As I write this, an event in Washington, DC, Memorial Day Storytelling, is close to conclusion. As a press release explains:

Each Veterans Day and Memorial Day people gather to tell their stories. [Today] women and men will share reflections of their time in Vietnam. The stories of the women cast in bronze will come to life as Vietnam veterans, Vietnam era veterans and the people touched by that war speak “in their own voices” about their experiences. Storytellers will be featured every 30 minutes near the site of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. This year’s ceremony will combine the stories of those who served during the Vietnam era with the stories of those individuals serving in today’s armed conflicts. The lessons learned in the past of bravery, the desire for peace, courage, and sacrifice are being relearned every day.

The release also offers an amazing story from seven years ago:

Seven years ago at the annual Memorial Day Storytelling, held at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, Allen K. Hoe spoke about his service in Vietnam, and the loss of his son in Iraq. Also on the slate of speakers for the day was Major Paula Couglin. She had just returned from a tour as a Trauma Nurse Coordinator in Iraq. Different wars, but these two individuals had so much in common. Mr. Hoe would speak about his own memories of war, but he would also share the more recent memories of losing his son, 1Lt. Nainoa Hoe, who had died on January 22, 2005, while serving in Iraq. What happened at Storytelling at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was a miracle. Mr. Hoe met Maj. Couglin for the very first time. He discovered she was one of the nurses with his son as he was dying.

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reports on the site TogetherWeServed.com, where servicemembers are invited to “recount your ‘Service Story’ in a comprehensive self interview your family and future generations will appreciate.”

Daily News reporter Tanyanika Samuels describes the site’s importance from its founder’s perspective:

It’s becoming increasingly critical to get these firsthand stories, said Brian Foster, the website’s founder and president.

In the last decade, more than 4 million veterans have passed away. It is estimated that more than 3,000 veterans of all wars die everyday, with WWII veterans accounting for one third of those deaths.

“If we don’t capture their stories now,” he said, “most of these veterans’ service will go unrecorded, resulting in a tragic loss of our military history and the sacrifice made by so many.”

Finally, a story not about US war dead or veterans, but about Australia’s, and very much in the same spirit: The Daily Mercury reports on an Australian school biography assignment in which students interviewed veterans.

The article focuses on 13-year-old Eli Cappello’s biography of Ronald McClure who died on Anzac Day [national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on April 25 every year to honor the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I and now more broadly commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries] this year shortly after Eli’s interview and includes an excerpt from the story.

The other day, I introduced my Scoop.it curation of the topic organizational storytelling and noted that the curation exposed me to storytelling content I probably wouldn’t have normally seen. The same is true with another curation I’m now experimenting with on personal storytelling. This post is a bit of a “soft opening” for that curation as I’m still tweaking it. But I doubt I would have found the three items above had it not been for this curation.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Some career and job-search products/services are worth paying for. Because most of the resumes I see (and saw in my five years as a professional resume writer) are terrible, I believe resume writing is one of those services. For many job-seekers, career coaching for career exploration, strategy, and interview prep, for example, is a worthwhile expenditure.

But for most Web-based services, I favor a free model, or at least a freemium model in which the basic offering is free, but the job-seeker can opt to upgrade to more bells and whistles.

If a service isn’t free, I certainly expect it to deliver what it’s offering. Thus, I skeptically approached intRvue, a service that started following both me and my partner this week on Twitter and whose headline screams “Tell Your Story.” intRvue never names its product as far as I can see, but I would liken it to an online portfolio or multimedia, Web-based resume. There is no free level of service, though there is a free 30-day trial.

As I looked at the sample on the site, which happens to be that of intRvue CEO Frank Rolles, I was having a hard time finding stories. I had to peel back layers, but finally found them on the portfolio page.

That page (see graphic below) is a nice collection of illustrated accomplishment stories.

IntRvue is rich with the language of story, however. Interestingly, rather than a personal Web site, other multimedia resume services like VisualCV, or blog, intRvue sees LinkedIn as its main competitor in terms of tools a job-seeker might use:

intRvue provides a place to share the depth of your professional success stories in a dynamic and interactive way without advertisements and without other [LinkedIn] members competing for the focus of your viewers. Use intRvue in conjunction with LinkedIn by placing one of your intRvue website links in the fields provided on LinkedIn.

The question then becomes — Will employers click on that link, and if they do, will they spend time looking at the attractive array of stories?

