About Us
The D3Memories Mission ~ Professional Services with a Personal Touch
Founder Mark Dougherty and the D3Memories team take great pleasure in helping others preserve and enjoy their valued family artifacts and records.
The D3Memories team is all about helping individuals, families, and organizations preserve their histories for future generations. That’s why you will always receive personalized and dedicated attention and service from Mark and his team. Each project is treated as their most important project.
It all began with a family tree…
Mark Dougherty founded D3Memories in 2012.
What started as a hobby over a decade ago has developed over the years into a passion and vocation that ultimately resulted in the creation of a family-run business.
Mark has a diverse background in technology with a successful career as a small business owner as well as holding senior management and consulting positions with World Wide Technology, Southwestern Bell, McDonnell Douglas, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Distribution Management/Supplies Network. He has been working with technology since before the first IBM PC and Apple computers were invented!
Mark began the journey with an interest in building a computerized genealogical history of his family tree. As he began filling out the descendant timelines and accumulating family heritage and genealogical documentation (birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, census reports, military records, family photos and albums, letters and correspondence, etc.), it became obvious that these aging paper artifacts needed to be converted to a digital format for long-term preservation and for the sharing and enjoyment by present and future generations. And it was a natural next step to also include conversion of film, video tape, and audio media.
So Mark studied, attended seminars, and consulted with dozens of genealogical, archivist and digital conversion experts and companies. He researched and experimented with equipment, software, and technologies. He educated himself on the science, technologies, and best practices of scanning, media conversion, digital preservation, and genealogical archiving.
Mark invested in state-of-the-art commercial-grade equipment and software and converted hundreds of films, VHS tapes, vinyl records, and scanned thousands of photos, album pages, slides, and documents for his family. Soon friends and business colleagues were asking for the same conversion services. And D3Memories was born.
When Mark isn’t busy scanning or converting memories, he likes sailing, travelling, and spending time with his family. He enjoys providing “pro bono” computer technical support and technology advice to his family and friends. And, of course, he also loves being an advocate to everyone about the benefits of digital preservation.
Why digital preservation matters…
Mark’s favorite memory is of his 87-year old mother when she watched the first digital video of a 8mm home movie film from the late 1950’s of his mother, father, and siblings enjoying a backyard barbeque in their family home. His mother smiled and teared up when she saw home movies she had not seen since the 1970’s with images of her husband who had passed away almost 30 years earlier. And Mark’s young children saw their grandfather and great grandparents they never met come alive in movies and pictures.