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

Q&A with Jon Thomas, Questions 6, 7, 8, and 9:

Q: Are there situations in which a presenter might be better off not using slides at all but should just tell stories?

A: I don’t know if I can name any specific instances when slides aren’t appropriate and just storytelling is, but I do want people to understand that I don’t believe PowerPoint slides are always necessary. Just because I’m a presentation designer doesn’t mean I’m ignorant to the fact that there are situations where slides may not be necessary and could ultimately be a hindrance to the learning process, especially if they’re poorly designed. I simply believe that in situations where slides could be beneficial, those slides must be designed effectively in order to properly engage the audience and aid in their retention of information.

Q: A story practitioner colleague follows this formula for presentations: “3 stories, 3 points, sit down.” To what extent do you feel formulas like that are useful for presentations?

A: I don’t subscribe to any type of formula. I don’t know how anyone possibly could. What if you have four great stories? What if you have three but one is “meh?” I suggest going with whatever style/formula works for you. The only rules I follow revolve around respecting the audience and their time.

Q: You probably have stories you use repeatedly in presentations. Because you’re likely to give presentations of varying lengths, do you have a short version and a long version of the stories you use?

A: I don’t have anything prepared, but you always have to respect the audience’s time and deliver the content you’ve promised. So sometimes stories will be shortened, or removed completely. Just make sure you practice the delivery before you try to edit a story or any presentation content for that matter.

Q: Should slides for a presentation be able to stand on their own without narration? There are thousands of slideshows on sites like SlideShare, and many have an audio track, but I wonder about the usefulness of the slideshows that lack narration.

A: SlideShare is a unique animal. It’s the first technology created for mass access and consumption of slide decks without a presenter. I believe there is a distinct way to design a presentation to be consumed on SlideShare or any other non-live environment (more akin to an eBook), and there’s a distinct way to design a presentation intended to be presented live, with a presenter.

The PowerPoint deck I submitted to SlideShare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest (which came in third overall) [embedded below] was actually created as a live presentation for a client. In order to make it work on SlideShare, I had to give it a fairly massive overhaul, adding text in many places where it didn’t originally exist in order for it to convey the proper information without a presenter or any type of narration.

I think SlideShare is a great tool, but I don’t want people to think that any old PowerPoint presentation can be put on SlideShare and consumed by an audience. There has to be a distinct design process depending on where/how the presentation is consumed.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Jon Thomas, 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: Not too long ago, the brands that “won” in marketing were those that had the most money. They could buy the best TV spots, the best billboards, the best radio commercial slots, and they could get eyeballs because the consumer didn’t have any power. If audiences wanted their entertainment, they had to sit through those ads. Brands didn’t need a story — they just needed brand exposure.

The power is shifting, though. Consumers don’t have to be subjected to this type of advertising. We can fast-forward over the commercials, pay for commercial free radio and television, and simply ignore the marketing we don’t want to hear or see.

Now, in order to reach consumers, brands have to create content that’s relevant, useful, and entertaining. That’s where storytelling comes in. Brands must create experiences that audiences enjoy and want to share with others. It’s within these experiences that stories are told.

Instead of paying for a 30-second spot, a beauty salon could invest in creating a blog dedicated to providing hair tips, tricks, latest styles, and customer stories. This keeps a customer engaged with the brand even when they’re not at the salon and creates a bond between consumer and brand that transcends pricing and quirky advertising.

Not to mention there are tools that are popping up every day, anchored by Twitter and Facebook, that allow brand and consumer, actor and fan, charity and volunteer, to connect on a human level. It’s becoming part of our culture to expect all brands to be human. Ten years ago if I had a problem with my cable provider, I had to call an 800 number, fight a phone tree, and battle with a robotic sales rep. One person heard my complaint, and the cable providers knew it. I had no power. Now, I can take my complaint to Twitter or the brand’s Facebook page and I can voice my complaint to hundreds if not thousands. This usually results in an immediate response, and that response becomes part of the brand story. They may respond so well that they turn my anger into evangelism, and I can tell my story to those hundreds, if not thousands of people in my network.

It’s been fantastic to see humanity and creativity return to marketing and advertising, and it’s all rooted in story.

A: I was just having a conversation with a soon-to-be college graduate who wrote his communications thesis on how Twitter killed the PR agent. I find the adoption of social media by celebrities to be quite intriguing.

Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter give consumers an avenue to connect with their idols in a way that was IMPOSSIBLE just a few years ago. I grew up a Celtics fan, but there’s no way Larry Bird was knocking on my door to say hi any time soon. But now there are all kinds of professional athletes using social media, and while it’s not anywhere near a guarantee, if I reach out to my idol on those channels maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a response. Just the ability to listen to their stream of consciousness makes a fan feel like they’re part of the conversation. And if there is a real direct response, then that creates a bond that is stronger than any baseball card or poster can ever create.

Celebrities have a built in audience, so once the join Twitter, they don’t have to focus much time on growing a followership. All they have to do is decide how they’ll use their power. I liken it to a superhero who just finds out he has a special power, like x-ray vision. He could use it for good or for evil.

As a Boston fan, I followed Paul Pierce on Twitter, only to realize that a majority of his tweets are paid advertisements. He’s using Twitter for “evil” and it left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s unfortunate to realize that celebrities would prefer the easy money of paid ads than to harness the incredible power of social-media channels to humanize and tell their story of who they really are.

As Gary Vaynerchuck says, “Giving a shit has an enormous yield,” and that couldn’t be truer. Gary has nearly 900,000 Twitter followers and I’ve gotten numerous responses from him, including personal email responses. He gives away tons of useful content for free, and I owe much of my success to him. So there’s no doubt I’ll be buying all his books, suggesting them to others, attending his speaking engagements, and promoting the heck out of his stuff. His story is about caring, and that resonates with me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael published a brief video today announcing the theme for the 2011 Reinvention Summit, coming in November, along with a 72-hour (through midnight EDST Thursday) special offer for a producer pass.

Quick reveal — the theme is crossroads — but watch the video for the rationale and more details.

If you’re new to this space and don’t know about the Reinvention Summit, just do a search here on A Storied Career and find tons of reportage from last year — or check out the site from last year.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Jon Thomas, Questions 2 and 3:

Q: In your comment on my blog, you wrote, “… To be honest, [my bio story] used to be pretty bad, and after some honest feedback from friends and family I spun it 180 degrees and tried to craft it in a way that tells a story and helps the reader understand who I really am. I approached it from a very honest place…” Can you talk more about this process and how you made it storied bio?

A: I rarely do anything without proper research. I’m travelling to France in September and I’m already researching the area, how to get around, local customs, where the train stations are, etc. So it’s no surprise that when I had to write an About Me page, I did a bunch of research.

When I found what most considered to be best practice About Me pages, I realized that many of them had interesting stories. I wrote what I thought was a good About Me page, complete with a few funny insights into who I am. However, when it came time to publish, I couldn’t do it. I let my lizard brain get a hold of me and reverted to standard corporate jargon.

The first About Me page I published spoke in the third person and simply stated some of my background and professional experience. However, once I sent it around to friends, family members and colleagues, I got some interesting feedback. They could tell that I wasn’t being truly honest with myself. I actually got a pretty blunt email from my brother-in-law asking me why I was putting on such a front. I didn’t have a good answer.

So I revised my About Me page to read the way I really wanted it to read. It’s in first-person, mixing both professional information with personal information. I’m a human being and I want those who read my About Me page to know that. I have other interests outside of business and sometimes those interests make for interesting conversation. At a recent presentation of mine I had a lengthy conversation with an audience member about how much I like ice cream.

If your About Me page is on any sort of business or professional site, it needs to carefully balance professionalism with personal storytelling. Include just enough information to validate your authority in your field. Also, let them know where they can find you (Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, etc.) That also helps to establish authority. After that, add some information that shows you’re human. I talk about my education, where I’m from, my non-business related passions, and my personal ethos.

At Story Worldwide, our bio pages have a picture of our business cards, with three truths and a lie. The page includes the back-stories of two of the truths, but you have to get in touch with the person to find out which of the remaining two is true.

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: I am a very frequent participant within social media, and I can’t stop raving about its potential as a business tool. When I started Presentation Advisors, it was simply a blog — a place where I could harvest my thoughts and findings about presenting, presentation design, marketing, and communications. It was my first foray into a media meant to be social — where traditional marketing techniques would not be accepted. Instead of selling my services, I helped others become better presenters.

Shortly thereafter I joined Twitter, which, combined with the blog, has been a knockout combination for me. The people I’ve met through Twitter and the recognition I’ve received from my writing on the blog (and as a guest on other blogs) has fueled all of my marketing efforts. I’ve never paid a dime to market Presentation Advisors, aside from the blog hosting costs.

What I’ve always believed was the underlying power of social media was the ability to bring humanity back into business. That humanity is achieved through storytelling, and we’re using these mediums to do so. It may not be a “story” in the traditional sense. But when you look at my Twitter feed and see the type of content I’m spreading, the conversations I’m having, and the people I’m connecting, you begin to see who I — Jon Thomas — really am. And that puts a face on Presentation Advisors and Story Worldwide, the two brands that I represent.

As Guy Kawasaki says, “People are enchanting.” The more humanity you can add to your brand, the more enchanting you’ll become. Connecting with your audience (clients/prospects/fans), telling real stories, addressing problems openly and honestly — these are all methods of framing your brand story that can be accomplished through social media.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I thought my first encounter with Jon Thomas was when I cited his bio story, one of the examples Michael Margolis shared during his webinar series on developing one’s bio story. He responded with a comment about his bio story that he elaborates on later this week in this Q&A; his comment prompted me to invite him to do the Q&A. As I was researching questions to ask him, I made the horrifying discovery that I had already encountered Jon when I trashed a presentation his company crafted that was one of the winners of SlideShare’s 2010 World’s Best Presentation Contest. Yikes! Jon was a very good sport in commenting on my skewering. Jon is one of several practitioners in this Q&A series who emphasize storytelling in presentations. I’m thrilled to have him — especially after I dissed his work here! This Q&A will run over the next five days.

