As if in response to yesterday’s entry in which Nick Corcodilos asked, “So, does your resume tell a story?” Certified Resume Strategist Karen Siwak writes about Career Storytelling: How Sharing Fascinating Experiences Gets YOU Hired!. “Ask any recruiter about a memorable candidate,” Siwak writes, “and chances are that it will be some element of [his or her] story that stands out.”

Siwak compares career storytelling to the third day of canoe tripping when “all pretenses are gone, and each of us has been revealed for who we are, in all our glorious colour and complexity” and everyone becomes comfortable relating storied experiences. I’ll take her word for it given that I’ve never been canoe tripping.

These stories, Siwak says, “are character building. They cause us to confront our foibles and take ownership of our strengths.”

They create the emotional space for self examination and questioning. Why am I here? Where am I going? Who do I want to be with? What do I want next?

Siwak doesn’t tell how to create a storied resume but asserts that she knows how to do it:

My goal as a Resume Strategist is to fast-track this process of self discovery, and I love it. I love getting people to open up about themselves and reach a place of personal authenticity from which truly unique and distinctive career stories can emerge. I love asking the probing questions that create “aha” moments. I love working with my clients to find exactly the right words to tell their stories. Any good marketing professional will tell you that stories sell. … Resume strategy isn’t just laying out a reverse chronology of your career path. It’s about telling a clear, succinct story about who you are and why you are the perfect solution to some company’s problem. It stirs interest and invites connection. It creates the opening for an interview, and lays the groundwork for you to be able to expand on your talents, strengths and insights.

I’ve encountered many resume writers who say they write resumes that tell a story, but I’ve never yet seen a resume that made me say, “YES! That’s a storied resume!” And that includes my own attempts. I still don’t know what the storied resume is, but I feel as though I will know it when I see it.

In the meantime, it’s great to hear another voice join the chorus for storytelling in resumes.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve always been a big fan of Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter for his iconoclastic opinions and exposes of the dark underbelly of the hiring and job-search arenas.

Now I have even more reason to be a fan; Nick has just published on Fast Company, Toss Your Resume in the Trash and Tell Employers Your Story (thanks to my friend Thomas Clifford for turning me onto this piece). His premise leads to this question and conclusion: “How do you craft a resume that tells a compelling story? Don’t. … Few resumes leave the reader wanting to know more. … Toss your resume in the trash.”

Here’s how he arrives at that conclusion:

After 30 years of reading resumes, I know I’m going to find just one or two nuggets of useful information in any resume. I don’t care about the rest. I know a resume is so over-edited that it’s just a faint representation of the person it’s about. That’s why so few resumes yield interviews.

On the other hand, I love talking with prospective job candidates to find out what their stories are. Few have one to tell, and that makes it easy to move on to the next without hesitation or guilt. The one who has a story—well, now we’re getting somewhere.

A person with a story to tell knows the importance of having a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Can you say, “project management?”) The best of them know it’s also important to have a plot, a conflict, and a resolution. The rare resume has a distinct theme that reveals itself; I don’t have to try to figure it out. That’s the person with insight and motivation. That’s the person whose aspirations I care about. People with credible aspirations will work hard to deliver what a manager needs so they can get what they need.

Nicks says the storied interviews on Fast Company provide superb examples of the kind of stories candidates should be telling but he’s not clear about what communications medium a job-seeker should use to tell this kind of story.

He then confuses the issue. After telling us to trash our resumes, he asks: “So, does your resume tell a story? Notice I said, ‘Tell a story,’ not ‘Hope the manager can piece together a story from all the facts.’”

So how do you write a resume that tells a story? Tomorrow’s entry offers a bit of insight from a resume writer who does that for her clients.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Not all the 20 finalists (out of nearly 1,000 submitted) in Organizing for America’s Health Reform Video Challenge are stories, but some are.

Organizing for America is asking the public to vote on the finalists. One downside is that you must rate all 20 videos for your vote to count. You don’t have to rate every video in one sitting, however; when you come back, you can pick up right where you left off.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My quest to respond to the challenge of reader Raf Stevens for examples of superlative storytelling has been rewarding because it has exposed me to some great storytelling, as well as gotten me thinking about a taxonomy of the kind of storytelling that’s available on the Web.

In my last entry in the series, I listed the forms of storytelling I had addressed thus far.

I’d like to address the category of stories — preferably nonfiction — that are told purely with words in print (as opposed to spoken words); in other words, a story that must be read. Because I want to share one or more outstanding stories in this category with readers, nominations need to be available online. It could be a blog entry, a news story, a personal story or memoir, or any of many other possibilities.

I say nominations because it’s a big category, and I’d love help from readers. Have you read a story online that you thought was a remarkable example of storytelling?

If so, please share.

Then, my next challenge will be to identify terrific slideshow storytelling, which is I think what reader Stevens most wanted me to exemplify.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Results are in for the “Six Words on the Digital Life” challenge sponsored by SMITH Magazine and FRONTLINE/Digital Nation after 850+ entries.

Here are the three winning memoirs:

• “Introverted autistic son blossoms on internet.” —Claire Luna-Pinsker
• Sexting is saving our relationship. —Dana Newsome
• Husband won’t confirm my relationship status. — Dana Calvo

Meanwhile, SMITH has announced a new six-word challenge based on the online project Significant Objects started by Joshua Glenn and NYT “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker, in which writers craft significance for items purchased on the cheap at thrift stores. They then sell story and object as a pair on eBay to determine whether a great story can make a random object valuable. T

SMITH’s newest Six-Word Challenge: Can you create Significance for the Object at left in just six words? The winning response will be published on the Significant Objects site, and more to the point, on its eBay store. Proceeds from that auction go to the author of the winning submission.

So what about this object, a lighter in the shape of small pool ball? What’s its story? You tell us. Leave your six-word story in the comments area below. The contest is open until Friday, November 6, 8 pm EST.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I wrote recently about integrating story into LinkedIn and similar profiles, and the same notion applies to the About Us page for your business (or About Me if you’re a solopreneur).

Barbra Sundquist lists four questions that the About Us/Me story should answer for readers/prospective customers:

1. Who are you?
2. What is your expertise?
3. How can that expertise how can it address customer needs?
4. How can customers contact you?

Sundquist also sells templates (at $50 a pop) for such stories (bios), but I’d suggest that unless you are really stuck for how to get started, templates may stifle your ability to creatively tell your story.