My research, unfortunately, suggests probably not. Earlier this year I researched new Web-based twists on resumes and wrote New Web-Based Twists on Resumes: Best Ways to Construct a Resume?. Products like this one are great for boosting your online presence and “findability,” making free versions worthwhile. But most of the hiring decision-makers I talked to found these Web-based products cluttered with too much information and “noise. Employers also noted that they can’t be entered into the all-important Applicant Tracking Systems most employer use.

The employers I interviewed also noted that the content in these products needs to be well-written to begin with. Bells and whistles won’t turn a poorly written resume into a silk purse. I note that intRvue offers resume/content writing for an additional fee.

IntRvue is one of the more attractive products of its kind I’ve seen. And I love the emphasis on story — even if the actual execution of story is rather limited. I’m just not convinced there is value in a product that employers probably won’t spend much time with. I would like to see a free product level offered (not just a 30-day trial) so job-seekers can see for themselves if employers will seek them out because of this product .

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve blatantly stolen an idea from my friend Gregg Morris — while also attempting to make it my own.

I saw recently that Gregg is using a tool — Scoop.it — to curate Web material on Story and Narrative. Scoopt.it is a pretty cool tool, so I wanted in. But I didn’t want to curate exactly what Gregg is; what would be the point of duplicating? Even though my applied-storytelling interests are broader than organizational storytelling, I decided to make that the focus of this particular curation effort along with business narrative, career storytelling, and job-search storytelling. You can find the first effort here — widget embedded below:

In addition to the curation I do here on A Storied Career, I curate in a couple of other passive ways: My Paper.li StoryPractitioners Daily (I am constantly being undeservedly thanked for including folks in this publication even though I do absolutely nothing to make those curating choices; it’s all presumably done by algorithm based on my Storytelling Practitioners Twitter list) and through two widgets here on the blog, one based on the same Storytelling Practitioners Twitter list as the Paper.li publication, the other based on keyword/hashtag “storytelling” and #storytelling.

The Scoop.it tool requires a more active form of curation. Scoop.it suggests items for curation and lets the curator accept or reject them. I like the tool because I’m seeing some material I don’t think I would normally see (and could thus also write about here). I also notice, however, that not all suggestions are current; some are quite dated. Scoop.it encourages curators to have their networks suggest items to include, so I encourage you to let me know when something of yours or something you see should be part of the publication (email me). The Scoop.it pub enables me to give attention to worthy content that I may not feel moved to write about here. The presentation on Scoop.it is quite attractive; I like it a lot more than Paper.li’s.

I’m delighted to offer yet another dimension to my curation. Now when people thank me for including them in the Scoop.it publication, I will actually deserve the thanks.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Yesterday I accidentally spent more than $100 on audiobooks. I took Audible up on a special offer of credits toward books, but kept getting an error message when I purchased it, so I ended up making the purchase three times. I could ask for two-thirds of my money back, but I’m just as happy to have the books.

Audiobooks have been a huge revelation to me. I first listened to them back when they were on cassette tapes, probably in the 90s, but usually just when I was on a roadtrip. The ease and convenience of mp3s made them more appealing. But as regular readers know, the real turning point for me was realizing that audiobooks could be a way to deal with being a slow reader — slow almost to the point of disability.

The other big realization was that I could multitask while listening to audiobooks. I could listen not just while driving, but while mowing, doing yardwork, painting, doing crafts, taking a bath — and virtually everything else.

I have always been a miserable housekeeper. I would clean the house, say, every six months, or when it got so disgusting I couldn’t stand it, or when guests were expected. But there was something about moving into a brand-new house last year that made me want to keep it clean, so after 26 years of marriage, I became a wife who gives the house a good cleaning once a week. Some “cleaning days” I wake up feeling like I don’t really want to clean, but then I remember I can “read” while I clean and look forward to it.

My listening device of choice is my iPad. In some situations, like driving or bathing, I can just sit the iPad in one spot and listen. (Funny story — I had had the iPad for about four months before I realized it had external speakers.) If I’m in a situation where I’m moving around a lot or making noise (vacuuming, mowing, sanding), I put my iPad into a small backpack and carry it around with me listening through headphones.

Because of this multitasking aspect, I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing as I experienced each book. Elizabeth Edwards’ Resilience? Cleaning up brush and stumps on a ridge on our property. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Painting siding to go on the house. Steve Martin’s Object of Beauty? Rototilling our vegetable garden. And so on.