Bio: [in his own words from his company site]: I am the founder of Presentation Advisors, but more importantly I am a storyteller and have been developing engaging brand stories for nearly nine years. I have extensively researched the topics of presenting, design, marketing and storytelling and fear that the world has unknowingly been exposed to a poisonous presentation landscape since the inception of PowerPoint. I am here to make a change.

Presentation Advisors was founded on the principles of simplicity, clarity, beauty, and most importantly, narrative. I design presentations with the audience in mind, including vibrant images, few words, and an engaging story. I don’t play nice with bullet points, and work best with clients who are willing to throw out what they know about presentations and realize that a story is more powerful than their sales pitch.

Whether your presentation is polished and you’re just looking for visuals, or you know you have a story and don’t know where to begin, don’t worry. I have designed award-winning presentations from just a two-page word document, and I’m excited to work with you to help you present your emotion, your passion, and your story.

I am also the Director of Communications for Story Worldwide, the world’s first post-advertising agency, where I am constantly working to make Story famous through social media engagement, audience generation, web strategy, and content creation.

I am an avid blogger and passionate speaker on presentation and marketing topics. You can follow my daily ramblings on my Twitter account. If you’re hoping for a follow back, make sure you’re not doing any of the 10 reasons I won’t follow you back.

Q&A with Jonathan Thomas, Question 1:

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

A: Right out of college I joined a video production house and for five years immersed myself in the story. From videography, to script writing, storyboarding, graphic design, editing, and producing — it all revolved around telling a compelling story that would entertain. I even started my own wedding videography company and had to weave the story of my clients’ wedding days into a two-hour DVD. It was hard work, but seeing their eyes light up when they watch it for the first time was pretty amazing.

From there I got my MBA in marketing and left the production house for a job within marketing at an IT security firm. It wasn’t easy since the firm was working with traditional, interruptive marketing techniques like direct mail, list buying, and cold calling. I sat right next to our outside sales team (telemarketers) and heard them get hung up on (and rightfully so) day after day. It ate me up inside. I felt bad for them and for the people on the other end of the line. I knew there was a better way to tell our story.

I made it my goal to bring the company into the 21st century — what I now like to call the post-advertising age. I totally immersed myself in the latest marketing books and read blogs religiously. I took a fondness to social media, eventually launching a corporate blog and Twitter account. I loved everything about it this new style of marketing and knew it was going to be the industry standard very soon.

Only out of chance did I start working on presentation design. I had a basic graphic-design background, so all of our corporate PowerPoints started showing up in my email box with notes asking if I could “pretty them up.” I figured if I was going to do that on a regular basis, I better learn how to do it effectively. Again, I turned to books and blogs to teach myself the ways of Presentation Zen.

I’ve always felt that the intersection between marketing and presentation design was storytelling. In order to engage your audience and express how a product or service can truly affect their lives, you had to have an engaging story. That story flowed through our presentations into our marketing materials, blog posts, webinars and more.

A little more than two years ago I founded Presentation Advisors to help others present more effectively, and joined Story Worldwide in April of 2010 as the Director of Communications. Story was walking the walk and talking the talk of brand storytelling way before any other marketing agency, and I knew a place called “Story” was going to be a great fit for me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m kind of taking the day off today from a “real” post because it’s my birthday.

But I did want to let readers know that I’ve added a bunch of new links to my inside pages, especially Interdisciplinary Storytelling Resources; Storytelling Platforms, Tools, and Prompts; and Blogs that Relate to Storytelling. I wanted to add the links before the end of this month because after that date, I can no longer add new “Apture” links. Those are the links accompanied by a small icon that enables you to mouseover and get a preview of the link without leaving the page. The Apture folks are discontinuing those on the 31st, although Apture links already on place will remain.

Within the next week or so, I’ll be tackling dividing the Links to Interdisciplinary Storytelling Resources into these sub-categories:

• Children’s/Family Stories and Storytelling
• Education-Related Story Resources
• Folklore and Mythology
• Literary, Fiction Sites
• Multimedia Storytelling Resources
• Narrative Psychology
• Online Magazines
• Oral Performance and Presentation Storytelling
• Portals Covering Broad Mix of Story Resources
• Social-Change Story Initiatives and Resources
• Spiritual and Religious Story Resources
• Story Collections
• Story Practitioners/Consultancies: Individual Coaching
• Story Practitioners/Consultancies: Marketing, Branding
• Story Practitioners/Consultancies/Authors: Other
• Storytelling/Narrative Theory and Research
• Uncategorized
• Visual Storytelling

“Interdisciplinary” has always been kind of a misnomer, code for “catch-all links that didn’t fit into other categories.”

Here are the main inside pages I maintain:

• Links to Interdisciplinary Storytelling Resources
• Links to Organizational Storytelling Resources
• Links to Storytelling Platforms, Tools, and Prompts
• Links about Memoir-Writing, Journaling, and Personal Storytelling
• Links to Blogs that Relate to Storytelling

I always welcome suggestions for links that should be on these inside pages: Email me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across an article, “Narratives and Storytelling,” by Julia Chaitin, written in 2003 but (I think) updated periodically (The citation the author requests is at the bottom of this post).

The articles discusses some rather remarkable uses of storytelling among groups that historically are in conflict with each other.

One involves PRIME, “a jointly run Palestinian-Israeli research non-governmental organization (NGO) that undertakes cooperative social research that studies issues that have great importance for both peoples.” Chaitin notes that two of PRIME’s current projects involve narratives and storytelling, and she goes on to describe those projects and how they use storytelling.

Even more striking to me was the use of storytelling in TRT — To Reflect and Trust, “an international organization [which does not seem to have a Web site] that began in 1992 as an encounter group between descendants of Nazi perpetrators and of Jewish Holocaust survivors.” Chaitin continues:

These individuals met together in a self-supporting atmosphere to tell one another their life stories in an attempt to better work through (that is, learn to live with) their pasts, in particular their parents’ experiences during WWII. In 1998, the TRT invited former/present enemies from Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and South Africa to join their work. Publications, documentary movies, and several year-round projects have resulted from the decade of work of the TRT.

In TRT’s week-long annual meetings, Chaitin writes, “the members of the group, who facilitate themselves, sit together in small groups and tell one another their life histories, within the context of their conflict. While telling one’s story is a major aspect of the TRT meetings, empathically listening to the story of the “enemy” comprises the main, and extremely difficult, work of the members. The TRT refrains from entering into political dialogues, which have been shown to hinder dialogue, rather than encourage it. Learning to contain the stories of the other, to hear their pain and to legitimize their narrative, while not negating your own pain and story, is the main work and ‘product’ of the TRT process.”

Chaitin concludes:

While denigrating myths of the other and self-aggrandizing myths of self can refuel the winds of hate, the open and honest recounting of one’s life story, and the willingness to be an empathic listener for the other, even if this other has caused your group suffering and pain in the past, can open the door for peacebuilding and coexistence.

A particularly valuable aspect of this paper is the bibliography and resources sections at the end, which list many narrative/storytelling resources, most of which were new to me.

Citation: Chaitin, Julia. “Narratives and Storytelling.” Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003 http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/narratives/.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Let’s file SmartMeme under my oft-used category of “story-based organizations I can’t believe I didn’t know existed until now.” And, yeesh, SmartMeme has been around since 2002.

I encountered SmartMeme in a post on the blog Waging Nonviolence entitled SmartMeme pioneers social change storytelling, in which Bryan Farrell interviewed SmartMeme co-founder Patrick Reinsborough and co-director Doyle Canning, who are also authors of Re:Imagining Change — How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World.

I’m not sure anything on SmartMeme’s own site explains what the organization does — its unique blending of story and meme — as well as Reinsborough describes it in the interview with Farrell:

We come to social change storytelling from the perspective that humans are narrative animals who make meaning of the world around us through narrative. Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for organizers and movement builders to name problems, unite constituencies, and mobilize people towards solutions. But how does a story become well known? How does a new idea spread? How can we challenge the assumptions that prop up the status quo and create momentum for fundamental social change? SmartMeme was founded to explore these kind of questions in order to help progressive movements communicate compelling stories about the more democratic, just, ecologically sane future so many of us are working to build.

We were interested in combining traditional grassroots organizing with new strategies to change the dominant culture. Our work isn’t just about telling new or historically marginalized stories, it’s also about changing the existing story — reframing issues and creating political space for new ideas.

And how does the meme concept fit in? Reinsborough explains:

A meme is like a gene of the culture that spreads from mind to mind, generation to generation; a contagious information pattern; an idea virus. Anything that can spread can be thought of as a meme: from cultural rituals like shaking hands to buzz words and slogans (Just Do it! No Blood for Oil!) to the latest fashion trend of pop-song lyric. The definition we use in our story-based strategy trainings is that a meme is a capsule for a story to spread.

A terrific article on the SmartMeme site, Storytelling as Social Change,

The article offers a story-based strategy framework that I suspect we can apply to change of all kinds — from social change to personal change:

The Story-Based Strategy Framework

Working through the story-based strategy framework can create a common narrative to integrate messaging, media, advocacy and organizing efforts by focusing on a few key cornerstones of storytelling:

The Conflict: What is the problem we are addressing? How is it framed? What is emphasized and what is avoided? How can we change the framing?

The Characters: Who are the characters in our story? This can be a profound organizing question: Who are “we?” Are we amplifying the voices of the most impacted people? Who are the other characters in the story?

Show Don’t Tell: What is the imagery of this story — what pictures linger in our minds? Are there anecdotes that we tell people to show them what we’re talking about? What about songs? Poems? Metaphors that describe the issue?

Foreshadowing: What is our vision of resolution to the conflict? What is our solution to the problem? How do make the future we desire seem inevitable?

Assumptions: What are the assumptions underlying the story we want to change? How can we expose and challenge them? What assumptions and core values do we share that unite our communities around a common vision?