A better approach for many will be looking at examples of profiles and About Us/Me pages that tell stories well. I like the one offered by Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software and other ventures, which also incorporates Berry’s business philosophy. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve seen startups and small business from multiple views. I’ve had the good years and bad years. My wife and I had three mortgages and $65,000 of credit card debt at one very low point, which we survived, but I really don’t recommend. I’ve landed investment from a Palo Alto venture capital firm and bought them back. I’ve consulted with venture capitalists on software startups, essentially kicking tires. I’ve consulted with startups on bringing in venture capital, and angel investors, and business loans, and friends and family.

For nice examples that skew more toward “About Us” than “About Me,” I like the short profiles of Etsy shops at Etsy Profiles. These are nicely concise, and some are more storied than others, but all truly humanize the proprietors of these shops. Here’s a sample:

à la mode was created as an outlet for a lifetime of pent up creative energy. While the business began in 2005, I have been designing, creating, crafting, and dreaming of it as far back as I can remember. I studied architecture and interior design in school. After working for an architect for 2 years, I headed to the non profit world and spent my next 10 years in marketing, pr, and fund raising. à la mode allows me to meld my creative nature and work experiences.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Cindy Chastain (pictured) joins Whitney Quesenbery as a user-experience (UX) guru who draws upon storytelling.

In a lengthy essay in the October issue of Boxes and Arrows: The Design Behind Design, Chastain writes about how a storytelling method can help unify teams and create better products.

I encounter very few items about storytelling that don’t get my brain clicking about how they might be applied to the job search. Chastain’s piece inspired me to think about framing user-experience stories as “employer-experience stories.”

Chastain talks about ccommunicating a “shared sense of the kind of experience” designers are trying to create when they develop products.

What if we thought of the job-seeker as the product (as well as the product designer) trying to create a storied experience for a prospective employer?

Chastain says to ask these questions, which I’ve translated to apply to the job-seeker:

• What is the product or service about? What is the job-seeker’s brand or Unique Selling Proposition?
• What will it do for the customer? What will the candidate do for the employer?
• Where does it fit into their lives? Where does the job-seeker fit into the employer’s organization?
• In what ways might we create an emotional response the customer can walk away with? In what ways might we create an emotional response that will inspire the employer to hire the job-seeker?

Chastain then discusses components of the user-experience story. The first is the experience theme, which she says is often expressed as a value, an opposition (something as opposed to something else), or “simply a very strong gut feeling about what the story is ultimately about.”

In Chastain’s work, a document called an Experience Brief packages and outlines the “purpose of the theme, the attributes unpon which it was founded, and the strategy it informs.” An illustrative Experience Brief gives a better idea of the Experience Theme and how we might apply it to job-seekers:

“An Experience Theme seeks to express the value of the user experience most desireable to your patrons.” Here, we consider the value of the experience you, the job-seeker, can bring that would be most desirable to the employer. (And here, we must note that “experience” refers not to your past work experience but to the way the employer will experience you as a prospective employee.)

Paraphrasing Chastain here and adding the job-search terminology: Experience Theme is the mission or purpose of the job-seeker expressed as an over-arching theme that identifies what the job-seeker is all about from the point of view of the prospective employer. It is where the job-seeker’s goals and the employer’s needs meet. So, the Experience Theme might be expressed as a sort of branding statement on Unique Selling Proposition that encapsulates what the job-seeker can bring to a particular employer.

The Experience Strategy talks about how to execute the Experience Theme. The job-seeker would examine how to carry the theme through all of his or her marketing communications with a given employer.

Chastain also discusses how the theme is helpful because it tells you what to leave out. She relates theme to story/screenwriting guru Robert McKee’s Controlling Idea, which “shapes the writer’s strategic choices.” Just as “a scene might be cut because it’s simply not relevant to the theme,” a job-seeker might cut something from his or her resume or arsenal of interview responses if it’s not relevant to the theme.

Overall, this approach, Chastain says, creates a holistic design. Similarly, a job-seeker can create a storied, holistic design to how he or she creates the employer’s experience of him or her as a prospective employee.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I have written about several story structures that job-seekers can deploy — especially in job interviews — but also in resumes, cover letters, and other job-search communications.

Let’s review:

• Traditional Situation (or Problem or Challenge) > Action > Result (SAR, PAR< CAR) structure
• Steve Denning's Attention > Desire > Reasons structure
• Gerry Lantz’s What’s at Stake? structure
• Lesley Morgan’s Feel … Felt … Found Blueprint
• Bill True’s Negative to Positive structure
• Rebecca Ruby’s Venn diagram
• Dick Gaither’s Who, What, Why, Where, When, How + Results structure

Every structure I’ve come across has been basically the same; it’s just that their originators use different words and nuances to describe them.

If they’re really all the same, why do I keep writing about them? Because not everyone can relate to the same structure. If you’re a job-seeker having difficulty grasping how to tell stories in your job search, perhaps the classic Situation —> Action —> Result doesn’t do it for you, but one of the others will.

Here are two more that I recently encountered and have framed in terms of job-search accomplishment stories:

From Mary Morel on the Flying Solo blog, in turn taken from Ros Jay, author of How to Write Proposals and Reports that Get Results:

• Position: In what position or role did you find yourself in a past or current job?
• Problem: What issue or problem did you encounter?
• Possibilities: What options did you have for solving the problems? What avenues did you consider?
• Proposal: Which option did you choose to solve the problem?

This structure leaves out perhaps the most important element, your results; be sure to tell prospective employers the outcome or results you obtained.

• Dramatic issue of consequence to the audience: What situation or problem did you handle in a past or current job that is directly relevant — or of consequence — to the job you’re targeting?
• The story’s movement: How did you move toward dealing with the problem and handling the obstacles along the way?
• Fulfillment: What resolution did you achieve? (Tell this story in a way that your audience, the prospective employer, will experience fulfillment because he or she will picture you solving the same kind of problem for his or her organization.)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My friend Cynthia Kurtz, whose Rakontu web application I wrote about on Friday, has also created a new Ning group, Swimming with Stories, along with my friend, John Caddell.

Cynthia describes the group as being targeted toward “people on the listening side of the story field to meet up.”

The group complements Worldwide Story Work, which skews strongly toward the telling side of story work. Cynthia notes that the listening side sometimes focuses on “different topics and concerns” from those of the telling side. “We are hoping to get together a small group for monthly telecons or chats to talk about issues and help each other out,” Cynthia says.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My friend Michael Margolis has a brand new book out: Believe Me: Why Your Vision, Brand, and Leadership Need a Bigger Story, and I’ll be writing more about it as soon as I get my copy.

In the meantime, readers can download a free excerpt right now.

Says Michael:

Believe Me is a storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators, and explores some of the principles around bringing any new idea into widespread acceptance. This is not a How-To book, but instead reframes why story matters in this adaptive age. The book is organized around 15 inspired storytelling axioms, and supported by quotes from various luminaries, along with my commentary and suggested next steps. If you want to buy the book, use code PN4JX3LN for a 15 percent off discount.