A similar theme emerges from Audible’s recent solicitation of customer listening stories. The collection of stories is an obvious ploy to promote the books customers talk about in their stories, but it’s also interesting to see that, like me, people associate books with what they were doing while listening to them,

The stories listeners tell about their experience tend to spring from the fact that they were multitasking, like this one:

I was so engrossed in the story that (I’m embarrassed to say) for three days in a row…I completely missed my exit on the way to work. It didn’t end there. I also had “driveway moments” where I would sit in the driveway listening until I came to a good stopping spot. My husband came out the first time thinking something was wrong. When I told him what I was doing he just laughed at me and said, “You know you can bring it inside don’t you?”

Some stories relate to the extraordinary quality of the narration of audiobooks. I can only wonder if I would have found some of the books I’ve experienced on audio nearly as good as I did had it not been for the incredible richness that narrators brought to the book. Similarly, some books are ruined by poor narrators, though those are rare. Here’s a listener story about one of the terrific narrators:

I started listening to the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (read by Davina Porter) about a year and a half ago. Every morning after putting my children on the bus for school, I would put on my running shoes and my iPod and go for a long walk while listening to Ms. Porter’s fabulous narration of these riveting and beautifully-written novels. I found myself so addicted to the books that I would make time to walk every day, regardless of the weather, and I became positively obsessive about not letting anything interfere with my daily read/walk. I found myself extending my walks just so I could continue listening. I wept, worried, gasped, and often laughed out loud while I was walking, drawing.

I love reading books in print just as much — even if they take me forever — but I can’t tell you where I was or what I was doing while reading most hard-copy books.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

We’re publishing some content from Ellyn Enisman, author of Job Interview Skills 101 in the next issue of our parent site’s Quint Careers newsletter.

The book, which is targeted to new grads and college students, doesn’t really break any new ground, either in terms of interview skills or using story in the job search.

But I like Enisman’s guiding premise for the book: A job-seekers’ goal for a job interview is (or should be) to make a memory.

Developing stories, Enisman write, is important “because as a recruiter, I remember you by your stories. You will become ‘the person who did the internship with the micromanaging boss in London’ or ‘the person who didn’t have any internships because he was needed on the family business and actually ended up running the business and getting incredible management skills that really add value to my open position’ or ‘the person who unloaded trucks of thousands of small items with a team at 3 a.m. for a large retail chain and had to inventory them and who therefore had my most needed skill of handling details and working in a team.’”

Enisman coaches clients and readers to develop a set of stories specific to each employer by creating a matrix listing “employer needs,” “what I have,” “story” (about what I have), and “story details.”

The other part of Enisman’s advice that I find interesting is her specific recommendation of the number of stories needed to succeed in any interview: Seven. This number is also not a new concept; arguably the most respected name in career development, Richard Bolles, also recommends a Seven Stories Exercise, though for a slightly different purpose.

When I have taught students or conducted workshops about using story in job interviews, I have participants develop three stories — largely because most audiences can develop three in the short time period of a class/workshop. I’ve found that with even just three stories, participants can adapt the stories into responses to many, if not most, interview questions.

Still, I recommend that participants come up with more outside the class/workshop. I have recommended 10-20. Given Enisman’s contention that an arsenal of seven will work for virtually any interview question, perhaps I can adjust my 10-20 recommendation.

By the way, if you’d like to try my Three Success Stories exercise, you can download the handout I used when I presented to a group of career counselors last month (click to download here). You’ll find instructions for both workshop leaders and participants, as well as a summary of my slides from that workshop (embedded below).

One of these days, I will record narration for the slideshow, so it makes more sense. In the meantime, be sure to check out the speaker’s notes tab on the version that appears on SlideShare.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Two recent articles address the headlined question — in much the same way.

Essentially, organizational (and brand) stories must come from within — within the organization, and more specifically, within the people whose stories comprise the organization’s story.

In the newsletter of Australia’s Anecdote consultancy, an unnamed author writes about strategy stories as needing to come from the organization’s leaders:

In the early days we would take away all the raw material from this initial workshop and create a stategic story to play back to the leaders at a later date. This worked pretty well except for the times when our take on the story was not as nuanced as the leaders had in mind. We learned quickly that the story, not just the raw material for the story, had to be created by the leaders. … It’s vital the leaders create their own story rather than have a creative team craft one for them.

