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How Much Would You Pay for a Storied Washing Machine?

Posted on June 23, 2009 by KatHansen

How about $5,160 in New Zealand dollars, which is $3,296.55 in US dollars?

Much is written about storytelling in marketing and selling. It has been a while since I’ve seen such a profound example of how this kind of storytelling works.

“mikew4” in Auckland was selling a washing machine on a New Zealand eBay-like auction site. The bid reserve amount was a mere $1. He wrote an absolutely hilarious ad for the washer. His listing provoked 89 pages of comments when printed out (and I know because I inadvertently printed all 89 pages).

Since the washer sold, and the listing may be removed (and thus above link will be no good), I’ve pasted the text of the ad below. Although only one little piece could be considered a beginning-middle-end story, “mikew4” certainly knew how to make his product so legendary that the machine sold for far more than it would have been worth even new and without all its flaws.

The ad:

Old mid 80’s Fisher and Paykel top loader.

Goes like a rocket!

By ‘goes like a rocket’ I actually mean that literally.

It actually shakes the house.

It’s the loudest most violent sounding washing machine I have ever
encountered.

It makes guests scared and children cry. I’ve lived with it like that for
almost a year and it still scares me.

Once while washing a load of towells it got a bit out of balance and it got
so out of control for a minute that I swear I actually saw a porthole to
another dimension open above it just for a second, there were dinosaurs on
the otherside and they looked scared too, it almost sucked me in but I held
onto for my life to the deepfreeze. It sucked my shoes and pants off though
and it got the iron as well which pissed me off because it was quite a good
one. Luckily it sucked it’s own power cord out of the wall and stopped
before the whole house went in.

I drew a picture of the dinosaurs i saw incase people didn’t believe me,
they are partly red because my green felt ran out half way through.

I think it would be good to paint it matt black and put steel spikes all
over it and draw demons on the front, however I have added an image of
another possible customization option for people who like horses.

On heavy duty spin cycle it sort of sounds a bit like the tortured howls of
1000 undead writhing in the sulphury pits of hell mixed with a train with
carriages full of scrap iron sliding down the road with no wheels, on fire,
into a bell factory.

Thankfully it’s bite is not as bad as it’s bark. It washes fine, completes
cycles, does everything it’s supposed to.

It leaks a bit when it’s running, always has.

Its a bit grubby, could do with a wipe down, I refuse to touch it because
I’m still getting over the whole dinosaur scare thing.

If your in a fix and need a cheap washing machine and are either completely
deaf or hate your neighbours this baby is for you.

$1 reserve, pick up only, Waterview Auckland.

Selling to pay for my counseling.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Stephane Dangel: Story Activist Bringing Organizational Storytelling to France

Posted on June 22, 2009 by KatHansen

One of the special delights of this Q&A series is its international flavor. We’ve had Q&As from the UK, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Sweden (by way of UK) — have I missed any? — and now France. Stephane Dangel almost single-handedly upholds organizational storytelling in France and builds bridges from there to the worldwide storytelling community. Here is my Q&A with him.

Bio: Stephane Dangel has a background in political science, journalism, and communications. His interest in storytelling has derived from these activities, and he defines now himself as a “storytelling activist,” since organizational storytelling is still an emergent discipline in his country, France.

He has created the blog Storytelling which includes posts both in French and in English. Stephane teaches storytelling in business schools, is involved in projects dealing with the co-creation of stories within various environments, and is a keynote speaker in storytelling.

He’s also a writer; his forthcoming (fall 2009) book (in French) is Rires Post-mortem. It’s about stories — a collection of real-life events throughout the world and related to burials, coffins also. The pattern is that they are all funny stories.

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: We hear a lot about “narrative turn.” I don’t see storytelling as a turn, but as a story “to be continued.” Organizational storytelling is a modern form of the very ancient art of storytelling, adapted to contemporary needs. Storytelling is not a revolution, it has accompanied evolutions. As Robert McKee says, “stories are the currency of human relationships,” basically.

Marketing, management, and other disciplines integrate some structured narrative dimension because the focus is now on these disciplines as the focus was in bartering (with a strong narrative dimension) yesterday when bartering was the way things were going on in the world. So it’s somewhat natural.