I am excited to check out the book and learn more about the organization.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Three recent articles bring up thoughtful questions about the ethics of telling other people’s stories.

Two of the articles are interviews with Amy Hill, director of programs with Berkeley-based Center for Digital Storytelling and co-founder of Silence Speaks, “an international digital storytelling initiative offering a safe, supportive environment for telling and sharing stories that all too often remain unspoken.” Specifically:

Silence Speaks has been committed to fostering individual and collective healing and justice by nurturing the production of personal media narratives and bringing these narratives into carefully considered public spaces. [from Margaret Rhee interview, referenced below]

and from Aspen Baker interview, referenced below, Silence Speaks …

supports the telling and witnessing of stories that all too often remain unspoken — of surviving and thriving in the wake of violence and abuse, armed conflict, or displacement … of challenging stigma or marginalization related to health and sexuality.

The articles focus on storytelling for social change, as well as journalistic storytelling. Both express concern for the people whose stories are told for the sake of journalism and social change.

In Storytellers Front and Center: A HASTAC Bog Interview with ‘Silence Speaks’ Amy Hill by Margaret Rhee, Hill says: “All too often, media enthusiasts are inclined to focus in on the excitement of production and content rather than on the impact of and benefit to participating in media creation on those who are sharing stories.”

Anyone who seeks to tell stories about painful situations could benefit from Hill’s knowledge. “I have learned volumes about what it can mean to bring a very sensitive, usually private story into public spheres,” she says in Rhee’s interview, “and how to best ensure that the workshop experience and subsequent experiences of sharing stories with broader audiences is a positive one, for the storyteller. For me, one bottom line is building trusting relationships with workshop participants before, during, and after they create their stories. When they know their personal experiences are being respected, honored, and valued as tools for change, locally and/or globally, they are much more likely to feel comfortable sharing their stories.”

In fact, the other interview, The Expert Teacher: When Stigma is Part of the Story; Aspen Baker Interviews Amy Hill, notes that Hill “specialize[s] in the ethical implications of producing and sharing sensitive personal narratives and in modifying digital storytelling methods to accommodate multiple languages and scarce technology resources.”

A key ethical question (from the Baker interview) for Hill is: “Who benefits from the proliferation of narratives of suffering and sorrow, online? Is it the storytellers themselves? Or is it journalists and media outlets, always on the lookout for a story that sells?”

Jina Moore, a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs, echoes this ethical dilemma in the third article, Reporters and Rape II: Readers’ trust and trauma stories (which Aspen Baker commented on, citing the Amy Hill interview). Moore interviewed a Rwandan genocide survivor who had experienced brutal violence: “There are times when we also have to recognize that these stories belong first to someone else. I decided not to press. I was telling a story, yes, but it was her story, and this was one part of that story I felt I had no business asking for if she didn’t want to give it to me.”

I recall my days as a journalist with a bit of shame as I reflect on this question of who benefits. In those days, I felt that a story about programs that brought companion animals to visit nursing-home residents were always good as heart-tuggers. At least in that case, the stories I exploited were not extremely sensitive and painful. More shameful was my notion — fortunately never implemented — that a story about a terminally ill teenager was a good idea.

Another question is — Who should play the leadership role in telling stories about issues? Hill’s response (from the Baker interview): “We focus on projects that position storytellers as leaders in speaking out about issues that affect their health and well-being.” I am intrigued by this idea of storytellers as leaders.

Hill doesn’t believe in pushing suffering people to tell their stories. “I believe that most people choose to tell their stories, even if the telling is emotionally challenging, when they are ready,” she says in the Baker interview.

Sometimes heated rhetoric, much of it from political and religious corners, has profound effects on people’s comfort in telling their stories. Hill, who has worked with abortion stories, notes in the baker interview that “the intensity of the abortion wars in the U.S. seems to have kept most women who have had abortion from feeling safe or comfortable speaking out.” Further …

It seems to me that those on both sides of this war who lament women’s lack of willingness to share their individual stories are failing to see what a monumental request they are making of such women. They seem to view stories as fodder for their battles, as commodities that will assist them in winning, in “owning” the discourse around abortion, rather than considering what it would like to put their own most personal struggles and life decisions out on the table, for all the world to see.

These interviews with Hill yielded other interesting observations beyond ethics:

• In the Baker interview, Hill notes: “I am interested in critically examining the ways in which the process of sharing and listening to stories can lead to specific changes across multiple levels of human experience and influence,” while in the Rhee interview, she observes that through these digital projects at individual, organizational, and community levels, but “funders are generally reluctant to provide resources for evaluating the impact of media projects, so we have been unable to do any formal documentation of change.”
• In the same interview, she asserts that sharing these stories tends to be more effective on a small, local scale than via mass Internet distribution. “I prefer to focus on mechanisms for sharing stories with local audiences, where they have the potential to really make a difference — as tools for training and eduation, or prompts for community dialogue and discussion,” she says.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I write a lot about storytelling in the job search, but story can play a role in other aspects of career, such as career exploration through story.

Carole Pemberton examined another aspect — the idea of authoring your own life and career — in a post from last year.

Pemberton notes, for example, that sometimes we adopt career stories that have been created for us — such as the young person whose parents urged him or her to become a doctor or lawyer. Or a similar young person who is expected to follow a given career path because that’s the path a parent followed. Or the person expected to take over the family business.

Certainly we are influenced by our parents’ paths. I know I was. I became a writer in large part because my father was a writer.

My sister has recently pushed my buttons by suggesting that my father wasn’t really a writer. He wrote and edited publications and promotional materials for gas-station dealers. He edited medical textbooks. He wrote many articles for horse magazines. He wrote a book on training horses. He taught classes in magazine writing. For my sister, these activities did not add up to his having been a writer.

I told her it didn’t matter because what was imprinted on my brain at an early age is the belief that he was a writer.

The irony, however, was that he was not passionate about writing. It was his day job; it was how he supported himself and his family. But his passion was horses — breeding, raising, training, showing, judging horses and running horse shows. He was never especially proud of me for following in his writer footsteps; he would have been far more proud of me if I’d become a horsewoman. Nor did he ever push me in any way to be a writer. [The photo above shows me (far right), my father, and my sisters in a “family class” at a horse show. We won first place, and I will always remember that event as a pinnacle in family triumph and harmony.]

So, for me, a parent was extremely influential, but I very much made my own choice. So, yes, I believe my career story is my own.

But Pemberton cites the work of Marcia B. Baxter Magolda, who for her book Authoring a Life “interviewed 35 adults over a 20 year period, and found that facing a career crossroad was a significant feature of her interviewees.” Continues Pemberton:

At some point, individuals began to hear an inner voice which told them that their needs were different from what they had come to believe. That voice was often suppressed because it opened up fears of disapproval, but at some point the individual had to make a decision.

To become the author of our own lives and careers, Pemberton believes we need to create our own authentic career narratives. “Sit down and write your career story so far, she writes ” — not as a CV story, but in terms of the following questions:”

• Think of the role models you were presented with in childhood and early adulthood and how they influenced your decisions about work?
• Has there been a point when you were challenged by something in life that changed your perspective on your career?
• If you have passed over a career crossroad, which road did you take and why?
• What has resulted from the road you chose?
• If you are currently at a crossroad, what is the tension you are caught between?
• How much of what you are doing now is guided by your own inner voice?
• If you are on a journey towards developing that inner voice — then when is it at its strongest, and when does it get drowned out?
• In a world where careers are constantly changing in response to global, economic, social and technological shifts, creating self authorship will become ever more important. A starting point is to take time to reflect on how well your career narrative is working for you, in order to check if a different story needs to be written.
• What aspect of your career narrative do you feel you have been in control of ?
• If you have reached the crossroad, what signs were there that were reaching that point?
• If you are at the crossroads right now, what are you noticing about what you are responding to that gives you clues as to what your inner voice wants you to hear.
• If you have started to listen to that voice how do you keep it from being drowned out by the ‘old story?’
• If you have begun to trust that voice, what does it enable you to do differently?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

For the last decade, much of the most important work in applied storytelling, particularly organizational storytelling, has come out of a relatively small organization based in Washington, DC. Luminaries such as Steve Denning, Madelyn Blair, Seth Kahan, Paul Costello, Lynne Feingold, and others are members of this group, called Golden Fleece.

Denning has compiled a partial history of the group in a downloadable PDF; I learned some interesting things about the group’s origins from this document.

The group began in 2001 as DC Organizational Storytelling Group. In November of that year, Madelyn Blair led an Organizational Storytelling Group session on “Storytelling and Appreciative Inquiry” at the World Bank. The group created three “Future Stories,” including one entitled “The Good Ship Golden Fleece,” from which the name “Golden Fleece” emerged for the Organizational Storytelling Group (Denning includes these three stories in the document). Madelyn’s future story envisioned a bestselling book called In Search of the Golden Fleece: Storytelling for Organizational Transformation.

Denning notes that his documents covers only some of the events in the group’s history; for example, he reports on the Smithsonian Associates events in which he has played a lead role over the years but doesn’t cover in any depth the Saturday Golden Fleece Day that has traditionally followed the Friday Smithsonian event (usually in April) — at least not for the years I’ve attended. It’s fascinating to read the topics and speakers of Golden Fleece meetings over the years, and to relive my first Smithsonian event — my first in-person exposure to Denning, Annette Simmons, Michael Margolis, and Madelyn.

The document is terrific look in microcosm of the growth of organizational storytelling over the last decade. All hail and happy anniversary to the influential brain trust that is Golden Fleece.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I attended my first Toastmasters speech contest last Friday. I was there to cheer on one of our members, who, because of previous Toastmasters experience, is at a higher level in the Toastmasters hierarchy than most of us in our new club.

Toastmasters International runs a spring contest featuring prepared speeches (the “International Speech Contest”) and evaluations (in which contestants are judged on how well they evaluate a “target speech”). In the fall, the organization runs “Table Topics” (impromptu speeches on a previously unknown topic) and humorous speech contests. Competitors start at their local club level and work their way up through a series of geographically defined levels.

