After having the opportunity to experience — at ridiculously accessible prices — 32 hours of high-quality content from brilliant, thought-provoking experts on the future of storytelling, would you dare hope for more? Would you dare hope you could be part of creating more?

More you shall have if you signed up for The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling. (You can still sign up to access recordings of the sessions — and a lot more. Those who signed up at the basic level and now have 60-day access to the recordings can upgrade and get mp3s of the sessions for posterity and other materials). I would guess that even those who have not signed up will still be able to access at least some of the “more” that emerges from the Summit.

And what might that “more” consist of? Nothing is written in stone, but in the Summit’s closing session yesterday, the design team (top slide, left column) listed these goodies as possibilities (second slide from top, right, right column — though, sorry, it’s hard to read):

• A crowd-sourced book covering the Summit’s 32 sessions, as well as the “making of” story, and more.
• An online community
• Learning modules for which guest instructors will be needed
• Virtual workdays
• Group and private coaching
• A bonus session on Dec. 7 for registrants (bottom slide, right column)

See slide at the bottom of this post.

Invoking the ongoing, collaborative “Stone Soup” theme of the Summit (second slide from top, left column), organizer Michael Margolis noted that participants will have the opportunity to author and co-create what comes next and that Summit content will be repackaged in all sorts of ways. Pointing out that the Summit’s 22 media partners and their collective audience of 2 million+ people want to continue the discussion and share the content — but the six-member design team won’t be able to respond by itself — Michael stated that the tribe will be needed. Get Storied (Michael’s company) is trying to build an ecosystem to share ideas, he said.

The team, Michael went on, wants to help participants create their “next,” their reinventions, if you will, developing “an action laboratory for channeling creative potential for what you want to share with the world. One aim is to socialize core idea of storytelling into the larger culture,” because, after all, “storytelling is our most basic human technology.”

“The world is ready,” Michael noted. “People are calling out for narrative.” He observed that we are all media and brands who can package our ideas into something that others can experience. Narrative is fundamental, he said. It’s the the base, the foundation, for everything else, the fundamental layer and vocabulary of storytelling. He spoke of a “knowledge spiral,” a concept from Ikujiro Nonaka (top slide, right column), getting one’s hands dirty in the ongoing work (middle slide, right column), and developing action plans for putting reinvention into action (next-to-last slide, right column).

Michael noted some of the remarkable aspects of the Summit — the fact that the team hatched it in just 90 days, for example. The Summit started on Nov. 11, honored as a worldwide day of remembrance (so appropriate for storytelling) and ended near Thanksgiving, a time of harvest (evoking the harvest of stories, memories, experiences). He mentioned and thanked the design team, partners, producers, speakers, bloggers and others who posted content about the Summit (wheee! my picture’s on the slide, and Michael generously mentioned me), and 566 participants (bottom three slides, left column).

In a poignant portion of the closing session, the design team shared post-Summit intentions. One of the most tweeted observations was team member George Huang’s “reinvention is messy.” The team also talked about the Summit sessions that were highlights for them, with several noting the impact of Angela Maiers’s session on reclaiming story in education.

For each live sessions I attended — eight of the 32, and I hope to listen to some of the recordings — an enthusiastic group of attendees expressed their appreciation and enriched the discussion. A few highlights of their sentiments in the final session:

• Marleen Vente: *choked up* I’m soo deeply moved by the sincerity of everyone involved… thanks to ALL who shared a piece of the stories that are so dear to them
• Karina Howell: Seriously,this conference is such a blessing. I’m incredibly grateful.
• Nico Gronenberg: I will certainly look at the term “reinvention” in a different way
• Mandy Leith: I loved how over the 11 days, the variety of perspectives offered a colourful kaleidoscopic view of the ways narrative touches and informs meaning and innovation
• Craig DeLarge: I loved the natural flawed and effective execution of this whole thing. How things continually went wrong but never was there a bog-down or frustrated or profane outburst but just a quick regroup around a deep cleansing breath without missing a beat. I loved it. Imperfection never felt so good.
• Lisa Rossetti: Hey Storytellers! Our time has come! This shared energy *must* be harnessed for the world.

The design team asked participants to think about their intentions, and I’m talking about mine in a separate blog post. In the meantime, I’m hoping some participants will share recommendations for the “can’t miss” sessions among the 24 I didn’t listen to live. I also have one more session to report on; look for that report tomorrow.