Meanwhile, on the blog of StrayDog, a brand strategy and communication-design firm, another unnamed author (what’s up with that?) takes a similar though broader view:

Find the people who have passion for the stories — that’s who should be in charge of storytelling. Everyone can tell stories, but when it comes to who’s in charge, look for the people who are most passionate. Ask them to participate in developing ways to protect, build and gather the story. There’s no other way to do it. You can’t assign it to someone who doesn’t believe in it.

Though the pieces are a bit different from each other, the bottom line in both is the same: Engagement and empowerment come from being in control of one’s own story within the larger organization.

Both pieces are excellent, and I recommended them

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Through a post on the Psychology Today site by Susan Cain, I learned of the work of Dan McAdams at the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, which studies lives from a narrative perspective.

Among the aspects of life stories that McAdams and his colleagues study is the idea of Turning Points and Life Transitions and how people respond to them. From the center’s site:

People often use redemption or contamination imagery to depict significant life transitions or turning-point scenes in their life stories. The concept of a turning point is both literary and psychological, and it has enjoyed strong currency in Western cultural life for hundreds of years. Social scientists have recently employed qualitative and narrative methods for examining the turning points that people describe in their lives. Some of the best research on narrative approaches to turning points comes together in a book edited by Dan McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson (Hebrew University and The Fielding Institute), and Amia Lieblich (Hebrew University), Turns in the Road: Narrative Studies of Lives in Transition (APA Press, 2001). This book is the first in a Foley-sponsored book series on “The Narrative Study of Lives.”

Cain elaborates on this concept of contamination vs. redemption:

We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (“I was never the same after my wife left me”) while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (“The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife.”)

Five years ago, I experienced such a setback/turning point, an awful thing that happened in my life that I don’t talk about publicly (except in oblique terms like this). In my heart, I characterize the turning point as redemptive. I know that only good things came out of this terrible setback, including living in the paradise that is our wonderful woodland farm here in Eastern Washington (I’m looking out the window at a brilliant blue sky, a few puffy clouds, sparkling sun, colorful wildflowers, and regal Ponderosa pine trees, as a fresh breeze blows in my window.)

But there’s a tiny part of me that still wants to think of the turning point as a contaminant. I have forgiven, but I am not 100 percent ready to let the perpetrator who hurt me off the hook.

The setback engendered redemption, but I still wish it hadn’t happened. At the same time, I know that wish is illogical, because if the turning point hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have the fantastic life I live today. I hope the day comes when I will stop wishing the story had been different, and I will completely embrace the redemptive qualities of the painful turning point.

What about you? Do you view your turning points as redemptive or contaminating?

By the way, the Papers portion of the Foley Center’s site is a goldmine because many of the research papers are downloadable.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across these two calls for stories:

Marlene Moore Gordon seeks 500-1,500-word stories in print, video and audio for an anthology book series on the Web, in print and e-book entitled HandPrints On My Heart® and PawPrints On My Heart®. In submission guidelines, Marlene writes:

Handprints stories celebrate relationships as the key element in all of our lives. They create, strengthen, and reinforce the bonds between people. A story can be, and ideally should be, a catalyst to create positive change in someone’s life. Whether we connect around the corner or across the globe our stories enrich each others lives and will make a difference.

If you are a writer or storyteller you may submit your true, personal short story about someone who has helped you to transform for the better. Since word of mouth is the best way to pass this message along, I am hoping you will help me to spread the word. Please pass along my e-mail address to any of your associates whom you feel might be interested.

Lots more details about submission are available on Marlene’s site.

Meanwhile, NPR seeks expectant moms with due dates in mid-July for a special project documenting the final month leading to delivery. The “Share-Your-Story” page describing the project notes:

We’re looking for the most compelling stories to feature, so please describe what makes your family, pregnancy or delivery plan interesting or unique.

The page doubles as a submission form for moms interested in sharing their stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve long advocated for story in the job search, one of the most significant applications of story I write about in this blog. (Swayed by story purists, I am trying to get away from using the term storytelling because many applications don’t fit the definition of storytelling.) Sometimes I feel a little pang when others write about story in job search (Hey, that’s MY topic; hands off!), but then I realize that the more people who write about it, the greater the reach of the message.

Two recent instances in which career folks are touting story:

The white paper Findings of 2010 Global Career Brainstorming Day: Trends for the Now, the New & the Next in Careers affirms storytelling’s importance, especially in resumes and interviews:

In a world as chaotic as we live in, where people are becoming increasingly accustomed to sound bytes of information, they still do need context. Storytelling provides a framework, context, and pathway to understanding. It’s compelling; it creates connection; it personalizes; it captivates. It hold attention in a multi-tasking world. In job search, those stories must be tied to value to prove that the job-seeker can meet the need and exceed expectations.

