I’ve been seeing and thinking recently a lot about the terms:

• cross-media storytelling
• transmedia storytelling
• immersive storytelling
• distributed storytelling

As I read about these terms, they all seem to be talking about roughly the same thing. I figured if anyone knew about the nuances of difference among the terms, it would be Christy Dena, who has focused her doctoral studies on what she describes as “a new form of storytelling & gaming” (which, I believe, she is currently calling “cross-platform” storytelling).

Indeed, she does offer an answer, and my puny list above, it turns out, is just the tip of the iceberg. Christy provides a lengthy list of terms that she states are either the equivalent or sub-sets of cross-media.

I don’t want to steal her thunder by repeating the whole list — and I also tend to shun those that directly reference games because I’m just not into games — so here’s a very abbreviated version of her list (in addition to those at the top of this entry):

• Convergent Storytelling
• Distributed Narratives
• Intermedia Storytelling
• Mobile Narratives
• Multimedia Stories
• Multi-Platform Storytelling
• Polymorphic Fictions
• Situated Narratives
• Synergistic Storyscapes
• Synergistic Storytelling

I find these genres fascinating and keep wondering what applications they may have beyond what we’ve already seen. But before I get into that, it’s useful to come up with some sort of definition and basic understanding.

Henry Jenkins, who champions the term “transmedia storytelling,” offers a good explanation in the video I embedded here. Jenkins also offers a good definition, explanation, and copious resources in the Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment Syllabus for the course he’s teaching this fall at USC, which he posted on his blog:

We now live at a moment where every story, image, brand, relationship plays itself out across the maximum number of media platforms, shaped top down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms and bottom up by decisions made in teenager’s bedrooms. The concentrated ownership of media conglomerates increases the desirability of properties that can exploit “synergies” between different parts of the medium system and “maximize touch-points” with different niches of consumers. The result has been the push towards franchise-building in general and transmedia entertainment in particular.

A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms. A story like Heroes or Lost might spread from television into comics, the web, computer or alternate reality games, toys and other commodities, and so forth, picking up new consumers as it goes and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper. The fans, in turn, may translate their interests in the franchise into concordances and wikipedia entries, fan fiction, vids, fan films, cosplay, game mods, and a range of other participatory practices that further extend the story world in new directions. Both the commercial and grassroots expansion of narrative universes contribute to a new mode of storytelling, one which is based on an encyclopedic expanse of information which gets put together differently by each individual consumer as well as processed collectively by social networks and online knowledge communities.

The Blair Witch Project and The Matrix are often cited as seminal examples that spawned transmedia storytelling. And just as an aside, a wonderful piece from five years ago — a great story of storytelling — is Exocog: A case study of a new genre in storytelling (back when transmedia/cross-media/immersive storytelling was indeed a new genre) about a transmedia project undertaken independently of a film studio — yet as an extension of the film Minority Report. The project was something like what Jenkins calls a “grassroots extension,” except that the organizers were not “fans” per se. Jim Miller, who wrote the piece, cites the old Apple HyperCard program as one of the earliest roots of using computers and the Internet for storytelling. I never grasped HyperCard yet thought it was cool.

Given that I’m not into games and that storytelling in movies and TV is also not at the top of my list of interests (mostly because other writers/bloggers have those genres well covered), I’m interested in other applications that transmedia/cross-media/immersive storytelling may have. Can they be used for nonfiction stories and for individuals (say, in job-hunting and personal branding)?

John Thompson, senior copywriter at One to One Interactive, answers the nonfiction question when he cites “one of the most successful social media-enabled stories going — the Obama presidency.”

Emerging multimedia journalism also is applying transmedia/cross-media/immersive storytelling to nonfiction. With regard to the way the aftermath of the Iran elections was covered through social media, Brad King writes:

… in this distributed world, the best storytellers should be out there aggregating all the information, creating pages where the information can be pulled, mapped and searched in a variety of manners; where information can be set up top by users; and then knowledgeable folks can provide their own context to what is happening.

(King is concerned both with the way this kind of storytelling should be archived and the perils of “remixing” storytelling that result in incidents such as Maureen Dowd’s failure to attribute a paragraph in her column to its rightful source.

And Kfir Pravda flirts with the individual question by writing:

Immersive storytelling is the use of social web and online video to tell a linear fictional story, through the social activities of the characters. … but what about the stories that happen to people around us? People in real life? Did you ever read someone’s Facebook status messages and learned about his personal stories through it? Did you ever read personal blogs and vlogs and felt that you are witnessing a real life story? This is the basic concept of immersive storytelling — the movie theater is replaced by Facebook and Twitter profiles, blogs, and personal vblogs.

So, we can probably say that some people are heavily involved in transmedia/cross-media/immersive storytelling by having personal Web sites, blogs, videos of themselves of YouTube, photos on Flickr, profiles on Facebook and Twitter, and so on. Various feeds, lifestreams, and storystreams are likely a good way for these various media to tell the individual’s story cohesively. For functions like personal branding and job-seeking, a certain degree of linearity is probably desirable.

And perhaps a degree of interaction is desirable. I’ve written before about Kevin Sablan, whose “storystreaming” vision focuses on how others interact with the story’s protagonist: “every story includes multiple characters, events and plot. A storystream platform needs to document a the events of a story, not a person.”

Although “Johnny Blank” (“a storyteller hell bent on discovering ways to harness emerging technologies to share stories with new audiences”) writes in the context of film and blurring the lines between filmmaker and audience, his words apply to those interested in telling — and participating in — nonfiction and individual stories acorss platforms:

For the first time since ancient cultures, where stories were passed down from generation to generation through verbal communication (around fires etc), the world has now found a new, communal space to share and grow its stories that represent humanity. … In other words, stories are no longer simply stories, they are world views that will evolve with discussion, creation, and review.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 15, 16, and 17:

Q: Paul, you write in a blog entry that you are an entrepreneur partly because of your family. Some entrepreneurs might find that statement surprising because business owners often find they have less time with their families than before. How are you able to find that balance?

A: Several thoughts are relevant here. Obviously, a big one is that the mobility in information technology that allows us to do many parts of our work in non-conventional environments. Another is that my spouse and I both work at WordWrite and so I guess less collective time is spent on “downloading” the day’s business to one another.

But perhaps an even bigger point is how being a small business owner is changing. Small business ownership has been perceived as very high risk because the entrepreneur forsakes the relative security of an organizational job. I worked in many organizational jobs for a lot of years. In one of them, I actually became in expert in the communications surrounding mass layoffs. I was on-site one year for more than 5,000 layoffs. I learned then what many people are just learning now — that there is actually less “security” in being part of an organization than in writing your own story as an entrepreneur. Thus, the issues of family balance are not substantially different, and in many cases are actually easier. I can afford to be more flexible when it comes to family. Yes, like any small business owner, I burn my share of the midnight oil and occasionally am on the iPhone while attending a family function, but for us the balance issue has come pretty naturally.

Q: John, you wrote a blog entry recently about how Carl Jung recognized the importance of stories. Have you always brought Jungian psychology into your storytelling work or were theories about storytelling a more recent discovery?

A: Since my graduate school days I have always been familiar with Jungian psychology but it wasn’t until Paul invited me in to collaborate on our current project that I began to make the link. Over the years Paul have clearly remained passionate about the importance of storytelling so I started to mesh some of his sustaining ideas with some of older ideas I might have once known. That’s when the Jungian connection about the “collective unconscious” became obvious.

Q: Does the current state of the economy create a greater need for businesses to tell a great story? Does the economy change the way businesses should tell their stories?

A: Yes. And because of the economic collapse, and the lies it exposed, the stories, more than ever before, must be authentic. Consider just one aspect, the collapse of residential real estate. One way of looking at it is that too many people fell in love with inauthentic story approaches to supercharge consumer activity. I mean how else do you explain a household with a $40,000 annual income qualifying for a $400,000 mortgage?

This experience should prove to businesses that we must avoid these types of inauthentic stories. The experience also makes clear that we, as a society, must leverage authenticity to help rebuild communications credibility across vast sectors of global business. The professional storytellers who let their narratives spiral into a swamp of inauthenticity in the first place have much to explain. The retribution, thanks to the independent voice that electronic communication provides, is more swift and powerful today. Without an authentic response to the anger and venom of those complaining on Twitter or blogs or web sites, the price of telling an inauthentic story is even deeper.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 13 and 14:

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came through a story or storytelling act?

A: The Southwest Airlines story is truly a story — in so many ways. One of the great successes of the company, in our view, is that it has successfully told many stories that reflect its evolution as a start-up airline that its powerful and heavily regulated competitors tried to strangle at birth. Many people know, for example, that the airline’s stock symbol is LUV. Like so much else in Southwest’s history, there’s a real story behind that. Early on, competitors trying to kill Southwest arranged sweetheart legislation that forced Southwest to fly out of Dallas Love Field, and not the much bigger (and better-connected) Dallas-Forth Worth airport. As a symbol of its spunk and its story, when Southwest not only beat the odds and its competitors to become a public company, it took LUV as its stock symbol, a symbolic storyline nod to its roots at Love Field. We could give you many more Southwest examples, but you probably get the point.

Q: If you could share just one piece of storytelling with readers what would it be?

A: Current uses of social media have focused largely on the wizardry of content distribution and redistribution. But comparatively little attention has been placed on the authenticity of content or the credibility of the storyteller within the social media realm. This is dangerous and social media users, in our view, need to begin to incorporate these points into their use of that media. The flip side of this caution is that this is where the opportunity lies in this digital era — employing storytelling in new ways that take social media to new heights, and storytelling to new success.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, and Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 11 and 12:

Q: Are there any current uses of storytelling that repel you or that you feel are inappropriate?

A: There are examples everywhere of inauthentic stories being told to influence or mislead (this remains a significant and well-paid endeavor in the marketing profession, sadly) and we believe that for most businesses, such an approach is dangerous. True storytelling is not direct selling or promotion. It is honest, open dialogue about products or services that helps frame an audience’s understanding and response. For these reasons we’ve always thought it was essential to make stories authentic. God bless Seth Godin and his followers, but it strikes us as inherently dishonest to write a book that’s called All Marketers Are Liars and then twist that title with another bit of misdirection late in the book to say that marketers aren’t really liars at all, but that consumers are huge liars and that they lie to themselves all the time — and that marketers are only honestly repeating the lies that consumers tell themselves when buying clothes or cars. So who then, is the real liar in that scenario? It’s hard to judge but not hard to understand that praising lying is praising the telling of inauthentic stories. We’re not at all suggesting that when a client or company tells a marketing story that they shouldn’t tell it in a way that makes them sound good. It just means that, if the audience wants to check it out (and today, with the Internet community, they can), it better be rooted in fact and told in a way that’s authentic.

Q: What future aspirations do you have for you own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?

