Shared Visions Unlimited

Help with Creation, Marketing, Publishing, and Story Productions

Category: Story Productions

Simple Photo Presentations to Refresh Family Memories

December 29, 2024 /
Simple Photo Presentations to Refresh Family Memories

One of the easiest story projects you can do yourself or with my help is to create a slide presentation with photos and captions identifying the people and events.

I have created dozens of these presentations for birthday parties, weddings, and memorials.

The most recent was a tribute to Rocket Norton at the recent Rock Beats Cancer benefit concert. The five-minute presentation is mostly photos with some video.

A happier project was to put together family photos for my son’s wedding. He grew up in North Vancouver and his bride grew up in the Maritimes with the wedding and reception in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

The photo slideshow with a music background started with baby photos of each and pictures of activities as they grew up separately (with many interesting parallels).

I included photos of parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins with captions for the names, relationships, and events. It was an excellent way for each family to learn about the other family.

We looped the video on a large TV at an Aunt’s house between the wedding ceremony and the start of the reception. Many people watched and commented on relatives they had not seen recently.

We also projected the video as part of the reception.

We used Google Drive to collect the photos from both families.

I used PhotoShop to crop and restore the photos, though Canva and other photo editors will work for this.

Today, I will use Apple FinalCut Pro to assemble the photos with transitions, captions, and music. Any video editor would work for this.

I can put it together for you. I will need the photos and notes about each photo for the captions sent by email or uploaded to a Google Drive folder.

The finished presentation can be embedded on a web page or played on most modern televisions from a USB Memory Drive.

Memory Refresher for Seniors

A great use of these family presentations is for seniors and others who are experiencing memory loss.

The photos and videos with captions and possibly a voice-over can be a fun way to refresh memories of family members and events.

Digital Photo Frames

There are many ways of presenting these photo presentations, including inexpensive digital photo frames for your loved ones.

Digital Photo and Video Frame

Tabletop Books

The photo presentation could also be adapted to a create a tabletop book.

There are many services to create these including VistaPrint, Walmart, and others.

Creating a book available for your family members to order from Amazon would also work. Publishing books on Amazon is one of my main services.

I am working on a Story Projects book and workshop series for creating Story Productions like these for people who want to do it themselves.

Let me know if you want me to help with your family story productions now.

Why I Want You To Publish Your Amazing Books and Stories

December 24, 2024 /
Why I Want You To Publish Your Book and Stories.

My first idea for this article was to ask why you want to publish your books and stories.

Then I realized that many of you are not yet on your publishing journey ~ perhaps this is a new idea for you.

So here are some of the reasons why I want to publish your books and stories.

Sharing Your Gifts

The world needs that special gift that only you have ~ Marie Forleo

As Marie Forleo says, the world needs your insights, knowledge and stories. Books and story productions are a great way to do that.

Clarity and Catharsis

The process of writing and publishing your books and stories can help you crystallize some ideas and provide rewarding insights for yourself.

Sometimes you simply need to get things out of your head onto paper.

Influence and Authority

A book and other media can establish you as the authority and attract people to your offers and open doors for speaking engagements.

Preserve and Share Legacy

Books and story productions are a great way to preserve and share personal and family stories.

I urge you to capture family stories while you still can.

Publishing Options

There are many free and near-free options for you to publish yourself.

Services like BookBaby can help you.

And Greg Dixon can help you with every step of the publishing journey from idea to publishing in many formats to promotion.

Sample Story Productions with Greg Dixon

December 17, 2024 /
Magic Stories

Here are some sample Story Productions I have created in the past.

Each one is unique for content and media.

Your family or personal story will also be unique to you.

Ruth Townsend’s Musical Journey

Ruth Townsend asked me to put together her musical story from age five to give to her grandchildren.

Shy prepared a short video introduction and we compiled photos, images, clippings, and video to tell her story.

I created a multimedia PDF that I put onto USB thumb drives in the shape of a piano that she put into a nice gift box for each grandchild.

Some of the grandchildren are now at college and have the story pianos with them.

See tellyourstory.productions/ruth_townsend

Felicity Morgan Family Stories

Felicity Morgan wrote a memoir about growing up in Victoria, British Columbia.

We combined video, photos, text from the memoir, and her daughter Ann reading the memoir as a Story Production website.

See felicitymorgan.ca

Robert Hollender Book

Linda Hollender commissioned us to capture her father’s life story. We usually shot videos, but Robert was reluctant to speak on camera.

Instead, we used a microphone and a smartphone to record his story, which we transcribed and assembled into a book with photos that he gave away to friends for his birthday party that year.

Last year, Linda gave away copies at his memorial service.

See tellyourstory.productions/robert-hollander/

The Rocket Norton Vault

I worked with Vancouver musician and author Rocket Norton for decades on many projects, including concert promotions, publishing his books, selling his How to Coach Baseball to Kids video course, and driving a Lincoln Town Car for his driving service.

Much of that I collected into a multimedia portal called The Rocket Norton Vault.