The brainstorming day was held in December 2010 by the Career Thought Leaders Consortium, publishers of the white paper.

I had some some lovely conversations with career coach Mary Jeanne Vincent at a recent conference. Our birthdays are two days apart. I admired her stunning wardrobe of “Audrey Hepburn” silk slacks. Mary Jeanne has just written and disseminated Using Stories to Land the Job, in which she writes:

The story begins with your résumé: Does it tell the tale of a hero’s journey or something less? Here’s a tip: If your story falls into the something less category, go back to the drawing board. Talk with co-workers or former supervisors and colleagues and ask them to help you remember your strengths and remind you of previous successes.

Getting started — when an employer hires you, exactly what is he getting? Describe three benefits, skills or areas of expertise that an employer receives when he hires you. Now, choose the most compelling stories from your background, work, or education that demonstrate those strengths. Use these anecdotes to build your résumé.

Offer specific details including results you achieved: for example, money saved, improved efficiencies, increased sales or improved customer service. Numbers are nice; they make your results real and tangible, so go the extra mile and do the math.

On a résumé, your stories are one to two sentences. I suggest an absolute minimum of three stories for someone just embarking on their career and nine to 12 on the résumé of a candidate with more experience.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I do not support the death penalty. I do not believe mere mortals possess the moral authority to sit in judgment of other mortals to the extent of sentencing them to death. And the emergence of DNA testing shows it is too easy to put an innocent person to death; the Innocence Project has resulted in the release of 17 death-row inmates based on DNA evidence. I will admit that in the case of people like Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and, indeed, Osama Bin Laden, my opposition to the death penalty is difficult to sustain, just as it would be if a loved one were the victim of a capital crime.

It seems death sentences and executions have been decreasing in the US. In “The Mitigator” in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin writes about one reason — the increasing use of mitigation, “a strategy that aims to tell the defendant’s life story.” (You can read the intro to the article, but the rest is behind a paywall.)

Toobin notes:

For a long time, defense lawyers didn’t know how to use [the mitigation] option to their advantage, and many largely ignored the penalty phase. In the nineteen-eighties, some death-penalty activists started taking a more systematic approach. The key figures in the change were not lawyers but anthropologists, ex-journalists, and even recent college graduates. The idea was to use the mitigation process to tell the life story of the defendant in a way that explained the conduct that brought him into court. The work was closer to biography than criminal investigation …

Toobin quotes Scharlette Holdman, a pioneer in the mitigation field:

As we in local communities began to look for mitigation, we saw it as pesenting the narrative of someone’s life, and we became acutely aware that is was a very specialized, complex undertaking. … That narrative is not there for the asking. … It requires not just knowledge and skill but experience in how you search for identity, locate, recognize, and preserve the information.

While Toobin notes that “it’s not easy to draw out those stories, much less present them in court,” but “in recent years the practice has been refined and systematized.”

Before that, though, was “a heartbreaking time,” in the words of the focus of Toobin’s article, Danalynn Recer, executive director of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE). Back then, Recer recalled thinking, “Surely the courts will listen to someone’s life story before killing them.” Well, they didn’t.”

Recer’s summation in a case in which this story-based mitigation resulted in a life-without-parole sentence rather than the death penalty captures my feelings about capital punishment:

… the only question remaining is whether [the defendant] is going to die by the hand of God or by the hand of man, and that’s the bottom-line question we’re considering …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

We each have our own individual story. But we also have shared stories of momentous events we’ve simultaneously experienced as American or global citizens.

I just finished a very good book, The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald, that spans the birth years of baby boomers — and a bit beyond. The protagonist is born in 1946, the first birth year of the baby boom (which most say ended in 1964).

Pop culture — books, films, TV, and more — that cover this period almost inevitably include the touchstone events that boomers universally remember. Their inclusion is so expected and predictable that once we’re aware of where we are in the chronology, we know what’s coming.

1963? Expect Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and JFK’s assassination. 1964: The Beatles come to the US. 1967: Race riots and the Summer of Love. 1968: Assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, and then Chicago. Often thrown into the mix are the Cuban Missile Crisis and the early days of the space program. And all of it is against the backdrop of Vietnam.

