Continuing a list of collection sites for stories aimed at social change (and related items about storytelling and social change), begun on Oct. 4.

• The man behind a downloadable report, Solutions Storytelling: Messaging to Mobilize Support for Children’s Issues, Herschel Sarbin, believes that “if people had more information about the good things being achieved on behalf of children, and more importantly, if those groups doing the work had the resources to tell their stories more effectively and more broadly, more people — individual citizens and policymakers alike — would be more inclined to support solutions for kids that are working,” reports Bruce Trachtenberg in a nice article on the Communications Network Blog summarizing the report.
• The Arizona LGBT Storytelling Project: Community Histories is the first collection of its kind of oral histories and digital documentation of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the state of Arizona. The project’s purpose is to record and commemorate the voices, images, and memories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people living in the state of Arizona. Its is to develop and build on the historical record of the diverse LGBT individuals and communities in Arizona, capture memories of historical moments and movements; reveal struggles, triumphs, healing, and beliefs; as well as share knowledge with future generations.
• GlobalGiving asked people in four communities in Kenya to tell stories about the development issues most important to them. Then, the organization asked experts (both local and foreign) with experience in those communities to predict what they thought the story (out of 12 possibilities) would be about. Only 1 of the 65 experts and implementers correctly predicted the most common theme. “The old style of aid is for experts to study the situation and decide what people need,” writes Global Giving’s Dennis Whittle. “It is tempting to say that we should simply reverse this and let the people decide. Exciting new technologies will enable beneficiaries to have a far greater voice in the coming years, and that is long overdue. But the best system will likely provide a balance of the two.”

• The Our Stories section of the Africare site enables visitors to learn about Africare projects from the individuals who know them the best. The site offers stories on Agriculture and Food Security, Health and HIV/AIDS, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene,, Emergency Humanitarian Assistance, Women’s Empowerment, Civil Society Development and Governance, Micro Enterprise, and Orphans and Vulnerable Children.
• Mapping Memories: Stories of Refugee Youth in Montreal is a collaborative multi-media project which uses personal stories and a range of media tools (video, sound walks, mapping, photography) to share the experiences of youth with refugee experience in Montreal.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Just as some of my favorite gurus are predicting that storytelling will become the dominant theme in social media in the next year or so, more and more seems to be written about storytelling as an important theme in job search. I’ve been asked, for example, to assemble a storytelling track for a 2011 conference for career-management practitioners. More cases in point — these recent items:

Miriam Salpeter wrote that telling stories well is the most important thing a job-seeker can do. In turn, Miriam (who kindly cited my book, Tell Me About Yourself) pointed to her friend Ken Revenaugh, whose blog touches of ways to tell effective career stories in the storytelling category of his blog, Fast Track Tools.

Michael Margolis recently collaborated with Julien Gordon on a teleseminar called How To Tell Your Powerful Story about storytelling and how it relates to your personal and professional brand and growth.

The next two items are actually not so recent; they’re from last year, but somehow I never saw them until recently, even though I’m mentioned in both. My friend Steve Krizman wrote about storytelling in his What I look for in resumes and What I look for in cover letters. In the former, Steve tells what he learned about the applicant who included this mission/statement on her resume:

My mission is to be better than I was yesterday. My action is not to get through the day, but to gain from the day. My vision is to take the path less traveled and act on those opportunities others are not willing to see. My process will be to take risks and only ask others to do what I myself can and will do. My objective is to identify new challenges and learn from both success and failure. My focus is my family, my health and my professional development. My goal is to inspire positive change and champion every moment of life.

“Kathy Hansen,” Steve writes, “in her excellent new book Tell Me About Yourself, says I am constructing your story when I scan your resume. Indeed, I made a first draft of your story when I read your cover letter (see my post on what I look for in cover letters). Your resume fills in the blanks and fleshes out the story outline.” Actually, the idea of the hiring manager reading a resume with his or her “story mind” comes from Terrence Gargiulo in his 2002 book, Making Stories: A Practical Guide for Organizational Leaders and Human Resource Specialists.

In his follow-up article, Steve suggests that in cover letters, job-seekers should “tell stories, but be short and to the point. Think very hard about that list of traits and skill sets and come up with stories that illustrate them. Describe the situation, what you did, and how it all turned out. Like this:

I single-handedly coordinated a party in Montréal, Canada for the company’s affiliates. Challenges included selecting a venue without an in-person visit, communicating with restaurant owners in French and negotiating cost in another currency. (The company’s) president and managers told me it was the best party in company history

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

All day long, I see links to videos that my social-media friends say are “must-see.” However, 99 percent of the time, I do not click on these links. Why? Because I have zero patience for watching videos.

One of my friends asked me if I felt the same way about watching TV. No. I enjoy watching TV and generally am not impatient about it. Here’s the difference: When I sit down to watch TV, that’s the activity I’m focused on. I watch to unwind and relax from the day. But when I’m confronted with the opportunity to click on links to online videos, I’m always engaged in some other activity — working or socializing on my computer. So, stopping to watch a video feels like an interruption, and I just don’t have the patience to stop and watch.

So I was delighted to come across a video site seemingly tailor-made for people like me: 5-Second Films. Believe it or not, some of these actually tell stories in that time. I also like the whimsical story behind the site:

5-Second Films was created by Brian “Boss Man” Firenzi in the Spring of 2005, after being disappointed by so many 5,400-second films. The rules are simple: 2 seconds of beginning titles, 5 seconds of film, 1 second of end titles. If you take umbrage with these 5sfs running at an actual length of 8 seconds, we can only assume you’re no fun at dinner parties.

I’ve written about Twitter storytelling, as well as here and here about other very short forms of stories. Just came across Vincenzo Scipioni, who is tweeting his autobiography, Unseeing Eyes.

The blog posting by Brigid N. Burke that alerted me to 5-Second Films laments about the proliferation of ultra-short-form storytelling venues, citing flash fiction, six-word memoirs, horror films re-made in 30 seconds, and books being written on Twitter.

But as I noted in a recent post about the ramifications of story length, long-form storytelling is alive and well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

David Meerman Scott offers a free e-book subtitled “A Case Study in Conflict-Driven Business Writing.”

Interestingly, Scott spends only two pages of the 27-page book talking about conflict-driven business writing.

The rest of the book is a story that exemplifies conflict-driven business writing.

It’s the story of Scott’s experience as a part-time male model in Japan (the book’s main title is Gaijin Male Model).

It’s an engaging story, attractively presented in the e-book.

Scott notes in the brief introduction that he learned in fiction-writing classes that conflict is the most important element in fiction. Without it, stories are boring and tantamount to propaganda, he writes.

I enjoyed the story, and you can’t beat a pretty e-book. I wish, however, that Scott had talked a little more about how to apply this type of compelling conflict-driven writing to other business situations.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m not very good at updating the inside pages on this blog, such as my Events page, so I blew it when it came to publicizing a spring symposium on storytelling and science at the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan in Cardiff, Wales.

But the Centre is offering audio recordings of three “provocations” from the symposium. I’m not familiar with the term “provocations” in this context, but they sound intriguing. They’re given by Mark Brake, Dr Steve Killick, and Prof Hamish Fyfe, offering what the centre calls “a fascinating range of perspectives on the role of story and narrative in various fields from science fiction studies to child psychology.”

Even better, the provocations join lots of other great materials — “a wealth of resources including documentation of our previous papers and symposia, digital stories and show-reels, and suggested reading lists and further information” in the newly updated documents and downloads section of the centre’s website (see below).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Quite by accident, I stumbled across the Improv Encycolpedia, “the largest collection of resources for improvisation theater on the web.” When the site says, “Here you will find tons of stuff related to improvisation theatre,” you’d better believe it.

I believe I found the site because a storytelling game came up in one of my Google alerts. That prompted me to search the site using the term “story.” I got 124 results — all sorts of interesting story-related games and prompts, such as Story Spine, Word at a Time Story, Story Story Die, Three Sentence Story, Word at a Time Story, Sung Story Die, Automatic Storytelling, Never-ending Story, and Object Narrative. Truly a superb collection.