I also helped promote three cancer benefit concerts related to his battle with cancer. Rocket organized and performed at the first two concerts. The one this year served as a memorial.

I had the honour of creating a memorial video shown at the concert.

Preserve Your Personal and Family Stories

My encouragement is for you to capture the stories of your loved ones while they can still share. Our time on earth is fleeting.

You can start with taking photos, video, and audio with your SmartPhone at family gatherings. I have created videos on the process in the past and am working with new resources to help you.

I am also available to craft new and existing content into story productions.

Please make an appointment to discuss.

Special Offer on Video Clips for Marketing, Online Courses, or Story Productions

March 5, 2024 /
Computer image and various idea icons

Video can be immensely effective for marketing and communicating almost anything.

I often help clients create video clips for many purposes, including:

  • Personal introductions.
  • Business introductions.
  • Product and service introductions.
  • Evergreen webinars.
  • Training videos for online courses, memberships, or to build authority,
  • Personal and family stories.
  • Special offers.
  • Landing page and thank you page videos.
  • Much much more.

My special offer is to create five videos with you for $188.

We can use StreamYard recordings, create videos with your phone, or edit existing videos and presentations together to help with your messaging.

Think Different about Publishing, Marketing, and Story Productions

February 13, 2024 /

Consider how book publishing, course creation, stories, and marketing can all fit together holistically for you to share your stories and help people.

As humans, we tend to approach things in silos: write a book ~ create a course ~ sell a service ~ tell my story ~ do a broadcast ~ try marketing here ~ and write some stuff.

Me too.

Over the years I have tried a lot of boxes: writer ~ artist ~ musician ~ course creator ~ publisher ~ video creator ~ marketer ~ software engineer ~ driver ~ logger ~ fisher ~ minor ~ literature ~ philosophy ~ traveller …

Sometimes I think my most accurate job description is Chief Enabler to Do Stuff.

The list a variety of projects is vast and diverse!

Shared Visions Unlimited aims to integrate all of that to provide encouragement and services for Publishing, Course Creation, Story Production, and Marketing.

The essential idea is that we are all creative beings constantly exploring life and sharing things like stories, insights, products, and services to grow lives and businesses.

As Marie Forlio says, “The world needs that special gift that only you have.”

The main principle here is that there are many ways to get your message out into the world.

I will explore expanding and integrating media and strategies in the next sections.

Publish Your Book In Multiple Formats

I have helped people publish their books over the decades because they asked for my help. I recently recast Shared Visions Unlimited to include writing, publishing, and marketing services.

Betty Withrow and I have helped many authors complete their books and formatted and submitted the books to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark to get the printed and eBook versions out through the usual channels.

Here is an expanded list of where the content from your book could go:

We offer all of these versions.

  • Printed Book.
  • eBook (Kindle, Amazon Books, …)
  • Audio Books
  • Podcasts and Broadcasts (serial readings like Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others used to publish their books).
  • Print Publications
  • Video
  • Flipbooks
  • Print Magazines
  • Digital Magazines
  • Digital Experience Editions

Courses and Membership Programs

If you come to me with a book you want published, I will likely suggest that you consider creating a related course or membership program to leverage your content and benefit more people.

If you talk to me with a course in mind, I will suggest you consider creating and publishing companion books as well.

And a comprehensive plan to develop and market the books, courses, and related stuff all at the same time using my Publishing Sales Machine.

Digital Experience Editions

I use the Kartra Membership platform to create a multimedia repository for books, audio, video, downloadable resources, exercises, and more to create a rich digital version of your book and any related course creation elements.

I marry a course creation platform with multimedia publishing.

Here are some examples:

Marketing Differently 

We often say the time to start marketing your book course or product is when you have the main idea and a working title.

Further than that, you can develop the content as part of your marketing campaign.

Let’s say you have an outline for a course and book. You can present each topic on your outline in live sessions and posts, all leading back to a landing page with an opt-in for a mailing list and a membership that grows over time.

You can start selling access right away, build engagement, and get feedback on your content.

Here are some related articles:

What Is Your Dream Project?

I can help implement the many components to take your books, courses, and story productions from concept to launch.

I can also help you repurpose the golden nuggets in your existing books, courses, and content. You likely have more resources than you think.

Or simply help you market existing products and services.

Let’s chat!

My Golden Offer

Let’s take a look at your publishing and marketing project and find a way to create a win for everyone.

One possibility is a modest retainer plus profit sharing for your offer.

I create the framework and marketing campaigns for success.

Multimedia Story Productions for Personal, Family, Community, and Business

September 1, 2023 /

Greg Dixon has been creating multimedia story production for decades, including:

  • Montages of photos, videos, music, and text for weddings, memorials, and other life milestones.
  • Personal journeys stories.
  • Organization stories and history articles and video productions.
  • Family history and stories.
  • Books
  • Memory boxes with USB drives.
  • Personal and family history websites.
  • Life Vaults

Every project tends to be unique.

What stories do you want to preserve and share?

See Kartra's New Features

Publishing, Marketing, and Memberhip Cash Machine for Authors.

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