My goal was to touch on the philosophical implications of how stories shape our lives, while keeping it both business-relevant and pop-culture-accessible. The book is visually appealing and digestible, yet provocative to everyone who reads it.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Last year, I noted that Cynthia Kurtz and other story practitioners sought grant support for a story-sharing application, Rakontu.

Rakontu has now come to fruition, and Cynthia seeks to gather some beta test groups to start using it.

From the site:

Rakontu is a free and open-source web application that small groups of people can use together to share and work with stories. It’s for people in neighborhoods, families, interest groups, support groups, work groups: any group of people with stories to share. Rakontu members build shared “story museums” that they can draw upon to achieve common goals.

Rakontu is about small groups sharing stories for a reason. Rakontus are invitation-only, private spaces where people share personal experiences about something they all care about, and in the process build something they can all use. Usually people who start a Rakontu will have something they want to do together, some common goal, and they will be interested in collecting and working with their stories as a means of getting there.

You can learn lots more about how Rakontu works and what it looks like on its Screenshots page, on its FAQ, its Features page, and its Tour page.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A blog entry I read by Derek Sivers describes a talk he once attended by the late Kurt Vonnegut in which the author detailed common story arcs.

Vonnegut compared Cinderalla stories, common disaster stories, and real life, as seen in the illustrations at the bottom of this entry — from Sivers’ blog:

Vonnegut’s conclusion, Sivers writes, was that because we have always been “surrounded by dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

During that relatively brief period when that balloon boy was thought to have been floating away in a hot-air balloon, news outlets and consumers were perhaps justified in seeing drama. But once the kid was found to have been hiding in the attic, the drama was over. Except to the media. There’s plenty of real drama going on in the world, but the media obsesses over a nonevent that momentarily resembled the common disaster story arc.

I’m also reminded of this summer’s press conference on health care by President Obama. The president made important points about his healthcare reform plan, but the only part of the press conference that really grabbed the media’s attention was the last few moments when Obama said the Cambridge, MA, cops were “stupid” for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in his own home. Suddenly … drama … and healthcare was quickly forgotten.

What do you think? Are we so steeped in dramatic story arcs in popular culture that the media feel they must keep feeding us drama?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the TV show “Mystery Diagnosis” on Discovery Health.

The true stories in the shows follow a pretty standard format. The patient starts out normally, but somewhere along the way, a weird symptom emerges, usually followed by more bizarre symptoms. Sometimes a seemingly irrelevant tidbit will be thrown in early on, and you can be pretty sure this information will turn out to be an important plot point, such as on a recent show when a mother stated that portrait photos of her two-year-old made the child appear that she had Down syndrome. It turned out, of course, that she did have a form of Down syndrome.

The shows have rather lurid titles, such as The Woman Who Couldn’t Cry, The Girl Who Couldn’t Be Touched, and The Girl Who Turned Blue. Invariably, the script includes a line: “Nothing could have prepared her for [what the doctor told her] or [the hideous new symptom that emerged.]”

But the real hook of the show is that no one can figure out what’s wrong with these patients, who see doctor after doctor sometimes for years before finally getting a diagnosis. Doctors keep telling these patients there’s nothing wrong with them.

Which brings me to a recent blog entry by Paul Furiga in which he describes taking an elderly aunt to the emergency room. He observed ER doctors overwhelmed by, even drowning in, data. They had to spend most of their time, Furiga writes “‘connecting the dots’ of informational components that included patient histories, diagnostic results, and physician phone consultations, vital sign reports and the like.”

Imagine if there were an easier way to take slews of data and connect the dots.

Ahhh, but there is: story.

Furiga calls for a medical “person who could share the patient’s ‘story’ in a way that connected all the dots and the bits and bytes of data so that a complete (and accurate) diagnosis could be made.” He asks: “Why does the model of treatment not place a trained professional front and center to continually provide patient context to physicians?”

Although narrative medicine has been making inroads, medical training generally omits patients stories. Mary Sykes Wylie writes in an article about child psychologist Daniel Siegel (about whom I will write more in the future) that in medical school (granted this was in 1978), Siegel was “regularly being dressed down for spending too much time listening to his patients’ stories. ‘If you want to listen to people’s stories, go to social work school-that’s not what doctors do!’ one irate supervisor told him.”

If doctors really listened to their patients’ stories instead of relying on mounds of data, perhaps there’d be no material for a “Mystery Diagnosis” show.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Continuing to rise to reader Raf Stevens’ challenge to present and characterize examples of excellent storytelling ….

Yesterday, while riding in an RV across the beautiful breadth of Washington state for 10 hours, I listened to 19 podcasts from The Moth’s podcast series. As a subscriber to the free podcast, I had 24 stories in my iTunes library, though oddly, none from 2009. For some reason, my subscription hasn’t been updating. Anyway, I was listening for outstanding storytelling examples.

I love The Moth and have written about this organization several times. The Moth presents live storytelling in several venues, sometimes in a competition, or “slam” format. Storytellers don’t use notes. The storytellers are not intended to be standup comedians, although I find that the majority of stories tend to be funny and elicit laughs from the audience. Even the poignant/sad/tragic stories often have comic elements. A few of the stories I listened to were, in my opinion, too much like standup comedy.

It’s clear to me that “delivery” genres are emerging in the stories I’m selecting to meet Raf Stevens’ challenge:

• Digital/video storytelling
• Live storytelling performance, captured on video, and now:
• Live storytelling performance, captured on audio (Interestingly, a number of The Moth podcasts have visual elements that the audio audience is not privy to. For example, you can tell the teller is holding up a photo or using some sort of gesture.)

Here are my favorites from the 19 podcasts I listened to. These more than rise to the Raf Stevens Challenge:

• Matthew McGough_ My First Day With The Yankees.mp3. I’d heard this one a number of times before because I used to play it in the classroom for my students. It’s included on a CD collection of Moth Audience Favorites, and it’s easy to understand why it’s a favorite. What makes this a great story? It has its roots in childhood/teenhood, a lifelong, deep-seated love of the New York Yankees. McGough’s passion for the game and the team shine through in the story. The story is funny, yet the comic parts are delivered in a low-key, authentic way that is the antithesis of standup comedy. (Can you tell that I really don’t care for standup comedy?) The payoff of the story is a rewarding life lesson. The story is about 14 minutes long.
• 01 Garrison Keillor_ Lessons in Swimming.mp3. It’s not surprising that Keillor’s story is one of my favorites. He has probably been telling stories for far longer than any of the other tellers in these podcasts and has told far more. I love this 11-minute story — like McGough’s, rooted in childhood — because it is about storytelling itself and tells of how a tragic event set Keillor on the path of his life’s work. I love the phrase he uses: “the intimacy of stories on a page.”
• 01 Jenifer Hixson_ Where There_s Smoke.mp3. Although this story extols the loathsome practice of smoking cigarettes (Hixson has since quit), it is delivered with a kind of raw, on-the-edge emotion that draws the listener in. It is a story of sisterhood between women; I’d be interested in whether men are as deeply affected by this story as I was. The story has moments of humor, but is mostly poignant.

