Showing the World What’s Possible — One Story at a Time

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Daryn Kagan’s online community features a daily Web cast of stories that “Show the World What is Possible.” The idea behind these stories is inspiration and triumph of the human spirit. Of course, all the stories are archived on the site and can be browsed under these categories: Animals, Artists, Business, Celebrities, For Charity, Heroism, Kids, Love, Over 60, Overcoming Obstacles, Sports, and World Events.

A former CNN anchor, Kagan devised a way to upload a quality video daily to her site without spending a dime, as she explains in this video.

Kagan is always looking for people to tell their stories of what’s possible, and she has written a book, What’s Possible: 50 True Stories of People Who Dared To Dream They Could Make a Difference. And who better to tell about the book than Kagan herself in another video.

Our Stories and More

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Our Stories™ is a new project that encourages people to interview friends and loved ones, and to share these oral histories with others. Founding partners include UNICEF, One Laptop per Child, and Google. The idea is to create, share, and grow a global collection of personal stories collected through recorded audio interviews.

The project’s founders plan to gather stories from around the world because:

we believe that everyone will discover joy and inspiration in these many and varied voices, words, and lives.

Currently visitors can’t upload their own stories directly to the Our Stories site, but the plan is to have systems in place in the future to allow all people to upload their own audio interviews to share.

Visitors can listen to the current collection of stories on the Find a Story page.

What I like — since I love collecting story prompts — is the interview guides (these seem actually to be from StoryCorps) for “capturing the stories and lives of those around you.”

Followup on LoJo

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I previously wrote about the “locative storytelling” project of a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies.

The team has concluded its project and presented its findings, which they summed up here in 12 points and have made available as a downloadable PDF.

I still don’t totally grok “LoJo” as Locative Journalism is nicknamed, but a couple of highlights resonated with me:

… locative stories delivered to portable devices has taught us that this kind of storytelling, at its best, can be extremely compelling… We live in an era of user-generated content and participation. Young adults, in particular, are used to sites that allow comments, rating or reviews, and sharing. Sites such as Yelp and YouTube have been distinguished and made popular by these qualities. Social networking sites such as Facebook have applications that allow for easier sharing of news stories and other content. … We are accustomed to using linear interfaces, such as alphabetized directories and timelines, to organize and access information. But our experiences in the real, physical and non-digitized world are usually not linear. They’re spatial, dynamic and intuitive.

The Value-Added Memoir

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Not long ago, USA Today ran a feature on memoirs about obsessions — such as the wife who vowed to have sex with her husband nightly for a year (somehow this one doesn’t seem all that obsessive to me), the couple that likes to vacation at sites related to atomic weaponry, the sportswriter, who, like George Plimpton, tried to play in the NFL, the guy who spent a year reading the Oxford English Dictionary, another who read the Encyclopedia Britannica and then spent a year “living Biblically.”

Also known, according to USA Today, as extreme writing, narrative nonfiction, immersion journalism, experiential journalism, radical self-improvement, these books make an appearance on my sidebar, though mostly in the form of anthologies, such as Dealing with Divas, about serving as a personal assistant to celebrities, and Who ARE You People?, about folks with just the type of obsessions the USA Today article describes.

It does seem like a pretty sweet concept for a book — find something wacky to do for some period of time and then write about about it.

From the Generous World of Storytelling

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I continue to be amazed at the generosity of spirit in the storytelling community. There is such an aura of sharing. Copious, rich material is offered on Web sites. Practitioners generously give of their time to answer questions and promote their craft.

The latest gem I’ve found is a fabulous 50-page booklet, Story Guide: Building Bridges Using Narrative Technique, on the site of Sparknow, a knowledge and communication consultancy. Want a slew of ideas for how to apply storytelling ideas to support knowledge sharing, change, and communication in organizations? Here they are, free for the taking. These exercises are also great for building community.

The exercises and guidelines include:

  • Warmups and icebreakers
  • Questions for drawing stories out of participants
  • a 7-element structure for shaping and sharing stories (with handout)
  • Checklists
  • Object and display exercise
  • Postcards technique
  • Jumpstart stories (Seth Kahan’s technique)
  • The half-a-story technique
  • The future story technique, with handout (Madelyn Blair’s technique)
  • Story-in-a-story technique
  • Troubleshooting log

There’s not a lot in the booklet about how and why story works — but plenty of other books and articles address those topics. What the booklet does offer is illustrations of how the techniques are actually applied.

It was created partially by and for SDC, the Swiss Aid Agency, but any organization can use it.

You can download the booklet here.

There’s a phrase I love from the booklet — “experience capitalization” — capitalizing on sharing experiences.

Stories of the Departed

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Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor got a bit of press when he announced that he was founding Tributes.com, “a central location to house online memorials for those who have passed on,” writes Marty Graham on Wired.com.

Taylor’s idea is not revolutionary. Sites such as MyDeathSpace, RememberWell, SweetMemoriesSite.com, Celebrations of Life (which includes pet stories and more), ChristianMemorials.com, Legacy.com (“Where life stories live on.”), and PreciousMemoriesAndMore.comalready offer similar services.

Here’s how Tributes.com differs, according to Graham:

  1. People can find information on those who’ve died with a name search from a database that includes the entire Social Security Death Index since 1936.
  2. The site plans to market more to the funeral industry than other sites, where individuals pay for tributes.

Legacy.com uses Social Security death records and also picks up obituaries from 650 newspapers. Tributes.com’s planned partnering with funeral homes aims to cut newspapers out of the loop, Graham reports.

Taylor was recently interviewed by Geoff Edgars of the Boston Globe

You recently launched your latest venture, Tributes.com, a site that allows individuals to post obituaries online. It’s pretty depressing, don’t you think? I mean, why base a whole business around dead people?

You know what? I think it’s exactly the opposite. I have this fascination with having a storied life. I had a relationship with a grandfather, but I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it and I find I have nothing to look at to be able to enjoy that story.

Addendum [ added 1-18-08 ]: On a related note, here’s an article that touts story as a meaningful element in funeral services.

Two Requests Regarding Stories and Health

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Lisa Neal Gualtieri, Ph.D., of the Tufts University School of Medicine, who blogs about health and education, has two requests having to do with stories and health. She writes:

  1. First, I am helping on a proposal for a health web site and need citations about the benefits of storytelling for health. I believe that caregivers benefit from stories they create because it is a cathartic process and they know they are helping others; and from reading others’ stories in that they know they are not alone and can learn from the experiences other caregivers have. Please send me any references to papers about the benefits of stories.
  2. Second, I am interested in any experiences you have had using the Internet for health information or support for yourself or your loved ones, be it for a minor or major health issue. In particular, I am interested in why you turned to the internet, whether it helped, and if you used what you found online with any health professionals. I teach a course on Online Consumer Health at Tufts University School of Medicine and am writing a book about this, which is why I am looking for stories. I greatly appreciate any help you can offer.

Email Lisa here.

Storytelling Terms I Like

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I like the term Terrence Gargiulo uses: Return on Experiences (ROE). Telling stories in ways that “enhance your credibility and influence” provides ROE.

I also like the idea of Social Collaborative Sharing (SCS) for social media. (OK, not precisely story-related)