BijanBlog: Writing down and sharing your life story
kirklove
· 4 months ago
Great idea. I've been meaning to "interview" my parents in depth for a while now for this same reason and have been putting it off. You've helped push it back to the top of the list.
I do remember about 10 years ago I asked them 5 simple questions along this line... Favorite food, how they met, best childhood memory, favorite movie... it was amazing. They stopped being just my parents and became real people with real lives I had never known. When I got to favorite musical artist my dad said The Carpenters. I was like right on I love The Carpenters! I had never seen a single Carpenter record in the house though. So I went out and bought him the entire box set (remember those, ha) and gave it to him. He got all choked up. My rock of a father choked up by a Carpenter's box set. Next we sat and listened to some of the songs together. It was incredible. I'm smiling now just thinking of it. One of the best memories of my life. Thanks for jogging it back up.
bijan
· 4 months ago
Thanks for sharing that.
I might have to do an "interview" as well to get them started.
-bijan
David Noël
· 3 months ago
Great story indeed!
Gary Burge
· 4 months ago
Please do this now while you can.
I lost both of my parents: my father, when I was a child, my mother, later when I was a middle aged adult. I have some sharp memories of them discussing their lives, but many are just vague recollections. The kind where, if your parents were alive, you would say "Didn't you say once that...".
And don't forget to have them help you document your own life. With my parents gone, I now will never remember the name of my third grade teacher!
reecepacheco
· 4 months ago
I've been really fortunate in my life so far (at 26), as I've always managed to spend a month or more at home with my parents in the summertime. It's not a vacation, we're all working, but it gives us the chance to reconnect beyond the usual weekly phone call, and it's in this time that the idiosyncrasies, the anecdotes, the minutia of their lives appear... and it is gold.
Last night was my last on Cape Cod for the summer. I had dinner with my parents at our family restaurant, and we covered all sorts of topics - from family, to the business, to my life, and theirs - and at the end, as has been the trend recently, I walked away thinking of my parents as my best-friends.
I also spent an hour with my grandmother yesterday afternoon. She's been battling Alzheimer's for a while now, but yesterday she was as lucid as I've seen her in two years. We, too, talked about everything! I cherish her stories about her life, immigrating to the US years ago and making a life - "my best life" - as she refers to it, in growing our family.
Yet, her stories, and those of my parents, are unlikely to ever be preserved digitally (slow adoption here on Cape Cod; my parents don't even have an answering machine and she may cringe at me even writing this much about our family). While I love the nostalgia of thumbing through our old photo albums in the attic, that experience will be well on its way to extinction by the time the next generation (my kids?!) is grown.
Conversely, my life has been digitized for a while now. Like Bijan, I can imagine my digital life being remembered by my future generations. Which brings to mind two relevant cases.
1. My friend Laura Lee, who started a non-profit http://TheGeneralHistoryProject.com. She's preserving the history of "The General" - an 85 year old Kenyan tea farmer who has a leader for independence - because there is no record of his amazing life and stories. It's really interesting to think of the incredible lives and stories that exist in our world, yet have no record in our digital existence.
2. My friend Ricky - my teammate in college - who passed away suddenly about 3 years ago. His profile is still up on Facebook, and I still see his name pop up in tagged photos and even news feed stories (everyone still wished him a happy birthday this year). His digital ghost still lives...
So then, what is the proper way to handle this? I'm sure services like Facebook and Tumblr and even Google will/have been faced with the question of what to do when a user passes on. Is it best to shut down their profiles - erasing them from memory? Or let them live on in digital eternity as part of the greater community? Finally, is someone going to build the service that enables us to have our own personal Archive.orgs?
reecepacheco
· 4 months ago
Wow... long post. Sorry Bijan!
bijan
· 4 months ago
Thanks for sharing all of that. Very helpful and interesting.
I've met a few folks that are looking at ways to keep our online profiles and content going after our time on the planet. I haven't seen any real traction yet but I think it's a good idea.
(2) There's a business in there somewhere. I had this idea of consumer digital preservation a while ago. I bought a domain name a couple of years ago off a domain squatter (iCapsule.com) thinking I would go build a "digital time capsule" that would allow a customer to store digital media for a generation and then deliver it to a kid or friend. In my own experience, we have about 10K digital photos per year of my son who is 3.5 and it's a challenge to figure out how to store it. It's not like an old photo album you can throw in the closet!
It turns out storing data for 30 years is non-trivial. A lot of people are thinking about this and most methods today are expensive. I think it would be cool to write some software that similar to the SETI Screensaver that allowed participants to donate unused hard drive space to a network that preserved digital assets. Think of how much unused HD space there is in the world? It's only going to grow. Anyway....back to work...
Heather Matthews
· 3 months ago
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David Noël
· 3 months ago
Great, Bijan. Don't wait.
We have a quite big family. My dad is the youngest of four brothers and two of them have already passed (so have my grandparents on both sides). One was the founder of the family business and the other was the "uncle from abroad" who lived all over the world and used to tell me great adventurous stories from Africa, Israel and South America when he visited. I was still very young when they both passed and I wish I could turn back time to sit down with both of them and just listen to their life stories. They were both great men and I wish they'd still be around so I could learn from them.
Recently, my sister started interviewing several family members and she said it was such a great experience listening to the stories from when my uncles were kids during and after the war. She has made it her mission to record and interview all family members (starting with the older generation) and I'm really thankful she's doing it.
bijan
· 3 months ago
you are right david
i was hoping they would do it so it would be their 100% owned by them
but an interview is a great idea.