A: At WordWrite, we continue to see long-term promise in storytelling. To a certain degree, when and how this unfolds is linked to where global society is headed with social media and at what pace. At some point, storytelling as we are discussing it here and the current use of social media are going to fuse in a way that, we believe, will require the classical tenets of storytelling, though altered by the delivery capabilities (and limitations) of social media tools. While we can’t predict how it all turns out, we feel deep within our bones that storytelling will be an essential element of success for organizations seeking to thrive in a digital era. “What does it all mean to me?” is a question we hear often. There is no substitute for a strong story in delivering an answer.

This thinking has fueled our development of StoryCraftingSM — WordWrite’s proprietary method of building an authentic storytelling platform for clients based on the fundamentals of their day-to-day business. We are very high on StoryCrafting as markets shift toward a greater demand for truly authentic communication (not merely “inauthentic authenticity”).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Want to hear stories about Utah? Read inspiring sports stories? Is there a kind of story that can’t be shared on the Web? Hard to imagine there is when you see plentiful sites that specialize in every imaginable kind of story. Some offer very open and accessible channels for contributing; others are more selective and complex. Some share but don’t collect. Here’s something for almost everyone:

• MyBestPetFriendForever each week features a heartwarming pet story, unique pet relationship, or helpful resource is shared with our pet lover community through a “Sharing with Sydney” video and posted article. MyBestPetFriendForever is part of the larger Celebrations of Life site that helps “individuals and families celebrate their extraordinary lives through: Life stories, Ethical wills, and Meaningful family legacies.”

• The Personality Project is a group blog to “explore why personality matters by inviting 100 top minds from business, best selling authors, popular artists, recognized academics, and global brand builders to talk about the role personality has had in their success. A mix of artwork, stories and interviews, the project is inspired by the theme of the popular new book Personality Not Included by Rohit Bhargava which focuses on helping companies and entrepreneurs to use their personality to make their product or service stand out.” And ancillary part of the project is a free e-book, Women of Personality: 20 Inspiring Stories of Success.
• Nabuur.com provides an internet platform where Villages get effective and trusted assistance from online volunteers (Neighbours). The storytelling aspect of the site is explained here.
• Storyplanet asks the question: Storyplanet “is designed to be used by individuals like photographers, journalists, artists, activists and others how believe in changing the world through intelligent storytelling. But our Storyplanet can perfectly well be used by organizations and businesses also. We believe that creating great enterprise products starts with creating software and services that excite individuals.”
• Sports Feel Good Stories collects and shares “inspirational sport stories that make you feel good” … “from little leagues to professional teams.”

• AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose — since the site was first launched in 1999 — is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. … AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront — not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take the site’s users to places where those primary sources are located.
• “Sometimes a story is so interesting, so outlandish, or just so plain entertaining that people need to retell it,” says “Will” of Secondhand Storytime. “In these cases, the story will start to take on a life of its own as it’s passed along by people who had little to no involvement in the actual events being recounted. Here I aim to collect some of these in the form of a weekly podcast.”

• Background Stories “is a concept of visual communication on the back stories of products developed by Arlene Birt . Background Stories is a visual system that engages consumers — sharing in a visceral way the back stories about the food we eat. This one-of-a-kind system promotes corporate transparency and more sustainable purchasing behavior, allowing organizations to communicate their social and environmental objectives and progress to their consumers.”
• Mobi-Blog enables European mobile students to tell their story and read about others’ experiences during their exchange program. The collection of stories of students’ experiences tell about the great time they had, and what they got up to, as well as helping in the case of any difficulties.
• Utah Storytelling offers 13 audio storytelling sessions ranging from stories about work, family history and immigration to deer hunting.

• MakesMeThink “is an online community where people share daily life stories that provoke deep thought and inspire positive change.”
• Once Upon a School (mentioned on A Storied Career before) collects and tells “stories about how all kinds of people — from celebrities to retired journalists — are doing their part to improve their local schools.”

• Story of My Life claims to be “the world’s largest online Story collection of the most extraordinary people — you, your parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, and Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 9 and 10:

Q: How important is it to you and your work to function within the framework of a particular definition of “story?” What definition do you espouse?

A: We define a story as simply “contextual communication with a beginning, middle and end.” Additionally, in our professional practice of storytelling, we work only with clients interested in telling authentic stories. To us, a story must be authentic to resonate with an audience. It must be told by a fluent storyteller. And the storyteller must continually “read the audience” to assure that he or she is engaging the audience or audiences he or she is trying to reach. Only then can true communication result through a dialogue.

Q: The culture is abuzz about web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?

A: Web 2.0 and social media are tools — and as practitioners, we love using them. As communicators and storytellers, we recognize that a tool is still a tool. Or as Paul wrote in a recent blog, you can’t confuse the content with the pipes that deliver it. You need both, but at the end of the day, it’s the content and communication that matter most. We have little doubt, that if applied properly, good social media strategies can benefit just about any business.

You’ll see the entire WordWrite staff engaged in Facebook, Twitter, and other social media environments for both individual and client service reasons.

We also believe these media are important storytelling channels — to a point. Consider the Iranian elections in early 2009. An entire protest movement was heavily stoked by leveraging Twitter to mobilize opposition. As long as the story protagonist was “fraudulent election,” social media was influential.

But current social-media usage (and to some degree social media technological limitations) don’t do enough to create true story context. Twitter got Iranian protestors into the global consciousness, but then where did it get them? As the situation demanded more story context, social media lacked the “special something” to make a lasting and meaningful difference. Those qualities are lacking in the speed and scope that are social media’s strong points.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In just under two weeks, I will host a Worldwide Story Work Teleseminar (Wed., Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST), entitled: The Golden Age of Storytelling: Why Is Story Exploding? What Does It Means for Practitioners?

If you’re thinking of attending, please access the handout I prepared for the teleseminar — to grease the wheels, get the thoughts flowing. You can download and read this PDF handout: Sept9TelesemWWSWGoldenAgeHansen.pdf.

Another option is to read this page (same content as handout) before the teleseminar or have it in front of you during the event.

You can register for the teleseminar here (you may need to become a member of Worldwide Story Work to register); however, I don’t believe registration is required, and you can simply call this number on Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST: 1-218-936-4700 — Access Code 710691

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 7 and 8:

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: The speed of evolving technology and our “sound bite” culture has people begging for communication with context. Few communication styles suited for broad audiences provide more context and meaning than a well-told story with a beginning, middle and end. People want a hero to root for, they want action they understand, they want a lesson or moral to the story, and they want resolution. Thanks in part to technology and our global media culture, we are overwhelmed by communication volume and gimmickry. People are at a loss when trying to distinguish what’s real from authentic. And 21st-century technology has enabled people to punish those who intentionally lie to them. These are among the reasons that we believe authentic, well-told stories are an important way to help audiences re-order the fast-moving reality that’s engulfing them.

Q: What people or entities have been most influential to you in your story work and why?

A: Wow, over the years there have been so many. Like a lot of guys in my era I was originally influenced by the work of Woodward and Bernstein in the Nixon years in journalism. Later when I worked for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois (an unusually decent man) I realized that authentic stories play a key role in true government and political leadership.

John’s path was a little different. His seminal storytelling influences came from kind of an odd group of folks: Edward R. Murrow, Bruce Springsteen, Marshall McLuhan, a range of social scientists and even Consumer Reports magazine. John still swears that for popular audiences, Consumer Reports does some of the best work in telling authentic stories supported by numeric data (a sub-area of storytelling John frequently works in as a market researcher).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 5 and 6:

Q: Paul, it is easy to determine how your journalism background fits in with PR, but how does journalism inform the storytelling side of your work? How about your political background; does that inform your storytelling work at all?

A: Great journalism is all about great stories. I was reminded of that again recently with the passing of Don Hewitt, the creator of the CBS News show, “60 Minutes,” and so much television journalism history. In a remembrance piece broadcast by CBS Sunday Morning, Hewitt said again and again that he had one guiding principle to journalistic success: “Tell me a story.” I agree. The memorable stories are the ones that unfold with the technical qualities of great stories. I’m not saying all journalism should read like immortal fiction. What I am saying is that great journalism employs the same storytelling techniques that produce great literature. I have learned the same is true in public relations.

As for my political experience, I had the great fortune to work in the U.S. Senate for a brief period for a thoroughly decent man, late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, himself a former journalist and the author of more than a dozen books. He understood the power of story and the importance of stories that move people. Washington, of course, is filled with storytellers. It was there, while in the Senate, on Simon’s 1988 presidential campaign staff, and later, while covering Congress and the White House that I truly learned that inauthentic stories may sound great at first, but as soon as the lies are discovered, there’s hell to pay. It’s a Washington story that’s repeated again and again. When this happens, as Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” In the midst of it all, there are those who tell authentic stories and thus, enjoy authentic success.

Q: John, how does your background in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and B2B inform the storytelling side of your work?

A: Really much in the same way that Paul’s background has informed his. Marketing strategy and research work is really so much about asserting the competitive business facts and then plotting marketing and communication activities from there.

At the dawn of healthcare marketing (circa 1986) this approach was essential and remains important today. The pharmaceutical world has largely forsaken this approach for “direct to consumer” marketing approaches that in my view has proven to be very dangerous to consumers. Our overall economy and health care delivery system is still digesting the negative impact of this paradigm. In B2B it’s different in another way where integrated marketing is still relatively new, poorly done and widely patterned after B2C approaches that really do not fit. In gauging these shifts over the years I gathered great enlightenment about stories and their marketing communications impact.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Well-known story practitioner Karen Dietz, (and one of my Q&A subjects) was interviewed on Blog Talk Radio about stories, storytelling, and marketing recently in an hour-long show.

Says Karen:

We talk about the essential set of core stories every business needs for marketing, how to become a better storyteller, and different storytelling media to use in different marketing efforts.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Paul and John, their bios, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Paul Furiga and John Durante, Questions 3 and 4:

Q: What brought the two of you together as business partners? Did you both support the idea of storytelling for business when you started or did one of you have to “sell” the other on the idea?

A: (While John is an important collaborative partner, for the record, know that John is a consultant currently engaged by WordWrite and at the present time does not possess a financial equity stake in WordWrite nor StoryCrafting.tm)

I had collaborated with John on a number of other projects through a third party. From that experience, I knew he could help me when I was ready to flesh out the Storytelling idea for the agency. I called him, he was available to take work on the assignment and I did have to sell him on the idea — for about a minute!

A: Even before I formed WordWrite, I knew that I wanted to develop a distinctive service based on the power of storytelling. I had tons of ideas as to why storytelling was important to public relations from my previous journalism experience, but knew that as an agency product, I needed a structure to help clients understand the power of storytelling, to help them develop their own unique story, and then tell it. Early on all of this was just offered up to John — lot of mental dumps from me, lot of reading by him where I wanted John’s perspective and advice about how to turn this into a viable agency process. His forte is candor and analytical thinking, and that’s what I knew he would add could help bring the needed operating structure.