Another story game/prompt idea comes from Family Tree Magazine: Memoir Mad LIbs, memory-jogging prompts “to start your memoirs.” Sample prompts:

1. I’ll never forget the time [person] misbehaved at [event] …
2. A(n) [adjective] thing that happened at [place] was …
3. Nobody ever talks about [person]’s …
4. I wish I could do [event] all over again …
5. [person] really surprised me when …
6. A favorite memory of [place] is …
7. [person] was so [adjective] when …
8. [person] made [event] memorable when …
9. I laughed so hard the time [person] …
10. One of my favorite childhood places was [place] because …
11. I felt [adjective] at [event] because …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In a series of five posts on how storytelling has become an important management tool, Allen Schoer suggests a nifty little story exercise for getting at essential components of one’s leadership style:

(1) Think of five different stories that made a strong impression on you. They could come from books, film, articles, your own experiences, etc. Post below the most memorable moment in each of those stories.

• What made it memorable?
• Who were the most memorable characters and why?

(2) Look back at what you wrote to both questions above.

• Do you find any similar ideas or themes?
• If so, what are they and why are they so important to you?

(3) Over the next week, observe where else in your life those themes are also true (i.e. friendships, hobbies, other relationships, etc.). These are some examples of your core principles and values.

They are essential components of your leadership style. You should always convey these principles in order to craft compelling stories and communicate more effectively.

You can also read the rest of Schoer’s series: Part 2 – The Three “I’s” of Storytelling, Part 3 — Crafting the Irresistable Narrative, Part 4 – Why Genuine Stories Create a Common Goal, and Part 5 – Break Free from Self-Defeating Narratives.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been interested in women’s issues since the women’s movement of the 1970s. I once thought I was truly part of the sisterhood because I went braless to hear Gloria Steinem speak during that period (I am really not the type who should go braless).

I got especially interested in gender equity in education and sports during my days as a speechwriter for Florida’s commissioner of education in the early 1990s. The commissioner was involved in a task force looking at sports gender equity in Florida schools, and I wrote some of the materials for the task force.

I knew from my research then that girls who get involved in sports enjoy many advantages in school and life. Wharton business and public policy professor Betsey Stevenson researched the relationship between high-school sports participation and educational/employment opportunities, noting in her paper Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports, that working women who were high-school athletes earned 14 percent higher wages than those who weren’t. As reported on Knowledge@Wharton, “the skills associated with athletic participation and success later in life ‘may include the ability to communicate, the ability to work well with others, competitiveness, assertiveness and discipline,’ and “sports participation may be especially helpful to girls because it gives them skills that they can use later in the business world.” Stevenson also asserts that “a roughly four percentage point rise in female labor force participation is attributable to increased opportunities to participate in sports. In turn, this suggests that up to 40 percent of the overall rise in the employment of 25 to 34 year-old women is attributable to Title IX [a 1972 amendment to the Civil Rights Act that expanded athletic and educational opportunities for girls].”

I was conscious of the value of sports participation for my own athletically gifted daughter, who competed in gymnastics and swimming.

We are much closer to gender equity in school sports than we were at the time Title IX was enacted, but many disparities still exist; “girls’ sports still needs champions,” in the words of the National Women’s Law Center, which is asking folks to share stories. The center asks:

• Is there a sport that a girl wants to play that her school does not offer?
• Are there fewer sports for girls to choose from?
• Are the fields girls practice on in bad condition?
• Are practice and game times for girls very early or late?
• Do male athletes have more perks — better locker rooms, tutors, nicer uniforms, etc.?

“If your answer is yes to any of these, your school may not be supporting female athletes the way they should,” the center says and asks for stories along these lines:

1. With the questions above in mind, have you or someone you know experienced unfair treatment from a school’s athletic department?
2. If yes, who experienced this discrimination?
3. Please share how the student or other person was treated unfairly.

You can submit stories here. The organization hopes to gather these stories by Nov. 5.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

It’s always fun to hear of the activities of story practitioners featured in my Q&A series. Got an e-mail recently from my friend Thaler Pekar that not only described what she’s been up to but also offered resources readers may find extremely valuable:

• A simple and highly effective framework for persuasive communication, read Heart, Head & Hand™: An Advanced Approach to Persuasive Communication. Smart leaders have received coaching in this technique for several years, and I’ve been working with organizations on implementing the approach throughout all internal and external communications, with great and lasting success.
• If you’d like to know about using specific stories to connect with your listeners and move them to action, read Everyone Wants to be a Hero and What, Why & How Story Matters.

Thaler reports on other recent work:

• Following up on co-facilitating the opening plenary of the Smithsonian Institute Conference on Organizational Storytelling, I’m delivering a program at the Robert Wood Johnson Local Funding Partnerships annual meeting, and keynoting the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands annual summit.
• Increasing engagement with smart private sector leaders and institutions: I recently facilitated a Young Presidents’ Organization Forum on narrative leadership, and worked with the national Time Warner Cable Public Affairs staff on building a more narrative organization.
• Increasingly working with professional communicators: I’ve delivered seminars to the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications Executive Masters Program and the Association of Cable Communicators, and I’ll be working with the Brazilian Association of Corporate Communicators later this month.
• Learning and contributing: I’m delighted to have joined the NY Advisory Board of Appleseed, and the 2011 Selection Committee of the New York Times Nonprofit Excellence Awards.
• And, I’ve added two new videos to the Thaler Pekar & Partners website.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lou Hoffman, Questions 8 and 9:

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

A: The story is always there.

I truly believe this.

Like discovery in the legal sphere, communicators need to dig for the story. I find mining to be an apt metaphor. As we poke, probe and cajole, a stream of information goes through a “sluice box” which ultimately leaves the storytelling gold.

I always point to one of our campaigns for a type of semiconductor called an EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory). On the surface, not exactly a topic that conjures drama and the media spotlight.

In going through our discovery exercise, we found the chip was being used in keyless locks for cars. This led to the insurance industry and researching auto theft. One of the insurance organizations pointed us to an auto museum that included a history of auto security devices. It turned out one of the earliest theft-prevention devices for cars was a blow-up man that one would place in the driver’s seat so potential thieves thought the car was occupied.

You can’t make this stuff up. Armed with this anecdote, we were able to package a story for the EEPROM that played on a number of broadcast outlets including CNN.

A: These workshops are designed to help companies apply storytelling techniques in their communications.

When we say communications, we’re not just talking media relations. The techniques have relevance to corporate blogging, internal communications, new-business development and even the info pack that goes to job candidates. For example, we conducted a version of the workshop for one of Sony’s channel sales teams.

The curriculum is in a constant state of change because each workshop is customized to the specific company. Plus, this never-ending search for the science behind storytelling means we’re always fitting new material into the curriculum.

One element of the workshop that always elicits considerable discussion and seems to flip the spiritual light switch involves reverse-engineering an article with relevance to the company.

You can see this reverse-engineering technique in a diagram (view/download it here: Economist Diagram.pdf) taken from a story in The Economist about wireless sensor networks.

While I wouldn’t exactly call this science — subjective decisions come into building out this diagram — we’re talking to people from technical backgrounds in their “language” by presenting the information in diagram form.

A visual depiction of the different types of content that come together in a mainstream article appeals to the intellectual side of the brain. For example, once they absorb that a significant part of this type of writing consists of anecdotes, we can move into a deeper discussion on anecdotes.

Perhaps it falls under the category of cheap parlor tricks, but we like to end the workshops showing the following:

To add to the Sunday fun, Ariel Hsing will play table tennis (ping pong to the uninitiated) from 1 pm to 4 pm against anyone brave enough to take her on. Ariel, though only 11, is ranked number one among first under 16 in the U.S. I played Ariel, then 9, thinking I would take it easy on her so as not to crush her young spirit. Instead she crushed me …

When asked if anyone knows where this came from, the answer is always no.

It turns out this passage was penned by Warren Buffett in one of his shareholder letters.

It serves as a good example to recap many of the techniques addressed in the workshop: conversational language, self-deprecation, the unexpected, etc.

In short, if one of the richest people in the world can show his humanity, certainly you can.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lou Hoffman, Questions 6 and 7:

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: It would be fun to rewind the tape and ask the oral storytellers of the second century AD how they felt about the invention of paper.

I'm sure the concept of paper caused consternation among some; i.e., "This is horrible. How can I get 'dread' across to the audience if I can't lower my voice and slow down the cadence? You can't just insert this type of feeling into words."

The point is, vehicles for communications are always evolving and changing.

The emergence of social media offers yet another platform for storytelling. Think about the options for telling stories through film 30 years ago. Either you were on the Spielberg career path with USC the likely springboard or you were shooting Suzie the Clown at birthday parties for living-room premiers. There wasn't much in between. Now thanks to platforms like YouTube, your video can literally reach a million plus people.

