Steve Denning earlier this year began offering videos on his site. I can only hear the audio, not see the video (some sort of Mac incompatibility, I'm guessing), but he has some interesting titles, such as Who Can Be an Organizational Storyteller?

Denning's Videos

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Seth Kahan this year has started a blog on collaboration: collaboratioNation, a look at how people work together across boundaries.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael Margolis contributed this quote from "This American Life" host Ira Glass to the Working Stories discussion group:

"The most powerful thing you can hear; and the only thing that ever persuades any of us in our own lives, is when you meet somebody whose story contradicts the thing you think you know. At that point, it’s possible to question what you know, because the authenticity of their experience is real enough to do it.”

I am quite interested in using story for persuasion, especially in connection with my research work on storytelling in the job search. Glass's comment explains, in part, why storytelling is so effective for persuasion.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Some time ago, I noodled with the Comments feature of my blog because I was getting inundated with spam comments. I wanted to set it up so that registered users could comment, but I hoped it would not be cumbersome for them to do so.

I'm not there yet.

Two people have taken the trouble to tell me that they had difficulty commenting, including Tim Sheppard, who has a fabulous UK storytelling Web site. I hope to soon fix this feature so others won't experience the frustration he describes. In the meantime, please be patient, and e-mail me if you'd like to comment in the meantime: kathy@astoriedcareer.com.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I was very close to the finish line of my dissertation when I suddenly started seeing a source pop up in virtually everything I read. It's not like he was someone new on the scene; on the contrary, Jerome Bruner's work is seminal in the storytelling world. As pointed out by a member of the Working Stories group, Bruner, in his Acts of Meaning suggests that stories are hard-wired into humans - that they are the primary symbolic activities that human beings employ in sense- and meaning-making. "There are certain classes of meaning to which human beings are innately tuned and for which they actively search." Narrative, he says, organizes experience and "specializes in the forging of links between the exceptional and the ordinary."

Odd that I didn't come across his work till so close to the end of my research. So close in fact that I ended up not citing Bruner. I have nightmares that someone reviewing my dissertation will gasp, "I can't believe you didn't cite Bruner!"

This concept of people being hard-wired to think in narrative is important for my work, though, because it suggests that hiring managers are more receptive to job-search communications in narrative form.

Another member of the Working Stories group suggested a number of additional works that address narrative as a way of thinking. See those in the continuation of this entry.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The online journal, Emergence: Complexity and Organization, presented a Special Double Issue: Complexity and Storytelling (Volume 7, Numbers 3 & 4, 2005) with guest editors Ken Baskin and David Boje. The journal is available by paid subscription, and individual articles are available for purchase, as well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My dissertation is not quite out the door, but it's complete enough so that I can get back to my poor neglected blog. I begin by sharing numerous resources from this year's Smithsonian Associates/Golden Fleece storytelling weekend in April.

I didn't attend this year, but much wonderful material was shared through the Working Stories discussion group.

The willingness to share these resources is a wonderful thing and a hallmark of the storytelling community.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.