Honorable mention goes to 01 Faye Lane_ Green Bean Queen.mp3. I wasn’t in love with the story, but the delivery was fabulous.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A convergence of books reminded me of my interest in the genre known as the “business novel.”

When Jon Stewart interviewed Jennifer Burns last week, Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, noted that Rand sought to evangelize her message promoting capitalism, individual freedom, and limited government by communicating it in the form of narrative — in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. (Every time the right is out of power and trying to get back up on the horse, Rand becomes its darling, Burns says, despite the fact that she was an atheist.)

About the same time, I received a copy of There’s More to Life Than the Corner Office from one of the authors, Lamar Smith.

The book’s Web site notes that the volume is written in story form because “stories don’t just relay a message, they touch us with it. So, There’s More to Life Than the Corner Office is a story about two men at very different points on that 21st Century highway, one barreling down the fast lane, the other still driving, but from a perspective of Balanced Living. … Effective teachers have long understood a simple point: People like stories. … There’s More to Life is a little story that conveys large lessons centered around one point, balance in your life helps you achieve more in all areas and sustain high performance for all of your years.”

Here’s a short synopsis:

Patrick Mitchell, 28-year-old hotshot investment banker from Boston. Patrick was crystal clear on what he wanted, what it would take to get it, and how he was willing to pay any price. What goal was worth that focus? CEO, the modern day equivalent of royalty. Patrick wanted to be the big boss and get there as a young man. His health was stressed, his marriage on the rocks, he had no real friends, but those were just details. Lesser-committed people might see danger signs, but not Patrick.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Another one of my occasional forays into my own story:

Those who follow this blog know that after almost 17 years in Central Florida, I have been in Kettle Falls, WA, since early May. Randall and I bought land here last fall and have been building a house here.

The plan was to be bicoastal; we would live in Florida in the winter and Kettle Falls in the summer. But we weren’t in the beautiful, magical Kettle Falls for long before we realized we really didn’t miss much about Florida.

I miss my hair stylist, my yoga teacher, nighttime space-shuttle launches (which we can see from our front yard), and the fact that Florida humidity keeps my skin from getting dry. That’s it. I decided I could easily live without any of those things.

In fact, I was amazed at what I found I could live without. We have a whole house just full of stuff back in Florida, but I can function just fine without any of it. This realization gives me pause about all the material possessions I’ve accumulated that I thought I simply had to have.

So we decided we want to live in Washington year-round. There’s still a possibility our winter residence will be in a warmer part of Washington, as winters are brutal here. We love to bicycle, which is difficult in a harsh winter climate (though we’re thinking of taking up snowshoeing).

To make our year-round Washington dream happen, we have to return to Florida to close out our life there — sell two properties and get rid of all but a few of those material possessions. We’ll return to Kettle Falls in April.

Eastern Washington offers astonishing beauty, a relaxed lifestyle (Randall calls it “Kettle Cool”), and transcendence. Being here has been truly transformative, helping us to shed complexities, a hectic pace, and painful memories.

We leave the day after tomorrow. I planned an interesting route back to soften the blow of leaving. We’ll first head west before we veer east — so we can check out a possible winter residence in western Washington. We’ll bicycle in three new states — Oregon, Kansas, and Indiana. And a former student has offered us a tour of Churchill Downs, where she works.

Still, closing this chapter — even knowing we’ll be back before long — is almost unbearable.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My Facebook friend Kim Pearson (pictured), who has written one haiku a day for 20-some years, runs a haiku contest every Friday on a particular theme. Today’s theme is storytelling. Check it out.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I'm delighted to have participated in yesterday's Blog Action Day 09 (thanks to guest writer Cathryn Wellner), joining 13,222 blogs from 155 countries with more than 17 million readers. Also blogging were the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain along with The White House.

From a roundup post toward the close of the event:

For the past day bloggers in 155 countries across six continents have written about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned BAD09 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by about 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world. ... We are about to hit 27,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17 million people today. We are also about to exceed 12,000 registered bloggers on the site ...

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A Guest Entry for Blog Action Day 09 by Cathryn Wellner

Blog Action Day is an annual event on Oct. 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. This year the issue is climate change. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. I am joining more than 7,000 bloggers in presenting an entry on this subject today. Obviously, I wanted to tie the entry to storytelling, so I invited Cathryn Wellner to submit this guest entry since she is both a storyteller and passionate about the climate-change issue.

With a subject as serious and controversial as climate change, people on all sides of the debate can bristle when a scientist refers to it in terms of “myths”.

Climate scientist Mike Hulme has ventured into the realm of myth to urge people to “use the idea of climate change to rethink and renegotiate our wider social and political goals.” He cautions against “the exaggerated language in the description of climate change risks.”

Some use this as confirmation that climate change is a nothing to worry about. Others accuse Hulme of dismissing the most serious issue on the planet.

Both sets of critics misunderstand Hulme’s intent. I can’t claim to crawl into his mind, but my reading of his 2007 essay, Climate change: no Eden, no apocalypse, tells me that many of his critics misunderstand the power of myth to guide our actions.

Myths, after all, are not just lies told to mislead gullible people. They are stories that explain how the world works.

Hulme writes, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has constructed a powerful scientific consensus about the physical transformation of the world’s climate. This is a reality that I believe in. But there is no comparable consensus about what the idea of climate change actually means. If we are to use the idea constructively, we first need new ways of looking at the phenomenon and making sense of it.”

Hulme frames the way we communicate climate change through the lens of four myths.

In the Edenic myth, we long for an idyllic past and see the natural world as fragile and in need of protection. “[W]e are uneasy with the unsought powers we now have to change the global climate.”

The Apocalyptic myth focuses on disaster. It betrays our fears for the future but and calls us to act.

In the Promethean myth, climate is “something we must control, revealing our desire for dominance and mastery over nature but also that we lack the wisdom and humility to exercise it.”

The fourth myth, Themisian, shows concern for those who will be unequally harmed by climate change. “Climate change becomes an idea around which calls for environmental justice are announced, revealing the human urge to right wrongs.”