And away we went — meeting weekly just the two of us for about the first six months, during which we took the idea and created a process: engagement time frames, number of client meetings, methods to canvass market data, how to make the clients accountable, pricing, results measurement, you name it. We laid all this on the table in preliminary forms. We really did hit on a complete process early on with definable time frames, price points, client work steps, even meeting agendas. Naturally we started to refine, share with WordWrite staff, friends and clients, and we collected responsive ideas that brought us where we are today.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m delighted to bring you my first double Q&A and the longest one I’ve run — with Paul Furiga and John Durante of WordWrite Communications. This Q&A will appear over the next eight days.

Bio: Read Paul’s bio here and John’s bio here.

Q: If you could identify an organization that desperately needs to tell a better story what would it be?

A: First the legacy carriers of the domestic U.S. airline business (not Southwest), who constantly strike us as desperately needing a clue, and perhaps even remedial training in how to communicate with stakeholders in all corners. As shifting economic and social conditions have strained that industry, too many carriers have gone out of their way to publicly convey panic (It’s one thing to make a boneheaded move to charge extra for checked baggage, but now you’re going publicize it?) This industry seems to have completely lost its sense of what is potentially valuable to the market and too often communicates in ways that suggest it really doesn’t care what its audience thinks. The American auto industry is another example. The big companies are experimenting with social media, for example, but it’s hard to be authentic and to promote your fluent storytellers when, for example, the CEO of GM is sacked by the government. Now what do you do with his blog, which was supposed to tell the GM story and reconnect with the audience? The story of the auto industry CEOs traveling to Washington early on in the auto crisis is an easily remembered and inauthentic story. It’s clear that the auto companies and their many internal and external communicators either didn’t understand the danger of a story involving flying on private jet to beg for taxpayer money, or they didn’t understand the power of a story at all.

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field?

A: John and I initially came at this from what would appear to be conventional avenues. I had been a journalist for two decades before going into public relations; John had been a market researcher and marketing strategist for a variety of organizations. We both learned that the “story” is the cornerstone of influential and persuasive communication. Using stories to drive communications meaning has drawn us to a wide range of PR and marketing ideas.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I definitely have memoir on the brain as it seems like a lot of what has come across my desk and screen in the last couple of weeks has been memoir-related. It is indeed so important to leave our story, our legacy, for others.

Here are a couple of resources I’ve recently come across:

Memoir Guide “explores memoirs, the impulses that lead to them, the stylistic and observational skills required to write them, and the assumptions that underlie them,” writes Gene Bodzin, the person behind the site. Bodzin notes that the memoir he (I’m assuming it’s a he) has been writing for more than 10 years, So Where Are You Now? Discovering Chaos on the Road from Certainty is at the heart of the discussion. Visitors can read the memoir online. A new section of the memoir comes on line every three days, and Bodzin has set up cool tools to enhance the reading experience.

A section of Essays offers thoughts in two categories, “Observing and remembering your life” and “The writing process.” Bodzin also offers a blog, Memoir-Guide Companion.

Silvia Tolisano writes on her Langwitches Blog about the importance of leaving something of yourself behind for descendants. In an entry titled Digital Storytelling-What will your Great-Grandchildren Know About You?, she writes:

In one hundred years, our present will be “a life long gone.” What will we leave behind for our descendants, so they can piece together the puzzle of Who we were?

• What would you like your great-grandchildren to know about YOU?
• What was your life like?
• How did you look?
• Where did you live? How did the town/city look?
• What was important to you?
• Who did you call family?
• How did you spend your days? Work? Hobbies? Free Time?

Tolisano goes on to point out how easy and inexpensive it is in our times to capture both still and moving digital images, and she offers a number of ideas for tools to use and what can be done with them.

The stories we leave behind can provide important clues for our descendants to understand their own lives. I’m thinking of my sister, whose intensive quest into family history began with her curiosity about our great grandmother, Grace Neal (pictured), who spent a large portion of her life in an insane asylum. (Read my sister’s account here). Poor Grace was in no shape to record her story for posterity, but her life is such a mystery that it would have been nice if her loved ones had left more information. It’s probably testimony to the shame attached to mental illness that they didn’t.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

If you’re lamenting that you missed the Terrence Gargiulo/Shawn Callahan webinar that I wrote about earlier in the week, you can experience it here, thanks to the presenters’ generosity.

The presenters also provided a slew of additional resources:
Selecting a Story Tool One of the questions we get asked the most is, “how do you know what story to tell?” It’s an excellent question. This is a simple tool for helping people select an effective story.

Information About the Story-Based Communication Skills Model Background and description of the nine story-based communication skills.

Story-Based Communication Assessment Tool Assessment measures nine story-based communication skills. Based on extensive research with Fortune 500 leaders and recipient of the 2008 HR Leadership Award from Asia Pacific HRM Congress.

Job Aid for Eliciting/Triggering Stories Three Steps For Eliciting Stories From Others

White Paper: Using Stories in All-Hands-On Meetings Large gatherings of people are a prime opportunity to incorporate stories into the proceedings. Careful thought and planning go into how to weave stories into the flow of the event. We explore several different strategies.

Book of Self-Development Exercises Series of self-development exercises mapped to the nine story-based communication skills. Exercises can be done either individually or used with leaders to develop their skills.

Anecdote Circle Guide A step-by-step description of a technique for gathering stories as part of a wider business-narrative program.

How to illustrate the value of storytelling — stories are memorable A 4-minute video on one way to garner the support of senior management to engage in storytelling activities.

A Simple Explanation of the Cynefin Framework A 4-minute presentation explains the Cynefin Framework and how you can use it to show people why they would be interested in business narrative.

Three journeys: A narrative approach to successful organisational change This whitepaper outlines an approach to effecting change in an organisation using narrative techniques.

Terrence and Shawn also invited folks to follow them on Twitter…

Shawn

Terrence

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been writing recently about storytelling for healing and “memoirs-on-the-go” — autobiographical writing in blogs. (And, by the way, here’s a poignant take on a different kind of memoir through social media.)

An article by David Spark on SocialMediaBiz reminded me of a site that brings these concepts together and adds a third concept — anonymity.

Spark writes:

Experience Project (EP) is a unique social network in that it promotes anonymity. Most social networks focus on promoting yourself as a brand and connecting you to your friends by name. EP members are anonymous and are able to connect through each other’s stories. EP is not the first anonymous social network. It’s just the first one I know of that doesn’t have a predefined agenda. With other social networks joining them automatically identifies you as a rape survivor, someone suffering from MS, or some other ailment or a physical/emotional tragedy. While these social networks are all valid and helpful, people are first seen by their issue or ailment. It’s hard to break out of that image and when you overcome that issue, then there’s no reason to be on that specific social network.

As of this writing, anonymous contributors have shared nearly 3 million experiences (dare we call them “stories?”) on Experience Project, which launched in 2007 and describes itself like this:

As the world’s largest living collection of shared experiences. and the premier passions-based network, experience project is a comfortable and supportive place for individuals to share and connect with others around the things that matter to them most. With over 24 experience categories, experience project is the definitive online social conversation destination for people to connect with others who really get “it” — and them.

I’ve actually written about the Experience Project before — almost a year ago, and the site has clearly evolved since that time. While its intentions seem to have remained consistent, the site seemed a tad voyeuristic back then, while now it seems more bent toward helping people with issues realize they are not alone.

Spark interviewed users of the Experience Project about how the site “helped them cope with their concerns.” Anonymity was an important element in this particular healing storytelling.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Marshall Ganz, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a civil-rights activist has written a thought-provoking article, Why Stories Matter: The Art and Craft of Social Change on the site Sojourners Magazine.

Ganz notes that it’s not effective to simply tell people to follow the values of social change you are hoping to imbue in them. Instead, he writes, “we talk about them in the language of stories because stories are what enable us to communicate these values to one another.”

Ganz cites three parts of every story: “a plot, a protagonist, and a moral.”

He writes of plot: “What makes a plot a plot? What gets you interested? Tension. An anomaly. The unexpected. The uncertain and the unknown. … We are all infinitely curious in learning how to be agents of change, how to be people who make good choices under circumstances that are unexpected and unknown to us.”

The protagonist’s choice results in the moral, Ganz writes:

The outcome teaches a moral, but because the protagonist is a humanlike character, we are able to identify empathetically, and therefore we are able to feel, not just understand, what is going on.

A story communicates fear, hope, and anxiety, and because we can feel it, we get the moral not just as a concept, but as a teaching of our hearts. That’s the power of story. That’s why most of our faith traditions interpret themselves as stories, because they are teaching our hearts how to live as choiceful human beings capable of embracing hope over fear, self-worth and self-love over self-doubt, and love over isolation and alienation.

The key question Ganz raises is:
HOW DO WE recapture that power of public narrative and learn the art of leadership storytelling?

Ganz asserts that a leader must first tell a story of self: “You don’t have any choice if you want to be a leader. You have to claim authorship of your story and learn to tell it to others so they can understand the values that move you to act, because it might move them to act as well.”

The second story is the story of us, and the third is the story of now, Ganz writes:

[The story of us] is an answer to the question, Why are we called? What experiences and values do we share as a community that call us to what we are called to? What is it about our experience of faith, public life, the pain of the world, and the hopefulness of the world? It’s putting what we share into words.

The fierce urgency of now … is realizing, after the sharing of values and aspirations, that the world out there is not as it ought to be. Instead, it is as it is. And that is a challenge to us. We need to appreciate the challenge and the conflict between the values by which we wish the world lived and the values by which it actually does. The difference between those two creates tension. It forces upon us consideration of a choice. What do we do about that? We’re called to answer that question in a spirit of hope.

Our goal is to meet this challenge, to seize this hope, and turn it into concrete action. After developing our stories of self, then we work on building relationships, which forms the story of us.

Here are individuals and organizations that are telling the story of us and the story of now:

• “The face and voice of homelessness” (I could not find any other name) explains the vlog Invisible People:

For years I’ve used the lens of a television camera to tell the stories of homelessness and the organizations trying to help. That was part of my job. The reports were produced well and told a story, but the stories you see on this site are much different. These are the real people, telling their own, very real stories… unedited, uncensored and raw.

The purpose of this vlog is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends.

After you get to know someone by watching their story, please pause for a few moments and write your thoughts in the comments section, or maybe email them to a friend and link back to this vlog. By keeping this dialog open we can help a forgotten people.

• Fonografia Collective is dedicated to bringing local and international stories about human rights and social issues to a wider audience. By combining traditional approaches with multimedia storytelling, we focus on how important global issues like development, economic trends, the environment, health care, immigration, or poverty affect people’s everyday lives. Since 2005, these stories have taken us to the U.S.-Mexico border, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, and Haiti.

