technology options. Karla’s builds from a new platform, WeAre.xyz and focuses on legacy and the engagement of her family. She’s used it to construct both a public family history archive and a private archive of her living family members, in essence a living historical record.
Resources
During our conversation, we touched on a number of external links. These may be helpful to you in reviewing the talk:
WeAre.xyz is the family archiving platform we discussed at length. Note that the company was founded by Projectkin member
so you’ll know how to reach him here on Substack.
Examples from Karla’s WeAre Family Archive:
Blog Post: “How many pacifiers are enough”
An example of a translated document
Sharing an article about an heirloom painting
Because of the remarkable technological transformations of our age, we are among the first generations to compile these materials into meaningful digital archives that can help our ancestors build on the collection we've amassed. Many tools have stepped in to offer solutions here. In her talk, Karla mentioned some she continues to use and others she considered:
Collectionnaire, now MyFamilyArchive.com
In the chat there was a discussion of the importance of photo metadata as a means to provide useful archival information. Karla mentioned how important it was that WeAre.xyz does not modify the metadata for photos you add to your archive. From the Projectkin archives, I can also recommend this introductory talk by Caroline Guntur about Metadata.
This is the first in our series of events and programs during RootsTech 2024. Join us for more of these events:
And explore our new Members’ Corner launched in celebration of RootsTech:
My journey to capture my family legacy