CCAirwaves

Cleveland's First Digital Museum of Life Stories

• The Catholic Cemeteries Association

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CCAirwaves welcomes Dino Jerković, the founder of Spiritus. In this digital age, preserving our loved ones' memories is more critical than ever.  Spiritus is a tool that helps you honor and remember those who have left a mark on your life.

Join us as we discuss the remarkable features of the Spiritus app, learning how it can be used to capture and cherish every precious moment.

Be part of Cleveland's first digital museum of life stories! Click here to download the Spiritus app!


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Podcast: "CCAirwaves" on your favorite streaming platform!

Speaker 1:

you. Hello everyone, and welcome to CC Airwaves. My name is Paige Matillo and I'm here with my co-host, joel Hansel. Today, we're diving into a topic that touches every one of us the memory of our loved ones who have passed on. In our digital age, where every moment is captured and shared, how do we create a lasting, meaningful memory for those who have passed? To answer that, we're honored to have with us Dino Jirkovich, the founder of Spiritus, a groundbreaking digital memory platform designed to immortalize and celebrate the lives of our cherished loved ones. Welcome, dino.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, paige, for having me, and thank you, joel, too.

Speaker 1:

How are you doing this morning? Well, after.

Speaker 2:

Doing great, doing great really, and I'm really amazed that I have this opportunity to talk with you and to share the story of Spiritus to you and the whole community of Cleveland.

Speaker 1:

Well, we're so excited to have you. So can you just start by briefly describing what Spiritus is for our listeners? For those who might not be familiar, Okay.

Speaker 2:

Spiritus is a platform for storing and creating digital memorials that could last forever. Basically, what we are solving? We are solving an age-old problem and that is that 99% of people that ever lived are now forgotten like they never existed. We don't know anything about them, we don't know what they looked like, what they did, even what was their names. For 99% of people, and the problem is that's the destiny for 99% of people that currently live they are destined to oblivion. That's why we are creating a platform where everyone can become a memory guardian for their loved one in a beautiful, simple and secure way. They can store memories that are mostly live stories, photos, videos inside our platform and we can secure it potentially forever, because we are using blockchain technology in a different way. We are not using it to create tokens, we are using just the technology to store the data and basically, that is Spiritus Just save the live stories of potentially every human being that ever lived in a beautiful, storytelling way.

Speaker 3:

What was the inspiration behind founding Spiritus?

Speaker 2:

It's a Croatian folk song that was an inspiration. It's called the story of Andrea Čordaš. So, basically, I believe that you never heard of Andrea Čordaš and neither did, let's say, 90% of Croatia. I think Andrea Čordaš was a simple local man that didn't do anything special in his life. He had a wife that he adored, he had some pigs, he had some dogs and he had a farm and basically that's it, and he died relatively because of a disease. And that should be the end of the story of Andrea Čordaš. But he had a friend and that friend was a poet and that poet decided to make a song, make a poem, and that poem went to a Croatian folk band called Zlatni Dukati and they created a song and that song became one of the most famous Croatian folk songs of all time.

Speaker 2:

A live story Of a person that didn't do anything special in his life Became one of the most recognizable song of a whole region In a country, and we were thinking how many people didn't have that luxury of having a friend that was a poet? How many people went forgotten? And the answer is almost everyone. And with this platform we want to be that poet, we want to be that Canvas that everybody else can be the poet. We just want to have those live stories and everybody can be remembered, just like Andrea Chaudhush.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible. Thank you. How does Spiritus differ from other digital platforms that offer memory preservation?

Speaker 2:

There are a lot of competitors inside this market, especially in the US, but the thing that the deeper Spiritus from all others is that we have two unique solutions on top of theirs. First one is the blockchain. Currently, all the other digital memorial platforms. They are storing their data, just like Facebook, just like Amazon, just like any other platform that has a liability, For instance, if they don't work, if they have an attack, if their platform is not working at all, all the data is gone. We're using blockchain. With blockchain, we can secure that all the users can have their memories that are written or saved in tech. They can have it secured even if something happens to our site. We are basically just a platform for so everyone can visit and see the memories, but all the users can store the memorials for themselves without us.

Speaker 2:

The second one is the museum part. Basically, what we did with the memorials that we currently have we pinpointed the memorials on the great location of every memorial. Imagine that we are inside, let's say, New York or some other city, that we're inside the cemetery and you can see a bunch of millions of names and dates of the people that used to live. The names and dates are inside that stone, but what about it? No one knows the stories about those names and dates. There are just names and dates on a stone With spirits. Imagine that you can open a mobile app. You can walk through a cemetery and see the life stories of every potential human being that you across. You can see a whole new experience of working through a cemetery. We call it the memory walk and basically what we are doing we are transforming cemeteries into museums yeah, museums of digital life stories.

