Hi, and welcome to my weekly blog! The big news in the genealogy world at the moment relates to the news that the Chief Executive of The UK National Archives is leaving to take up a new position at the Financial Ombudsman.

The question on everyone's lips is what direction the institution will take under her successor? Given the upheavals witnessed recently, it is to be hoped that the emphasis on access to online collections is coupled with a return to core archival values, and a prioritization for cataloguing, specialist knowledge and onsite services.

I'm also involved in a campaign to retain public access to electoral lists, which is under threat from a government review. Hopefully I'll have more on this next week.

To kick-start the launch of the Life Cube, arcalife is running a contest for the most innovative and inspiring Life Cube. The winner will collect $500 – CASH. The first 5 people who shared the winner’s Life Cube link through social networks Facebook or Twitter will also win $50 each – so everybody wins! It’s free to enter with a few simple steps to follow.

[ Contest Begins in September 2009 and will run for one month. ]

Life Cube Contest Details:

1. Build a Life Cube on arcalife.com or sign up through the Facebook Application. (It's free and easy to sign up.)

2. Share your Life Cube on Facebook OR Twitter.*

3. Get 5 of your friends or followers to either Comment on your Facebook Profile OR Re-Tweet your Life Cube link on Twitter.**

That's it!

The arcalife team will judge and award the winning Life Cube based on inspiration and creativity.

* / ** Rules, Regulations and Specifications will be posted to the arcalife wiki when the contest launches in September.

Check out this Michael Jackson Life Cube a fan created. (Don't forget to hit the animate button!)

Press Release August 20, 2009

VANCOUVER, BC (arcalife) August 20, 2009 -  Arcalife has launched their latest application: the patented Life Cube^TM. Life Cube^TM is a multimedia application, accessible on the arcalife site and as a Facebook application, that allows you to bring all of your best photo and video moments together in a fantastic animated 3D showcase. 

The Life Cube^TM is a perfect tool to highlight memories from weddings, graduations, birthdays, and even memorial events. The arcalife team also sees this tool as a great way for visual artists and musicians to show off their work, or for companies wanting to use it to easily display professional projects or products.  Being able to add music, videos, control the rotation speed of the cube and overlay text on each frame, means that you can create an extremely professional result that works in time with the music and is in keeping with the message you are trying to deliver in your promotion or showcase.  Best of all it can be done in a matter of minutes and shared publicly or with a specific, defined private audience.

VP of product and technology Daniel Dekkers says, “The great thing about the Life Cube^TM is that you can use it to play your life from beginning to end. Modern technology has made this kind of digital showcase accessible to the end user. In the past this would have cost you hundreds or even thousands to have this custom made. Now you can upload your photos and video to arcalife and literally create a unique view of your life in minutes.”

 Arcalife is a family centric social website where its members can securely and privately capture and share memories, stories and family history. CEO Paul Taylor says that the site is about “showcasing life experiences that we have every day and sharing them with family and close friends.”. As well as letting you research your family history, the site has a number of unique multimedia applications. 

A couple of months back I was talking with Peter Van Garderen about personal and public archiving projects. One of the things that came up is that there seems to be a gap in how private companies like our family history site arcalife and the public / not for profit organizations can work together.  Peter and I shared the view that some of this is as result of profit making companies targeting national and provincial resources. Some of the attempts to secure exclusive access to national assets are badly thought out and not in anyone’s interests.  Still the appeal is there; for local, provincial and national archives the opportunities are significant in terms of the preservation of records and the benefits for companies are obvious – Is there a model that works for everyone?
 
Mistrusted motives is only a part of the problem in my view. A few months ago we realized that we had been spending a large part of our time and resources building our membership on a global basis, and not much time in our own back yard. Once we figured this out we started to create a program to reach out to family history and genealogy organizations inside of Canada. Maybe naively, with us being a Canadian company, I expected a warm welcome. People have of course been friendly enough, but disappointingly a bit ambivalent in their dealings with us.  Despite major success in a global context, it seems that forging links and partnerships with Canadian organizations is an uphill struggle.
 
I think this is because some not for profit organizations have the view that it is unethical to work with profit making companies. This idea is an anathema to me as we are based around a free membership [no time limit] and our offering is founded in a strong personal motivation. This is to encourage all of us to secure our family history, memories and experiences for future generations, either in a personal digital estate or as part of a wider contribution to the Canadian cultural record. I would be very surprised to hear any not for profit organizations say that my motivations are not genuine and from the heart.
 
I think these kind of objectives are important enough for us to overlook the difference in our profit making structure and I will continue to reach out to Ontario Genealogical Society and New Brunswick Genealogical Society with the hope that they will talk with us one day. Over the coming days and weeks, we hope to make some friends at Manitoba Genealogical Society, Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta Genealogical Society, Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island Genealogical Society, Québec Family History Society and the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society.
 
 And we look forward to working with you at the British Columbia Genealogical Society and the Alberta Family Histories Society.

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A few weeks back I spoke with Tony Wanless about what it’s like starting up a new family history business in this kind of economic climate.  Tony is an independent consultant who writes for the National Post and he has a keen eye for the issue’s of the day.  Talking with him actually brought into focus some things I have been doing to get me through the tough times.  They were subconscious previously, and I wasn’t sure they were always good habits.  After my conversation with him, I came away thinking of these habits as strengths rather than potential weaknesses.  For sure it’s a tough time out there and you do what you need to, to get through.  The path that Tony mentions in his piece is a rocky one, but with some sturdy boots and a shoulder to lean on now and again, it is navigable to anyone who believes in their vision enough.

Read the full National Post arcalife article here.

It’s such a popular activity these days. If all the talk of family trees, family history and scrap booking your memories has caught your attention but you don’t know where to start, here are some ideas to get you going.
 
You could start building a family tree or conducting a family history search, but probably the best thing you can do before you do anything at all is to think about what you want to get out of the pursuit of your heritage.  You can spend years tracing your genealogy, going back generation after generation through your lineage.  Some people find this alone a satisfying hobby and also get a great deal of fulfillment, knowing something about where they come from. The key question is this: do you want to spend all your efforts looking back, when some of the richest rewards are in your more recent history?
 
Within the living memories of your present day family, you probably have a wealth of fantastic history with which you can identify. Try picking a relatively recent ancestor, who seems interesting and whom you think you may be able to gather material about. This can be a motivational place to start researching your history, before you immerse yourself in records and certificates.  Moving across your tree and fleshing out the details about an ancestor has the added benefits of allowing you to connect with living relatives today. This can aid your search later when you start to move back in time.
 
You may also want to think about capturing some of your own or your family’s living history and preserving it for the next generation.
 
These days researching family history is much more accessible than it used to be.  If you are starting out, there are lots of sites where you can start building your family tree and do family history searches for free.  A good one that allows you to build a tree, search records and flesh out an ancestor for free is right here at arcalife.com, of course. Or if you know where you are headed and have the money you can sign up for a paid membership at a site like Ancestry or FamilyLink. The paid sites do give you an extensive set of records to search and a tree, and are great for this, but they have less of the other stuff that allows for you to connect with your family in the past and the present.