Our club representative won first place in his portion of the contest — although he had no competition; the other Toastmaster who was scheduled to compete in his group didn’t show up. However, his first-place finish means he’ll go on to compete April 1 in the next level — the Division Contest.

Only three people, in fact, competed in the speech portion of the contest — our rep for his group and two others for another group.

My happy observation was that all four speeches given during the contest (the three competitors, plus the target speech for evaluators) prominently featured stories.

Our club speaker told a story about how, after being told by his father that his family didn’t have enough money for him to play basketball, he got a paper route and raised the money himself (you can see the speech as he delivered at our club). A woman who spoke about everyday heroes told the story of a woman she’d encountered in the Peace Corps in Nepal who helped her community. A competitor speaking about the notion that animals and humans share morality told the story of how complete strangers in Mexico reached out to help his family when they were in trouble. The “target speech” for evaluators was almost entirely a story (dubbed a “sea story” by the target speaker) about an encounter on Puget Sound between a ferry and a much larger vessel.

I am convinced that stories were integral to the success of these speeches. I’m also thinking about other rhetorical devices, especially because an upcoming Toastmasters speech assignment deals with “how to say it.” Bill Wren, a writer-editor, and social-media enthusiast, wrote earlier this year about a very short (less than two minutes) video presentation that deals with storytelling and offers several such rhetorical devices.

The presentation is part of the TEDify effort by Maria Popova, which attempts “to capture [the] common tangents between TED’s incredibly diverse speakers. To connect the dots in order to make the bigger social and cultural points. And, above all, to help the voice of TED echo through ever more inspired minds.” (TED, of course, being a superb series of talks and performances captured on video and made available to spread ideas).

The Evolution of Storytelling (embedded below) is the third TEDify installment, of which Popova says: “exploring the evolution of storytelling — [is] something I feel TED embodies on multiple levels.”

OK, so getting back to the rhetorical devices … Wren notes that the video contains “pairs and sequences of threes.”

Further:

In fact, the opening sentence begins with a sequence of three that concludes with a pair:

“There is a revolution …

1) in the way that we think,

2) in the way that we share,

3) and in the way that we express

3-1) our stories,

3-2) our evolution.”

These pairs and sequences occur throughout the video. (“Our story, our poetry, our romanticism,” and “How to live, and how to die.”) These patterns create the rhythm of storytelling because telling a story isn’t just about the story; it’s about how it’s told.

You’ll notice something else in the video: repetition. “People have been leaving behind footprints, footprints that are moments of self-expression.” This is another very common device, a mnemonic that emphasizes something and helps the audience to remember.

I’m not sure I agree with Wren that the “patterns create the rhythm of storytelling” because I don’t think the presentation itself is a story, but I do believe they create the rhythm of good speech-making.

The video is a feast for the eyes even though the visual portion consists almost entirely of animated typography. The audio is perhaps the most remarkable part because Popova has put together the rhythmic — almost poetic — soundtrack from snippets of voices from TED Talks.

Stories and rhythmic, patterned speech devices are essential tools for engaging presentations.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Happy vernal equinox, and happy World Storytelling Day.

Let’s face it; the work that we practitioners of applied and organizational storytelling do would not be possible without the ancient tradition of oral storytelling. It is that tradition that we celebrate on World Storytelling Day (see also Wikipedia entry).

As I wrote on Thursday, Michael Margolis quickly hatched a nice way to celebrate the oral-storytelling tradition in the digital age — by inviting folks to film and submit video stories of up to three minutes and submit them to the site he has set up for the project

At this writing, 11 videos grace the site, plus one each that Michael and Annette Simmons created to introduce the project. They are clearly international in flavor, with folks of several nationalities and in global locales participating. One of my favorites, by my friend Cathryn Wellner, appears at the bottom of this post.

Each year has a theme; this year’s is “water.” This year’s Twitter hashtag is #WSD11

I thought about whether I have a water story. I have never wanted to live more than an hour’s drive to the ocean (living inland makes me claustrophobic), and for most of my life have achieved that goal. Now here I am a good six or seven hours drive to the ocean. But living no more than a mile from the Columbia River makes it OK because I know the Columbia empties into the Pacific. I also seek water for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing; a steaming hot bath is my favorite refuge.

But a story … yes, I do have one. When I was about 6, I was at a Sunday School picnic and was “swimming” in a lake. I was not a very accomplished swimmer at that point, and I suddenly found myself in water over my head and felt myself in danger of drowning. A Sunday School classmate name Nigel Bees was nearby. I don’t believe he actively tried to rescue me, but I grabbed onto him to keep myself from drowning. In my mind, he saved my life (without even trying). My cousins teased me for years about being saved by Nigel Bees. Nigel, where are you now? (yes, I did just Google him; looks like he’s still near my hometown in New Jersey). Should I write and thank him for saving my life?

World Storytelling Day is

a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

At the end of a post earlier this week on Forbes about some recent emergences of storytelling in business*, Susan Adams muses about storytelling in job search and career, citing David Couper, who has also written for A Storied Career’s parent site, Quint Careers:

The growing emphasis on storytelling has made me think of how frequently my career coach sources talk about the importance of laying out a compelling narrative, in the so-called elevator pitch, in a résumé, and in job interviews. “For me, it’s a fundamental part of the preparation for getting the job,” says Los Angeles career and executive coach David Couper, author of Outsiders on the Inside: How to Create a Winning Career … Even When You Don’t Fit In. One of Couper’s clients, a project manager at a large corporation, wanted to switch careers and work in advertising. In his spare time, he raced bicycles, and raised thousands of dollars for charitable causes by convincing donors to sponsor his races. He came up with a compelling story about his fundraising efforts, and used it to convince an ad agency to hire him. He’s now a vice president there.

I’m a little worried that folks reading that might think they need to have as grand a story as Couper’s client’s. Any accomplishment is fodder for stories in the job search. This Accomplishments Worksheet offers ideas for stories you can tell in your interviews, cover letters, and resume. But Couper’s client has the right idea about one thing — the stories you tell in the job search can come from virtually any area of your life — jobs, hobbies, sports, volunteer work, school, and more.

Meanwhile, over on the employer side, my friend Lou Hoffman followed up this week on a post from last year about how poorly written job postings/job descriptions are. Lou refers to the “homogenous dullness that permeates this type of writing.” I wish I could remember more details, but I recall a study from a few years back in which at least 65 percent of job postings were judged to be horribly written and unclear. (And, of course, they are unlikely to be found in the newspaper these days as in the image above, but it’s hard to depict a job posting online.)

Lou is aiming to change that situation in his own company. “It took a few months but we’re finally applying storytelling techniques to our own job listings,” he writes.

He then shares a newly released job posting his company is running. Here’s the first part of it:

Job Title: Senior Communications Consultant

What most accurately describes you, PR person or storyteller? If the latter, keep reading.

We’re retooling our consultancy to take a holistic approach to communication campaigns. Think earned media + owned media. Our programs increasingly blend traditional PR with thought leadership, digital properties, social media, SEO, etc. — all underlined with the type of storytelling that has relevance to the target audience as well as influencers.

Regardless of the assignment, clients come to us for a combination of brainpower and passion.

Naturally, this particular role calls for smarts, op-ed grade writing and a track record in triggering client reactions ranging from “Well done” to “I’m naming my first born after you.”

If more employers could be this specific — and storied — about what they want, they might not be inundated with applications from unqualified people.

*The emergences Adams mentions illustrate what an exciting time we’re in for storytelling: She lists Peter Guber’s Tell to Win, which is topping best-seller lists and has enjoyed publicity in vast numbers of (old and new) media outlets; the second edition of Steve Denning’s Leader’s Guide to Storytelling; and the work of Murray Nossel of Narativ — though interestingly, Adams doesn’t mention Nossel’s work in the job-search and career realms.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 5:

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

A: Too often when we prepare a story we strive for the approval of the highest being in the land, whoever that may be. We want to do our best for the story, it deserves no less. We hunger for recognition of our genius in fashioning a new story that will live long after we have passed on.

However, when we deliver it we do not get the reaction we expected. We get a reaction; just not what we thought it might be. That is because we are not well placed to be our own best judge. And our listeners do not share our experience of preparation. They react at what they see or hear. They react to our telling of the story, so we must accept that as their verdict. It is the challenge of the storyteller to have that reaction course as closely as possible to the intended result.

So, in telling the story, tell it to the one intimate listener who has not heard you before. It is a new story, a new listener, and a new journey for all.

Enjoy and give it your best. You have created a story and a telling.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 4:

[Editor’s note: Brendan was president of Lucan Toastmasters and guided a team that achieved The President’s Distinguished Club Award, a club’s highest honor. He won numerous speech contests with his own original material and evaluation contests in his time with Toastmasters, most of them story-based. I asked him about his preparation process, in part because I am in the early stages of my own Toastmaster’s experience.]

Q: With respect to both Toastmasters and your Telling Tales radio show, Can you also talk about the best way to prepare to tell stories, whether as part of a Toastmasters speech or otherwise? Is it best to memorize, speak off the cuff, or use minimal notes? And is your preparation different when you can be seen telling stories (such as in a speech) compared to when you can’t be seen (such as when you’re on the radio)?

A: How we prepare to tell a story depends on the way it is to be delivered. For live telling you must know the story so well you can dance with it. For radio, it is better to have it scripted so you can cleave more accurately to the allotted time. For a corporate speech or presentation or in Toastmasters some brief notes can serve as a comfort to the nervous or time-challenged speaker.

In any case, we need to maintain contact with our listener, eye contact in the flesh, or aural contact if we tell on a radio broadcast.

If the brief is to speak for seven minutes then it is useful to lay out the story on cards, the size of which depends on your own preference. You can read from them or hold them in reserve as comfort cards.

I use 6” by 4”, which corresponds more or less to a minute of my speaking time. Seven cards are sufficient. I print on just one side and number them consecutively.

I study each card until I decide on a keyword for that card. Once on my feet I have just seven consecutive words to remember to deliver that speech well.