Blogs, videos, SlideShare, and the like can all serve as vehicles for storytelling.

I consider myself a student of storytelling techniques. That's what I try to do with my blog Ishmael's Corner. I enjoy having fun with language. I believe reverse-engineering communications can deliver useful insights. As my mom will attest, I can still be a bit of a smartass at 52. All these elements come together in the blog.

Even a platform like Twitter fits into this picture. While you're not going to replicate F. Scott Fitzgerald in 140-character chunks, anyone can channel Will Rogers or Studs Terkel and serve as an observer of society. And if you offer fresh takes packaged in compelling language, thousands of people will tune in. If you're lame, no one will care.

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: I'm keenly interested in the science behind storytelling.

So many of our clients play in what we call markets of complexity: technology, energy, telecommunications, water, medical systems and financial services. As you would expect, the executives typically come from engineering or technical orientations. Their world revolves around hard data.

For these people, storytelling can come across as fluffy and counterintuitive.

Winning these folks over is not for the weak because there's an intangible quality to effective storytelling that doesn't resonate with the technical mind.

Take a book like Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Imagine you have five minutes to explain to a Java programmer what makes this book so powerful. It's not about charts and graphs. It's about understated narrative. There's the building of psychological tension interrupted with subtle humor. Technical professionals can struggle to understand such abstractions, much less support their use in business communications.

That's why I hope to find more time to explore the "why" behind the effectiveness of storytelling.

Scientific American published an article a couple years ago called "The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn." [Full version of article requires purchase.] It touched on storytelling's neurological roots and hypothesized that the enjoyment of a good tale is probably tied to crucial parts of our social cognition. If I could find the data that changes the word "probably" to "definitely," it would be useful in convincing our clients to embrace storytelling.

In the meantime, we rake the academic world for studies that serve our agenda.

For example, we came across research led by the University of Pennsylvania that examined how different types of content influence people when it comes to charitable giving. In an experiment that allowed people to donate up to $5, one pitch personalized the need around a little girl in Africa and the second pitch outlined all the facts behind the need. No surprise, humanizing the need generated roughly twice the amount of money as the case made with statistics.

There was also a hybrid approach that included the little girl combined with some factors and figures. The engineering mind assumes the best of both worlds should increase the giving, when in fact the opposite happened.

I'd like to build a library of this type of information.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lou Hoffman, Questions 4 and 5:

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: I do have a view on this with the caveat that I have zero background in psychology or anthropology.

People have a desire to connect.

I’m convinced when Curly was asked about the meaning of life in the Billy Crystal movie City Slickers, that’s how he was going to answer before he passed away.

Living in Silicon Valley since ‘81, I see how this accelerating emphasis on the virtual world with e-mail, IM, texting, etc. means we’re talking to more people more often than ever before in the history of humankind.

But we’re not connecting.

Storytelling nourishes genuine connections.

I have this theory that high-touch services associated with the idyllic 1950s are going to make a comeback.

Imagine a brave soul knocking on the doors of venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road trying to raise capital to resurrect the “milk man” business for home delivery of dairy products.

Now that would be a story, capturing the expressions of the VCs trying to understand why anyone would pay a premium to have something delivered to their doorstep when the same goods can be had from a five-minute drive down the road.

What they don’t get —

People are paying for the “connection.”

That half-gallon of two-percent milk is simply the vehicle.

Q: How important is it to you and your work to function within the framework of a particular definition of “story?” (i.e., What is a story?)

A: Frameworks don’t have much relevance to our work.

We’re not focused on a journey or redemption or reflecting society, although such elements can play a role in our approach.

At the macro level, we’re using storytelling techniques to help our clients show their humanity.

People like it when companies have personalities. It shows the outside world that there are actual people on the other side of the communication. This concept might seem like common sense. Yet it eludes the vast majority of companies.

In fact, I’ll go a step further and say most companies actually work at hiding their personalities with vanilla communications which appear shaped by the Six Sigma police.

Sometime in all of our lives we were taught business is serious.

Certainly, if you’re evaluating a semiconductor for a medical device or a law firm for a legal entanglement, I appreciate both are serious matters. But the buyer of the semiconductor or legal service still gravitates toward the company that stands for something and has a “face.”

The right communications help put a face on a company. More than a story, the communications can be a vignette or even a single comment.

For example, we recently helped a client launch a new product that marries the news-gathering process with social media. As part of the creative process we examined the history of CNN, which pioneered the 24x7 news cycle. Our research showed that CNN hadn’t kept pace in pulling real-time information (social media) into its breaking news process. The irony of CNN falling behind in this area provided amusing anecdotes and a good door-opener into our client’s story.

Sometimes, we’re simply helping our clients communicate in a more entertaining fashion.

That alone has value.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael Margolis’s Reinvention Summit: World’s First Virtual Conference on Storytelling being held November 11-22 is shaping up to be a content-rich and innovative event.

The summit features 25+ visionary voices on the role of storytelling as a driver of reinvention for career, business, and change-making efforts.

Not only is Michael offering a number of pricing options, he also offers early-bird pricing until Nov. 1.

The summit will explore trends, such as:

• How personal branding is reinventing career management
• How social media is reinventing communications
• How participatory culture is reinventing advertising
• How a shift in values is reinventing social change
• How distrust is reinventing public relations
• How sustainability is reinventing the business model
• How spirituality is reinventing meaning
• How storytelling is reinventing identity
• How culture is reinventing culture

You can explore the program, which encompasses three content tracks: (a) Personal reinvention, (b) Business reinvention, and (c) Social reinvention. Speakers include some of the best-known names in the storytelling movement — Annette Simmons, Steve Denning, Nancy Duarte (who will be featured in a Q&A here on A Storied Career during the period the summit is going on), plus lots of new names whose wisdom I’m eager to absorb.

I plan to virtually attend several of the sessions, even as I work on my November novel writing.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lou Hoffman, Questions 2 and 3:

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

A: I was interested in storytelling before I even knew it.

Here’s what I mean.

I’ll always remember one particular Chanukah my family celebrated when I was around 15. I couldn’t contain my excitement because I had bought the absolute perfect books for each of my three siblings.

When it came time to exchange gifts, my brother and two sisters tore the wrapping paper off their books and looked at me, each trying to muster enough enthusiasm to mask what could kindly be described as disappointment.

That’s when I realized my passion for reading and writing — didn’t think of it as storytelling at the time — was different from others.

Given one can’t make a living reading — unless you were “el lector” (the reader) in the late 1800s, reciting stories out loud to workers in Cuban cigar factories [see photo at right] — I pursued a career path in writing and specifically journalism.

I landed my first job at one of two bilingual newspapers in the country at the time, The Independiente. Assigned the police beat, it quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t cut out for the rigors of daily journalism. I lasted about six months.

After a couple years of aimless but productive wandering, I ended up at a public-relations agency supporting Philips and its CD-ROM business. In preparation for a slew of media interviews scheduled for Philips in 1986, I walked the VP of marketing Rob Moes through the messages and how he should answer anticipated questions. That was what I was trained to do.

The first interview unfolded according to plan.

The second interview found the reporter getting more and more agitated as Rob parroted back the party line. The reporter repeatedly pressed for market projections, which frustrated Rob to the point that he finally blurted out, “Trying to figure out the number of units that will ship in the future is like asking Mrs. Magellan how many lunches to pack. Who the hell knows?”

Needless to say, this answer wasn’t one of the key messages.

The response completely altered the dynamic of the interview. Rob essentially shucked the script and had a conversation with the reporter, answering the questions in his own words with anecdotes pulled from personal experiences.

Observing the exchange, I couldn’t believe the difference between pre-outburst and post-outburst.

That was my “aha! moment.”

Stories trump corporate drivel.

Why were we pummeling executives into submission to stay on message?

Instead, we should be helping our clients apply storytelling techniques in their communications.

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

A: I’m always learning from Malcolm Gladwell.

He’s a wonderful writer and storyteller.

His storytelling doesn’t follow the classic definition of zeroing in on a protagonist who must overcome a Job-like disaster to achieve a happy ending.

Instead, he takes conventional thinking and turns it upside-down.

One of my favorite Gladwell articles is “How David Beats Goliath,” which appeared in The New Yorker.

More than recount an underdog story, he digs out a fresh narrative:

“David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful — in terms of armed might and population — as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.”

Why does this passage grab our attention?

Because it’s unexpected. It causes us to stop and wonder how this can be.