• Mike Best of Georgia Tech collects stories in post-conflict environments, countries recovering from civil war, genocide or other disasters using a tool he and his team developed, called MOSES; i.e., Mobile Story Exchange System (which doesn’t seem to have its own Web site but is explained here and here). As Ethan Zuckerman notes, “most of the people Mike works with were forced out of school by war and are illiterate.” MOSES “allows participants to record and browse videos using an interface that uses pictures and speech, though no text. The system is portable and was moved throughout the country, tested in different areas. Mike’s team uses a model called HDF — heuristic evaluation, diaspora evaluation and field evaluation - to sharpen the designs. This allows a team based in Atlanta, Georgia to try and develop tools that can work in Liberia. … The system has generated hundreds of videos, and thousands of Liberians have participated.”

• PCI-Media Impact “uses creative media to mobilize individual, community and political action in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, environmental conservation and sustainable development, and human rights and democracy.” See examples here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I just finished attending a terrific webinar with Terrence Gargiulo of MakingStories and Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. I have attended several of Terrence’s webinars, but this was my first one with Shawn. This was the second presentation of this webinar; the pair presented it last week at a time more geared to Eastern Hemisphere audiences.

I thought I would try to do a quick brain dump of some nuggets I picked up while they re fresh in my mind.

The webinar offered far more information than I can convey here, but here are a few takeaways:

• The presenters provided value even before the webinar by sending the Anecdote whitepaper I’ve cited before and that anyone can get as a free download: The Vital Role of Business Storytelling. The presenters also provided links to additional resources:

Narrative or story-based approach to employee engagement

Conveying values with stories

Evaluating hard to measure initiatives

Transferring expert knowledge

Gaining insight into org culture with archetypes

• About 55 people from all over the world attended. A few countries I heard mentioned were Canada, Scotland, Spain, as well as the US. Terrence asked what temperatures were like in attendees’ locales, and it seemed to be hot everywhere.
• The mention of Scotland promoted Shawn to mention the Johnnie Walker video with actor Robert Carlyle that has been much mentioned in the Twitterverse recently. It’s a terrific rendition of the story of Johnnie Walker.
• Shawn and Terrence compared the Triple Threat of show business (singing, dancing, acting) with the Triple Threat of storytelling: Storylistening, Story triggering, and Storytelling. They like the term “Triple Thread” better than Triple Threat because of the way stories are interwoven. An attendee suggested the term Triple Helix.
• Shawn stressed that he spells “storylistening” as one word for the same reason one of his professors spelled “prehistory” as one word — so the word represents a real discipline.
• Shawn spoke of evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, whose research has shown that 65 percent of human conversation consists of “who has done what to whom,” about which Shawn writes on the Anecdote Web site: “This type of small, almost invisible storytelling has the greatest impact on who we are, how people view us (our reputation) and how we see this world.

• Terrence and Shawn discussed the age-old question of what exactly a story is. Shawn mentioned that a story generally has some sort of time marker, and to be effective, has an unanticipated aspect. I did a screen-capture of the slide they used for the “Unanticipated” point (at right). As Shawn pointed out, we automatically construct a story about why this woman has marshmallow Fluff in her hair; when humans need to make sense of a situation, they tell a story about it.
• The presenters introduced the concept — new to me — of the Storytelling Spectrum — where at one end is “Big S” Storytelling: legends, fairy tales, epics, hero’s journeys and the other end is “little s” storytelling — including anecdotes, examples, and recounts. Business storytelling, Shawn and Terrence said, gravitates toward the “little s” end.

The webinar was well-presented, content-rich, replete with extra resources, completed within its scheduled time — and free. Can’t beat the generosity of the storytelling community.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A few months ago, personal-branding guru Dan Schawbel sent me a review copy of his book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, which came out this spring.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to review it yet for A Storied Career’s parent site, Quintessential Careers, but I thought about it recently when I read Part 6 (of a planned 10) of an ongoing personal-branding story by Marcos Salazar on Dan’s blog. More about that later.

In Me 2.0, where Dan tells the saga of landing his first post-college job, he writes, “As I went to a series of interviews, I noticed that hiring managers paid attention to three items: the personal story that I told, my CD portfolio [a tool he had prepared to distinguish himself from other candidates], and my enthusiasm. My storyline gave the hiring managers an understanding of my personal identity and career strategy as well as my perseverance, which clearly reflected my desire for the position.”

As far as I can tell, that’s Dan’s last mention of his story (and, again, I have not yet read the book), but his disciple, Salazar, says a lot more. His Part 6 blog entry is entitled My Personal Branding Story Part 6: Narrative, Context, and Being a Purple Cow.

Salazar talks about using stories in networking situations. After giving a couple of compelling examples of stories he told while networking, Salazar writes:

… our brains are wired to think in terms of narratives. Storytelling is one of the few universal human traits that spans across cultures and all of known history. They captivate the mind and elicit emotions that become tied to themes, events, or characters. When this happens, our story gets implanted into memory easier and much more permanently. This is why creating a narrative about your personal brand is infinitely better than simply stating your job title.

In Part 7, Salazar talks about carrying through one’s story to online venues, such as blogging:

Whether we realize it or not, we are all creating a narrative about ourselves online. Everything we post, comment on, or upload is contributing to the story of who we are online — potentially to millions. And even if you don’t make a conscious effort to create an online presence, that too is a narrative because you are leaving your personal brand to chance.

Salazar then presents a story-based test for maintaining one’s personal brand:

… one thing to always keep in mind is that anything you post could have an impact on the narrative you are trying to create. So when forming a strategy, ask yourself, “How is this going to contribute to the story I want to tell?” Finding answers to this question will provide you with a good guide in developing a strong personal brand both on and offline.

I would love to know more about how Dan Schawbel developed and told his story (and indeed what the story was) and how employers engaged with it — because I am convinced this employer desire to hear the candidate’s narrative is a huge untold story in the hiring process.

I am heartened by the way Salazar uses his story as a test how strong his personal brand is.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

“One thing that people ask me all the time is: ‘is storytelling dying?’” said Dale Jarvis, the Intangible Cultural Heritage development officer for Newfoundland, in a transcript of a podcast interview on PreservationToday.com

I know what Dale’s talking about. I constantly see articles lamenting “the lost (or dying) art of storytelling.” Maybe it’s because I am acutely tuned in to storytelling, but “lost” and “dying” are the last adjectives I would apply to storytelling.

Dale’s response:

I really believe that things are always in a constant state of evolution. I think traditions are always changing, and I think that the rise of things like YouTube indicate that people are really passionate about storytelling. They really want to share their own personal stories.

So, it is sort of a really great democratization of storytelling in a way. Maybe people don’t sit around and tell the long-form fairy tales in quite the same way that they used to, but people are incredibly interested in sharing their own personal stories and creating stories and sharing them.

Yes. On Friday, I talked about this phenomenon particularly with regard to blogging. In that entry, I quoted academician Cynthia Franklin: “I argue that blogs are serving as a kind of ‘memoir-on-the-go…”

Here are a few more examples of blogs that are “memoirs on the go” (suggested by Joel Kelly on Ingenioustries in an entry entitled The keys to a storytelling blog:

• The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy, the blog of Jelisa “J-Money” Castrodale, “a freelance writer and stand-up comic who is fueled by an enamel-eroding Diet Coke habit and an insane love of music, both of which put her in the categories of ‘good at Jeopardy!’ and ‘annoying to have at parties.’” Kelly describes the blog like this: ” The story is Jelisa’s life. We know she’s kind of broke, loves running, and has had plenty of hilarious dating misadventures. And she’s trying to get more professional writing work. The content [comprises] her posts about what goes on in her life.”
• Gaping Void, the blog of Hugh McLeod, a cartoonist who sells limited-edition prints, published a book in June (which as of today, Aug. 17, is No. 1 in Amazon’s “creativity” category. He is also CEO of Stormhoek USA, a small wine brand out of South Africa, which just launched in America. Kelly says: “The story is Hugh living in Alpine, Texas, doing some futile marketing and making awesome artwork after having been a traditional ad man for 10 years. The content [comprises] his cartoons and marketing insights (often the same thing).”
• Vegan Dad, who describes his blog this way: “When you have kids, supper has to be on the table every night. And when you are a vegan, the drive-thru, the deli counter, and TV dinners/frozen convenience foods are not an option. So, you do the best you can. This blog is a record of what my family eats. It’s not always a totally complete meal, not always photogenic, and sometimes it’s leftovers. But, it is a realistic look at a vegan family in a northern Ontario city that is not always vegan-friendly.” Kelly: “Story — A, well, vegan dad who wants his family to be healthy and eat great food. He’s got a few boys and a brand new vegan daughter, and he wants to share the cool food he makes for them with other vegans. Content — Amazing recipes. They’re usually fairly simple because we know from the overall story that he’s a busy guy.”

• Maximum Fun, of which Kelly say: “Story — Jesse Thorn, 28, is living his dream of hosting a public radio show (and podcasts), despite the odds (it doesn’t really make him much money). He struggles, he finds success, and you’re on the journey with him of living his dream. Content — The episodes and blog posts themselves. The things he creates and controls. Each episode of his show or podcasts are framed by the fact that he’s young, fairly broke, but having a huge amount of fun interviewing his heroes and hanging out with his friends.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Time for my monthly look at storytelling zeitgeist in Twitterland. Here are items that have gained significant attention:

• Add to the annals of Twitter storytelling, Columbus across the Atlantic, in which Chuck Steele is “twittering the ship’s log of Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the New World.”

• An Ad Age article discusses the storytelling of the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man” campaign: Awesome storytelling bringing awesome results. The Most Interesting Ad Campaign gets results.
• Much laud for the storytelling prowess of Frank McCourt after his recent death made its way to the Twitterverse.
• Henry Jenkins’s video on transmedia storytelling and convergence culture (below) was significantly re-tweeted. Good stuff!

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

• Yikes! Is “storytelling” merely a buzzword? @lindadong tweeted: “I’m so sick of buzzwords. No more ‘innovation’ ‘storytelling’ ‘experience’ or ‘usability’”!
• I liked this quote from Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri that Scott Zeitz tweeted: “The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
• Storytelling practitioners and fans will find familiar material in The Need for Storytelling Skills on Silvia Tolisano’s Langwitches blog. These four summary points suggest reasons we need storytelling skills, an argument author Lori Silverman crusades for:
1. There is more INFORMATION out there than ever before in human history. We (and our students) need to learn how to find, evaluate and make sense out of all this information that we are bombarded with through many types of different media.
2. WHAT HAPPENS when we have obtained this/these information/facts? What do we do with it? How will we remember? How will we archive for future retrieval?
3. It is precisely THAT ability (organize/connect/remix/create) that we need to foster in ourselves and our students . The ability to put these facts in context. The amount of facts alone (without context) just overwhelms us.
4. Storytelling (putting information in a narrative context) might be the answer to our need to make sense of this vast information that is available to us anytime, anywhere and anyhow.
• This technically multifaceted site from Louis Vuitton, A Journey Beyond, “connects history, storytelling, and the thrill of a journey with an iconic brand.” It presents perspectives from astronauts Jim Lovell, Buzz Aldrin, and Sally Ride. My laptop couldn’t quite handle the technical requirements, so I didn’t see too much. The site is impressive, but I didn’t see enough to form an opinion on the storytelling.
• A re-tweeted TED talk was characterized as explaining why storytelling needs interactive imagery. In the talk, information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. …he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?
• Another quote I liked, this one from @KathySierra: “Don’t learn PPT/Keynote, learn how the brain works. Learn storytelling. Study filmmaking. Apply learning theory. Inspire.”
• This piece by Melinda Partin from Fast Company garnered attention: Brand Storytelling: Connecting With Your Audience. She describes a storytelling ad her company created:

  … When sharing the story of the AT&T 8525 by HTC, a Windows Mobile smartphone, we targeted harried business people who needed real-time access to their productivity tools, such as email and Microsoft Office programs, at all times. An out-of-home campaign in airports, subway stations and table trays on Alaska Airlines jets showed how the 8525 kept users calmly connected, as if they were sitting in their offices. An emotional need was met — to stay calm and connected — while the consumer was actually in a usually stressful travel environment.