For the most part, the myths we live by are invisible. Behind the scenes, they guide our actions. Hulme writes, “The four mythical ways of thinking about climate change reflect back to us truths about the human condition that are both comforting and disturbing. They suggest that even were we to know precisely what we wanted — wealth, communal harmony, social justice or mere survival — we are limited in our abilities to acquire or deliver those goals.”

Copenhagen will be the scene of the next round of global climate change talks. It will be fascinating to compare Hulme’s four myths with the stories delegates bring to the table and the actions they take, or fail to take, based on them.

  Mike Hulme is Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, coordinator of the EU’s project on options for European and global climate policy, and a Lead Author on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change from 1996 to 2001.

  Cathryn Wellner is a storyteller and writer in Kelowna, British Columbia. Her early work as a performer morphed into community development, with a focus on organizational narrative.  

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Just a couple of items to add about this year’s Blog Action Day 09 — in addition to Cathryn Wellner’s wonderful guest entry. One of these is related to storytelling; the other not so much:

1. Another story-based initiative regarding global warming is the online anthology, Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. From the site:

   This new anthology from the Union of Concerned Scientists and Penguin Classics brings together established writers and fresh voices to inspire us with personal stories and reflections on global warming.

   Following in a uniquely American tradition of environmental writing begun by Henry David Thoreau and continued by great writers from Rachel Carson to E. O. Wilson, Thoreau’s Legacy enhances our appreciation of the world around us and galvanizes support to preserve it for future generations. The 67 pieces of writing and art in the anthology are drawn from nearly 1,000 submissions about beloved places, animals, plants, people, and activities at risk from a changing climate and the efforts that individuals are making to save what they love. A foreword on global warming by the well-known author Barbara Kingsolver helps to set the context.

   

   Readers can launch the interactive book to read the anthology or explore the site to learn about the hardcover and e-book versions and what individuals can do to help address climate change.

2. There’s a way to do more than write or read blog entries about climate change. Blog Action Day has partnered with Al Gore’s group the Alliance for Climate Protection to start a global online action addressed to the one country whose actions will most influence the future of our climate: the United States. From the Blog Action Day organizers: “Blog Action Day bloggers represent 130 countries, and climate change impacts us all. But more than that of any other country, action taken by the United States to limit greenhouse gases and build a clean energy economy is needed to achieve a sustainable solution to our global climate crisis. Add your voice and call for bold action now.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Again rising to reader Raf Stevens’ challenge for me to present more examples of good storytelling in this space, I give you another one that is making the social-media rounds.

This one could not be more different from my first entry, posted earlier this week, “The Closet.”

While that one was a video/digital story, this one is an oral performance (although it is a video of an oral performance).

While my first selection used very few spoken words, this one depends on spoken words. The spoken words give it a huge portion its power.

The rest of its power comes from the delivery by actor, singer, writer, and composer Daniel Beaty, illustrating just how much a teller can bring to a story.

Like my first pick, this one is relatively short — two minutes and 35 seconds.

It is also classified as Def Jam poetry — but it undeniably tells a story.

The story draws the listener in and builds to a powerful climax that includes its audience. Commenters have used words and phrases like “brilliant,” “riveting,” “beautiful,” and “the most passionate, powerful, intense. genuine, wise and meaningful message”

Here is Knock, Knock:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I mentioned a few weeks ago, a “Tell Us Your Best Toilet Story” contest from American Standard.

The winning entry, submitted by Emily Horos of Atlanta GA, has now been chosen. Here’s the beginning of it:

It Works As a Phone, Too

I lived in a house with two female roommates, so toilet paper was never in surplus.

One night while watching a movie in surround sound in the living room, I felt the call of nature and exited the room for the adjacent bathroom.

I did my business and reached for some toilet paper before noticing that the roll was empty. No worries. We kept a stock of extra under the sink as this was the only bathroom in the house. I opened up the cupboard only to find it bare as well. Read the rest here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Last week, reader Raf Stevens challenged me to present more examples of good storytelling in this space. I was critical of the storytelling in the entries in Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest, so Stevens wanted to get a better idea of what I consider to be good storytelling.

Here’s an example that has been making the rounds on Twitter over the last week. While I can’t say for sure that the characteristics that make this video great storytelling work for every attempt at storytelling, those traits are:

• It’s concise (a minute and 14 seconds).
• It has a beginning, middle, and end.
• It’s exciting and suspenseful.
• The viewer wonders where it’s going.
• There’s a great payoff that more than satisfies the “where is this going?” question.
• The story and its payoff are communicated in very few spoken words.
• And you can’t beat the tagline: “Never underestimate the power of a good story.”

I’ll present more terrific examples as I come across them. In the meantime, enjoy “The Closet.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

In yesterday’s entry, I lauded the How to Find Your Story Worksheet that Elizabeth Sosnow of BlissPR created for B2B businesses.

As promised, today I present my adaptation of the worksheet for job-seekers.

As I noted yesterday, for job-seekers to use this worksheet effectively requires thorough research into each targeted employer’s problems and needs. You won’t be able to adapt your message to the most appropriate story framework unless you know how it relates to what the employer needs most from you.

Here, side by side with Sosnow’s version, is my adaptation for job-seekers:

Find Your Story Job Seekers

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently came across Elizabeth Sosnow of BlissPR and its blog, B2B Bliss: PR for Thought Leaders, in which she is offering an awesome worksheet called How to Find Your Story.

It’s particularly targeted at businesses, and especially businesses in the B2B realm, but as always my mind starts spinning about how an individual, especially a job-seeker, could use it.

For this approach to be effective for a job-seeker, I believe he or she would need to target a specific company and probably position within that company. The job-seeker would want to perform extensive due-diligence as to the company’s needs and problems.

Update: After I posted this entry, I came across an interview with Sosnow by my friend Trey Pennington. In fact, Sosnow created the worksheet featured here for this podcast.

Tomorrow: My adaptation for job-seekers of “How to Find Your Story”.

Worksheet How to Find Your Story

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In addition to appearing in this space, my blog entries also appear in my Facebook profile, and occasionally I get more comments on the Facebook version than I do here at A Storied Career.

Such was the case with Tuesday’s entry about whether career-changers should use a white-lie/half-truth “cover story” when asked what they’re up to between jobs.

Here are the responses I got over on Facebook:

I advocate authenticity. Dig a little into the truth of the time you need to “cover”. Surely you traveled, managed investments and or studied something .

If you can’t find something in the truth to talk about, then something is wrong. Maybe that’s the story that needs to be looked at & a better story created through doing something positive. Sometimes it’s hard to see the positive side of the story, but if it’s not there it can be created through community work, internships, education, or a short term meaningful job. There is always a way to create a positive truthful career story. … I have worked with people who were in desperate situations & feel that lying or covering up is the only solution. After a short conversation, they could always come up with an honest story for the interview.