There’s also simplicity in the story. Rather than numb us with a multitude of facts and figures, his premise pinwheels off one statistic, that the Goliaths only win 71.5 percent of the time.

These storytelling techniques can be effective in business communications where complexity too often weighs down story.

I also admire Warren Buffet’s storytelling.

His annual shareholder letters offer lessons for anyone involved in communications.

Write with a conversational tone and don’t be afraid to bring humor or at least a touch of levity to the story.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my wife, Heather. When I think or see things that don’t fit under the status-quo umbrella, she’s always the first one to say “trust your instincts” and nudge me forward.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve known about Lou Hoffman and his blog, Ishmael’s Corner, since probably the early days of this blog. To be honest, I perceived him as really, really important, running a big, important agency, so I never imagined he’d want to participate in a Q&A on my little old blog. In the past year, though, Lou and I have both become a part of an ad hoc group of story bloggers that includes Gregg Morris, Cathryn Wellner, Trey Pennington, Michael Margolis, and others. Thus, I realized what an accessible and friendly guy Lou really was. I invited him, and I’m ecstatic that he accepted. This Q&A with Lou will appear over the next five days.

Bio: Lou Hoffman launched The Hoffman Agency in December 1987 after six years in journalism and public relations. Since that time, he has transformed the agency from a Silicon Valley player into a global communications consultancy. While the firm initially focused on the technology sector, its clients now come from what he calls markets of complexity.

Hoffman enjoys counseling clients in areas ranging from brand building to the “art of storytelling.” He blogs on the topic of “storytelling through a business prism” at Ishmael’s Corner and conducts varied workshops including one that combines storytelling with corporate blogging. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from VentureBeat to BusinessWeek.

He lives in Silicon Valley harboring the belief there’s one book in him … somewhere.

Q&A with Lou Hoffman, Question 1:

Q: While your blog, Ishmael’s Corner, focuses significantly on storytelling in business, your company’s (The Hoffman Agency) main Web site does not seem to play up storytelling. Is that a fair observation, and if so, is there a reason behind not emphasizing storytelling on your agency’s site? Also, your agency has been around since 1987. Has storytelling been a strong focus from the beginning, or did it evolve? (You bio suggests an article you wrote in 2003 may have been the starting point of your storytelling focus.)

A: That’s a fair statement.

We’ve debated how much to emphasize our storytelling expertise on the Agency website.

The challenge relates to economics

The amount of money that companies allocate to outside storytelling services is a tiny fraction of what’s earmarked for public-relations services. In a world where labels often point the way, it’s important that people searching for PR services in the tech sector or markets of complexity find their way to our doorstep.

With that said, our expertise in storytelling represents a vital differentiator. We’ve created other digital properties beyond www.hoffman.com like Ishmael’s Corner and SlideShare with a focus on storytelling. We call this lily pad marketing, establishing other digital doors to bring prospects to our main site. By developing content for these digital doors that’s honed to storytelling, we gain SEO (search engine optimization) benefits which hopefully bring relevant buyers, not just more buyers, to us.

For example, the title field of our blog reads “Storytelling Techniques For Effective Business Communications.”

That’s what we’re about.

If someone is looking for information on foreshadowing or help pumping energy into Johnny’s college essay, we’re not going to be the right resource.

Since founding the Agency in 1987, storytelling has always been part of how we support clients. A couple variables gained enough mass around 2003 that prompted us to move storytelling into our core service offering.

First, our clients, even technical B2B companies, increasingly wanted visibility in mainstream media ranging from daily newspapers to BusinessWeek.

In addition, we could see that the Internet was commoditizing news, particularly product announcements, which at the time constituted much of our work.

Taken together, we started evangelizing to clients that it’s no longer enough to inform and educate and sell. Your communications need an entertainment dimension to stand out.

At the time, I was a columnist for an Adweek sister publication, Technology Marketing, and wrote a piece called “Heard a Good Story Lately?” which in a sense became our storytelling manifesto.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I had heard the term NaNoWriMo before last year, but didn’t really know what it meant. Last year, though, my cousin, Alex Lucas, posted a number of status updates/tweets that he was participating in NaNoWriMo, so I got curious enough to look up the term and learn that it means National Novel Writing Month. Participants strive to write 50,000 words toward a novel in November.

I’ve always had “write a novel” on my bucket list, and for about four years now, I’ve had a particular novel brewing in my head. Inspired by Cousin Alex, I am participating this year. I tell you this partly because story fans might be interested in NaNoWriMo, but also just in case my commitment to the novel interrupts my daily blogging. I don’t think it will as I try to plan my blog posts ahead of time. But just in case…

Of perhaps even more interest to story fans, November also marks National Life Writing Month and Write Nonfiction in November.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Ongoing story of my Toastmasters experiences

I recently joined Toastmasters and am blogging about my Toastmasters experiences occasionally as they relate to storytelling. Read my previous entry.

I really started writing my first Toastmasters speech in my head after the first meeting I attended once I learned that the first speech (or “Project,” in Toastmasters parlance) is intended to be an “Icebreaker” in which the speaker tells the audience about himself or herself.

My concerns for this first speech were:

• Ensuring that I included stories, or at least anecdotes;
• Knowing the material well without its sounding memorized;
• Timing the speech (it was prescribed to be 4-6 minutes);
• Communicating what I wanted the members to know about me.

I scheduled the speech for my fifth week in the organization. I had gone through a few weeks of angst and disgruntlement because joining the organization had proved more difficult than I anticipated. The relatively new local club did not yet have a bank account. The club’s secretary had suggested that I wouldn’t get “credit” (toward the Competent Communicator certificate the organization awards after 10 speeches) for any speeches I gave or leadership roles I took on before I became a member. So I had to cool my jets until the membership kinks were worked out, leading to an awkward moment when I passed on doing one of the impromptu talks (“Table Topics”) that are part of every meeting. I passed because I didn’t want to do something I wouldn’t get credit for, but also because I’m not good at thinking on my feet, a requirement for these impromptu talks. Interestingly, the Toastmasters literature suggests that Table Topics are good practice for speeches, but I find the impromptu aspect much more daunting than the planned aspect of the project speeches.

I’m sure I benefited from listening to the speeches of other members while waiting for my chance to present my first talk.

I committed my speech to writing about five days before I delivered it. The next day, I broke it down into an outline of keywords, cut the outline apart, and taped into onto 5 x 8 index cards. I started practicing the speech by reading/speaking the full text, as well as by using the keywords on the index cards so I could speak the talk without reading.

The Toastmaster’s literature suggests memorizing the beginning and end of the Icebreaker but ad libbing the body of the speech since you are presumably comfortable talking about yourself. The right kind of preparation and delivery — reading vs. memorizing vs. speaking off the cuff from bare-bones notes — has been an ongoing dilemma for me as I’ve considered the best ways people should tell stories and give presentations in various contexts, and I’ve written previously about some of my musings (a post that includes the additional complexity of whether one should read, memorize, or go off the cuff when in a situation when one can’t be seen, such as in a podcast or on the radio).

One Toastmasters member had given a well-received speech one week that was indeed very good — but to me, it sounded very memorized, as opposed to delivered in a natural way. Others had been overly dependent on their notes. Still others barely used notes and sounded completely natural; that’s, of course, what I was striving for.

In the five-day run-up to delivering the speech, I established a routine of spending an hour or so, reading over the text but then putting it aside. After the first couple of times, I also put aside the notecards with the keywords. In each run-through, I would mess something up or forget something. With three days to go, I recorded myself reading the text, using a very cool iPad app called SoundNote, and I incorporated listening to the recording into my routine; I even listened to it in the bathtub.

During the first few run-throughs, I timed the speech, and it came up at just about 4 minutes. Since I had up to 6 minutes available, I decided to add a bit more to the speech. In fact, I added a couple of anecdotes. After that, the recording on my iPad came out to be about 5 minutes. I thought my timing would turn out to be accurate, especially after I read this observation by Roger C. Schank, president and CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to design and implement low-cost story-based learning by doing curricula in schools, universities, and corporations:

I performed an experiment recently. I wrote down 100 of my favorite stories that I tell about lessons I have learned through experience, limiting myself to two typewritten pages for each story. Then I tried reading them to people to see what they thought. I found that it took three times longer to read what I had written than it would have taken me to tell the same story the way I would have done in a typical conversation. Writing rules and professional styles make written stories less memorable, less interesting, and too long.