• In Storytelling tools: Audit Your Intellectual Capital — 7 Ways to Find Your Stories, Elizabeth Sosnow raises the specter that corporate entities trying to promote themselves in social-media communities face “story fatigue.”

• Another technologically and visually stunning Flash site, The Ropewalker created Twitter buzz for “really slick storytelling.”
• Yet another good quote, which I believe comes from @ChuckWendig: “Future of storytelling: multimedia, illustrated stories, co-created in real time by author, audience, and fictional characters.”
• The Whitehouse got kudos for video storytelling (with music): “Inside the White House: Letters to the President”

• And in a final piece of Twitter-worthiness, author Dave Eggers’ project, Once Upon a School is all about telling “stories about how all kinds of people — from celebrities to retired journalist — are doing their part to improve their local schools.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

One of my occasional departures from curating and commenting about storytelling material — and instead telling the story of my own life ….

The day crackled with anticipation yesterday. The hours passed slowly, and we felt like children on Christmas Eve.

Finally, it was time to pick up our box …

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I’d been influenced by the book Omnivore’s Dilemma and had realized the importance of knowing your food’s story — the story of where it comes from.

That epiphany inspired me (and my husband) to subscribe to a Community-Supported Agriculture organization (CSA). I knew about these organizations because my best friend has subscribed to one for about six years and frequently described the bounty of produce she received every summer Friday. I was thrilled to learn a CSA was available in the Kettle Falls area.

The USDA’s National Agricultural Library defines CSAs like this:

CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Typically, members or “share-holders” of the farm or garden pledge in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer’s salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land and participating directly in food production.

Among many other advantages is the knowledge of exactly where your food has come from, the flavor and quality of just-harvested produce, the satisfaction of supporting local farmers, and relief that you are not supporting big-agra practices, including consumption of fossil fuels from shipping produce to you from distant locales.

I was thrilled to consume a dinner consisting mostly of foods I had just picked up from the farm — BLTs on whole-wheat bread and fresh broccoli.

Since I’m not a big fruit eater, I might have preferred a bit less fruit and a few more veggies.

But the excitement of wondering what’s in the box each week will sustain me through mid-October.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I came across an interesting interview last week with Cynthia Franklin, author of Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory and the University Today. I was attracted to the interview by Scott Jaschik because I sometimes think about and consider writing about my all-too-short academic life as a college instructor.

But the part of the interview that grabbed me the most was this response by Franklin:

I argue that blogs are serving as a kind of “memoir-on-the-go,” one that allows for dialogue and also a large readership. … I believe the permeability between memoirs and blogging — and also practices such as “facebooking” — will, if anything, feed the memoir phenomenon: these sites are further popularizing autobiography; increasingly eroding the boundaries between the personal and the public; and extending the practices of personal narrative by combining it with political commentary and analysis. Rather than replace the memoir market or the desire to write autobiographically, then, I think the habitual public sharing of private life — and the increased blurring between the personal and the public, the political, and the professional — will, if anything, stimulate memoir writing and probably also influence its shape. An example: I have a friend who blogs, and then links his blogging to his Facebook site. The blogs, accounts of concerts he has attended, combine personal narrative, analysis of the dynamics of race and class and region in the U.S., and commentary on music. He is amassing a significant body of writing that is losing its extracurricular feel, and his readers have started petitioning him in their comments to write a memoir based on these writings.

Having suggested earlier in the interview that memoirs are more popular them ever, Franklin makes two important points here:

1. The storytelling that many people do in blogs in indeed a sort of a memoir in progress, certainly rough notes that could become a memoir. I immediately thought of a blogger, Jared (pictured at left), who wrote to me recently about his blog (Moon Over Martinborough): “I’m now getting 1,800 pageviews a month, and I’ve got 80 fans on Facebook and 273 followers on Twitter. Not bad for a blog that’s only 5 months old and is mostly about chickens and olives!” The blog is pure storytelling about “an expat American city boy lands on 20 acres and an olive grove in New Zealand.” Jared could easily turn the blog into a fascinating memoir. The blog as memoir-on-the-go also has the advantage of offering the memoirist feedback and support.
2. The “storytelling” folks do in social-media venues is also memoir fodder. People who probably had not the slightest notion of ever writing a memoir are probably more inclined to do so because they have become more comfortable with publicly telling their stories. Now, I’ve been chewing on this idea of social-media as storytelling for along time now and asking the opinions of many others. Perhaps the best we can say about social-media storytelling is that it is a crude, fragmented, incomplete sort of storytelling; yet there is much storytelling in social media that transcends that characterization and is truly memoir-worthy. And, as Jared’s experience shows, social-media and blogging also cross-pollinate each other.

I for one am heartened by these cultural influences that turn more of us into storytellers.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Jim, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Jim Ballard, Question 5:

Q: You wrote to me: “To me, each of us has a Story Mind (as against what I call Lecture Mind), that allows something that begins ‘There once was …’ to bypass the left brain and go straight to the part that wants only to know what happens next.” How did you develop this philosophy? Can you give an example or two of how you’ve seen it work? What’s the advantage of going to the part of the brain that wants to know what happens next?

A: Over the years a frequent question I have asked people (even strangers such as wait-persons in restaurants and helpers in airports and hotels) is: “What’s your dream?” I like seeing the reaction: the eyes go up and usually to their left, and they always tell. Asking people about their dream gets them to tell stories, and I am always careful to show respect and belief in the dream. This enables me to encourage them, and many have said that being able to tell makes their dream seem more real and more possible. I often share an idea or refer the dream-teller to a book, article, or person that might further their aspiration. [Editor’s note: Jim wrote at greater length about this phenomenon in his blog.]

In my coaching business working with authors and creative people, I often coach them to put their ideas into a short story that encapsulates the main points; some have ended up publishing these. I also offer myself as a consultant/ fable writer to companies and organizations, promising as an end product after my study of the company’s DNA an engaging myth they can use with employees and customers to say, “This is us.”

In a time when so much is known through the intellect, there are three factors that contribute to a special need for stories: (a) we think that all our knowing comes through information; (b) we are desensitized by our overexposure to everything; (c) we lack the cultural stories that were common before we became a global village. Stories provide a way into the hungry heart.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This year’s SlideShare “Tell a Story” contest underscored the emergence of of storytelling as a significant component in presentations (even if slide shows aren’t always compatible with good storytelling). (I had thought the “Tell a Story” contest replaced the more generic contest SlideShare held last year but just learned the World’s Best Presentation Contest ‘09 has begun accepting entries.)

In recognition of story’s growing role in presentations, I found these 12 interesting bits published recently:

1. Listeners go into a trance when they hear a story. So says professional speaker Andy Dooley in a blog entry that is actually not that much about presentations: “Did you know that when you’re listening to a story you go into a trance? Did you know that change happens when you least expect it? Did you know that change happens when you are in a trance?”
2. Gestures that go with your story have a specific effect on brain activity. This observation comes from research reported by Bruce Bower in Science News. In the study conducted by neuoscientist Jeremy Skipper, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, and presented in the academic journal Current Biology: “As volunteers listened to and watched a woman who made descriptive hand gestures while telling a story, activity simultaneously increased in one set of brain areas involved in planning and executing actions and in another set thought to underlie language comprehension, the researchers report … These neural systems form a network that ascertains the meaning of gestures accompanying speech, they suggest.” Different brain activity was observed when observers could see a nongesturing woman and when they couldn’t see the woman telling the story.
3. You can effectively alter the classic presentation formula by integrating stories. That formula is: Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em what you just told ‘em. Koert Bakker learned to turn that formula on its ear after reading Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor. “This completely changed the way I write presentations now,” Bakker said. “Instead of giving away the key point of the presentation at the beginning, I save it for last. I start with the perspective of the audience, and then take them on a tour of all the aspects that step-by-step convinced me to believe what I believe so they can step-by-step come to believe the same things. And I insert a little drama and tension along the way, to help remember the story and make it easier to pass on.”
4. Bullets [probably] can’t help you tell a story. I’ve come to believe bullet points — popularized in presentations by the ubiquitous PowerPoint — serve no real purpose except as memory aids for the presenter. In an article, “The First Five Slides: Unlocking the Story Buried in Your Presentation,” that is packed with lots of good advice about presentations, Cliff Atkinson, says: “When the primary way that we communicate is by presenting lists to one another, it is no wonder that the phenomenon of story is gaining momentum, because a story is the opposite of a list. Where a list is dry, fragmented and soulless; a story is juicy, coherent, and full of life. Presented with the choice, any audience will choose life.” Want another illustration of this point? About 1 minute and 53 seconds into this little video talk by Shawn Callahan, he tells a story that shows how poorly bullet points work compared to stories.
5. In fact, ditch the slides. Many a tree and many an electron has given its life in “death by PowerPoint” articles that emphasize not only how PowerPoint kills storytelling in presentations, but how it murders presentations themselves. Joining that chorus is José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, who, as reported by Jeffrey R. Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education “has challenged his colleagues to ‘teach naked’ — by which he means, sans machines. More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool.” As Young characterizes Bowen’s view: “When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors.” Yes, and they will remember the stories their professors told. Some see digital storytelling as the cure for death by PowerPoint, as evidenced by this resource list: Digital Storytelling and Reforming PowerPoint
6. Stories stick. In a similar academic vein as the previous point, Joey Asher on his Talking Points blog lamented the terrible presentations he hears at his son’s freshman orientation at the University of Michigan: “Over and over college administrators, health professionals, professors, and public safety professionals would stand up to talk to us about what our kids could expect at the University of Michigan,” Asher said. “And over and over we’d get a series of bullet points, delivered somewhat randomly.” The day was saved by, not an administrator or professor, but a student who described taking an unusual course her freshman year. As Asher writes, quoting the student: “‘I had taken German in high school,” she explained. ‘But when I started looking through the course catalog, I found so many interesting courses, I wanted to take something unusual.’” The something unusual turned out to be Yiddish, and the lesson was that it’s a good idea to take some courses simply because you find them interesting. Said a relieved Asher: “Of all the messages I’ve gotten over the last two days, that message is the one that sticks more than any others. And it’s because it came through a story.” (Shawn Callahan’s story mentioned above under No. 4. also illustrates the stickiness of stories)
7. Stories connect your listeners with your topic on a personal level. Citing “a brief slide show at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009,” Geoffrey X. Lane wrote that “Palm … put [itself] back into business competition.” You can see the portion of Palm’s “great slide presentation” that Lane refers to here. Wrote Lane: “… notice how Palm’s Jon Rubinstein, like Apple CEO Steve Jobs, treats the presentation like a story. Rather than simply spouting facts about the new phone, he employs narrative (storytelling) to connect listeners to the device on a more personal level — a marvelous marketing strategy involving the audience, and an effective technique you can adopt the next time you appear before the board or your customer.”
8. Sequence, unexpected events, and detail can enhance presentation stories. An unnamed blogger at Social Ch@nge cites the “sequence, unexpected events, and detail” in the amusing slideshow below (“An Excellent Boring Presentation” by Ishtiaque Zico). These traits are not exactly applied to a story, but then again, the slideshow can be seen as the story of how to construct a boring presentation. And even if it isn’t, sequence, unexpected events, and detail are still good story devices.
   An Excellent Boring Presentation