These watershed parts of our shared story as boomers are so ubiquitous in period pop culture, that they are almost cliches. Yet, if they were absent, would we cry out in protest? Would we say, “How can you write about Thanksgiving time in 1963 and not mention JFK’s assassination?”

Of course, I’ve always had a freaky memory for dates and tendency to associate them with what was going on in my life at the time.

When The Irresistible Henry House got to December 1966, I knew exactly what event was foreshadowed. Even if the book’s protagonist had not been working as an animator for Walt Disney Studios, I’m sure I would have immediately associated December 1966 with Walt Disney’s death.

People remember where they were when they heard JFK was shot, when the Challenger space shuttle exploded, when the planes hit the Twin Towers.

I remember where I was when I learned Walt Disney died. I was in Mrs. Kerr’s study hall in junior high. I can’t imagine how classmates learned of events in the outside world in the pre-Internet, pre-Twitter culture in which we grew up, but someone had heard about Walt.

As The Irresistible Henry House wonderfully illustrates, Walt Disney was the preeminent storyteller of our youth. Losing him was tantamount to losing the stories. My own grandfather also died in 1966, but I don’t remember where I was when I learned he died. The deaths of both men are emblematic of another shared experience of baby boomers — realizing our grandparents and parents might have lived longer had they not smoked. Walt died of lung cancer; my grandfather of throat cancer following years of suffering with emphysema.

As predictable and overdone as the repeated appearance of these shared experiences in pop culture, they are a cherished part of the story our generation shares.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael Margolis continues to evolve his concept and formula for the personal bio story, and he’s offering a free download, A 7 Step-Formula For Your New Bio Story, an upcoming (May 17) webinar (which I think is free), and a new Web site, The New About Me,” focusing on the personal bio story that has come to the forefront of Michael’s interests and offerings.

The new site’s tagline is “personal branding without the icky stuff.” Here’s why and how the process has been icky up to know, according to Michael:

Few of us have been taught how to authentically talk about ourselves in a hyped-up age of social media and personal branding. Thankfully, there’s a new way of distinctive storytelling — without the need for bragging, arrogance or self-importance. This handout will introduce you to this breakthrough process.

Michael’s process is somewhat targeted at what he calls “the Creative Class (e.g., entrepreneur, speaker, author, blogger, designer, consultant, or expert in some niche or topic),” and I would go even further than that to suggest the process works best for solopreneurs since it deals with personal stories.

I’m extremely interested in the process for several reasons — I went through (and struggled with) an earlier incarnation, when the formula had just five steps; I have long been a bit cynical about “personal branding,” in part because so many experts all talk about a different way to develop one’s personal brand; I believe one’s personal brand must link to one’s story, but I’m not sure I’ve yet seen the best way to do that; and I am interested in how personal-branding/personal story/Michael’s concepts can translate to individual job-seekers, going beyond solopreneurs.

I’m heartened to see that Michael’s process continues to grow and evolve, and I want to keep following it. How about you?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Dave Snowden (pictured) responded to yesterday’s post in which I mentioned a post he wrote several years ago. He tried to post the following — twice — as a comment, but some technical snafu has prevented the comment from coming through to me. I’ve responded briefly below Dave’s comment; I may write more at some point.

Get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning did we Kathy? Not sure why you needed to include a half-remembered and incorrect quote in what would otherwise be an interesting post. Nor why you use the pejorative term “excoriated” when I am pretty sure that all I did was have the temerity to disagree with you.

The phrase I normally use when dealing with social constructivism is “reality exists, live with it”. I’m not wild about critical realism either and if I remember the debate on ActKM (I think that is what you are referencing) opened with that. I think both are absurd positions but they are held by some intelligent people. If you want to take that position they you need to demonstrate (i) that you can lead your life by it (for example when reality intrudes through the theft of your property) and (ii) that you can avoid the Reductio ad Absurdum that leads to solipsism if the position is maintained without compromise.

Otherwise you are confusing perception with reality, or you are taking the position that reality is what is perceived by a human actor. If you want to do that fine, I can’t see why you think I should want to sue you. If you are taking that position then I will send you my deepest sympathies rather than a summons.

You are also drawing conclusions from Eagleman that lack any logic. If we receive a tape delayed broadcast then it is a tape delayed broadcast of something — namely reality. How about if we film the accident then get lots of people to study it and validate their results? Are they dealing with a common socially constructed illusion?