Interesting conversation! I think that when we look at our lives, we have a habit of thinking in terms of negative at times. When we are preparing for an interview, it’s a great time to truly think about our story, not try to lie about it, but take the time to give ourselves credit. If we were not working in a for paid position for awhile, the things we were doing still had value. Were we caretaking for someone in need? Were we taking time to make sure our children had a solid foundation after a move or other life change? Was there a death of a family member that caused emotional trauma? Many people typically do not give up their job for a reason so we just have to think in terms of the positive and view our life stories in a positive manner. After, all our life stories make us who we are!

Integrity alone disallows half-truth and white lies. There are generally good, and reasonable explanations for changes, or periods of unemployment, whether good or bad. However one could take their experiences, something like volunteering during that time and apply it to their story. Nothing like thinking you are down and out and then go volunteer in an intercity soup kitchen to let you know just how great your life is…

I’m very glad that all these readers agreed with me that an authentic story is always the way to go.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written somewhat extensively in two of my books about the elevator speech, which is also known as the elevator pitch. In Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career, I call this communication tool the Elevator Story.

I have to admit, however, that of all the career-marketing communications I’ve written about, the Elevator Pitch/Speech/Story is the one I’m not quite comfortable with.

Maybe it’s because I’m not a natural networker myself, and most elevator communications seem a little corny or hokey to me. My research tells me, however, that, yes, they are hokey, but they work to cement networking contacts and make the user memorable.

My discomfort came home to me again yesterday when I attended Bernadette Martin’s webinar previewing her book, I Need to Brand My Story Online and Offline — Now What???.

The end of the webinar dealt with the elevator pitch. Bernadette wrote to me last night and told me she felt the elevator-pitch portion of the webinar had been very rushed and had not done justice to her message (the presentation had already gone past its scheduled end point when she started talking about this topic.) She said she hoped to conduct a separate webinar devoted to the elevator topic. She also noted that the example pitch she discussed in the session was not as polished as it could be.

Because Bernadette was not happy with this portion of the presentation, it’s not fair to critique it. I do have one bone to pick with one of her basic tenets about the elevator pitch: She feels an elevator pitch should be 60 seconds. I feel that’s at least twice as long as an elevator pitch should be; in my opinion, it should be 15-30 seconds.

She and I both believe the most effective elevator pitches are storied. It’s not easy to make an elevator pitch into a story, however, and I have to admit I’m not completely happy with the storied quality of some of the examples in Tell Me About Yourself.

Here’s one that is because it’s told in a problem-action-result format:

Hi, I’m Sandra Dinkleman. You might be interested in knowing that I recently stabilized a highly chaotic operational and customer-service situation by taking control and implementing new heightened customer-service standards and collaborating with staff members to improve the company image and boost the morale of my employer’s staff.

Bernadette’s formula for an elevator pitch, shown at left, from a screen capture of one of her slides, also incorporates the basic problem-action-result sequence.

Here’s another from my book, contributed by one of my former students, that tells a nice story but depends on its audience grabbing the bait of a teaser line to unfold. This pitch doesn’t do a lot toward telling what the networker wants to do but does give a good sense of his character:

Networker #1: Hi, my name is Tom Jacobsen. I was born a lucky Arkansan.

Networker #2: How so?

Networker #1: Because I was born on July eleventh, 7-11. I have been fortunate enough to meet two presidents, Reagan and Clinton, and the richest man in the world, the late Sam Walton. I am also blessed to be part of a good family with one brother and three sisters. This family has instilled in me strong values, which were reinforced by volunteer work in my church and community. Trustworthiness and honesty are my defining characteristics. Quiet by nature, I am the “strong silent type.” Far from boring, I have a great sense of humor, and even own a goose. I intend to achieve my goals through hard work.

I am not sure that either Bernadette or I have come up with the formulas for elevator pitches that are sufficiently storied. Perhaps a better approach is to train yourself to pick up on appropriate tidbits from the situation you’re in and weave a compelling story out of them.

Such was the approach of Marcos Salazar in Part 6 (of 10) of a personal-branding story on Dan Schawbel’s personal-branding blog (and I will admit that this one probably lasted at least 60 seconds):

When I got asked what I did in New York, the person also said, “Nice shirt!” That night I was wearing one of my Brooklyn BoroThreads tees, so instead of simply mentioning my day job of, “I’m a psychology researcher for the Girl Scouts,” I took a cue from that person and started talking about how I had designed the shirt myself and it was from a clothing company I just launched in New York. I could have ended there, but that still would have not been too exciting.

So I began telling a story of how I had met my business partner Gabriel via Craigslist when I subletted an apartment after breaking up with the girlfriend I was living with. Gabriel was my roommate for that month and we hit it off right away as we hung out in the apartment talking about how much we loved Brooklyn, funny things about New York, Amherst (where he was from and I went to college), and general tech stuff. This led me to talk about how Gabriel and I were chatting at a café one day and noticed how New York was packed with clothing stores, but no one had ever really created hyperlocal clothing focused on interesting and quirky things about living in the 5 Boros.

So before you know it, I was creating a narrative on the origin of BoroThreads and discussing funny stories, the way we come up with the designs, and how we end up seeing people on the streets wearing our gear and make it a point to go introduce ourselves (and sometimes buy them a beer). The person was really enjoying the story and I can guarantee that they remembered who I was much better than if I had just said, “I am a clothing designer.”

One very useful tool Bernadette offered was a phone number (below), where you can call to record your elevator pitch and play it back so you hear how it sounds.

What are your ideas on integrating stories into elevator speeches?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I just attended a webinar delivered by Bernadette Martin, a Paris-based American who has a new book coming out soon, I Need to Brand My Story Online and Offline — Now What???. Martin’s work has a lot in common with my Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career.

Her focus in this webinar was storytelling in LinkedIn profiles and elevator pitches.

A starting point, Martin says, is a Bio Tool, one of three key tools in a personal-branding toolkit (the other two are one’s resume and references). She notes that a bio is not a static document, and you can have bios for many situations. She mentioned having about 19 versions of her bio.

Some of the most interesting parts of the webinar sprang from audience questions and comments. Martin talked about making an emotional connection with one’s audience by integrating storied elements into resumes, bios, and LinkedIn profiles, prompting an audience member to ask about discrimination issues. We’ve long been taught to keep personal information out of career correspondence, especially resumes, so that employers won’t be tempted to discriminate. Legal and discriminatory concerns are a huge emerging issue as more and more recruiters are using social-media venues — which are replete with photos and the kind of information that can get candidates screened out — to source candidates. I don’t know how these discrimination questions will be resolved, but I favor the storytelling possibilities in social-media profiles and more — rather than less — personal information in career-marketing communication.

