Stephanie West Allen turned me on to this entertaining video from Ira Glass’s This American Life Showtime series. It tells the tale of a guy whose wife experienced an embarrassing incident while waving to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on the streets of New York City. In the story, the man is … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Example of How a Company Tells Its Story
Those of us in storytelling circles constantly read about how organizations need to tell their stories and brand themselves with stories, but examples can be hard to come by. Here’s just one company Etsy, that has done it well, describing its first five years of tremendous growth. Etsy says the … Continue reading
Telling Stories at Difficult Times
Wendy Bigham wonders about people who tell important stories at difficult times in their lives. Her exemplar is Randy Pausch who has a best-selling book and highly viewed video, The Last Lecture, life lessons (Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams) delivered like the college professor he was before being diagnosed with … Continue reading
A Test of the Teaching Power of Stories
Here’s a way to test the ability of stories to teach — at least compared to PowerPoint presentations. Writing in Newsday, Patricia Kitchen told of the technique of Manhattan-based organizational consultant Ben Dattner that “vividly illustrate[s] how stories are memorable and PowerPoint is forgettable.” Writes Kitchen: Dattner asks his master’s-level … Continue reading
Using Storytelling to Attract Girls to Computer Programming
In a terrific testament to how storytelling aids learning and makes students want to learn, creator Caitlin Kelleher describes Storytelling Alice: As my thesis work, I created and evaluated a programming system for middle school girls called Storytelling Alice that presents programming as a means to the end of storytelling. … Continue reading
It’s International Day for Sharing Life Stories Today
See this earlier entry.
Washington, DC, Storytelling Weekend Recaps
Storytelling Weekend 2008 in Washington, DC, is in the history books. I didn’t attend; I seem to go in odd-numbered years. But some bloggers have posted some nice recaps of the Smithsonian portion of the weekend, as well as the subsequent Golden Fleece Day: Lynn Tveskov’s Storytelling, a Path to … Continue reading
Update on Stroke of Insight Story
Since comments are not very prominently displayed in this blog, I wanted to call attention to Stephanie West Allen’s comments about a recent entry, featuring the video of a presentation by Jill Taylor, a stroke victim and neuroanatomist. Apparently the science in this presentation has come under quite a bit … Continue reading
A Story of Challenging the Organizational Culture
2020 Note: I can no longer access the video that originally appeared here, but you may be able to using the link below (Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang). In this video, Jake McKee, former social media practitioner at Lego, “tells his story,” writes Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang “on how he challenged … Continue reading
A Marketing Conversation around Storytelling
Recently came across three similar blog postings about storytelling in marketing and thought I would pretend the authors were having a conversation. Thus, sort of a made-up story with these bloggers as characters. McLellan Creative (no individual blogger identified) begins the conversation by asking, “When was the last time you … Continue reading