You must not use notes when storytelling to a live audience. That is where your skill as a teller comes into its own. You live the story; you tell it with wonder as it unfolds before you.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The ever-enterprising Michael Margolis is organizing a crowdsourced project — a global experiment — for this Sunday’s (March 20) World Storytelling Day. He’s so enterprising, in fact, that he hatched the idea Tuesday and had a Web site up about it today.

The project is quite a cool idea because we applied-storytelling folks have always been a little lost on the day because it focuses on oral storytelling. (And, in my opinion, the official Web site for the event is not exactly a fountain of information.) But Michael has found a way to bring all kinds of storytelling folks together.

He has put together his own Tumblr site for the project. A description of the global experiment from the site and from an e-mail:

This site is a crowdsourced storytelling project that invites you to participate virtually. Record a video that shares a part of who you are, and embraces this year’s theme of WATER. Let’s show the world how technology can be a force that brings us closer together and helps us discover how interconnected we really are. This project celebrates the democratization of story: everybody is a storyteller.

You’ll find more about the project, guidelines for how to submit a video, an archive of submissions, and a submission page.

Below, project co-producer Annette Simmons talks about the important foundation oral storytelling provides for all story practitioners:

For every video story submitted, Get Storied will donate $1 to MercyCorps which provides aid to Japanese families affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 3:

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

A: Storytelling requires no props, no elaborate venue, no expensive equipment, no membership conditions or fees, no license regulations to comply with. No batteries are required. The guerrilla storyteller needs only his wit and imagination to practice his craft. He is free to follow his calling at anytime in any place.

A teller tells the story of her people as they come to her through an oral tradition of generations gone before, or she reflects her life and times as she observes it. She tells for those yet to be born.

Some tellers choose to draw from what was and what is to entertain an audience.

In times of economic uncertainty and challenge people will seek a touchstone. Stories provide reassurance. They tell us that this happened before and all was well for others, as it will be for us. In time. Live storytelling feeds the need of the teller for audience. In turn, it reassures the audience that while dark shadows lie beyond the flickering campfire there is a hero that will save the day, or at least frustrate the demon so that it goes away.

In a time of slight human contact storytelling takes us from the cave of our mind and shows there is more to life than ourselves alone and a flickering screen.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 2:

Q: You offer a writing course called “Write your way to work,” which is of great interest to me since I evangelize about using storytelling in the job search. Without giving away any of your secrets, can you give readers a brief preview of your teachings about “how to find and write your story to best effect using a proven system?”

A: Storytelling is the art of the parent soothing a child to sleep; it’s the storyteller keeping oral tradition alive; it’s the sermon with parables to make it memorable; it’s the business consultant putting a point across through story; it’s the professional speaker constructing a speech with a beginning middle and end. Something happens, there are complications, there is a resolution.

Many stories follow a pattern of: introduction; calm; proposition; frustration; nightmare; resolution and wrap. Seven key words, seven phases all leading logically into one another making the story easier to understand and remember.

If you have been though interview and presentation in business or job-seeking, then you have experience from which to draw. Open a personal story file to correspond to the questions asked of you in the past. Keep it up to date.

Next time, you will have your story ready to tell as part of your presentation. Keep it tight: a sentence or so on each portion is sufficient; but have further detail in reserve for supplementary questions. You can use a template of “In the past this was the way; in the present this is the situation, in the future I expect it to be this way.”

In business, the story shows there was a setting, a situation, and a solution. Begin, develop, close. Make sure you were the hero of the story. You faced a challenge and you persevered.

Hired.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I got interested in Brendan Nolan both because he teaches a course called “Write Your Way to Work,” which relates to my interest in using story in the job search, and because of his involvement in Toastmasters. I’m delighted to bring you this Q&A with him, which will run over the next five days.

Bio: Brendan Nolan is a sought after speaker, writer and storyteller who draws on more than 25 years experience of journalism and practical business knowledge to train and entertain business people who know their business well but who may not have the communication skills to say what they mean at all times. He shows people in the corporate world and in local communities, no less, how to tell their own story well.

He twice delivered his bespoke* two-part workshops on “Telling Your Story” as part of InnovationDublin 2010.

Brendan is a member of Storytellers of Ireland; communications officer of the Irish Writers Union and a board member of the Irish Writers Centre. While President of Lucan Toastmasters Brendan guided a team that achieved The President’s Distinguished Club Award, a club’s highest honour. He won numerous speech contests with his own original material and evaluation contests in his time with Toastmasters, most of them story-based.

Nolan produces and presents Telling Tales a popular community radio show each week where writers and storytellers are interviewed on-air by Brendan and where he tells a new story each time in his own inimitable style. More than 80 original stories have been broadcast, so far. Some 25 stories may be heard online at any time.

As a book writer Brendan is author of Phoenix Park a History and Guidebook, The Irish Companion, and Barking Mad: Tales of Liars, Lovers, Loonies and Layabouts.

As a news journalist he wrote more than a million words in five years, all published and read across national, local and niche publications.

See his storytelling website.

*”Bespoke” is a term used much more in England than in the US that essentially means “customized.”

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 1:

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

A. A teller will easily find an audience in Ireland to listen to a well-told story. The unspoken condition being that the story be interesting and have a twist or reveal; else the listeners will wander away out of politeness to an incompetent.

My father, Jimmy, told stories in an informal way and as his son at his side, I heard them often. A teller follows the story, always. My father told as to the audience before him.

On the way home, I would point out that this was not quite what he had told before. He would say he had forgotten and ask me to tell him how it should have gone. Such was his skill that I only recently came to realise he was teaching me to tell as we travelled along.

I sometimes find myself telling stories from his mouth even now. All hail Da.

In my own adulthood I worked as a news journalist for many years and during those interminable waiting periods with other reporters between news stories would listen and tell with relish those stories that never made it to print. Many of them inevitably were tall stories with the journalist as hero. Indeed.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Yes, I recognize the irony of writing about beer and wine stories the day after I wrote about sobriety stories.

Beer and wine companies are using storytelling in their marketing.

In fact, Matt Kramer writes in Wine Spectator that narrative is the most important word in wine today. “This business of narrative is vital, and never more so than today,” Kramer writes. “In terms of wine, the reason is as simple as it is stark: The wine world hasn’t merely changed, it’s exploded.” Further:

Bottom line: It’s no longer enough to say that your wine comes from “somewhere.” You’ve got to say more, and better. The idea of “narrative” is not simply a story but, rather, a story that sticks, that has resonance and allows its recipient to see the world differently. Think of French Champagne as an example. You see the world differently through a glass of Champagne. Somehow it, well, sparkles. It’s not the wine; it’s the narrative.

Bordeaux, he says, isn’t doing well “because of an inability to convey a compelling narrative that resonates with a modern audience.” On the flip side, though, burgundy “enraptures people, as its narrative is far more than just Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.” Wines from Argentina, Australia, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Chile, and New Zealand will have to acquire narratives, Kramer asserts.

You’ll also find lots of interesting comments to Kramer’s post.

Meanwhile Scott Nicholson extols the value of storytelling in beer marketing. Writing that storytelling “allows an audience to see beyond what is being sold, or the service being provided, and creates an opportunity to reach a consumer on a deeper level while adding personality and character to the brand, big or small,” Nicholson cites several beer brands as great examples of how storytelling can be used in brand building.

The most literal example is Just Beer’s “Case of the IPA” series [pictured], Nicholson writes. “To capture the attention of their consumers, the brewery teamed up with an author to create a detective/mystery story. The twelve chapter fictional piece is printed right on the labels of the 22 oz bottles, one chapter per beer.” Nicholson goes on:

This is an innovative way to narrate a story around a product, one that the reader (drinker) can delve deeper into as they go through the case of beer while trying to solve the mystery. Enjoying the beer while reading the story is a unique experience you cant get anywhere else.

The other examples Nicholson cites are true (more or less) origin stories about the people and places behind the brands.

I offer a (non-alcoholic) toast to beer and wine stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Glamour magazine runs an annual essay contest, and the winning entry is always a compelling story. This year’s story, “I Drank and Drank, and Then One Day I Stopped,” by Adrienne Edenburn-MacQueen (pictured) reminded me very much of my own, which I told around the first of this year. I’ve never had much difficulty telling my story of getting sober cold-turkey, but I have rarely told the stories of the wretched, shameful things I did as a drunk. Every alcoholic has a mental list of shameful, drunken acts; every list may be different, but they’re all equally shameful. Edenburn-MacQueen writes about hers, shamefully but not specifically:

Among my circle of friends and coworkers, I became well-known as a hopeless drunk. Even on weeknights, when everyone else was only mildly intoxicated, I had to be carried out of the room. And I suffered the shame of being the worst drunk-girl stereotype. When a young man drinks himself into a stupor every night and then awakes oblivious the next day, he is considered, at worst, a douche bag. At best, he posts a photo on the Internet of himself passed out with a Sharpie mustache and is the life of the party and everyone’s best bud. When a young woman parties too hard, she’s a mental case.

Oh, I can relate. I can also relate, oh so painfully, to blackouts and remorse:

Blacking out occurred at some point every night. I would wake up every morning and do damage control. If I had properly removed my contacts, I reasoned, then I must have been OK. I’d look out the window, see my car and feel relief; never mind the fact that I didn’t remember driving it or parking it on the front lawn. Checking my bank account was next. The nights that I had used just my debit card were acceptable, but I knew that if I’d used an ATM, large amounts of cash in the middle of the night could have been for only one thing. It’s hard to look back now and realize how easily I could have been hurt or taken advantage of during a drug deal. I was never one to say no to anything, and the only thing that could stop me was the dreaded “insufficient funds.”

