#FlipboardChat Summary: Curating Family Magazines on Flipboard

Mia Quagliarello / May 12, 2015

Every Wednesday evening, members of the Flipboard Club—an unofficial community of passionate evangelists—hold a Twitter chat about a Flipboard-centric topic and we summarize the discussion here.

Tomorrow’s topic is “Creative Magazine Ideas for New Graduates.” Join in the chat Wednesday at 7pm PT/10pm ET via the hashtag on Twitter. If the time zone doesn’t work for you, join their Facebook group to stay in the loop.

Last week, participants chatted about how to curate family magazines on Flipboard. Here’s what they said:

Q1. Looking back, what is your most treasured memory of a family event or activity with loved ones?

• I have so many. I was just looking through daughter’s baby book. She’ll be 29 soon.
• Our Christmas camping trips or our trip to North America and Canada.
• It’s almost my cousin’s first wedding anniversary at the Jersey shore. We looked at all the pics and videos recently.
• Birthdays and holidays. We all treasure those family memories—us as kids and then with our kids and their kids.
• I love it when our family is all together. Usually every couple of years, we all make it for Christmas.
• A ski trip with my parents, my brothers, my sister, their spouses and 12 nieces and nephews. We all stayed in one house.
• Summer of ’77. An 8-week cross-country trip with my family. It’s good to have schoolteacher parents!
• My family likes to take one-day trips to wineries when we all have time off together. We just talk and laugh all day.
• I didn’t take many trips, but loved time spent playing sports with my dad. Getting to that age with my son.

Q2. Family life is full of lists: grocery lists, wishlists, packing lists. Why use Flipboard for lists?

• List of places for possible family trips!
• Instead of favoriting something on Twitter, I’ll flip it on Flipboard! It’s a great organizational tool.
• Flipboard makes scannable lists even more scannable! It’s also a nice way to package items. It makes lists easier to consume and share.
• After a #FlipboardChat a few weeks ago, got the idea to start a “kids idea” mag for ideas for this summer.
• Packing list for my one month trip to New York. For: reminders, packing the office, the stuff for the apt….
• The shareability factor of a Flipboard mag can’t be beat. Make it private to just your family and all can contribute.
• I wish I could’ve made my list for Santa on Flipboard! How fun 🙂
• We have list of mags that we use to pull recipes from, does that count?
• You could have a family mag with pics of your product serial numbers for reference for tech support.
• A grocery mag with images? What better way to ensure you get the exact ingredients you need for that holiday pie.

Q3. Family life involves planning. What events or projects can be planned using Flipboard magazines?

• Using Flipboard, you can plan events, like your son’s wedding.
• You can use Flipboard for trips, birthday parties, weddings, even a bucket list!
• Practical things like buying a house or home remodeling.
• Family reunions would be a natural for a Flipboard mag—for planning before and sharing pics and memories after.
• Family vacations. Mine is all over the world. We plan holidays and Flipboard is great for coordination and organization.
• Individual ghost stories for camping trips.
• Plan everything: family reunion, family vacation, bat mitzvah, anniversary parties, baby showers..seriously EVERYTHING!
• A DIY mag for remodeling projects to be done at the grandparent’s house with ideas they like.

Q4. Family life is rich in history. What kind of Flipboard magazines celebrate or record family history?

• Someone I know is starting a Flipboard mag to keep track of genealogy she’s discovering.
• We mentioned this, but family reunions are rich with history. You could make a companion mag that goes back generations.
• @j_allen was saying sports with kids from generation to generation. It’s also good to put those sepia tone pics.
• If you find old photos or documents in the attic and digitalize them you could put them all in a mag to share with family.
• My favorite are mags that celebrate the matriarchs and patriarchs of a family. All that history…so fascinating!
• I am curating a magazine with my daughter’s adventures. She is in Nepal helping out. That is historic.
• We’ll have this gen of kids who will be able to see themselves grow up in a magazine (I know mine will). How cool!

Q5. Family is about love. What kind of Flipboard magazines strengthen relationships and sibling bonds?

• Flipboard magazines make great gifts! Make one for someone special, customized with all their favorite things.
• My sister and I curate mags together. We plan mags on the phone while we are going to work in the am.
• Being the youngest of five, I have always been daddy’s little girl. I curated a mag about the love.
• This one is for @wordwhacker: weddings, wedding albums, showers and generational albums, all on Flipboard.
• A picture mag would be nice for an 18th or 21st birthday, showing your child from birth to the present.
• A friend with cancer is recording herself reading bedtime stories for an audio mag for her kids for when she’s gone.
• Food mags, books, music we both enjoy…
• I have one private Flipboard mag that’s just pics of my two grandkids together. Shows their sibling bond, from birth on.
• Mags are just great ways to share things long-distance, if family members are apart.
• Mother’s Day and Father’s Day photo mags can showcase lots of wonderful memories that honor parents.

Q6. Which Flipboard features do you consider to be most helpful when curating a family magazine?

• Invite collaborators is my favorite feature.
• What makes all these personal mags possible is that we can get our own pics and scans into mags.
• Flipboard search and topics really help in finding content. Also, following relevant Twitter lists and curators.
• The contributor and the email features. All of these can help organize your family magazine.
• Group mag sharing, being able to limit readership of mags, inviting others—super helpful! And camera roll iOS flipping!
• Connecting to places like Instagram—gives me a fast track into my magazine.
• Private mags. Flipping photos directly into mags. Price tags on wishlists.

Q7. What are your best Flipboard topics and sources for content when curating magazines for kids?

• If your kid is interested in sports, search for that sport, team and players. They’re probably all topics!
• I like to follow the topics around my kids’ interests and flip the best from there—hellooo sloths!
• Follow the kid’s passions! Are they crazy about Frozen? Super heroes? It’s easy to research and find content on Flipboard.
• Back to school, holiday parks, get them interested in nonprofit, Xmas gifts, food education, follow local children’s museums or “things to do” from your local newspapers, etc.
• I so wish there had been Flipboard mags when my kids were little. I’d have dinosaur mags, solar system mags, dolly mags…
• Also publishers like @NatGeo are great sources for kids.
• Videos from any source are great especially if they engage the kids. For example, tutorials for creative projects.

Q8. How can you keep family members interested in co-curating a Flipboard magazine?

• Give them the flipping power! Don’t force them to flip something. Get their ideas and feedback.
• Show them how beneficial they can be. How easy it is to make a list of “to dos.” That gets them interested.
• If family members own the responsibility of development, they’ll be interested.
• Show them interesting things and find out what interests them and flip it.
• Have “Flipmeetings” every time family meets.
• I find mags that are of interest to my boys and frequently send to them. They can’t help but get lost in them like I do.
• The mag has to add value in their everyday life on a subject they are genuinely passionate about. Not just a “cool” mag.

Don’t forget to join this week: the topic is “Creative Magazine Ideas for New Graduates.” Start chatting on Twitter on May 13, 2015, at 7pm PT/10pm ET, or come back to this blog for an update.

~MiaQ on behalf of The Flipboard Club
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