The content of the speech was in three acts, which I connected rather artfully, if I do say so myself. I could have come up with content that would lend itself better to stories, but I had strong feelings on what I wanted to convey. Act I was my shyness and introversion (including my phone phobia), Act II was my life as a writer (the perfect profession for a quirky, shy introvert), and Act III was our cross-country move from Florida to Washington (because I’m a writer with an Internet-based business, I can live anywhere). The speech was not as story-rich as one would expect from someone passionate about story-telling, but it had proto-storytelling and anecdotes.

On the day of the speech, I had two long run-through sessions. I never did a truly smooth rehearsal performance. My dread started to mount as the day went on. I am not nearly as freaked out by public speaking as some people are, but the first time in a new venue or to a new audience is always unnerving. As I drove to the Toastmasters meeting, I had a vague hope that something would happen to prevent me from having to go through with it. I also had a strong desire to be holding my notecards during the speech instead of laying them on the lectern, as the Toastmasters manual strongly encourages. I didn’t think I’d look at them, but the idea of holding them seemed like a security blanket.

My moment arrived. I didn’t hold the cards. I laid them on the lectern. Then I walked well away from the lectern, and a magical thing happened. Adrenaline kicked in. I delivered the speech so much better than I had in any of the run-throughs. Not just better, but stunningly, astonishingly better. I walked back to the lectern to check my notes just once. I tripped on my words a couple of times. I uttered seven pause words (according to the meeting’s “Ah-Counter’). But I felt it was a pretty darned good speech.

The member assigned to evaluate my speech had lots of great things to say about it. She especially praised my independence from the lectern and my notes, as well as my hand-gestures. She was the same woman I’d admired for her story-rich speech about biting dogs on her meter-reader route, so her praise meant a lot. A couple of other people came up to me and said nice things.

Toastmasters members vote on Best Speech at each meeting, and I didn’t win. The most likely reason is that the other speech was better than mine (how can I be objective?). Other factors may have included the notion that it would be unseemly for a first-timer to win Best Speech — there’d be little room for growth. And then there was the length factor. Despite my timing the run-throughs and Roger Schank’s observation, the speech exceeded the limit by more than a minute. Shouldn’t have added the extra padding.

I’m elated that it’s over. But I’m already planning my next speech, which I’m hoping to deliver in early November. Stay tuned.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This is my third year of participating in Blog Action Day, the annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. 2008’s Blog Action Day was about poverty; 2009’s was about climate change. My particular slant for Blog Action Day has been how folks are deploying stories and storytelling in service of the social change concerning each year’s Blog Action Day issue.

Here are some ways concerned activists are telling water stories for change:

• Unquestionably, the best-known water-story effort is charity:water, the non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. (charity:water’s instructional graphic is above). 100 percent of public donations to charity:water directly fund water projects. See the story of the organization, in a video that Mario Vellandi says “uses the power of founder-narrated storytelling to describe the history and mission of an organization.” charity:water’s sister site, MyCharityWater, enables people to join in the activism and fundraising:

  In September of 2008, over 800 people gave up birthday gifts and asked for donations from friends, family and strangers. Together with matching gifts, almost $1,000,000 was raised to bring clean water to people in Ethiopia. We knew they were on to something. Since then, we’ve been busy building a website where everybody can give up their birthday, but also use weddings, anniversaries and holidays — run marathons, climb mountains and jump out of planes — or just create a fundraising page to give people clean drinking water.


• The folks who brought us The Story of Stuff (primarily Annie Leonard) this year introduced The Story of Bottled Water, which tells the story of manufactured demand — how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.
• The Groundwater Story, part of the King County (WA) Groundwater Protection Program, describes the importance of groundwater to living things — including people — and how to help protect this hidden resource.

• Canada’s Eco-Kids site features The Story of Water, which gives facts about water, including usage and conservation. Aimed at kids.
• National Geographic has a couple of photo stories, Fresh Water asks: “Will there be enough [water] for a more crowded world?” World Water Day Pictures: Epic Disappearing Acts, which notes, “United Nations water experts are warning that human activities—especially population growth, industrial pollution, and climate change—are degrading our planet’s limited supply of fresh water.” My friend Lou Hoffman (who will be the Q&A subject in this space starting Monday, Oct. 18) wrote about the storytelling power of these photo shows:

  The main takeaway from these pictures is that water — at its core — is life. Without a doubt, it is an element that we need to save, especially as the world population keeps growing. It as if the earth — via National Geographic photographers — has presented its own photo album to the world, saying, “‘Look here’…’Be forewarned’…’I’m almost empty.’” The other element about impactful photos is that viewers can immediately identify with them and — if they are anything like me — immediately insert themselves in the picture. I’ll remember those photos long after reading the content of an entire article. Need I even say it? A picture is worth a thousand words. The best storytellers understand how to use photos to tell the story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written several times in the past about SlideShare’s presentation contests, usually expressing mild disappointment that winning entries were not more story-rich, not even in the site’s Tell A Story contest.

SlideShare opened up its 2010 World’s Best Presentation Contest Oct. 7 (submission deadline is Nov. 8) and announced the contest’s six categories: Business, Education, Technology, Creative/Offbeat, NonProfit/Gov, and About Me.

While entrants could conceivably tell stories in their presentations in any of these categories, I’m thinking “About Me” will especially lend itself to storytelling.

In addition, the site is holding a Presentation Horror Story Contest: “We’ve all sat through a terrible presentation or two,” the site states, “but this October, we’re looking for the a true presentation horror story. The worse it is, the more we want to hear about it. Enter your horror story to win a 3M™ PocketProjector MP180 with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology. This powerhouse projector stores video, music and data and can access the internet as well as other devices.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Two organizations are asking for stories this week.

The more time-sensitive one comes from NPR, which is looking this week for stories of teachers who made a difference:

This week, we want to hear your stories about teachers who made a difference in your life. Maybe it was that French instructor who helped you break through a language barrier. Or a piano teacher who saw the talent you never thought you had.

Spoken Stories seeks authors/contributors.

The organization disseminates “oral tales and folklore that have been recorded from cultures throughout the world. Other [stories] have origins in the oral tradition but have been reworked in original ways by our storyteller contributors. Other tales by our contributors are their own original creations, often reflecting the diverse cultures they come from and their personal experiences. We also post stories of real-life events and situations that we hope will provide you with insights and lessons that you otherwise might never have had the opportunity to encounter.” The site lists the benefits of contributing and lists the information needed for submissions of stories, writings, and videos:

Why you should become a contributor/writer/storyteller to SpokenStories.org???

1. Your stories/writings can get more exposure
2. You can become more recognized author
3. As an writer and or storyteller, you can build trust with your readers and or listeners
4. You can establish your brand and credibility
5. You can gain free exposure for your website or blog. Your website will be including in your posts
6. You can increase your sales and market your writings, videos and podcast
7. You can promote your existing articles archive by including links in your postings

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In the last month or so, a new storytelling platform, Storify, has emerged and is in beta preview. The platform is quite intriguing and promising; in its own words, “Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos, and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.”

Intriguing and promising indeed, but I couldn’t immediately think of how I might use it. Michael Margolis and Tim Carmody, however, are among those who dived right in, thus suggesting a couple of ways that users can tell stories on Storify. Both of these efforts garnered a fair amount of attention

Tim Carmody’s Lobbying For Followers On Twitter: A Love Story, in fact, had already enjoyed more than 5,700 views. As you might guess from the title, Carmody’s story tells of his quest to get some of his favorite people to follow him on Twitter. In particular, he tried this tweet to engage these folks:

I’m shameless: People I wish would follow me: @EileenAJoy @brainpicker @JadAbumrad @blacksnob @ThisMoiThisMoi @NathanBransford @digiphile

At the time of posting his Storify story, Carmody (who teaches the history and theory of writing at Penn) had gained follows from all but @brainpicker and @NathanBransford.

Carmody’s story exclusively uses tweets, with some narrative to fill in details.

Michael tried Storify as kind of a aggregator of his favorite tweets from the recently completed National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. He notes that the tweets are “not all presented in chronological order, but sort of tellin’ my own story.”

Like Carmody’s Storify piece, Michael’s is dominated by tweets, but he does also include some photos of the festival from yfrog and Twitpics.

These pioneer uses of Storify show some interesting ways to use this exciting new platform. I’d also like to see some Storify stories that incorporate a greater variety of social media.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Of all the aspects of applying storytelling to job search/career, the two that don’t quite gel for me are the elevator speech/story and the personal-branding story.