The last step was finding my phone. Some days it was fine, with no new contacts I couldn’t remember adding or text messages from people asking whether I was alive. Most days, however, ranged from mild embarrassment to panic as I would piece together events of the previous night. I’d find out from friends that I had started a brawl, called 911 looking for my purse, or gotten in a brutal fight with my boyfriend while singing karaoke because I decided halfway through the duet that I should get to sing both Sonny’s and Cher’s lines. I’d wake up surrounded by things I’d stolen, from street signs and traffic cones to framed pictures from whoever’s house I’d been to the evening before. And my growing shame would send me hunting for the cans of beer I knew my drunk self had hidden the night before for just this moment. Only when I was properly buzzed could I find any of it funny.

Both my and Edenburn-MacQueen’s drinking lives took place in our late teens and 20s; mine spanned ages 18 to 28, while hers from age 10 to 21, but her “daily abuse,” as she calls it, occurred the last four years before she quit. I envy someone who did not squander most of her 20s as a drunk.

The author hints at ways she has rationalized her drinking, but instead of spelling them out, she takes responsibility: “As easy as it would be to lay out my history, pointing to specific events as the reasons for my collapse, as though life were a giant game of Jenga, I won’t do it. Every drink — from my first, at age 10, to the start of my daily abuse at 17, to my last warm beer at 21 — was a choice.” Of course, mine were, too, but at the time, I voiced my favorite rationalization to people at parties: “Would it make any difference if I told you my father was an alcoholic?”

The fact that Edenburn-MacQueen’s story is so similar to my own is probably the least significant reason it is so compelling. It is well written. And if one young person sees himself or herself in it and quits abusive drinking, the author’s words will have done a world of good.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, alcoholics’ telling of their stories does remarkable things for both storyteller and listener.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I’m in the mood to bring you a list of recently discovered prompts, tools, and platforms instead of merely listing them on the inside page dedicated to that topic:

• Saikat Basu on MakeUseOf.com shares 7 Collaborative Storytelling Websites to Weave Your Own Digital Stories, some of which I’ve listed/written about before and some that are new to me. I’ve written previously about One Million Monkeys Typing. Folding Story, a game in which players write one line of a story, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person, is listed in the inside page, but it holds a special place in my heart because my cousins and sisters and I played this game as kids. We played three variations: In “Boy-Girl-Where-They-Met,” everyone would write a boy’s name in the first round, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person. The same process was repeated for the girl’s name, where they met, what the boy said, what the girl said, and the consequences. This variation was by far our favorite and is really the only variation that results in a story. In “Love Letters,” the first round is the salutation, the next the body of the letter, and the final round, the closing. In “Funny Pictures,” round one is the head; round two the body; and round three, the legs and feet. Other sites in Basu’s article are Ficly, where stories are limited to 1,024 characters and anyone can pick up a narrative thread and weave a prequel or sequel; Fabulate, a crowdsourced book with submissions limited to 500 words; WikiStory, a site for writing short stories collaboratively or alone and sharing it with and receiving feedback from others; StoryMash, a creative writing community for authors, amateur writers, readers and anyone interested in collaborative fiction and collaborative creative writing; and Novlet, a Web application designed to support collaborative writing of non-linear stories.
• The Brainstormer, pictured above right, is a cool, pinwheel-shaped Web app (and also iPhone app) in which you click on a button called “Random” and get a random set of words phrases consisting of an object or person, an adjective, and a story structure. Great as a story prompt.
• broadcastr, in beta at this writing, is a social-media platform for location-based stories. It enables the recording, indexing, listening, and sharing of audio content.

• Dipity is a free digital-timeline website. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines (such as the one pictured) that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.
• The Story Quest/Challenge is a story activity offered by Heidi Dahlsveen on the blog Historiefortelling (which, I believe is Norwegian). The idea is to create a short story based on an image and a specific story structure. The blog post provides both instructions and a sample story.

• I’ve written many times about the Six-Word Memoirs published on SMITH Magazine (story purists dispute that these are stories); the Six-Word Memoirs Card Game is coming this fall. SMITH Mag founder Larry Smith does say much in his post about what the game will be like, but he tells an interesting story of choosing a gamemaker.
• Guts on the Table is a story exercise designed by Puanani Burgess for community-building and the conflict-transformation process. Participants sit in a circle and are given these three instructions:
  1. Tell the story of your names, all of your names.
  2. Tell the story of your community, however, each participant defines “community.”
  3. Tell the story of your gift(s)
  Burgess says she’s participated in more than 1,008 circles. This exercise sounds wonderful to me; I encourage you to read Burgess’s post to grasp the full scope of the exercise.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

No more than a week after my brother-in-law Gary died after his six-year decline from early-onset dementia (and I wrote about his son Sam creating a Web site for loved ones of dementia sufferers), I read a similarly heartbreaking dementia story in O Magazine.

I found notable similarities in the story of dementia sufferer Lynn Forbish (pictured) and my brother-in-law. Forbish was a little older than the 57-year-old Gary — early 60s at the onset of her illness. She was diagnosed with the same form of dementia, called Lewy body, that Gary was thought to have.

I am not sure how much awareness Gary had of what was happening to him. But Forbish knew. “I have dementia, in case you didn’t know!”, she announced to the author of the O story, Beth Macy. In my view, if there is anything worse than losing your cognitive abilities, it’s knowing you are losing your cognition and knowing you can do nothing to stop the loss. In fact, it’s a fate I fear more than heart disease or even cancer.

I am one of those people who is inordinately afraid of death. Forbish found one bright spot in her condition — if your mind goes, you no longer worry about dying. There is that.

Here’s a small bit of Forbish’s story:

Lynn is in the early stages of Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease that shares traits with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. She didn’t realize how confused she’d become until our newspaper, The Roanoke Times, switched computer systems the year prior and she kept botching the most basic functions. I later learn that a coworker once summoned the elevator to our third-floor newsroom, only to find Lynn standing inside, confused. She hadn’t known which button to push.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

If you want to see great personal bio stories online, look at the Web sites of authors. I’m sure that’s not universally true; I’m an author (of nonfiction), and I don’t have a great personal bio story. So certainly not every author, and not even every novelist, has a terrific bio story, but I’ve been charmed recently to find two that do.

The first, Susan Isaacs, I’ve already written about.

The second is Stephanie Kallos (pictured), whose two novels, Broken for You and Sing Them Home, have enthralled me recently. Kallos is a superb writer who has a way of drawing the reader into worlds and families we don’t want to leave. Populated with flawed (“broken”) characters, they are worlds in which the dead are as present as the living. Bonus, the author lives in my adopted state of Washington (Seattle), where Broken for You is set.

On her site, Kallos actually offers three enchanting variations on her bio story:

• Her author bio is somewhat standard but contains whimsical elements, like these, that reveal her personality (by the way, I am salivating for that third novel):

Stephanie lives with her family in a north Seattle neighborhood which has no sidewalks and looks very much like a small town. Sightings of men in kilts are common. Happily distracting her from writing are numerous unfinished knitting projects, a doe-eyed Labrador named Mr. Nick Tumnus, a pair of extremely vocal tabby cats, two adolescent boys who play brass instruments, and an eighty-voice Intergenerational Choir of Unitarians which she serves as Conductor. She is currently working on her third novel.

• Her A Selected (And Mostly True) Work History is a lengthy bulleted list written in present tense, second person, that offers insight about how bits of her life may have inspired her fiction (theater, medicine, art history). A snippet:

1998. Decide it’s time to acquire a real skill. What if you husband dies? How will you support your children? Not by writing, clearly…Enroll in the Medical Transcription Program at the local community college. Discover that you still have a brain. Become enthralled with medical language. Hope your one and four-year-old children are taking note of your good study habits.

• Who would not be intrigued by a link labeled Directions To Where I Live? Really? Does the author want people to come visit her? Only figuratively. Written in the imperative mood, this page is another variation on a bio, written loosely as a set of directions. Sample:

Move to the suburbs. Get a TV in your room. Get a diary. Get quiet. Wonder if you’re crazy. Watch TV in your room while you make drawings of the Breck girls from Seventeen. Cry a lot. Slam doors. Go for walks. Wish for trees. Dream about mountains and frozen lakes. Get used to boys who are not your friends calling you Dog and Fatty. Get used to your parents offering you a nose job. Get braces. Get good grades. Spend hours practicing. Baby-sit for a retarded girl and her genius brother.

Providing another helpful resource on the personal bio story is Michael Margolis in a recent blog post. Michael gives before-and-after examples of three bio stories. I’ve provided links to two of the “after” versions previously (Hugh Weber and Mandy Leith), but it’s instructive to see the “before” version. The third case study, Eric Frazier’s, is one I haven’t posted before; however, Michael hasn’t yet posted Eric’s before-and-after versions because of a formatting snafu. In all three cases, Michael’s instruction guided the transition from before to after.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

It’s Women’s History Month, and today is International Women’s Day.

EMILY’s List, the organization that raises money for female political candidates, is collecting stories this month:

Women’s History Month is a time for us to celebrate the great contributions women have made to our society. EMILY’s List wants to honor those who have touched our lives, whether or not their names are famous. That’s why we’re asking you for a personal story — your own women’s history.

It is far too often that the stories of women go untold — our narrative is left out of history books, or our heroism goes unnoticed. We want to change that. Throughout the month, we’ll be collecting inspirational stories of the women who have paved the way or who walk among us.

You can find the form for submitting your story here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Academy Awards weekend was The King’s Speech weekend for me. I read the book, saw the movie, and watched as Hollywood named the film Best Picture at the Oscars.

Interestingly, the movie was not based on the book, the film already having started production when Mark Logue, grandson of King George VI’s speech therapist Lionel Logue, decided to write a book based on his grandfather’s diaries.

While the book offers much more background on Logue than does the film, it offers surprisingly little in the way of explanation of Logue’s techniques, other than to say they had to do with breathing. Logue also believed that stammering was not related to psychological trauma, a fact that the film seems to contradict in its depiction of the Logue character probing the royal’s past (this was when he was a duke, before ascending the throne upon his brother’s abdication).

In both book and film, Logue scrutinizes the scripts for the king’s speeches (virtually is nothing is said about who wrote the speeches, although the book mentions Winston Churchill’s authorship of one of the king’s wartime speeches) to help King George break the text into short phrases and to come up with substitutions for words that were difficult for the monarch to say. The king practiced speeches over and over in Logue’s presence.

