Getting started
Inviting your family
Sending the invitation is trivial. Getting a reply is the real task, and it has almost nothing to do with the software.
Step by step
Invite one person first
Not the whole family. One person who is likely to reply, so the archive has a second voice in it before anyone else arrives.
Send something with the invitation
An empty archive is an obligation. Record two things first so the invitation arrives with something in it.
Ask a specific question
'Can you tell me what the back garden looked like?' gets answered. 'Come help with the family history' does not.
Let them reply in twenty seconds
The reply is a spoken answer, not a writing task. That is the difference between a yes and a good intention.
Why family invitations usually fail
The standard invitation asks someone to join a system, learn an interface, and then produce content of unspecified length on an unspecified subject. That is three separate asks disguised as one, and the rational response to it is to leave the email unopened.
It also arrives at an empty room. Being the first contributor to somebody else's archive feels like being the first person on a dance floor, and most people will wait.
What actually works
Put something in it first. Two or three of your own recordings turn the invitation from a request for labour into an invitation to reply to something.
Ask a question only that person can answer. This is the single highest-yield technique in the whole category: it makes the recipient the expert rather than the recruit, and it takes the decision about what to say off their plate. Uncles who have ignored every family project for a decade will answer "what was Dad like at twenty?" within the hour.
Accept partial participation permanently. Most families end up with two or three regular contributors and a long tail who add something once a year. That is a normal, working archive, not a failure.
Children and teenagers
Children contribute readily when the format is short and playful, and not at all when it is framed as preserving family history. Games and photo-based prompts work; solemnity does not.
Teenagers are the hardest group and respond best to being asked for an opinion rather than a memory — what they think of a decision, or what a photograph of their parent at their age looks like to them.
Common questions
- Who can see what I add once I invite people?
- The family members you invite can see the family's archive. There is no public surface — no feed, no profiles, no discovery — so nothing is visible to anyone outside the family.
- How many people should I invite?
- Start with one. A second contributor changes the dynamic more than the twelfth does, and a room with two voices in it is much easier to walk into than an empty one.
- What if most of my family never contributes?
- That is the normal outcome and it is fine. Two or three regular contributors plus occasional additions from everyone else is a functioning family archive.
Related
Getting started with KeepSaiQ
How to set up KeepSaiQ and capture your family's first memory in twenty seconds — plus what to record first so the archive is worth returning to.
Games made from your family's own memories
Trivia, photo challenges, and memory matches generated from your family's own photos and voices — a low-effort reason to revisit the archive together.
For families spread across distance
A shared private space for families living far apart — asynchronous, low-pressure, and built for the ordinary days that video calls always skip.
Start your family's living memory
Free to start. Your first memory takes twenty seconds, and it stays private to your family.
Create your free account
Free · iOS 17+ · Android 9+