Last month, my friend Trey Pennington wrote an attention-getting blog post in which he cited the word of “father of personal branding” Tom Peters: “The brand is the story. … think story first, brand second.” Trey’s post was mostly about product/service branding, but applying this notion to personal branding might just address my qualms, as well as the kinds of complaints about personal branding I reported on here.

In my book, Tell Me About Yourself, I talk about developing a personal-branding statement and having a story to support the statement.

But Lana Kravtsova takes that idea a step further 30 Minutes To Craft a Remarkable Personal Brand Story, noting that a brand story should consist of 3 main elements:

1. Your values and beliefs. In other words your “whys”
2. Your experiences
3. Your personal unique characteristics

Starting with an example of an un-storied branding statement, Kravtsova takes readers through the process of developing a branding story. She gives an example of her own branding, but I have difficulty seeing a story in it.

In 10 Ways to Building Your Personal Brand Story, Kyle Lacy, who cleverly breaks his advice into “chapters,” suggests including as part of your personal-branding story the story of where you came from and where you’re going, examples of problem-solving, a story with which your audience can connect emotionally, and story elements that make you relatable to your audience. Unfortunately, he provides no example of a personal-brand story that meets all the requirements of Lacy’s 10 chapters.

If would-be personal branders want to take Peters’s advice to think story first, I believe they need to see more examples of the personal-branding story done well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Continuing a series of recent visual-storytelling highlights begun on Sept. 19. To set the scene, here’s a nice reflection on visual storytelling (especially in philanthropy) from last summer, Visual Storytelling: Is Seeing Believing? by Melanie Moore Kubo, who followed that post with “A Framework for Approaching Visual Media in the Social Sector:”

1. Paintings of Rebecca Campbell: “Alice” (no last name given) writes that “Artist Rebecca Campbell combines realism and abstraction to create paintings that look like pictures from our past. Memories from our childhood get triggered but then are combined with more present day experiences. … Her storytelling art [sample above] is created by using huge brush marks that appear almost photorealistic. It’s like you’re looking at pictures from old photo albums and only remembering the emotions that have passed.” In another post, Alice touts the storytelling self-portraits of Cig Harvey.
2. Framework, LA Times: Framework, the photography and video blog of the Los Angeles Times, celebrates the power and explores the craft of visual storytelling. The blog highlights the work of Times photojournalists who, frame by frame, document the drama, the emotion and sometimes the humor of life. Framework also aims to serve as a resource hub for photography, multimedia and video enthusiasts. The folks behind the site intend to “trade insights and discuss the tools and techniques of telling stories through images” Below, a photo of JFK from the site.

3. Survey Select Art Exhibition: A contemporary art exhibition featuring 65 world-class artists, 12 authors, 10 films, 20 events and unlimited inspiration in a museum setting in San Diego, CA, that ended earlier this month. Eclectic by nature and selective by choice, “Survey Select” examined a new tradition of storytelling.
4. Debbie Millman’s Visual Storytelling Workshops: Over the course of six months, Debbie Millman worked with a group of graphic design students at the Academy of Art University who were interested in exploring the art of telling a story through a unique combination of images and words. She writes: “Visual storytelling — the art of using language and images to convey a narrative account of real or imagined events — is something that fascinates me. Historically, humans have used this means of sharing experience to pass on knowledge, beliefs, values, secrets and information. Through stories we explain how things are, why they are, and our role and purpose.”
5. View this Old Spice Commercial without sound, suggests Bill Wren. “This is a great example of how visual storytelling works. Regardless of what the guy is saying, the images communicate the essence of the ad; its meaning,” he writes.

6. Photobus: Daniel Meadows once lived in a double-decker bus, the Free Photographic Omnibus, which was his home, travelling darkroom, and gallery. Meadows talks about the “stories that live in photographs,” offering many storied photos on the Photobus site. You can also view the story of the Photobus.
7. Audio Slideshows — Human Interest Storytelling: This how-to article by Chris Labelle focuses on the making of an audio slideshow about a “‘day in the life’ of a group of laborers, referred to as ‘Hoedads,’ who spend much of their day traversing difficult terrain in remote areas of Oregon in order to plant saplings.” LaBelle notes that “the ‘office’ of the typical Oregonian Hoedad is expansive and oftentimes stunning — lending itself to the visual medium.”
8. A Tom Wujec TED Talk only partially comprises visual storytelling, but Wujec tells how visual storytelling enhances presentations. As speechwriting expert Kevin Ferguson writes, “information designer Tom Wujec discusses why animation, graphics and illustrations are powerful ways to create meaning.” In a talk that is just over six minutes, Wujec discusses how brain function works with visuals to make them meaningful.
9. “…[M]edia experts predict that image-based storytelling will play an increasingly important role within the tourism industry,” says an article posted last month on Adventure Travel News. That’s why at the just completed Adventure Travel Trade Association’s 2010 Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS) [October 4-7] in Aviemore, Scotland, emphasized lectures, workshops, case studies and content geared toward videography, photography, filmmaking and social media outlets to help educate, inspire and further engage delegates in building comprehensive multimedia strategies.
10. Pictory is a showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures. Anyone can submit one large, captioned image to each of Pictory’s editorial themes. Founder Laura Brunow Miner selects a few dozen of the best items from each theme to appear in each showcase.
11. The 12-minute, 46-second documentary Up There tells the story of the fading tradition of hand-painted advertising (on for example, billboards, as opposed to billboard content printed on large sheets and pasted on the billboards.) Thus, it is a visual story about a dying form of visual storytelling. You can view the short film on Vimeo.
12. “When Giles and Angie decided to get married, they used Giles’ skills as an animator to create … illustrated nuptial invitations,” writes Robyn Currie on Trendhunter. “Mailed out to their guests in a bound book style, the illustrated nuptial invitations will surely have people talking about the wedding before it even happens,” Currie writes.
13. A Thousand Words, a video embedded below, is a touching story that uses no spoken words. Minimal word usage, in my opinion, can be a test of effective visual storytelling. Here’s another nice one that tells a story with no spoken words.

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently came across a book, published this past April, Storytelling as an Instructional Method: Research Perspectives. The surprise is that is edited by Dee H. Andrews and Thomas D. Hull of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, along with Karen DeMeester of Florida State University.

I’m interested in the book because I’ve used storytelling in teaching and hope to do so again someday.

Here’s how the book’s publisher describes it:

For thousands of years storytelling has been a key means of instruction in cultures around the world. Today stories are told for educational purposes in virtually every domain of human endeavor. This book explores various theoretical and practical aspects of storytelling as an instructional method.

It is divided into sections that examine instructional uses of the four types of storytelling: scenario-based, problem-based, case-based and narrative.

The book’s chapters cover a variety of topics including; theories of storytelling instructional effectiveness, story archetypes, cognition and storytelling, the use of stories in instructional games, and effective instructional strategies that employ stories. In addition, practical applications of storytelling are given for healing combat stress and improving information security.

I found a paper by the same two Air Force authors and a different civilian author (Jennifer Donahue of Boeing), “Storytelling as an Instructional Method: Descriptions and Research Questions,” published in The Interdisciplinary the Journal of Problem-based Learning, volume 3, no. 2 (Fall 2009). Looks like the reader can get a good flavor for the book by reading this paper; the authors’ four types of storytelling (scenario-based, problem-based, case-based, and narrative) are covered.

You can also download an excerpt that includes the book’s first two chapters. Here are the contents of the book:

SECTION 1: ABOUT STORYTELLING AND INSTRUCTION
1. Story Types and the Hero Story by Dee H. Andrews
2. What is So Special about Stories? The Cognitive Basis of Contextually
Rich Learning.by Russell J. Branaghan
3. Storytelling, Archetypes and System Dynamic Modeling by Robert Patterson

SECTION 2: SCENARIO AND STORYTELLING
4. Using Scenarios to Archive Experience and Organize Training by V. Alan Spiker
5. Storytelling with Scenarios and Instructional Games by Conrad G. Bills and Cheryl D. Bills

SECTION 3: PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AND STORYTELLING
6. Problem-based Learning and Storytelling: Finding Common Ground as Instructional Strategies by John R. Savery and Carol A. Savery
7. Adapting Narrative Theory to Improve the Implementation of Story in Problem-based Learning by Michael A. Rosen, Stephen M. Fiore, Rudy McDaniel and Eduardo Salas

SECTION 4: NARRATIVE AND CASE-BASED STORYTELLING
8. Once Upon a Time: The Role of Stories in Educational by William R. Watson
9. Enhancing Soldiers’ Resiliency to Combat Stress Injuries Through Stories by Karen DeMeester
10. Deriving and Designing Dynamic Stories to Communicate and Learn about Information Security by Stefanie A. Hillen and Jose J. Gonzalez

SECTION 5: CONCLUSION
11. The Storytelling Instinct: Concluding Thoughts by Thomas D. Hull

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

As I have probably written previously, it’s easy enough to find slideshows and videos about storytelling. You can simply go to SlideShare or YouTube and search using “storytelling” as your search term. But given that, for example, the YouTube search results in 38,000 videos, it’s a good idea to watch for others to curate the videos and check out their recommendations (the SlideShare search is set up to return only 16 results; if you search Google using the terms “SlideShare.net” “storytelling,” you get 50,000 results, a mix of SlideShare presentations and sites that mention SlideShare presentations).