The convergence of my King’s Speech consumption roughly coincided with delivering my third Toastmasters speech, so I was thinking a great deal about speech preparation. I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing that learning a speech and preparing to deliver it is similar to the preparations am oral-performance storyteller undergoes to tell a story well. Perhaps one of my oral-performance storyteller friends can confirm.

With my third Toastmaster’s speech, I felt I had fine-tuned my speech-preparation process (I did win Best Speaker this time). I’ve described that process in the extended entry.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Park, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 14 and 15:

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

A: For the past 15 years, our agency has worked with Forever Living Products, the world’s largest grower, manufacturer and distributor of aloe-vera-based health and beauty products. Every year we creative direct, write and produce the company’s international Super Rally, when more than 3,000 of their top distributors from 125+ countries gather in what is the United Nations of network marketing.

As you might imagine, we try to reinvent the product launch portion of their event every year to present something unique, surprising, and motivating to their top sales people. This past year we essentially wrote a two-hour play that depicted the growth of a distributor as we launched several projects throughout the three acts of the production. In addition to launching new product, the client also wanted to provide snippets of business training and motivation, while also recognizing some of their top-performing distributors. To add to the challenge, we needed to keep our audience riveted to the action while having the dialogue simultaneously translated and broadcast to the crowd in 10 languages. Verbal jokes never work given the timing delay of the translators. So our story needed to be told with great attention to the visuals and physical action on stage, while also writing a compelling script.

Our heroine was a mother of three stuck in a dead-end job, who decided to venture out into network marketing. Her antagonists included a condescending boss, nay-saying husband, skeptical mother, slimy MLM huckster with a shady product, self-doubt, and a host of obstacles that she, like every real-life distributor, must overcome to be successful. We applied the 15 beats to great storytelling and paid close attention to the setting and timing of each act. We took her to artificial highs found in her early success, only to lead her into a great low when her distributorship began to deteriorate for her false sense of achievement.

We tested her morals and work ethic as she rebuilt her company, all the while inserting training and motivational side stories into the play to amplify her success and pains, while demonstrating to the crowd ways to avoid these pitfalls and grow a successful business.

The production ended with our protagonist overcoming all odds and reaching the highest sales level and being pinned on stage by FLP’s CEO, just as she would at the Super Rally. For the first time in 15 years, distributors who had traveled for days to get to the Denver convention, stayed riveted in their seats. The outcome of the story was obvious. Everyone knew what was going to happen. And when we delivered her to the exalted “Diamond” level of the FLP marketing plan, and she was recognized on stage, the crowd went wild. We heard time and again that it was the best product launch we had ever produced. I give all of the credit to the transformative power of story, coupled with a great understanding of the crowd’s worldview of the subject matter, and our intense focus on delivering a story with universal themes that would resonate internationally.

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

A: Every great story begins with you, the writer. If you don’t take risks, go “All in,” meet new people, explore your uncomfortable zones often, and have the courage to create lots of inciting incidents in your life that propel you into action, then you don’t have what it takes to tell a great story. Live adventurously and colorfully, and your words will leap off the page and make a difference on your readers’ lives. Make your life an epic.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Park, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 12 and 13:

Q: Which story-rich project that your agency completed for a client are you most proud of and why?

A: We have a number of story-rich projects that we’re proud of. One of the first, and most successful, is the campaign we created for Goodwill of Central Arizona. We addressed head on the embarrassment some women-of-means experience when they shop for treasures at Goodwill.

Our first spot showed two lady friends running into each other at a local Goodwill. The one who had just finished shopping pretended that she was simply donating and placed her recently purchased treasures in the donations bin. The second lady, who was just entering the store, said she was just dropping off donations. When they parted ways, each secretly went back; the first to grab her purchases out of the donations bin, and the second to grab a shopping cart.

The story, although feared by the client for making fun of its customers, actually touched-off a groundswell of conversation about Goodwill, and their sales nearly double from $17 million to $30 million that year. You can hear all about it from our client here.

Other gripping stories include our branding of “Sustainable Healthcare” for a 30-year-old community health services provider, “Recycled Water” for Global Water Resources,” “The Sidewalk Fashion Show” we created for MadCap Theaters, and our “Buy Local” campaign we created for Arizona’s advertising community.

Q: It was through you that I became familiar with the work of Donald Miller. You wrote more than one blog post about his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and also attended his workshop. How has your thinking about Miller’s work evolved since the workshop?

A: I have tried to adopt every material aspect of storytelling I’ve learned through the books I’ve read and apply them to my life and those around me. It never occurred to me until I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years that story can help us set personal goals while providing the structure to the operations of our businesses and causes.

Story is not just about the metaphorical or metaphysical. It’s about striving to be part of something bigger than your self. That takes guts. Guts are a prerequisite to initiating an inciting incident. This catalyst launches the journeys that propel our lives forward. Every conceivable internal and external force is thrown into our path to thwart or growth and the conquest of our mission. It is not until we overcome these obstacles that we learn the new, stronger, and more accountable individual within us.

What makes a great story also makes a great life. From my Storyline post:

Six ways story parallels life:

If you haven’t experienced something hard, you don’t have what it takes to be a hero.

“Setting” is huge. Where you do what you do matters a lot. Make it meaningful and memorable.

In story, as in life, “conflict” gives value to ambition. It’s good. It’s essential. The beauty of the story is when it gets tough.

If you’re avoiding conflict, you’re avoiding creating a great story.

What is the single climactic scene you’re gunning for in your story?

The impact and legacy of our story is completely up to the author: You and me

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Park, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 9, 10, and 11:

Q: If you could identify a person (such as a celebrity) or organization who desperately needs to tell a better story, who or what would it be?

A: British Petroleum. They are so backwards on their forthrightness, and so Luddite-like in their use of new media, that they have inadvertently encouraged the storytellers and civilian journalists to frame stories for and about them. Check out this Fast Company article for greater insight.

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

A: Just about any story coming out of the mouths of politicians and the slanted coverage found in the news media repels me every day. It is near impossible to decipher what’s accurate and what is not in most things you see and read. I’m hoping that the transparency inherent in social media, the authenticity it fosters, and the power it provides to the common citizen to rally people around the truth, is what will help bring civility and honesty back to our discourse.

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

A: I’ve only scratched the surface of storytelling. I was practicing the art without really knowing it, innately understanding its power without understanding why it worked. I first truly appreciated the structure of story when I studied music composition and theory. Each piece tells it’s own story and must ebb and flow to keep the listener engaged. For example, the Sonata-allegro form was created with the early classics. Scholars say it has stood the test of time because of its three-part, or three-act, structure. The theme is presented in the exposition, contrasted and elaborated upon in the development, and resolved in the recapitulation, with a series of scenes and interludes to create and embellish the characters within the composition.

Story is found in all things of substance.

Like the 15 beats of story in Save the Cat, we are creating a similar proven methodology that marketers can use for everything from developing better brand strategy, to creating more powerful print and broadcast advertising, to launching more ingenious user-centered websites, to making word-of-mouth marketing campaigns more viral.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Editor’s note: The presentation that I refer to in the first question below blew me away. It’s a fabulous story (embedded below), which you can find on SlideShare. The slideshow both illustrates how to create great slides and demonstrates the limitations of a superb slideshow without narration. The key in this case is to read the Speaker’s Notes as you go through the presentation, which you can actually do only by viewing it on SlideShare rather than the embedded version below.

I also asked Park if the “single-page story platform” he handed out at the presentation was the same terrific worksheet I wrote about in December 2010. He confirmed that it was, noting: “The single-page storytelling worksheet is the same one we use with our clients. I have found that it can be universally applied to any topic, be it advertising, a job search, to help focus a book’s direction, personal goals, you name it.”

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 7 and 8:

Q: Last November, you delivered a rather remarkable presentation to the National Ad2 Mid-year Retreat in Phoenix that consisted mostly of a story. What kind of response did you get to the presentation?

A: How did it go over? I’m not sure. I think the crowd was expecting a typical presentation on how to use social media in marketing from a so-called social media “expert.” I threw them a curve ball. “Before worrying about social media, get your story straight,” I implored. And then I tried to demonstrate the impact of great storytelling through the presentation you referenced above. I think a third of the crowd was really engaged, a third was wondering where I was going with this storytelling concept, and a third checked out wanting more typical advertising content. There is a lot of opportunity for storytelling growth in our industry.

A: There are lots of accurate and inaccurate stories being told about green marketing. I think one of the biggest fallacies is that you have to be on the fringes, the Birckenstock generation, to make a difference. Story in green marketing is particularly helpful to engage the masses in sustainability issues. After all, it is within the greatest volume of the bell curve where incremental change has the most significant impact on sustaining our lives and this planet.

This is the area where great storytelling really works well, as seen in my previous case study of SunChips [See also Part 2 of this Q&A]. Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory,” Patagonia’s “Shed,” and Goodwill’s “Donate Campaign,” are wonderful examples of how the format of story can frame operations, activation and communication; how it can be uniquely applied to igniting the growth of the people, products, companies and causes that dare to make the world better.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 5 and 6:

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: When was the last time you heard a really funny joke? When was the last time you took the time to practice and tell a terrific yarn at a party? The Internet is full of them, but like the world economy, our storytelling talents have been in recession.

As the noise of advertising, media, and politics has increased over the past 50 years, our attention spans, and therefore our message delivery, has grown dramatically shorter. We have become experts at “low-resolution” communications: The sound bite, 30-second commercial, PowerPoint slides, Twitter’s 140-character character, thumbs-up liking, speed dating, and texts that replace whole words with single letters. The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of burping information like bullets out of a Thompson machine gun, that people are beginning to realize something is missing.

Storytelling is making a resurgence because the social animal in all humans craves context, depth and content in our interaction. A story that involves us as the protagonists, or at least presents a hero we can identify with, that has to overcome great odds to achieve their desires, absolutely parallels the quests in each of our lives. It is an elemental depiction of our most basic instincts and fight for survival.