   View more documents from Ishtiaque Zico.
9. Make presentation stories simple enough so that audiences can easily repeat them. “Use the power of simplicity to add to your storytelling skills in presenting your ideas, products and solutions,” advises Thomas Sechehaye, who bills himself “The World’s #1 Presentation Storyboard Coach.” In his blog The Next Meeting, he writes, “Training your audience to recall your message happens when you simplify and make it easy for them to tell your story.”
10. Road-test your stories. In an article with lots of other good tips, Corey Sommers advises test out stories with trusted people who fit your audience profile: “The question you want to ask is: ‘Does this story resonate with you?’”
11. Tell stories about yourself. Carmine Gallo gives an awesome example of using self-stories in a presentation in a Business Week article:

    In September 2007, Brad Nierenberg, CEO of RedPeg Marketing in Alexandria, Va., pitched a project to Gaylord National, a massive new resort outside Washington, D.C. He, along with several other members of the team, competed for the account to publicize the hotel’s hiring event the following year. … Nierenberg told me the team members told stories about themselves in the first slides of the pitch, connecting those stories to the roles each would play on the account. For example, the account lead showed a photo of herself as a young cheerleader and discussed how her role is to lead with precision and to keep spirits high. Nierenberg brought a picture of himself as a 6-year old in a cowboy outfit. As the “sheriff” in town, he might not be on the account every day, but he would be available to make sure “all was right in the town of Gaylord.” Nierenberg knew the stories were making on impact on his audience from the smiles on their faces. “They couldn’t wait for the next story,” he said. The attendees even asked for copies of the photos to show the other decision makers. RedPeg won the account.

12. On the other hand, tell stories not about yourself but about others. While stories about oneself are great for building trust and connection, Seth Simonds makes a case for telling stories about others, suggesting it may be “possible [to] might find value in telling stories that aren’t about you” (in fact, he offers three reasons to tell stories that aren’t just about you). Simonds cites a Thai Pantene commercial (“Pantene tells us a compelling story with a message we recognize and connect with the shampoo”) and Malcolm Gladwell’s 2004 17.5-minute The Story of Spaghetti Sauce on TED Talks (“Gladwell engages us with a story about a man we can model ourselves after.”)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Jim, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Jim Ballard, Question 4:

Q: What future aspirations do you personally have for your own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?

A: Being a lover of stage musicals, I have long dreamed of the opportunity to see a story of mine called “Milo’s Beam” done as a musical. A few years back I took an online screenwriting course (Authors’ Boot Camp) and developed a movie script of the tale, which I’m presently re-working for live theater. In my study of musicals, I’ve learned the actual function of the musical number from the standpoint of the architecture of a show. Whereas before I thought a song was merely an enjoyable interlude in the story, now I know that songs play a crucial part in a scene or play. They move things along exponentially. Whole scenes can be skipped through the right number. When a song begins in the play the audience, characters and show are at a particular place. By the end of the number, if it’s done right, everything is in a new place. Not only is the character of the singer revealed, or an action taken, the number has served as the vehicle for carrying the essence of an idea (or meme). It is this skill of storytelling through lyric-writing that I hope to develop.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A study of of 48 boys and girls aged 5-1/2, found that the 13 girls and 10 boys who currently or previously engaged in imaginary companion play had more advanced narrative skills than children who did not engage in this type of play, reports ScienceAlert:

Children’s interaction with imaginary friends appears to play a positive role in their language development, according to new research that adds to the growing body of evidence that having such companions can be developmentally beneficial.

Associate Professor Elaine Reese of the University of Otago, New Zealand and her former Clark University student Dr. Gabriel Trionfi conducted the research, which appears in the academic journal Child Development.

Well, phooey. I did not have an imaginary friend. My sister Robin did. Her friend’s name was Giffen. It evolved that Giffen lived on the route between our farm and the home of my childhood best friend, Claudia. When my mother would drive me to Claudia’s or pick me up, Robin would always point out Giffen’s house.

Neither of my children had imaginary friends, but my son John had an “old family” with whom he said he had lived before he came to be our child. His memories of his old family were quite vivid and detailed — to the point where I actually wondered if he was recalling a past life. Apparently his old family had been killed in a bomb explosion, and he could get himself into quite an emotional state recalling their demise.

Researcher Reese notes that “because children’s storytelling skills are a strong predictor of their later reading skill, these differences may even have positive spinoffs for children’s academic performance.” Interestingly, both my sister and my son are brilliant. Robin was an early reader, and John became a voracious reader.

Another interesting study — and one might exist — would look at why some children have imaginary friends and some don’t.

Did you have an imaginary friend? Did you become a good storyteller and/or learner as a result?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Jim, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Jim Ballard, Question 3:

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: Not long ago I heard Bruce Springsteen say on “Larry King Live” that “When people are in trouble, they go to storytellers.” That intrigued me, because the link must be age-old. We certainly live in a time of confusion and uncertainty. I guess when people find themselves cut off from their accustomed assurances, their minds and hearts open to things they would have dismissed before. The usual image evoked to illustrate the age-old-ness of story is that of our ancient forbears around a fire, listening as someone spins a tale that helps them forget their hunger and cold, or the wolves at their backs. This time is no different than others, for today’s stories continue to take us away, entertain and inspire us. But this moment in history may, as you say, be special. Perhaps a storyteller will arise that will do for our nation what Abraham Lincoln did for a farmer who said, “I went down there to Alton feelin’ pretty burdened, but ‘twan’t long after he begun to speak that I felt I had no troubles a-tall.”

My wife and I went to see “Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” last night, and thrilled again at perhaps the greatest Bible story of all. It was about a storyteller, a man who could interpret dreams. He was ill-treated by his brothers, who sold him away into slavery, but in the end his marvelous ability to reveal the meaning of dreams enabled him to save Israel. A story of how storytelling redeemed a nation. Perhaps it will happen again, Perhaps, in a world weary of scandal and subterfuge, a truthteller will arise. Perhaps he already has.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Jim, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Jim Ballard, Question 2:

Q: What motivated you to write some of your books as fables, notably your work with Ken Blanchard, the story you wrote with your wife of adult children who are facing having to move their aging parents out of the home they’ve occupied for 40 years, and your spiritual fable, Little Wave and Old Swell?

A: I’ll focus on No Ordinary Move; Relocating Your Aging Parents — A Guide for Boomers, the book my wife Barbara and I have published in both paperback and audio-book form. In operating her senior move manager business for 14 years, Barbara has amassed a host of stories from the many moves she’s helped clients make. When it came to our putting the strategies and wisdom she’s accumulated into a book targeted at adult children facing this issue, it was plain that the usual how-to approach (omniscient voice saying, “Do this, do that,” laced with case studies) would not work for us. We wanted to convey the emotional issues for both the adult children and the aging parents. We wanted to treat the inter-generational points in a way that would help readers understand “the other side.” Storytelling was the answer; in this particular case, it was the way to round in so many of the stories Barbara had heard and been a part of. Seniors and family members, when given the chance, become natural storytellers during the process of a move. Storytelling can produce deep understanding and healing in families.

We created a fictitious family who are facing this issue, and followed their inner and outer journeys through the eight stages of a move. We included all the frustration and consternation people feel with their older parents, the resistance and fears that the parents feel, and the sense of overwhelm both groups experience when they face a major move. We also inserted a wisdom voice in the character of Moving Mentor, the professional move facilitator. The depths of wisdom Barbara has gleaned through her work are revealed in Moving Mentor’s journal entries. This particular instance of storytelling has already given countless people insights into how to help their parents relocate. It also teaches senior move managers to be aware of the opportunities for storytelling inherent in the work they do.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m now really working in earnest on my upcoming free e-book, Storied Careers: 40+ Story Practitioners Talk about Applied Storytelling. The books compiles the best from the Q&A series that has run in this space since last September. I expect to have it ready for free download by the anniversary of the first Q&A publication, Sept. 2.

I organized the contents today. The book will be organized thematically rather than by practitioner. It was easy to come up with the themes suggested by the set of questions I had asked all the practitioners. But I asked each guru at least two questions specifically tailored for that person, so it was interesting to see what common themes emerged from that diverse array of questions.

Although the following might not be in the exact order of the final book, I expect these to be the contents:

• Introduction
• Defining Story
• Origins of Storytelling Passions
• Storytelling Influences
• An Explosion of Storytelling?
• Social-media Storytelling
• Troubling Uses of Storytelling
• Transformational Storytelling
• Storytelling Advice
• Change Your Story, Change Your Life
• Storytelling in Relationships, Teams, and Community
• Story Techniques and Tools
• Unexpected Applications of Storytelling
• Storytelling in Organizations
• Getting Buy-In for Storytelling
• Personal Storytelling, Lifewriting, and Memoir
• The Practice of Storytelling
• Storytelling and Change
• Storytelling in Marketing, Sales, and Branding
• Storytelling and Career
• Storytelling in Writing and Communication
• The Future of Storytelling
• Directory of Practitioners: Photos and Contact Info

Click here to e-mail me to be notified when the book is ready for free download.