I think I have said this to you before in the ActKM forum; you really need to be comfortable to engage in a debate without taking criticism of your position personally, or making your response personal. Mind you if the world is socially constructed then you are creating reality from your perceptions, not sure I want to live in that world.

(reposted with some changes as apparently original comment lost)

— Dave Snowden, Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

My response:

Thank you, Dave, for responding. Perhaps our dialog will enable me to finally get the “stupid” label out of my system.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A few years ago, Dave Snowden excoriated me for making the statement that there’s no objective reality. I believe his words were something to the effect that “the world is real, stupid.”

I don’t think his post is still around, which is a good thing because if if were, I’d be stewing and seething about it even more than I already am all these years later. I will admit that I made the statement in a rather clumsy and cringe-worthy fashion.

But I think Snowden kind of overlooked the word “objective.” Do any two people perceive “reality” the same way? Can everyone agree on what reality is? A school of philosophy espouses that no objective reality exists and that reality is socially constructed, that we construct reality through things like language. So, sue me, Dave Snowden, but that perspective makes a lot of sense to me.

If I didn’t support this view philosophically, I might be convinced by neuroscience. (In fact, a neuroscientific study was what inspired the reviled post.) I renewed my interest in the connection between objective reality and the brain when I read Burkhard Bilger’s New Yorker piece, The Possibilian, on neuroscience professor David Eagleman.

Eagleman has studied and done all sorts of things, but the main focus of the article is on how the brain perceives time. Bilger writes: “‘brain time,’ as Eagleman calls it, is intrinsically subjective.” Eagleman’s work inspires Bilger to wonder about …

the fundamental issue of consciousness: how much of what we perceive exists outside of us and how much is a product of our minds? Time is a dimension like any other, fixed and defined down to its tiniest increments: millennia to microseconds, aeons to quartz oscillations. Yet the data rarely matches our reality.

Eagleman says our sense of time comes from multiple areas of the brain, but not any we can necessarily isolate. He calls our sense of time, Bilger reports, “a distributed property. It’s metasensory; it rides on top of all the others.”

The brain does not process all sensory information at the same rate. Bilger writes:

Messengers stream in from every corner of the sensory kingdom, bringing word of distant sights, sounds, and smells. Their reports arrive at different rates, often long out of date, yet the details are all stitched together into a seamless chronology. … The brain is describing the present — processing reams of disjointed data on the fly, editing everything down to an instantaneous now. How does it manage it?

Here’s Eagleman’s picture of what the sensory time differences look like:

“Imagine that there’s an accident on the highway up ahead,” he began. “One of these cars runs into that bridge.” If the crash were to occur a hundred yards away, we’d see the car hit the bridge in silence. The sound, like a peal of thunder, would take a moment to reach us. The closer the impact, the shorter the delay, but only up to a point: at a hundred and ten feet, sight and sound would suddenly lock together. Under that threshold, Eagleman explained, the signals reach the brain within a hundred milliseconds of one another, and any differences in processing are erased. … Reality is a tape-delayed broadcast, carefully censored before it reaches us.

Maybe now you’re beginning to guess how story fits in…

“… the brain needs time to get its story straight … Living in the past may seem like a disadvantage, but it’s a cost that the brain is willing to pay,” Eagleman said. “It’s trying to put together the best possible story about what’s going on in the world, and that takes time.”

It seems to me that if no human brain can truly perceive reality in real time, objective reality cannot exist. That story is what the brain uses for sensemaking is at the core of why story is so incredibly important in our lives.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Sept. 11, 2001, is very much on our minds, both because of the death of Osama Bin Laden and because this year is the 10th anniversary.

I have long maintained that 9-11 is a significant reason that storytelling has surged in recent years, especially personal storytelling. The loss of nearly 3,000 lives on a single day showed us how valuable and precious each life is, and how every person’s story is important.

In Constructing a Story, With 2,982 Names, David W. Dunlap of the New York Times discusses the National September 11 Memorial and Museum which has the “name [of every victim] inscribed on the bronze parapets that are being installed along the perimeters of the pools where the World Trade Center towers once stood.”

The arrangement of names was not random; instead, adjacencies of names “might mean the victims were close friends or fond acquaintances, were related by blood or marriage or simply common interests, that they bowled together or dined together.”

Dunlap reports that one of the the architects, Michael Arad, noted that the arrangement that “allows families’ and friends’ stories to be told.”