Recently, a number of bloggers have cited noteworthy storytelling videos and slideshows. Here are a few of them:

• Nick Montfort cites “a 10-part video series about storytelling in our networked, digital age,” posted by Kurt Reinhard of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Find Part 1 and links to the other parts here.
• I lost track of who touted these two, but on SlideShare, Bianca Cawthorne’s Engaging Through Storytelling (embedded below) and Roger Burks’ Creating a Culture of Storytelling earned support.
• Over on Prezi, the very cool Web-based presentation app that enables zoom effects, Raf Stevens’ Power of Storytelling generated praise and is a Prezi Staff Pick.
• The agency StoryWorldwide has begun a storytelling channel on You Tube, offering the video Storytelling for Brands — The Storytelling Matrix.
• Lara McCulloch-Carter has prepared a slideshow with audio track in Pecha Kucha style titled The Art of Storytelling A pecha kucha presentation. Though she doesn’t break a lot of new ground, she gives some good examples of the effectiveness of storytelling, and the Pecha Kucha format is an interesting touch. When I view the presentation, the slides lag a bit behind the narration.
• Claudio Perrone’s excellent Crafting Outstanding Presentations — Storytelling Techniques almost stands alone without narration. It offers terrific images, and most slides have very little type. My favorite slide: “I could brain-damage people with PowerPoint.” Lots of interesting comments posted about this slideshow, too.
• Finally, this video featuring storyteller Jay O’Callahan (also titled The Power of Storytelling) has enjoyed considerable attention. As the site 99%, where the video appears, points out, “through the lens of a tale about NASA putting a man on the moon, O’Callahan illustrates how storytelling taps into our imagination, engages those around us, and inspires amazing achievements.”

Want to learn to tell compelling visual stories in presentations? Nancy Duarte, arguably the guru on that subject, has a new book just out, resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, and you can read a sample chapter here. Nancy is the next subject in this blog’s Q&A series starting a month from today, Nov. 8.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Occasionally a random freelance assignment drops into my lap, such as the recent client who wanted his LinkedIn profile to tell a better story. I took the assignment and immediately encountered two dilemmas:

Should the story be told in first-person or third? The client’s initial LinkedIn profile was in third person. I was inclined to change it to first person but hesitated because the client correctly noted that many experts recommend that the profile be written in third person. Ultimately, I decided to go with first person for three reasons:

1. A LinkedIn profile is more like a resume than like a bio, and resumes are in first person (even though the pronouns “I,” “me,” and “my” are understood rather then included);
2. first person is more personal and thus lends itself better to storytelling; and
3. some of the LinkedIn profiles I most admire are in first person. Like these:
• Jason Alba
• Paul Mullen
• Meg Guiseppi
• Mark Beckford
• Deb Dib
• Thomas Clifford

How can you tell a good story in reverse-chronological order? Perhaps one of the reasons storytelling in resumes has not evolved to the level at which I’d like to see it is that resumes are formatted in reverse-chronological order. The theory is that the most recent experience (and/or education) is more relevant and a better selling point than older material. Like resumes, LinkedIn profiles also are constructed in reverse-chronological order. It’s not impossible to tell a story in reverse-chronological order (see the film Memento), but it’s not easy.

In telling a story chronologically, each piece builds on the last piece. The reader understands what’s happening in the story, in part, by knowing what came before. But in reverse-chronological order, the writer has the dilemma of trying to set up each step along the journey when the reader does not yet know what has come before.

I found myself writing a lot of transitions like this:

Having learned after my initial 11-year post in [city] that the most urgent need was for [position title](s) in [region], I accepted an assignment …

I believe these transitions worked, but I can’t help wondering if there’s a better way to tell a career story in reverse-chronological order.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Three nice resources for story fans:

Nicholine Hayward offers a downloadable Word .doc, The Storytelling CEO, in which she has “looked at how the most successful CEOs are also the best storytellers. Hayward analyzes the assets and attributes they have to make them so. The best storytellers, she writes:

• Embody the archetype of their organisation
• Deploy direct channels of communication
• Tell the truth, even if it hurts
• Tell the stories that people want to hear
• Deliver customer service in person
• Are the voice of the consumer, the category and the community

Michael Margolis has launched a nice site, Storytelling Quotes, which presents one story-related quotation each day.

NCM Fathom offers the whitepaper, Bold Brands Drive Revenue with Storytelling, downloadable from a number of sites, including this one. Description:

The same elements of powerful storytelling that captivate us in our everyday lives can benefit companies and their brands. NCM Fathom’s white paper explores how businesses can tell their story to engage audiences, build brand preference and loyalty and deliver results that meet objectives. Bold companies like Kleenex and Siemens have shared their brand’s story with customers and employees in cinemas nationwide. Download the white paper to learn more.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Back in the spring, Jacqueline Marino wrote on Nieman Storyboard about her two-year analysis of the writing in the highest-rated multimedia presentations on Interactive Narratives, a Web site sponsored by the Online News Association.

At that point, the site had more than 1,700 presentations, of which “54 English-language presentations had received five stars, the highest rating.” Marino’s analysis:

Of those, 16 stories (30 percent) included no writing or minimal writing, such as a brief introduction to the site. Twenty-six (48 percent) featured long-form writing, the sort one might find on the front page of a newspaper or within the feature well of a magazine. Twelve (22 percent) included short-form writing. One presentation was inaccessible.

Given persistent edicts to “write short” for the Web, Marino was surprised that nearly half of the highly rated stories featured long-form writing.

Marino (whose rather long essay is worth reading) goes on to note: “… it’s important to remember that writing needs to evolve in order to survive. … In the scramble to develop new ways to tell stories, portraying meaning — as opposed to the mere collection and presentation of fact and opinion — remains important.

Marino’s essay brought to mind the recent excellent series by my local newspaper, Spokane’s Spokesman Review, which recently ran an eight-part series marking the 100th anniversary of the Big Burn, the largest forest fire in U.S. history. On the two days during the series when I was able to get the paper (it is not delivered in our area, so we can get it only when we drive 20 miles into town), I eagerly read every word of the series of long articles. I also checked out the series’ excellent multimedia presentations online.

Granted I was particularly interested in this story having read a book about it, but the existence side-by-side of the long-form story of the fire and the more concise multimedia presentations support Marino’s analysis that both can produce compelling storytelling.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Virtually every day, I see examples of storytelling in service of social change. So many examples, in fact, that it takes two postings to cover just the recent ones. Here are some that have caught me eye in recent months:

• Brooke Dean and Levi Felix, who document their project at THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN are “traveling around the world capturing stories of leadership and heroism, learning about communities in need and conflict, and connecting them with the support of those looking to give it. The kinds of questions they are asking during these travels:
  • What is effective activism?
  • What is collaboration, sustainability and understanding?
  • How will our diverse generation of social change build a true global culture committed to one another?
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  The two seek “talented photographers, writers, filmmakers, travelers, backpackers, organizers, vagabonds and volunteers to join the collective and start blogging with [them]. If you think you’d be a good fit or want to get the details about being a blogger, or know someone who might be interested, shoot us an email at BrookeSDean@gmail.com with the subject title, ‘Join The Collective.’”