This week’s Q&A subject, Jim Ballard, is the last to be included in the book, and with his Q&A, the series comes to a close for a moment. I will always welcome and publish Q&A responses from those to whom I’ve previously sent questions. I will always welcome participation from those I’ve previously invited. And I will welcome participation from anyone who would like to nominate a practitioner (and self-nominations also are welcome) to do a Q&A.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I connected with Jim Ballard when he contacted me after reading my Q&A with Karen Dietz, with whom he has worked. When he told me he had written several of his books as fables, I felt he’d be a good subject for his own Q&A. He was also kind enough to send me a couple of his published works. And, he responded to my Q&A questions faster than any other subject ever had! Since then, we’ve also begun collaborating on a project. He has just re-launched his blog, mind like water, which is terrifically inspirational. This Q&A will run over the next five days

Bio: Jim Ballard spent 10 years in schools as a teacher, guidance counselor and principal, and another 10 years conducting teacher training seminars in classroom management, team building and affective curriculum. When he met Ken Blanchard in 1973, Jim moved into corporate training. As a consulting partner with Blanchard Companies he designed and facilitated award-winning management courses and coauthored books with Blanchard, including Managing By Values, Everyone’s A Coach, Mission Possible, Customer Mania, and Whale Done! On his own Jim has published What’s the Rush? (Random House), Mind Like Water (Wiley & Sons), and Little Wave and Old Swell, A Parable of Life and Its Passing (Simon & Schuster). With his wife Barbara Perman, he has published No Ordinary Move. The primary writer of Whale Done! and Whale Done Parenting, Jim has compiled his coauthors’ stories and suggestions and worked them into a parable. His writing focuses on positive relationships, change, and empowering people to deal with problems like information overload. Jim is a life coach and enjoys coaching readers through his blog and other writings. Jim lives in Amherst, MA, with his partner Barbara Perman.

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A: When my kids were small, I was a summer camp director a couple of summers, and I would spin yarns to them every night in our tent. (Even now they joke about the series we did about the exploits of a superhero insect named Snyder the Spider, who could spin a steel-strong filament to catch criminals and save falling people and breaking bridges.) During years I spent training teachers, I owned a small publishing firm for printing and disseminating the story-based curriculum I wrote. Four fables I published for my children were sold when we sold the business, and have made the rounds. One entitled “Warm Fuzzies” became widely told, and in time became a part of the language.

I have had a number of fables published in the business and spiritual-self-help categories. Ken Blanchard, a frequent co-author, taught me how to write fables, following the lead of his and Spencer Johnson’s best-seller, The One-Minute Manager. I came to see, with Aesop, that storytelling is still a way to get a point across. I continue to use the fable as the basis for my books, including five projects that are under way now.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A month from today, I am stepping way, way, way out of my comfort zone to host a Worldwide Story Work Teleseminar (Wed., Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST), entitled: The Golden Age of Storytelling: Why Is Story Exploding? What Does It Means for Practitioners?

Why out of my comfort zone? I am phobic about the phone. It has been only a little more than a year that I’ve grown comfortable attending teleseminars and webinars — and I don’t even have to talk at those.

But I felt hosting the Sept. 9 teleseminar would be a good growth opportunity. Lest you be put off attending by my being out of my comfort zone, I am putting so much preparation into it that I am reasonably confident I will present well.

I don’t want to portray myself as an expert on the teleseminar’s topic but rather a facilitator of a discussion about it. (Actually, I really like Terrence Gargiulo’s characterization of me as a curator of material about storytelling.)

One of the things I’m doing to prepare is making a handout available for the teleseminar — to kind of grease the wheels, get the thoughts flowing. It would be helpful for attendees to have downloaded and read this PDF handout: Sept9TelesemWWSWGoldenAgeHansen.pdf.

Another option is to read this page (same content as handout) before the teleseminar or have it in front of you during the event.

You can register for the teleseminar here (you may need to become a member of Worldwide Story Work to register); however, I don’t believe registration is required, and you can simply call this number on Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST: 1-218-936-4700 — Access Code 710691

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The New Prosperity Initiative (NPi) is a Boston-based media organization “that pairs storytelling with new media to publicize the efforts of people and organizations doing socially innovative work to end poverty and build prosperity. NPi stories take the shape of interviews, photo essays, videos, and podcasts and are distributed both in print and online.”

At the same time that NPi is chronicling those working toward social change, its founders, Jeanne Dasaro and Alexis Schroeder, are maintaining a blog that chronicles the story of their entrepreneurship and how they are attempting to launch, grow, and raise funds for the venture.

In a recent entry, Schroeder wrote: “Every now and then someone asks me where I think NPi is in terms of its long-term development. The short answer is: We don’t have money yet, but we do have a strong business plan and some pretty fantastic partners. … One question I’ve been asking myself lately (the answer to which I think we need to communicate better) is, “Why invest in NPi?”

NPi’s answer to that question is one that reflects deep social concern, but it’s a question that every entrepreneur must answer.

Last year, my best friend hatched an idea for a Web-based application that will be truly revolutionary. It’s not quite as much about social change on a global level as NPi is, but it’s something that can truly do wonders for people’s personal and career growth. She asked me to partner with her. For almost a year, we’ve been slowly developing the idea and seeking a way to finance it.

We recently applied for venture capital support that is more than just money. If we’re chosen, we will get intensive expert guidance and personnel to bring our venture to fruition.

Interestingly, part of the application process asked for stories of how our idea would work and what it would look like in action. I had a lot of fun developing those stories.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to see those stories play a key role in our success. If you want people to invest in your idea, you must be able to present a storied vision that enables investors to picture how it will work and why it’s a great idea.

I love the circularity of NPi’s discussion of storytelling: Storytelling is at the core of the venture’s purpose. The founders must show why storytelling is so important (see quote below). And at the same time, they tell their own story of launching the venture

From Schroeder’s blog entry:

So why invest in a media organization that tells stories? Because millions of people in America and across the globe are missing more than a few of these key pieces of the puzzle necessary for living a prosperous life. … Everyone deserves a fair shot at living a healthful, prosperous life. In cities and towns all across the country, in major international cities and rural villages, people are doing incredible work to make sure everyone gets one. These are stories that must be told.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Kevin Hoffberg of Group Partners offers a fascinating look at the role of stories in decision-making:

Decisions come from the stories we tell ourselves and others. Listen to the stories you tell yourselves. Listen to the stories other people tell themselves. A “justification” or a “rationalization” is the story we tell ourselves so we can feel good about what we did. Every decision has a story going in, every decision has a story coming out. What’s yours?

Hoffberg’s statement is the first point in a Decision Manifesto

Group Partners brings “its unique visual, structured thinking processes to solve complex problems for large multi-national clients.” The Decision Manifesto is part of a growing “wiki of nearly 2,500 pages.”

The illustration below is part of the Decision Manifesto and is captioned “The Framework for Decisions is always based on a full context.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Melissa, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Melissa Wells, Questions 5 and 6:

Q: If you could share just one piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative with readers, what would it be?

A: A gripping story has changes and growth. You must realize this, and not be afraid to change, even when others see you as a success. Stagnation is not good, not for your mind and not for your story.

Q: On your blog, you say you draw inspiration from “explor[ing] remote areas to find unexpected stories about cool creatures.” In what ways do these unexpected stories inspire you, and how do you pass on that inspiration to your clients?

A: I spend a considerable amount of time in nature looking at things that most people never have the chance to observe or simply ignore. There are illuminating parallels between human behaviors and the actions of glaciers, leafcutter ants, howler monkeys, elephants. I am inspired when I stop and experience these creatures and environments, which can be powerful inspirations for people-totems, if you like. My job in the field, too, is to capture stories. I have video camera in hand and work with scientists to understand the unique behaviors of creatures. Then I craft a story on film.

Ultimately the stories that inspire me are unexpected. Did you know that a glacier is not, in fact, slow, but noisy and constantly in flux? How similar is that to the human experience of identity shift? Often I find humor in creatures. All of it serves to entertain, inspire and make clients know they are not alone.

The most important aspect of my transition from consultant to career coach and videographer is credibility. I spent over 12 years as a management consultant. I experienced much of what my clients go through each day — long hours, lots of airports, managing difficult projects, politically complex situations, struggling for balance. Because I changed my life so dramatically, my clients look at me and gain confidence and hope. They see that the leap they want to make is less dramatic and that I have the experience to guide them in creating something new in their life, to pursue their own definition of success.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

At the same time as I am slogging my way through a very cerebral and academic book on narrative psychology, I am noticing more and more about uses of story for various types of healing.

Here are some examples I’ve come across recently:

• First, some background on narrative therapy: Not that every example here uses a technique that would necessarily be labeled “narrative therapy” (or narrative psychology), but many of the tenets are the same across the board. An article on Ezine Articles, Narrative Therapy — Concepts and Applications by Pedro Gondim, describes narrative therapy this way:

  Narrative Therapy is an approach to counselling that centres people as the experts in their own lives. This therapy intends to view problems as separate entities to people, assuming that the individual’s set of skills, experience and mindset will assist him/her reduce the influence of problems throughout life. This therapeutic approach intends to place the individual in both the protagonist and author roles: switching the view from a narrow perspective to a systemic and more flexible stance.

• Refugee healing: For Vietnamese refugee Lucie Trinephi, telling her personal story of fleeing Vietnam and being subjected to racist abuse in Paris is a way “to find peace. Katie Nguyen details Trinephi’s quest in Overcoming Trauma of Displacement through Storytelling, Illustration, in which Trinephi is “channeling these vivid memories into an illustrated book of her personal story.”
• Storytelling in healthcare: I’ve read lots about the increased emphasis on gathering patients’ stories in the medical profession, most recently in an article by Sarah Kearns in HealthLeaders Media, Storytelling in Healthcare Enhances Experience for Patients and Providers, in which Kearns quotes Anna Tee, patient stories coordinator at the 1,000 Lives Campaign in Wales:

  “‘Patient stories’ is a term that describes a powerful tool that is extremely effective in gathering, listening to, and making changes based on the patient’s voice,” says Tee. The process must allow for a patient or patient caregiver to present his or her experience with an illness or condition in his or her own words “to gain an understanding of what it is like as a patient.”

• Storytelling in Family Therapy: An unbylined article on the site Combat Alcoholism, Why Go to Family Therapy notes that a number of therapists in the Scottsdale, AZ, area are using storytelling in their therapy, offering these advantages:

  Storytelling when used for family therapy relays ideas and messages holistically. This effect enables the listeners to receive the message in a simple, logical manner and through one session. …This technique opens up the family to therapist in a way that allows him to sort out the elements in logical sequence out from a chaotic setting. This approach connects the individual to time and space, and the direction of the sequence of events becomes clearer which allows the therapist to deliver a more sensible idea or message.

• Storytelling as indicator of mental and physical health: Perhaps more along the lines of diagnosis than healing is a blog entry Senia Maymin on Positive Psychology News, How You Tell the Story of Your Life, which discusses Martin Seligman’s book, Learned Optimism, in which Seligman asserts that “how a person tells a story can be an indicator of physical health and mental health.” Seligman cites several studies to support the assertion, including the Grant Study that I wrote about here, in which (based on the later analysis of Seligman and a colleague), the degree of optimism of the men studied at age 25 predicted health at age 60. The flip side of this type of study is perhaps the research reported by Patricia Donovan on the site Anxiety Insight, Personal post-trauma stories predict narrator’s emotional outcome, showing that ” the aftermath of national trauma, the ability to make sense out of what happened has implications for individual well-being and that the kinds of stories people tell about the incident predict very different psychological outcomes for them.” The national trauma in question was, of course, 9/11, and the researchers gathered “personal accounts about experiences of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 written by 395 adults from across the country, some of whom were more intimately connected to the events … than were others.” One of the researchers summed up the findings:

… we found that psychological well-being was associated with post-trauma stories that were high in closure, high in redemptive imagery and high in themes of national redemption. Psychological distress, on the other hand, was significantly related to accounts that were low in closure, high in contaminative imagery and high in themes of personal contamination.

