Keeping it: archives, exports, and what lasts
60 min · 60 minutes planned
The program's promise made durable. Everything captured so far — recordings, captioned photos, written stories — gets a real home, a backup, and a named person to inherit its care. Plain talk about where recordings die, why open formats matter, and what a family handoff actually looks like.
Any group finishing the program. Helpful to have wifi and a few phones or laptops in the room, but the session works fully on paper — the plan is the point, not the technology.
By the end of the hour
- Every participant chooses a real, named home for what they've captured — and puts at least one item into it before leaving.
- The group understands, in plain terms, why open formats and exports decide what survives.
- Every participant writes a one-page handoff: who inherits the keeping, and where everything lives.
The session, minute by minute
Welcome and the inventory
Norms, then take stock out loud: over five sessions this room has made recordings, captioned photos, and written stories. Ask everyone to list, on paper, what they actually have and where each piece currently sits. For most people the honest answer is "on my phone" — say cheerfully that today exists to fix exactly that.
Where recordings die
Plain talk, no scare tactics — every group has lived at least one of these: the phone that broke or was lost with everything on it; the account nobody could open after a death because nobody had the password; the format or app that simply stopped existing; the box of tapes with no machine left to play them. The lesson isn't fear, it's a rule: a memory kept in one place is a memory on borrowed time.
What lasts
Three principles, kept simple. Copies: everything precious exists in at least two places. Open formats: keep plain files a person can open in thirty years without a particular company's permission — ordinary audio files, ordinary photos, plain text; anywhere your things are kept should let you export them that way, and if it won't, that's a warning. Paper: still a great format — a printed story with a photo needs no charger and no password.
Set up the home
Working time: each participant sets up a real home for their material and puts one item in it. DearestEllie is free, private by default, and exports everything in an open format — that's what it was built for — but say honestly that any home is fine: a shared family folder, a labeled drive plus a paper binder. The point is that the home exists and one thing is actually in it before the hour ends. Helpers help; participants press the buttons.
The handoff
The step almost everyone skips, so it happens here, on paper: name the person who inherits the keeping, then write the one-page "where everything lives" note — what exists, where it is, how to get in, and one line about why it matters. Folded into the will, the family Bible, the fireproof box, or handed straight to the named person. An archive nobody can find or open was never really kept.
Close of program: one thing kept
The last circle: each participant shares one thing they kept during these six weeks — a recording, a captioned photo, a story, a conversation that finally happened. Then what continuing looks like: one story a month beats a burst and a burnout; the mystery photos still have living witnesses; the question lists still have names on top. Thank them honestly. This work is quiet and it outlives everyone in the room — that's the point of it.
Materials
- Phones or laptops and wifi, if available — the session works on paper without them
- Printed one-page "where everything lives" template (or draw the four headings on a whiteboard: what exists / where it is / how to get in / why it matters)
- Paper, pens, and a few envelopes for handoff notes
- The open memory-format spec at /resources/memory-format, printed for the technically curious
- Tissues within reach — session six has its own tears
The gentle moments
What to expect in the tender minutes of this session, and how to meet them. Read this part twice.
The handoff step surfaces its own grief: "who will care about this when I'm gone?" Don't rush past it with logistics. Naming an heir for your memories is naming your own mortality, and doing it in company is exactly why this happens in a group.
Someone will have no one to hand off to — no children, no close family. Have the communal answers ready and treat them as fully equal, because they are: a local library or historical society, a faith community's archive, a dear friend, the senior center itself. Stories have outlived families for all of human history.
Technology frustration can masquerade as failure ("I'm too old for this"). Separate the two out loud: the keeping is the skill, and they've already done it — the buttons are just buttons, and paper remains a first-class answer.
That's the program — six sessions, and a room full of stories that now exist somewhere safe. Back to the full curriculum. Questions or training conversations: [email protected].