• I’m From Driftwood is an ongoing collection of true stories by gay people from all over, the intent of which is to help gay teens feel not so alone. Users can submit stories here. This site seems especially timely after the recent suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi.
• Storytelling has emerged as an important tool for fundraising, and a timely example is The YMCA of Greater New York, which, as documented in an article by Caroline Preston, “hired a freelance journalist to spend time with Haitian teenagers at its Port-au-Prince affiliate. The reporter turned those interviews into short biographies that the charity presented to potential donors on its Web site and on Facebook.” The campaign raised about $30,000 over two and a half months. You can see the video stories here.
• The Bay Area Video Coalition and several other organizations used digital storytelling to reduce incidences of domestic violence in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, CA. The digital storytelling initiative, called Abriendo las Cajas (Opening Boxes) is “facilitated process of sharing personal narratives for individual empowerment and social change using simple media technologies.” Here’s how an article by Jen Gilomen describes the process and its capabilities:

  It starts with the sharing of personal narrative, facilitated dialogues about violence, and participants finding commonalities of experience. … The process of expressing this narrative — of talking it through in a safe space with your peers, then owning the narrative from your own perspective — is empowering. … (One participant, Veronica, said that through her story she wanted to “tell the women they should never feel scared.”)

• Finally, not a story collection for social change, but a call for for storytelling for social change, in this case sustainability. Noting that “storytelling is, and always has been, the antidote to information overload,” Marc Stoiber calls for storytelling about climate change, sustainability, and green innovation. I especially like this part of his argument:

  Storytelling ensures that your innovation has the momentum it needs to overcome inertia and resistance to change — both inside your organization, and out in the real world. A staggeringly large number of things have to go just right for a new idea, service or business model to ever see the light of day — and many of them involve changing or expanding consumer thinking. Without the glue, context, and inspiration of storytelling, the odds are stacked against you. Without a story, a great innovation can be reduced to a clever invention among a million clever inventions. With a story, it can help educate consumers, drive them to positive behavior change, and perhaps even inspire greater, more fervent climate action. Not bad for a new product or service.

More social-change story sites coming up later in the month.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A conference on business narrative took place in Singapore almost a month ago, and while I haven’t seen a lot of followup, the conference’s Web site declared it a “thrilling success.” Terrence Gargiulo, who was one of the speakers, called it fantastic. A Facebook page dedicated to the conference noted that the 140 participants shared “case studies, techniques, and lots of stories.”

A little digging around on the conference site, including its blog, you can find lots of goodies related to organizational storytelling/business narrative. For example, you can find resources mentioned at the conference here. You’ll also find links to story-related organizations. Some content is password-protected for attendees only. Here’s who spoke at the conference.

Terrence says he plans a followup blog entry about the conference. I’m looking forward to it.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

While poking around my iPad, it occurred to me to search Apple’s App Store for apps related to story and storytelling, so I used those two search terms to see what’s out there. This listing isn’t intended to be comprehensive, and I would certainly love to hear of other great story-related apps.

I focused on iPad rather than iPhone apps because I have an iPad and not an iPhone. Even when not designated as being an iPad app, most iPhone apps, I’ve found, can be used on an iPad; they just aren’t optimized for the size of the iPad’s screen. For example, Eric James Wolf’s Art of Storytelling podcast app is ostensibly available only for iPhone, but it can be used on an iPad if you don’t mind its small screen image floating on the larger iPad screen.

The vast majority of results that come up when searching apps for “story” are stories or storybooks for children. Here are some that are not:

Story-prompt and brainstorming tools:
Storyteller HD helps users write that next story, that next page, or that next sentence, offering “thousands of character ideas, plot suggestions, location ideas and themes. Whether the hero is an insecure bodyguard obsessed with his own mortality or the suspect a vigilante father avenging his daughter’s kidnapping, Storyteller is sure to surprise you with intriguing and original ideas for your stories. There’s no need to ever fear writer’s block again!” $1.99

Story Tiles (sorry, can’t find a link for iPad version) enables users to arrange random word tiles into fun and interesting phrases, providing more than 13,000 random words and millions of phrase possibilities. $2.99

Stories and collections of stories to read:
The Narrative App brings Narrative Magazine to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch and places the magazine’s entire library at your fingertips, for free. Narrative Magazine, named “the gold standard in online literary magazines,” is the leading publisher of first-rank fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. A nonprofit organization, Narrative is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership around the world. Read stories from award-winning authors such as Sherman Alexie, Rick Bass, Ann Beattie, T. C. Boyle, Robert Olen Butler, E. L. Doctorow, Gail Godwin, Jim Harrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joyce Carol Oates, and James Salter.” Free.

SpiritRenew provides content for spiritual development and growth. Content includes short stories and inspirational articles.

301+ Short Stories for iPad offers 315 stories by more than 90 authors (with more on the way)

 in these and more genres: adventure
, humor
, ghost stories, horror, mystery
, westerns
, fantasy
, romance and love
, and sketches of life
. 99 cents.

Created to keep literature vital in the digital age, Electric Lit features video-enhanced stories by great contemporary authors like Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm), MacArthur “Genius” Grant winners Colson Whitehead and Lydia Davis, Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, and many more. Free.

Moving Tales: “The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross”: is the first in a series of Moving Tales’ Classic World Tales. Inspired by the age-old tale of a man who becomes rich through a dream, “The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross” describes the journey of a poor pedlar woman who, guided by the shifting line between the real and the unreal, discovers a surprising and wonderful treasure. The app’s dynamic typographic layouts can be animated using the iPad’s accelerometer, and randomly selected alternative perspectives are incorporated to ensure that no two viewings are alike. Other features include Cover Flow-like navigation, the choice to hear and display the story in Spanish as well as English and compelling, poetic voice-over narratives. $4.99.

Touching Stories: Enables the user to experience four interactive stories designed specifically for the iPad. “By touching, shaking, and turning your iPad, you can navigate, unlock and reveal unexpected variations in each of these stories. Shot by 5 different directors, these interactive, live-action, short stories evolve storytelling in ways that haven’t been done before on the iPad.” Free.

Blog-like story news:
Post Ad. Story Worldwide, a marketing agency that “connect brands to customers by telling engaging and entertaining stories that audiences actually want to hear” believes “the Interruption Age — the time for traditional ads — is over. The Post-Advertising Age is what’s now and next: Great content driving deep consumer engagement; less and less money wasted on expensive traditional media (like TV) as free media take over. It’s inevitable, it’s a good thing, and it’s already upon us…as this app aims to prove.” Free.

Tools for writers/creators of stories (and other genres):
Story Tracker helps writers keep track of stories, novels, poems, scripts, and articles submitted to publishers. “Many magazines, journals, or other markets for your work don’t allow simultaneous submissions,” the app’s description says. “When you’re juggling dozens or even hundreds of stories, it’s easy to make an embarrassing mistake. Keeping track of it all can soon become a nightmare.” $9.99

StoryPages is “for anyone that wants to create illustrated stories or guides of any kind and deliver them quickly and easily. StoryPages lets you create storyboard style pages with your drawing in a top panel and typed text in a bottom panel like a storyboard used during movie production. Draw in fullscreen (landscape or portrait) and optionally add a background to set the scene or use as a tracing template with transparency control. StoryPages can be used for sketching movie scenes, animations, and comics. Use it for keeping a record of your product ideas, visual instructions (for hardware, electronics, contractors and landscapers), help files, construction and restoration projects, teacher curriculum, travelogues, hobbies, dream recording and more.” $2.99

Successful Novel Plotting is described as a productivity app, but it seems more like a book to me. From the description: “This authoritative guide will help steer new writers through the minefield of the writing process. Using examples from her own work, and that of other top authors, [author] Jean [Saunders] explains how to create memorable characters, generate cliffhangers and keep up a pace that will hook readers. And when you’ve done that, she even gives advice on how to work with publishers and editors to make your novel a best seller.”

This site offers a collection of apps for digital storytelling on the iPad.

Shelly Terrell offers 17 Digital Storytelling & Literacy Apps/Resources, some of which are targeted at children, but others of which work for general audiences.

Lots of diary and journal apps also are available. Search for “diary” and “journal” at the App Store to see them.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Larry, Question 8

Q: Any future plans for SMITH you’d care to share?

A: We’ve just launched a new community project that will turn into our next book called The Moment. The Moment will be collection of personal stories (as short as a tweet, as long as 700 words, done via a photo, illustration, or annotation of a letter) about how a single moment changed someone’s life in a profound way. As always with a SMITH project, most of the stories will come from ordinary people with amazing stories, via the web, with some famous folks sprinkled into the mix for the book that follows. If it works, which I think it will, we’ll have a web and book project that is smart, fun, inspiration, and addictive. I’d love for your readers to think about their own “Moments” and share them on SMITH. After all, everyone has a Moment.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.