The full academic journal reference is: Adler JM, Poulin MJ. The Political Is Personal: Narrating 9/11 and Psychological Well-Being. J Personality 2009 Jul; 77(4):903-932


Maymin also points to a New York Times article reporting on a study about how people describe their problems in therapy. One of the researchers sees “the relevance of stories in all parts of a person’s life” and that People “draw on these stories implicitly, whether they know they are working from them or not.” (The other researcher, interestingly, was Jonathan Adler, one of the researchers on the above 9-11 study). Next, Maymin reports on a study that showed that “using the third-person is a good technique to see the positive changes you’ve made in your life, and that is likely to lead to greater satisfaction with your efforts.” Finally, Maymin details an exercise created by Claude Steiner to identify “the stories people make up for themselves.” Specific questions in this exercise are these:

What is your favorite fairy tale?

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

What movie most represents your life?

Who is your favorite person?

Whom would you be like if you could be like anyone?

• Journaling for healing: Because I consider journaling to be a close sibling to storytelling, I was interested in Kathleen Adams, who runs Center for Journal Therapy, which looks at the many applications journal therapy for holistic mental health.
• Storytelling for healing prisoners: Finally, Vandy Duffy in Storytelling and words that heal tells the secondhand story of Kathryn Windham, who told stories at a men’s prison: “When she finished the men stood and rushed her. The guards were unable to react as she was surrounded, this petite, elderly woman surrounded by a room full of prison inmates. One lifted her from the ground in a hug, others hugged her too. Over and over they hugged her. One inmate, tears streaming from his eyes said, ‘No one ever told me a story before.’” Duffy also cites Healing Story Alliance, a special interest group of the National Storytelling Network.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Melissa, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Melissa Wells, Question 4:

Q: What future aspirations do you personally have for your own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?

A: Currently I am organizing groups of creative people in business and other fields to meet at remotes spots way out in the bush where no one else is going, to help them break from entrenched habits and to create space for imagination and new ideas. I define “creative people” broadly; entrepreneurs, scientists, CEOs, artists, writers, actors are all creatives to me. Maybe an encounter with a tiger or lemurs can work its way into their life narrative! And not to worry — stories need not feature pain; we eat and travel well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Yesterday in his Buzz Canuck blog, Sean Moffitt made the jaw-dropping (to me) statement, “Unfortunately, stories are mainly dead in marketing.”

Seriously?

Perhaps he needs to have a little conversation with Melinda Partin, who wrote in a recent Fast Company column, “At its very core, marketing is storytelling.”

Subsequently on Twitter, Moffitt said he was “canvassing for great stories as a sequel to [his] post.

I have a whole stack of examples I could share with him, but I thought maybe the folks out there on the cutting edge of storytelling in marketing and branding could give him even better examples than I could.

Please tell him that stories are not “mainly dead in marketing.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Melissa, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Melissa Wells, Question 3:

Q: What people or entities have been most influential to you in your story work and why?

A: As a career coach, my purpose with story work is to teach people how to imagine, communicate and allow a different story about themselves into their lives. I’m most influenced by those who are not only good storytellers, but also passionate about another subject in life. One without the other is useless. Too often a speaker has something brilliant to say, but cannot express it (lack of storytelling skills). Or someone is an engaging storyteller, but doesn’t know enough about the subject matter to create a lasting impact or establish credibility.

I’m influenced by variety. The scientist Gary Strobel tells stories about his discoveries, such as a microbe whose byproduct is the equivalent to diesel fuel. Al Gore took on a mammoth story-telling project to communicate his knowledge and passion. JetBlue and VirginAmerica created new stories about domestic air travel (for a frequent flier like me, this is no small feat, where US air travel is often less pleasant than the Madison Avenue bus at 6 o’clock). Conferences such as the EG and Adventures of the Mind feed me. I believe some of the most powerful storytellers are talented psychotherapists who get mentally ill clients to disengage from beliefs (stories) that cause debilitating pain. The truth is that my partner and husband, Mark Moffett, is my favorite storyteller. He uses the stories of his experiences in the wild to get people to fall in love with the little known in nature.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Melissa, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Melissa Wells, Question 2:

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A: Life is about stories, whether you choose to express your stories through the arts, the sciences, or helping people. Whatever it is, your talent in turning your experiences into a narrative is what is important to me. That includes your whole life, in an important way. As a career coach, I guide talented people to create lives that represent their best stories. Life itself is can be a splendid story, if done with flair.

As for my own story, another part of my life is that I work in rainforests and deserts, documenting new species and behavior of animals around the world. I am just back from Botswana where an elephant charged me from only a few yards away — now that, at least for my life, is a wonder­ful story. I ask people, “What experiences make you proud or do you love to remember?” The key to creating a self-determined work-life lies in the stories of our past and the experiences we hope for. I extrude those stories from clients. The magic is in the real-world planning and execution. I was a management consultant for more than 12 years. Clients love to be escorted over that threshold from idea to reality. That’s what I love, clients realizing the most powerful stories of their careers.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Get ready for a powerhouse free webinar.

Two of the most interesting and well-spoken figures in business storytelling, Terrence Gargiulo and Shawn Callahan are teaming up to present a webinar, Three Questions We Usually Get from Leaders About Storytelling: Reflections, Discussion & Tools, that they will deliver twice — once geared to Australian and surrounding timezones on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 12:30 PM - 1:15 PM Australian EST (which is Aug. 11th, 3:30 US Pacific Time), and the second time geared to the US and surrounding timezones on Aug. 19th at 12:30 US Pacific Time.

I’ve attended several of Terrence’s webinars and find him to be an exceptional presenter. I haven’t heard Shawn present, but I’ve read his writing, so I’m really looking forward to the webinar.

Here’s the skinny from these gents:

Are your leaders great storytellers? And, why should you care anyway?

With more then 40 years of combined experience, two of the world’s leading narrative consultants divulge some of what they have learned. Join Shawn Callahan of Anecdote and Terrence Gargiulo of MAKINGSTORIES.net for a 45-minute rousing interactive discussion rich with examples and practical tools.

Will you be as surprised as we were when we discovered the “Triple Threat,” of storytelling for leaders?

Find out the answers to the three questions we get asked the most. Prior to the event we’ll share a white paper on leadership and storytelling. Following the webinar we’ll send you a job aid that we use in our work. So give us the pleasure of your company and interact with your peers to take a nuanced but deep dive into the art and science of leadership through narrative.

To register for August 12, go here.

To register for August 19, go here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Melissa Wells, who is, I believe, another one of my discoveries through Twitter, is one of those rare breeds kind of like me who combines fascinations with career development/management with storytelling. In addition, she’s a nature videographer who has adventures in Africa and other places. I’m delighted to bring you this Q&A with her.

Bio: Melissa Wells is a career consultant who works with individual and corporate clients at the cutting edge of their fields whether business, science, or the arts. Blending inspired travel with experience as a consultant, she guides clients through the process of precisely defining and creating success, defined their way. A world-traveler and videographer, her video work is currently featured at Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, as part of the “Farmers, Warriors, Builders” exhibit. Prior to career coaching, Melissa was a director at Huron Consulting Group and also consulted with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture, in the US and overseas. Melissa hold a B.A. from Smith College in psychology. She can be found at mwells@amazoncoaching.com or through her take on career through an explorer’s lens, Amazon Coaching.

Q: When you say “Your Career, Your Story,”” as your tagline, or more specifically, “It’s your career, write your own story,” and “creating a narrative that makes you distinctive,” can you explain a little about what you mean by that and how that process works?

A: The heart of my work is helping people clearly articulate what they want and why. I chose “Your Career, Your Story” as a way to inspire and encourage clients to choose their work. In short, if you cannot articulate what you want, why, and how you are different from others in your field, then finding a satisfying job or anything else in life, becomes less likely.

Clients find I make the process fun by letting them express what brings them happiness and what experiences make their skin crawl, and building from there. When someone is enthusiastic, or shares their worst experiences, I get a vivid picture of who they are and the role of work in their life. Once I’ve established trust, I’m able to guide them to craft a narrative they can use to persuade, influence, or soothe.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Jim Knutsen claims “there is literally nothing left to say on branding.

With all those words, you’d think the discipline would be clearly defined and understood. And yet there is still massive confusion. I’ve had a hundred conversations that center around client questions like, “What’s the difference between positioning and branding? Is this my business strategy or my brand strategy? Is my brand promise the same thing as my elevator pitch?”

“Nearly every brand consultancy answers those questions with their own ‘proprietary’ version of a branding model,” Knutsen notes.

The same is true about personal branding. Though one of the hottest trend in career management in the past few years, personal branding is confusing because every expert has a different model and approach for identifying one’s personal brand.

Knutsen thinks perhaps consultants have overcomplicated branding and that all organizations need to do is tell their stories. He poses these three questions, which I’ve adapted for the careerist individual rather than the organization:

1. What is your [individual career] story? Your differentiating DNA… clear, focused and compelling.
2. How can you use that story to align your team, resources and strategies to create a consistent … experience [for prospective employers] and achieve common business goals?
3. What are the words and symbols that point back to the substance of your story, and how will you present them consistently?

The words are the tools for presenting your brand to prospective employers in such media as resumes, cover letters, interviews, portfolios, and networking situations.

The symbols are things like fonts, colors, design, and images that tie your written career-management documents (resumes, cover letters, and more) together and present as consistent, branded image, as well as the way you brand your own appearance/attire — your distinctive look when you network and interview.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The Workbook Project offers a slideshow and corresponding PDF about “how one can use to social media to extend a story and generate a conversation around [one’s] work.”

Although The Workbook Project (“for those who want to be creative in the digital age”) focuses on such media as film, games, music, design, software, the resource — and the project itself — can be useful for many types of story practitioners.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The Chain of Confidence Challenge is a Tupperware-sponsored contest seeking “your unique story about a special person who has made a significant difference in your life; perhaps a mentor, a teacher, your sister or your best friend. What did you learn from them and how were you encouraged and inspired to become an even stronger person? You can nominate a friend, family member or someone from the Tupperware community — a consultant/director.” Entry deadline is Aug. 14.

The winner’s nominee gets $5,000 that will be donated to a charitable organization of her choice, dedicated to empowering women.

Entry details here.

Chain of Confidence stories can be found here

Tupperware’s Chain of Confidence honors women around the world and the profound, life altering impact that they can have on one another.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.