When you see a cave painting created by the ancients of a person on horseback following a large beast with a spear in its side, what story are they telling? Why would they take the time to build the fire, burn the charcoal, and memorialize their victory on a dark and damp cave wall? Because story, no matter how it is told, is essential to bringing meaning and expression to life.

We have all been in such a hurry to be heard that the dots and dashes in our high tech telegraph communication are losing resonance. We communicate in binary form like the computers we type on. I believe the pendulum is swinging back to what people are starting to long for again: Slowing down and being part of a greater story.

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: As a marketer, not embracing social media is akin to being an early newspaperman and discounting the advent of radio and TV. The only difference is that social media is being adopted fifty times faster than broadcast ever was. I write my Sustainable Storytelling blog focused on green marketing at ParkHowell.com. You’ll find me @ParkHowell on Twitter, on Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, and Vimeo. I’ve created a Ning network for the niche of water conservation professionals wanting to learn more about using social media for their causes. And I’ve been an active guest writer and interview subject on several blogs and online magazines. We also have a company blog, Facebook and Twitter account that I dabble in, as well as provide strategy and content for our Water — Use It Wisely social media network.

The social media “experts” are all about starting the conversation, but in reality there is little conversation going on. There are quick check-ins, status updates, the aforementioned “like” button, and chatter, but there is not an overwhelming amount of substantial conversation taking place. Therefore, although these channels offer their own unique merits for storytelling, too few of us take the time to actually learn how to craft and tell compelling stories.

The best use of Twitter for storytelling is the now famous and soon-to-be TV show, “Shit My Dad Says.” These 140-character quips are so beautifully crafted and insightful in an r-rated sort of way, that you can easily imagine the story behind every utterance. Other than that, Twitter is a “Hey you, what’s up, this is what I’m doing,” low-resolution channel.

Blogs, of course, are the primary forum for storytelling. But even they have been dumbed-down by the “experts” coaching writers to keep it short, write in bullets, and give them lists. “No one wants to take the time to read your stuff,” they implore. These “social media best practices” are probably because we need to relearn our innate ability to tell a great story, then have the guts to be authentic and tell it like it is.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Park Howell, Questions 3 and 4:

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

A: Although I’ve been in the communications business since I was 18, I never realized how important story is to my craft until recently. Our son just graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film and a minor in business. He and I would have long talks about the lectures in his classes and what makes a great film. I was so intrigued by the proven story format that screenwriters use, that I began studying it.

Save the Cat is my favorite book on the subject of screenwriting. Blake Snyder outlines the 15 basic beats found in the three acts of most successful movies. The elements of setting, character arc, inciting incident, timing, etc., are not new. He points to the exact same structure found in the earliest Greek tales. He wrote a follow-up book called Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, which spells out the 15 beats in famous movies in 12 different genres. It’s fun to read his play-by-play as you watch the picture. You gain a terrific insight into the tricks of the trade of telling a great tale and how important timing and pace is to every story.

I read Steven Pressfield’s and Donald Miller’s blogs for different insights into story. Pressfield approaches it from an author/journalist/screenwriter point of view, while Miller, an accomplished author, overlays story into real life. This is the theme of his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Story mirroring life was also the theme for Miller’s inaugural Storyline Conference that I attended last October in Portland, OR. The two-day event was a remarkable study in how story profoundly impacts our lives, and how we can choose to live a snoozer or an epic. My favorite sentiment from the conference is: “If you haven’t been through something tough, you don’t have what it takes to be a hero.”

I’ve also studied playwrite David Mamet’s, Three Uses of a Knife, on the nature and purpose of drama, Seth Godin’s, All Marketers Tell Stories, and Robert McKee’s bible on screenwriting called, Story, substance, structure, style, and principles of screenwriting.

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?) What definition do you espouse?

A: Working in the framework of story is the most important foundation for everything we do in the advertising and marketing business. It starts with our mission: To ignite the growth of people, products, companies and causes that dare to make the world better.

The heroes in every one of our endeavors are the people, or product, or company, or cause that hires us. Their quest is to make their customers’ lives better while positively impacting the world around them. The word “dare” reflects the antagonistic challenges our protagonists have chosen to battle to achieve something great. We are the sidekick, love story, or sage to the protagonist, and our singular mission is to ignite their growth, ensure survival and make them thrive by helping them overcome their obstacles

That’s the story framework found in our business relationships. Now overlay that exact same framework involving our clients’ customers as the sidekick or love story, and craft and tell a compelling story from their worldview as to how together with our client their worlds are mutually better.

What do people fear? Some of the most basic fears are those of physical survival, health and wellbeing, humiliation, and being disconnected from your community. If you can tell a compelling story as to how the person, product, company or cause can make a significant and very real impact in any one of these areas, and all it takes is for the customer to participate in the story by engaging in the offering, and then deliver on that promise, you can’t lose. That is the power of story and how it is the building block for the gestalt of a client’s brand.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Park Howell, Question 2:

Q: You use the term “sustainable storytelling.” How do you define the term, and what’s your favorite example of sustainable storytelling?

A: I started my blog with the title, “A Brighter Shade of Green Marketing.” However, about six months into writing it, I realized that green marketing was too limiting. Being planet-friendly has a lot more dimensions to it than just being green.

“Sustainable Storytelling” to me is about taking green business practices to a higher place beyond just the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits. I prefer to add process and peril to those three “P’s,” which truly leads to sustainability. Most of this doctrine has come to me from Adam Werbach’s book, Strategy for Sustainability, and Derrick Main’s work with GreenNurture.

All of this is featured in an article I wrote for the February issue of O’Dwyer’s P.R. magazine about the state of green marketing from a communicator’s point-of-view:

Being “Green” is not a sustainable brand differentiator

Park Howell, President, Park&Co, a Phoenix-based sustainable marketing firm

It used to be cool to smoke. It was a personal statement: a brand differentiator.

People didn’t think twice about polluting their bodies by puffing on tumor-causing cigarettes. Still today, the stench permeates smoker’s clothes, cars and homes. Fingernails turn brown, lips crack, healthy skin becomes ashen, and lungs heave with the slightest exertion.

The act of smoking is so insidious, it even risks loved ones through disease caused by second hand smoke.

The filthy habit that once separated the elite from the middle class has become stigmatized in our society, primarily due to massive education about its harmful effects through campaigns like The Truth.

“Tobacco companies’ products kill nearly 37,000 people every month. That’s more lives thrown away than there are public garbage cans in New York city.”

Like nonsmokers, with the benefit of education, hindsight and self-preservation, more and more companies are making themselves and their communities healthier through green practices. They have realized that it’s not sustainable to keep polluting our waterways, ravaging natural resources, and producing products harmful to the world.

A perfect storm of external forces, including the global recession, an upswing in corporate social responsibility initiatives, supply chain process improvement, and a crescendo of voices in environmental education have helped satiate toxic business practices and promote more sustainable organizational behaviors. In fact, they have become key to survival.

Companies are now trumpeting their newfound green exploits like jittery chain smokers that are resolutely kicking the habit. The whole world seems to be in one big Kumbaya for green. Which is a good thing. It’s just no longer a differentiator.

One of the first areas marketing departments started jumping on the green bandwagon was by sprouting leaves on logos. Logo design is about capturing the iconic brand essence of a person, product, company or cause. This may be the first time in the history of advertising that marketers are singularly focused on a simple act of being responsible as a brand, and not the company’s collective character. “Green this” and “Eco that” have become the calling cards of corporations so numerous that they all sound the same. Just explore any blog about green logos, or how to create them, and ask yourself if green isn’t the new color for vanilla.

Communication professionals are missing the big picture. Being “green” is only one element of being sustainable. Even your customers know that. In the “State of Green Business 2010” report, Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com states:

“Consumers want products that aren’t just greener, but better — that offer some kind of personal benefit, whether they’re cheaper to buy or own, have enhanced features or higher performance, are more convenient, less wasteful, healthier for their families, or simply cool.”

Is your green marketing approachable, believable and doable?

A great measure of your approach to sustainability and how it is reflected in your green marketing is whether your mission and message are approachable, believable and doable. One of the world’s largest snack-food manufacturers, Frito-Lay, has done a remarkable job of marrying its SunChips brand to sustainability

SunChips is a whole-grain snack that was launched in 1991, and has experienced phenomenal growth (about 20% per year). Earlier this decade Frito-Lay recognized the growing intersection among its consumers’ concerns for their health and the health of the planet.

SunChips marketers know that consumers want a tangible, functional benefit (the healthy food snack) with a green benefit. So sustainability became core to their business strategy. Their efforts started in 2007 and they knew they couldn’t do it overnight. They managed expectations and curbed any whiff of greenwashing by branding this initiative, “One small step at a time.” Their efforts include:

Purchasing renewable energy credits to offset its energy needs

Using solar power at its Modesto plant

Reducing the environmental impact of its packaging by introducing a fully biodegradable chip bag in 2010

Supporting sustainability initiatives, such as helping to rebuild National Geographic, then invited customers to come up with the best Earth-saving idea. These ideas were collected on the website, The Green Effect, and each of the five winners received $20,000 to put their idea into action.

Noisy bag aside, SunChips is a remarkable example of all three legs of our green marketing stool. The “tangible” healthy qualities of its product are very approachable, and therefore make the larger brand approachable. Powering their plants with solar energy and creating biodegradable packaging make Frito-Lay’s green efforts with SunChips all the more “believable” with no fear of greenwashing. Engaging its customers in their “One small step at a time” initiative makes it all very “doable.”

Here are seven other examples of organizations that have made their brand positioning much more sustainable by turning their green marketing into wholistic movements for the greater good.

If you’re touting green, imagine yourself as a smoker who has recently quit. How are you enhancing your health? Have you become a jogger, an avid 10k competitor, marathoner, ironman? Just being a nonsmoker — or being green — for practical health reasons is admirable, but not that cool of a differentiator.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.