I applaud the designers for underscoring the importance of telling the victims’ stories, and indeed recognizing the importance of every individual’s story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I singled out jawbone.tv when it launched two years ago, so it seems fitting to note its cessation of producing new content.

The site described as “a collective resource and project showcase that tightly embraces those things on the progressive edge of digital and interactive narrative — the good, the bad, and the bad-ass of story in the digital age.” I had seen jawbone as “sort of a revved-up counterpart to A Storied Career that ‘cover[ed] the methods, mediums and innovations of storytelling.’”

In a post yesterday, founder Todd M. Denis wrote:

When I started JawboneTV, a little over two years ago, my intention was to explore the edge of the digital landscape. It was a passion project that turned out to be easily one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever created, but it was never intended to continue forever.

After more than a thousand articles covering everything from ipad applications to experimental 3D, I’ve decided it’s time to pursue other passions. As such, JawboneTV will no longer publish new content. I will leave the site online in its current state as an archive for anyone who’s interested in referencing the material. … This is the end of the chapter, not the story.

At a time when new sites related to storytelling seem to spring up almost daily, it’s unusual to see one go. We’ll miss you, jawbone.tv.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A couple of years ago, I mused about whether an individual, such as a job-seeker, could tell transmedia stories (and then described what that might look like).

The folks at A Think Lab are also talking about uses of transmedia storytelling outside the world of entertainment.

I became aware of this discussion when I saw a post on the Psychology Today site by A Think Lab co-founder Pamela Brown Rutledge, PhD.

For companies, Rutledge describes transmedia storytelling as a way to rise above the noise. In the Psychology Today post, she emphasizes the psychological foundations of storytelling and tells what transmedia isn’t:

It isn’t just hauling out a story and repurposing it across media. When done well, it uses the psychological basis of story to develop a narrative across multiple media. Each piece adds to the whole, it doesn’t just echo it.

She also does a nice job of explaining what transmedia storytelling is:

Transmedia storytelling uses multiple media platforms to tell a single, coherent story or narrative that unfolds across time. … The story can be experienced and appreciated at any stage, but the cumulative effect of all the pieces makes a larger, richer and more engaging message experience.

On A Think Lab’s site is a wonderful example of what a well-known story — The Three Little Pigs — would look like in transmedia form.

I also like the “four fundamental parts” of storytelling that A Think Lab scrutinizes:

1. the historical, cultural, psychological and neurological qualities of stories
2. the psychological and technological change driving the converging media landscape
3. story structure and the development of an authentic and coherent story; and
4. matching the story and audience with the cognitive, social, and experiential attributes of each media platform.

I’m quite intrigued by this idea of transmedia storytelling for companies. But despite the Three Little Pigs case study and another case study explaining the importance of a company story, I don’t have a good sense of what transmedia storytelling looks like for a company. It could be something like the Jack-in-the-Box campaign that Rutledge cited elsewhere — but the campaign seems like advertising, and Rutledge notes that “Stories are not a sales campaign. They are an invitation to join in an experience.”

I will admit that I have not explored every corner of A Think Lab’s site (which, by the way, has a ton a terrific information on storytelling, transmedia and otherwise) so I could be missing the “what it looks like” piece.

Transmedia storytelling for companies is a fascinating concept. I want to know more.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I almost glossed over a recent four-part series by Ozge Karaoglu, 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (that’s Part 1; I’ve listed links to the other three parts at the end of this post).

I almost glossed over it because “digital” storytelling is not at the top of my list of storytelling applications I most like to cover. That’s likely because I apparently define “digital storytelling” very narrowly — basically as telling stories on video or film. Apparently I’ve been wrong; “digital” is not as narrow as mere video. Most define “digital storytelling” as using digital tools to tell stories.

I was excited to see the four-part series because it lists a number of tools I’m not familiar with and that I plan to add to my page Links to Storytelling Platforms, Prompts, and Tools.

Seeing the great variety of tools also suggests a taxonomy or set of categories for these diverse tools:

• Aggregators that bring multiple tools together
• Animation
• Audio, Voice
• Collaborative storytelling tools
• Comic-book-style media
• Location-based tools
• Online books, stories, ebooks
• Photo, image tools
• Slides and slideshows
• Timelines, storylines
• Video
• Virtual scrapbook tools

Not every tool in Karaoglu’s collection is, in my opinion, a storytelling tool. Nevertheless, it’s a superb collection for everyone looking to experiment with new, technology-assisted ways of telling stories. Here are the other parts in the series:

• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.