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.