Speaker 3:

The concept of immortalizing cherished memories is intriguing. How do you ensure that these memories retain their personal touch and emotion in a digital format?

Speaker 2:

We are not really we are hands off inside this experience. We are giving all the authorization to memory guardians to guard the memories in the best way they possibly can. So what we do, we are just really touchy that it's not a harm for hateful content but other than that memory guardians have the full control of every possible life story that they create or that they can get access to from other people, from other users.

Speaker 1:

Can you walk us through the process of creating a life story on Spiritus?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's basically pretty simple. You just create a profile. When you create a profile, you automatically become a memory guardian. Once you are a memory guardian, then you have two possibilities. First is to create a Spiritus profile. That's a profile. Let's say that you want to create out of blue, out of nothing, you want to create a digital memorial for grandma, grandpa or something. Or you can claim an existing memorial. So when we partner with a city, let's say city of Cleveland, we automatically upload all the grave locations inside cemeteries. So, for instance, we are going to have more than 700,000 grave locations inside Spiritus from all the Cleveland grave locations that we have inside.

Speaker 2:

Yet and the memory guardians can claim it. Once they claim it, they are in the memory guardianship of a Memorial. So there are two possible ways. You can create it out of nothing, or you can claim it Once you claim it. You can just enter the Memorial, create a story, create a subject, write a story, put some pictures in it and that's it. Basically, you are up and done. Or if you don't know, if you are not the memory guardian of a person that you want to create a story, you can suggest it. Basically, the whole process is the same, but you can suggest it and the memory guardian will proceed the story and then decide if it's going to be public or private or declined.

Speaker 3:

Dino. If I'm interested in contributing to an existing museum, what steps should I follow, and is there any criteria that I should be mindful of?

Speaker 2:

As long as the story isn't harmful or hateful, we don't have a problem with it. Memory guardians are the ones that have the full ownership of the Memorial content. We are just here to provide a safe and beautiful platform.

Speaker 1:

Have you personally shared any of these stories on Spiritus?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm the memory guardian of two of my grandpas and one of my grandma. I create stories for all of them and they are really some beautiful, emotional stories.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really sweet.

Speaker 3:

Why do you think it's crucial for individuals and communities to look back and preserve the past?

Speaker 2:

Because the fuel for tomorrow is backed by inspiration from the past. We are all sitting on the giants from the past, and what's the problem? The problem is that we really need to preserve the memories that are left behind. Currently, the only memories from the past, the life stories that we generally know, are from the people that are in textbooks, from generals, from some kind of people that are solely remembered, but we believe that almost every human being that ever lived has at least one inspirational life story worth knowing and remembering that can be the fuel for tomorrow or for the present, not only the world or the generals.

Speaker 1:

Are there any success stories or testimonials that have particularly touched your heart?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there is a famous creation soccer coach 20 years ago, a legendary. His name is Miroslav Chiroblaciewicz. He was the coach of the creation team that won the bronze medal in the World Cup in 1998. So he was pretty big and he passed away last year. What we did? We created his memorial and we made a campaign for all other people to just write stories about him, because he's really, let's say, a celebrity in the sports sense. But we already know everyone in creation knows 15 of his stories. But the thing is with spirits is what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to achieve those small stories from people that just used to see him for one day and have some kind of a crazy story with him that could be forgotten Inside his memorial. We can have more than 30 stories.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

So that's a fantastic success story. Imagine that we create a memorial like this for I don't know prints or someone from US, because we all know they are amazing stories, but imagine all the stories from regular people that are inside the heads of regular people, that are forgotten or will be forgotten. With spirits platform, we can have it all in one place. That's one success story. The second, let's say a personal, is from me. I received a photo of my grandma that I never saw before From a user that I didn't know. So, yeah, that was pretty emotional and it could happen to anyone.

Speaker 3:

That's really cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is really cool, because then, you kind of get to see something new that you didn't know about your grandma.

Speaker 3:

Or even hear a story that you didn't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Finally, for our listeners who might be inspired to begin their journey of digital memory preservation, what advice or tips would you give them as they embark on this path?

Speaker 2:

I don't want to be a Nike, some kind of ambassador, but just do it. The thing is, if you want to create, if you want that the memories of your loved ones are not forgotten, you are the one who needs to step up and do something about it. We created a platform, but it's on the users to see if they want some stories to be preserved or not. We are accounting that they're really, really conscious about the remembrance of their loved ones and we believe that no one ever should be forgotten.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and answering all of our questions. Dino, I'm sure that all of our listeners are interested in downloading the Spiritus app and, if you are, you can go down to the description of this podcast episode and click on the link.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Paige. Thank you Joel, it was a pleasure.

Speaker 3:

Thanks, Dino, for a few minutes of your time today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Dino.