Considerable discussion ensued over the question of first-person Linked-In profiles vs. third-person. While Martin acknowledges that both options are viable, she prefers third person because it’s more “professional.” She completely contradicted everything she’d previously said about using stories to make an emotional connection by asserting that third person is preferable because it’s more “detached.” Hmmmm … that would seem to be the opposite of an approach that makes an emotional connection.

One of Martin’s main arguments against first person is that first-person profiles tend to repeat “I, I, I.” Several audience members pointed out that it’s possible to use first person without beginning every sentence with “I.” Others noted that the profile should target “you” the reader and take more of a second-person approach in which the profilee tells what he or she can do for you. Jason Alba, host of the webinar and a LinkedIn expert/author, favors the first-person approach, and I agree with him. It’s much more personal and makes an emotional connection much better than third person. I also note that resumes are written in first person (with the actual “I” unspoken but understood), and in the research I’ve conducted, hiring decision-makers loathe resumes written in third person. A resume is not the same as a Linked-In profile, but they are close enough that hiring decision-makers’ first-person preference likely applies.

I like my LinkedIn profile and feel it is reasonably storied (and branded), but one thing I realized from the webinar is that its paragraphs are way too long. That’s because LinkedIn limits the user to 2,000 characters. I remember editing and editing to get mine down to that and finally reducing space between paragraphs to eliminate characters. Looks like I need to do more slicing and dicing.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss the webinar’s take on elevator pitches.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When we hear the phrase “cover story,” we think of a story that’s not true.

Recently on CollegeRecruiter.com, Sital Ruparelia suggested that career changers should have a cover story for those between-jobs situations when someone asks what the career-changer is up to these days.

Ruperelia describes his personal experience with this process: “I came up with a “cover story’ — a vague (yet plausible) answer to that awkward question: “so what are you doing these days?” or the “what are you planning to do next?” question.”

Ruperlia admits to the lack of truth in such a story: “You could say it’s a little white lie or half truth you tell others (and yourself!) because it speeds up your career transition.”

The situation the blogger seems to be referring to occurs when an individual voluntarily leaves a job and is not sure of his or her next move.

Ruperelia lists five reasons this cover story is desirable but does not tell what cover story he used when he voluntarily left his job as a recruitment consultant and had not decided what to do next. It’s hard to evaluate his premise about the cover story without knowing what he considers to be an appropriate story. (And quite honestly, it’s hard to imagine — certainly in the current economy — voluntarily leaving a job without clearly knowing what one is doing next. Ruperelia’s exit was in 2003, so that may have been a more reasonable time for such a choice).

Granted, it’s awkward in networking situations to describe this limbo or indecisiveness about one’s current situation and future ambitions.

But is a white lie or half-truth really what’s called for?

Instead, I think we’re all looking for authenticity. It’s totally possible to confidently tell an authentic story — one that aligns with your personal brand — of what you’re doing when you’re not employed.

Would you tell a white lie or half-truth story to explain what you’re doing between jobs? Have you?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Had a couple of good comments to yesterday’s entry about Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest 2009.

Raf Stevens challenged me to share more examples of good storytelling, particularly from among Slideshare presentations. I accept the challenge, although I find it difficult to identify good slideshow storytelling because the slides are only half the equation; the presenter’s spoken words provide the other half. As I accept Raf’s challenge and try to find good storytelling on Slideshare, it’s possible I will divide my discoveries into good storytelling slideshows with no narration and good storytelling slideshows with narration.

In the meantime, can you nominate any Slideshare presentations that you would consider to demonstrate good storytelling?

One thing is certain: The best examples will be the antithesis of this amusing specimen shared by reader Chris Collison (his friend Rowan Manahan created it to mock PowerPoint on its 20th anniversary), in which a familiar story degenerates into slideshow bullet points:

Cathryn Wellner asked I’d ever explored the definition of “story” on A Storied Career — because I suggested in yesterday’s entry that presentations may require a narrower definition of “story” than I usually subscribe to. On further reflection, I think presentations with slideshows may require a subset of the presentation definition.

I told Cathryn that I had primarily communicated the opinions of others (notably my Q&A participants) about defining “story.”

As a jumping-off point for discussion, I’ve compiled a little handout (DefiningStory.pdf) that juxtaposes the opinions of story practitioners who don’t feel it’s important to define “story” with those who feel it is important and offer a definition.

With these thoughts in mind, assuming it’s desirable to include stories in presentations: Do you feel presentations require a different definition of “story” than do other ways of using story? What criteria for “story” would you set for slideshow presentations?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve gotten into the habit of evaluating the storytelling in the presentation contests that Slideshare holds. The first one I looked at a little more than a year ago was dubbed The World’s Greatest Presentation Contest. No special emphasis on storytelling was implied or included in the contest, but because I happen to believe storied presentations are the most effective, I looked at the storytelling in the winning presentations, concluding that only the third-place winner offered good storytelling. One of the judges later told me privately that the judges hadn’t been allowed to set some judging criteria as to what makes a good story.

Storytelling was a major expectation of Slideshare’s Tell-a-Story Contest earlier this year, and I felt that the winning entries did a reasonable job of telling stories, but I was left a bit disappointed considering that storytelling was the contest’s focus.

So what makes for good storytelling in a presentation?

• For one thing, it’s hard to answer that question based on a slideshow alone. When accompanied by a presenter, a slideshow may become much more storied than it appears in the slides because the presenter may embellish the slides with stories or elaborate on what the audience sees on the slides or give storied examples.
• Since none of the slideshows in Slideshare’s contests have had narration, their storytelling must be judged by the slides alone. So, one criteria for good storytelling could be that if the slideshow stands on it own merits and communicates its message effectively, it might be good storytelling, but not necessarily. The contest is, after all, for the World’s Best Presentation, not for the World’s Best Set of Slides.
• I generally adhere to fairly loose definitions of “story;” yet, stories told in presentations seem to require a tighter definition. Perhaps the oral delivery of stories cries out for narratives with a beginning, middle, and end.
• And in a presentation, a recitation of facts, statistics, figures, and lists is probably not storytelling.

Others more expert in using stories in presentations can probably come up with a better set of criteria than the foregoing, but it’s the rubric I’ve applied in evaluating winners of the Slideshare contests, including The World’s Best Presentation Contest 2009 just announced.