David Noël
· 3 months ago
If they want to do it that's even better. My sister said that she only needed one or two questions to get my uncle started and he didn't stop talking. I guess he was happy that someone came and took the time to listen.
I can't wait to hear the first recordings and see how the many different stories come together to one. Let me know if you find a great way to do it for people that are more used to using modern tech.
All Comments
I do remember about 10 years ago I asked them 5 simple questions along this line... Favorite food, how they met, best childhood memory, favorite movie... it was amazing. They stopped being just my parents and became real people with real lives I had never known. When I got to favorite musical artist my dad said The Carpenters. I was like right on I love The Carpenters! I had never seen a single Carpenter record in the house though. So I went out and bought him the entire box set (remember those, ha) and gave it to him. He got all choked up. My rock of a father choked up by a Carpenter's box set. Next we sat and listened to some of the songs together. It was incredible. I'm smiling now just thinking of it. One of the best memories of my life. Thanks for jogging it back up.
I might have to do an "interview" as well to get them started.
-bijan
I lost both of my parents: my father, when I was a child, my mother, later when I was a middle aged adult. I have some sharp memories of them discussing their lives, but many are just vague recollections. The kind where, if your parents were alive, you would say "Didn't you say once that...".
And don't forget to have them help you document your own life. With my parents gone, I now will never remember the name of my third grade teacher!
Last night was my last on Cape Cod for the summer. I had dinner with my parents at our family restaurant, and we covered all sorts of topics - from family, to the business, to my life, and theirs - and at the end, as has been the trend recently, I walked away thinking of my parents as my best-friends.
I also spent an hour with my grandmother yesterday afternoon. She's been battling Alzheimer's for a while now, but yesterday she was as lucid as I've seen her in two years. We, too, talked about everything! I cherish her stories about her life, immigrating to the US years ago and making a life - "my best life" - as she refers to it, in growing our family.
Yet, her stories, and those of my parents, are unlikely to ever be preserved digitally (slow adoption here on Cape Cod; my parents don't even have an answering machine and she may cringe at me even writing this much about our family). While I love the nostalgia of thumbing through our old photo albums in the attic, that experience will be well on its way to extinction by the time the next generation (my kids?!) is grown.
Conversely, my life has been digitized for a while now. Like Bijan, I can imagine my digital life being remembered by my future generations. Which brings to mind two relevant cases.
1. My friend Laura Lee, who started a non-profit http://TheGeneralHistoryProject.com. She's preserving the history of "The General" - an 85 year old Kenyan tea farmer who has a leader for independence - because there is no record of his amazing life and stories. It's really interesting to think of the incredible lives and stories that exist in our world, yet have no record in our digital existence.
2. My friend Ricky - my teammate in college - who passed away suddenly about 3 years ago. His profile is still up on Facebook, and I still see his name pop up in tagged photos and even news feed stories (everyone still wished him a happy birthday this year). His digital ghost still lives...
So then, what is the proper way to handle this? I'm sure services like Facebook and Tumblr and even Google will/have been faced with the question of what to do when a user passes on. Is it best to shut down their profiles - erasing them from memory? Or let them live on in digital eternity as part of the greater community? Finally, is someone going to build the service that enables us to have our own personal Archive.orgs?
I've met a few folks that are looking at ways to keep our online
profiles and content going after our time on the planet. I haven't
seen any real traction yet but I think it's a good idea.
-bijan
--
Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
bijan@sparkcapital.com
twitter.com/bijan
617-830-2010
http://www.storycorps.org/record-your-story
-bijan
--
Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
bijan@sparkcapital.com
twitter.com/bijan
617-830-2010
(1) Have you heard of StoryCorps?
(2) There's a business in there somewhere. I had this idea of consumer digital preservation a while ago. I bought a domain name a couple of years ago off a domain squatter (iCapsule.com) thinking I would go build a "digital time capsule" that would allow a customer to store digital media for a generation and then deliver it to a kid or friend. In my own experience, we have about 10K digital photos per year of my son who is 3.5 and it's a challenge to figure out how to store it. It's not like an old photo album you can throw in the closet!
It turns out storing data for 30 years is non-trivial. A lot of people are thinking about this and most methods today are expensive. I think it would be cool to write some software that similar to the SETI Screensaver that allowed participants to donate unused hard drive space to a network that preserved digital assets. Think of how much unused HD space there is in the world? It's only going to grow. Anyway....back to work...
We have a quite big family. My dad is the youngest of four brothers and two of them have already passed (so have my grandparents on both sides). One was the founder of the family business and the other was the "uncle from abroad" who lived all over the world and used to tell me great adventurous stories from Africa, Israel and South America when he visited. I was still very young when they both passed and I wish I could turn back time to sit down with both of them and just listen to their life stories. They were both great men and I wish they'd still be around so I could learn from them.
Recently, my sister started interviewing several family members and she said it was such a great experience listening to the stories from when my uncles were kids during and after the war. She has made it her mission to record and interview all family members (starting with the older generation) and I'm really thankful she's doing it.
i was hoping they would do it so it would be their 100% owned by them
but an interview is a great idea.
I can't wait to hear the first recordings and see how the many different stories come together to one. Let me know if you find a great way to do it for people that are more used to using modern tech.