Instead I spent loads of time online with my family collaborating via Basecamp, a “closed community.” We shared memories, photos, laughs and tears as we got ready to help my mother and her twin brother celebrate their 80th birthday. It became addictive – each morning we rushed to our computer to see who had written what last night. We laughed and cried. We dragged our spouse and the kids into the mix.

Tweeting and blogging simply couldn’t compare to the appeal of our real-world social network. Time I might have invested there went into the family memories project.

A week after the big birthday party – the 50-person family reunion – we’re still collaborating via Basecamp. Everyday, we’re still talking.

As my brother Dana wrote so eloquently today, sharing is the secret to a thriving family community:

Recipe for Memories

1 part shared experience
2 parts (or more) of laughter
(optional) 1 part surprise/OMG’s!
Many parts LOVE
1 freedom to share
2 (or more) people to giggle/guffaw/pee pants about the memory later

Take experience and roll out onto life’s table using both hands. Shape with words of awe and laughter, surprise (or any other emotion handy). Mix in the love—-fold gently but don’t be afraid and be too gentle. Love can handle the rough stuff.
Now, this is the tricky part: take 2 or more people and have both of them put their fingerprints all over the experience. Really get into it and make it their own. Twist it, turn it, shake it up, turn it over, run towards it and then embrace it for all you got.

Next, allow it to sit for awhile to “percolate”.
Come back to it later-in some cases, YEARS later. Add the freedom to share.
Slice it, serve it up and allow others to enjoy with you with a dash more of laughter, some tears and lots of love.
Laughter, tears and love are the spices that make it a gourmet meal.

Bon Appetit. This is your life served up just the way you lived it. Eat well.

Thanks, Dana.

• a printed book of photos and images, courtesy of Shutterfly (or equivalent service)
• a printed booklet of stories and recipes
• perhaps a photo collage that she can hang on her wall
• a DVD with an edited set of family movies plus other motion graphics (thanks to her creative grandson Kevin)

All these materials will be ammunition for her “bragging rights” — a favorite activity for grandmothers these days. Show-and-tell has become an important ritual for today’s senior citizens. Digitally-enabled sharing and media production certainly make things easier for the contributors, although not necessarily as effective for the intended recipient. The trick is to figure out how to bridge the gap.

How We’re Sharing

The process to collect all these materials is more complicated than it might seem because my mother has 7 children, plus a computer-savvy husband (83 and an active blogger). All of us are actively contributing to Mom’s memory book. We live in 5 states and are scattered across 3 time zones. Relying on email with attachments as the principal means of sharing our contributions became too chaotic, way too quickly. (Needless to say, we have no common mail server.)

So I set up a project site on Basecamp, figuring it was so easy that I wouldn’t have to invest too much time helping my brothers and sisters master its UI. (That turned out to be a bit optimistic, although most of them have figured it out by now.) This site is serving as the central repository for the stories, recipes, photos, movies and so on. The selected content will eventually be downloaded by the “editors” responsible for the photo book and other tangible outputs.

In the meantime we’re all having a blast posting stories, editorializing and critiquing each other’s contributions, correcting details, uploading photos, etc. The granddaughter who has a college degree in digital media production is watching over our shoulders, chiming in from time to time. (She’s probably wondering why we didn’t choose Facebook. Answer: the gap referred to above.)

As my sister wrote earlier today,

This is getting to be addictive.…..looking at this site and posting pictures! What fun!

I can tell that everyone is logging onto the site every day, and in some cases, multiple times a day. Real proof that there’s a lot of joy in sharing this way.

Once we’ve delivered the books and things to her, we’ll give Mom access to the site, so she can share the memories and relish all the juicy commentary and stories. But for now, we don’t want to spoil her surprise.