All of the presentations are clever, graphically interesting, and well done. Few of them represent good storytelling, though. I felt the most storied entry was the second-place winner, Sheltering Wings by Sarah Cullem (shown below), about the Sheltering Wings Orphanage in the incredibly poor nation Burkina Faso. I also admire the presentation’s conciseness; it’s the shortest entry among the winners. It’s true that this presentation doesn’t tell a story until Slide 21 (of 33). It’s also apparent that the story could be enhanced with narration (it uses a timeline instead). Toward the end of the presentation we see brief stories of three young people in the orphanage who benefited or could benefit from some assistance. These are effective stories, though too much type appears on the slides that tell the stories (they would be more effectively presented in just the narrator’s words.)

The other winners and my perception of their “storied-ness:”

• Healthcare Napkins All by Dan Roam (first place) is a timely and clever explanation of the healthcare issue but does not tell a story.
• Feels Bad On The Back by Mohamad Faried (third place) explores kidney disease symptoms and prevention. No story here.
• 24 Reasons why Twitter sucks! by Henrico Dolfing (winner in the technology category) is a humorous, thought-provoking list with a significant punchline, but hardly a story.
• Eco-nomics, The hidden costs of consumption by Josh Beatty (winner in the business category) takes a storied approach to illustrate its point but loses the story’s thread fairly quickly as it morphs into facts and figures.
• Simplicity by João Paulo Reis Alves (winner in the creative/offbeat category) is a graphically excellent but storyless how-to on achieving simplicity.
• A crime so monstrous by Missing Link delivers a powerful message about an appalling issue — human trafficking — without benefit of story.
• Finally, many congratulations to my friend Mike Wittenstein who is the subject of the winner in the About Me category, the excellent Who Is This Guy by Jackie Goldstein. Ironically, though, despite the fact that Mike is a story practitioner, and his company is called Storyminers, the presentation does not tell a story.

Perhaps it’s unfair to judge these presentations by story standards since the judges did not. These presentations show it’s quite possible to produce excellent and interesting presentations without stories.

I just happen to believe presentations are much better with them.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

On behalf of researcher Nicole Cundiff, I pass along this invitation to take a survey that closes on Monday, October 5:

The purpose is to assess different types of organizations and their leaders. Cundiff is especially interested in survey-takers who are part- or full-time workers from public, private, non-profit, or entrepreneurial types of organizations that either live in the United States and its territories OR work for a U.S. based company.

The survey will take no longer than 10-15 minutes of your time, and simply asks you to give your opinion about some short scenarios.

You’ll need to copy and paste the password cba112 to take the survey, which is here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m belatedly reading one of the classics of the storytelling world (especially personal storytelling), Storycatcher by fellow Washington resident Christina Baldwin.

Early in the book, she tells this tale:

Attending a conference in California not long ago, I found myself standing in a line waiting to buy fancy coffee. One by one people reached the counter and placed their orders: “skinny latte double-shot tall.” I could see I would in in this a while, so I took a risk. Turning to the person next to me, I asked, “So what’s your earliest memory of coffee?” The man’s face lit up …

Baldwin goes on relate the coffee stories she elicited.

In my other home, Central Florida, I’m about an hour away from Walt Disney World, where waiting in long lines consumes at least half of the theme-park experience. What a great idea it would be to turn to folks in line and ask things like: “What’s your best memory of Disney World?” or “What do you remember about your first visit here?”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Do you know the story of rabbit, rabbit day? Neither does anyone else according to Wikipedia, yet millions say some variation of “rabbit, rabbit” on the first day of every month. I never knew about this tradition until I married my husband, in whose family of origin the habit is well-entrenched. Here’s what Wikipedia says about “rabbit, rabbit day:”

“Rabbit rabbit white rabbit” is a common superstition. The most common modern version states that a person should say “rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit” or simply “rabbit, rabbit” upon waking on the first day of each new month, and on doing so will receive good luck for the duration of that month. … The exact origin of the superstition is unknown, though it has appeared in print at least as early as 1954 in Bromley, Kent, where it is most commonly said to have originated, though some reports place its origins even earlier, into the 1800s. Today it has spread to most of the English-speaking countries of the world, although like all folklore, determining its exact area of distribution is difficult. This superstition is related to the broader belief in the rabbit or hare being a “lucky” animal, as exhibited in the practice of carrying a rabbit’s foot for luck. Some have also believed it is representing a jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness.

A friend of one of my Facebook friends told this story today:

I had a 4th grade teacher that would march us into her teacher friend’s classroom on the first day of every month to jump up and down and shout “rabbit day!” three times, and then turn and march out.

Anyhoo … it’s a good day to report on which items related to storytelling have attained the most buzz on Twitter since my last report about six weeks ago:

• I wrote about Waterlife before in connection with “database storytelling” (which is still a mystery); this presentation got lots of buzz on Twitter.
• A video that previews a Nov. 19 conference in London called Creativity and Technology is titled CaT Video: The Storytelling Throwdown: Is technology changing brand storytelling? and was much-retweeted. [Disclaimer: Because it’s more than 20 minutes long, I haven’t yet had the chance to watch it.]
• Much buzz focused on Adam Westbrook’s blog post on 6×6 storytelling for freelance journalists, the third in a series of six blog posts, each with six tips for the next generation of freelance multimedia journalists, in which Westbrook wrote:

  A lot of the focus for multimedia journalists and digital journalists has been on new technology: using Twitter, learning Flash. But there’s a danger that in the rush to learn new skills, we forgot (or never learn) the oldest ones. And there is no skill older, or more important, than storytelling.

• Every month in the Twitterverse, it seems at least one movie is cited for excellent storytelling. Since my last compilation, three films have enjoyed storytelling accolades — two with “9” in the title, 9 and District 9, along with Inglorious Basterds. One movie, Extract, was cited for weak storytelling.

• Following the death of Ted Kennedy, The Boston Globe’s tribute was cited as a great example of multimedia storytelling.
• This same kind of storytelling — for magazines — attained much traction based on the article, Magazines Need to Embrace Multimedia Storytelling in Digital Age, an interview by Mark Glaser on Mediashift with Jim Gaines of Flyp Media, “an online publisher of magazine-style content that combines video, audio, Flash animations and interactive features.”

• A new collaborative storytelling tool, Storybird, got lots of buzz. The tool targets narrative artists, families, writers, and educators. “Storybirds are short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share.”
• I helped promote Cathie Dodds’ Labor Day Twitterthon, designed to “see if it was possible to tell your story with Twitter,” and the results were significantly retweeted.
• I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about transmedia storytelling recently, in part because this story form has garnered so much attention, such as in the article, The revolutionary power of transmedia storytelling.
• And finally, my friend Tom Clifford enjoyed well-deserved retweets of his Three Keys to Good Storytelling, a guest post from Bluedot Productions, the filmmakers behind the documentary, The Quantum Activist.

Make it a good Rabbit Rabbit day!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.