Day One
It's day 1 of 2024, and I've already just done what will be one of my favourite activites for the year: I looked back over the highs (and some of the lows) of the year just completed.
This task took around an hour, and was a complete joy.
Sharing my speedily narrated summary with the rest of the family was an even bigger joy - as we all collectively were reminded of how many incredible things we saw and did throughout the year.
The review only took an hour (and was only a joy) because of the routine preparatory work I do throughout the year:
Curation is an act of love
Most weeks one of my family chores is to go through all of the photos that the four of us have taken, and to curate them into monthly photo albums, with addiitonal special albums if we go on holiday or undertake special activities.
I've written about our Home Photography Workflow quite a few years back, and much is broadly similar today.
While it is often actually quite good fun to go through the photos, I've ensure that I've undertaken this task irregardless of if I really feel like it. This is a family task I have undertaken since the kids were born 17+ years ago.
Total curated photos throughout 2023
Monthlies : January2023, February2023 etc.
12x albums with 3059 photos (and videos)
Special activities such as 'July2023-Wimbledon', or 'December2023-Harry-Potter' 35x albums with 2482 photos (and videos)
Big holidays 'April2023-Iceland'
5x albums with 5608 photos (and videos)
and 2x 'Stream' albums which are kind of around 670 'best ofs' and an easier way to remind us of the broad shape of the year (one of which is public on flickr of non-family photos)
Storyus
Storyus is a family-friendly slow-social storytelling platform, that I have been slowly developing for about 6 years now.
While it is a multi-tenant platform, is it is long term closed-beta, and access is carefully gated. Todate there have been well over 1200 stories now captured, predimantly by families that we know well.