Being interested in family history is a like taking a great adventure into the past and never really knowing what to expect! This is actually one of the many things that makes family history so fascinating.
Often discoveries become intriguing and require additional discussions with other family members creating an opportunity to share findings with family and potential family. In the process one can learn more about their family and gain new family members who may know more about your family than anyone realizes. The list of positives when sharing and collaborating is immense when one considers the possibilities.
So just what is "Relative CrowdSourcing"? According to the Merrian-Westers dictionary, "Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed serves, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees of suppliers."
I would like to tweak it a little and consider one's extended family the 'crowd' and you are the individual who is asking your extended family for needed information to build your family tree with not just names, dates and places but with stories, pictures and documents. All these things can be done online through many different mediums available today.
There is of course the basic email, but there is also Skype and Google + Hangouts where one can converse face to face as well as chat if necessary. Sharing knowledge gained from others can be done in a family blog or on a family website. Pictures and stories can also be shared through blogs or a family wiki and of course FamilySearch allows you to upload pictures and stories too.
Apps on an Android or an iPhone or tablets make access to these even easier and allow for inter-exchange between multiple people. There are many new and exciting ways to take advantage of the tools already there and to employ new ones. Evernote has added many new features that make it a possible place to store and grow your family tree. Of course there is always Google Drive which can be used to store and share stories and pictures too.
Regardless of the methods used, the main point is to begin and reach out to your extended family and build your Relative Crowdsourcing family who will be there to help you grow your family tree which in essence is also their family tree!
Building Bridges for All Generations!
Claire (*)
Timeless Genealogies
We're Your Family is "No. 1"
http://gen-reflections.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/clairebrissonbanks
Twitter@TimelessGen
Timeless Genealogies
We're Your Family is "No. 1"
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claire@timelessgen.com