Another dimension is related to “the quest for sense.” We hear a lot about the lack of sense. I think it’s more a lack of sense quest, because sense quest is complex and time spending. As storytelling is already deeply anchored into each of us, it’s a relatively low-cost solution to engage on sense quest. So it’s a solution for lazy people, but lazy, that’s what we are all, and it’s not negative. A problem occurs when corporations are extremely lazy, so they only grab and arrange stories in a database, instead of pursuing the quest till the patterns-finding stage.

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

A: Not everything is storytelling, but storytelling is able to be integrated in almost everything.

What I see, especially in France , is that some users in the political area have written the screenplay of a soap, and they even have already shot season 1, 2, 3, and more in advance. How could such a practice operate within an ever-changing world? It doesn’t fit the very basics of storytelling requirements. It’s like displaying, say today, an episode of a soap featuring Saddam Hussein, head of Iraq, as if he was still there. Irrelevant and ridiculous.

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

A: Here is the full (and long) story:

In the winter of 1954 in Paris, there was a man named Abbot Peter (Abbé Pierre) [pictured]. He was willing to launch some initiatives to help poor people, but nobody cared about that unknown guy. At this time, you got very low, minus temperatures in Paris. Abbot Peter managed to convince the biggest radio network to let him address a message to the population. So 20 millions French (half of the population) heard the message while being around the table for dinner.

Here are some excerpts from the message:

A woman has just died tonight, frozen, on the sidewalk of Boulevard Sebastopol in Paris. She was keeping in hand the paper by which she was expelled from her home two days ago. Each night, there are 2,000 persons who have no home, no bread to eat, some almost naked.

They need your help. In each Parisian borough, in each French town, boards have to be put under a light in the night, in front of houses where you can read. You, who suffer, whoever you are, come and sleep, eat, regain hope, here we love you. Weather channels announce terrible freezes for the next weeks. Thank you.

The most interesting fact is not that barely he had finished to address the message people began to act and help those poor people with great success, but the wave of collective innovation that followed after that emergency need for help.

While some weeks before, the government refused to take money to build homes for poor, this single story was sufficient to trigger what will be called “the revolution of Good,” whose actors were an anonymous team constituted by people from the whole country, who didn’t know each other but were united by the same spirit. The days following the radio message, money could be collected, people joined Abbot Peter, acting as a team. As a result, several organizations were created — an association called Emmaüs, a sub-division dedicated to the building of low-wages houses, the first non-profit organization dedicated to the defense of tenants, the creation of communities for homeless people where they could find a roof and a job (collecting old objects and reselling them)…

The Emmaüs organization still exists (Abbot Peter is now dead) and has an international scope, spreading in a lot of countries wolrdwide.

Q: You mention on Worldwide Story Work [a community of story practitioners focussed on the application of story-based techniques in organizational settings.] that you are “trying to expand storytelling in France.” What similarities and differences have you observed in the storytelling community in France and the storytelling community in the US ?

A: The “storytelling community in France” is for the moment… a fiction. We are only two bloggers running a blog dedicated to storytelling! There is only one and major book dedicated to storytelling in French, and it has been written by a man who hates storytelling (Christian Salmon: Storytelling)! His message is very raw: “storytelling = fiction = manipulation.”

So, building the storytelling community is a big task, trying to educate people who don’t have the patience to read all the wonderful available resources in English, and reinsuring those who are tempted by storytelling but express doubts since they are hearing such “negative mess.”

I also see French focusing on marketing uses, knowing few about the analytical potentiality. This is also a real issue.

But we cannot let a guy like Christian Salmon establish himself as The Voice about storytelling in France, seeing the ideas he tries to infuse.

Q: You have undertaken some storytelling initiatives, such as a bilingual storytelling blog, a tag cloud fueled by 2009 storytelling resolutions, the newsletter (in French) that springs from your blog, and many discussions on Worldwide Story Work. To what extent do you feel these initiatives have succeeded? What has contributed to their success or lack of success? Do you have plans to make them more successful, and do you plan new initiatives?

A: What I wanted to do is to prove that even an under-developed country (in the storytelling field), could contribute to the worldwide storytelling community. I’ve also launched the first Digg-like [site] dedicated to storytelling. I need to take care of it because after some good start, it has somewhat faded; I didn’t give enough time to it.

I’m working on a method to elicit stories within conflictual situations and contexts which I’ve called “The I forgive…” method. I’ve already released a paper about it. I’m currently refining it, getting some advice especially from Cynthia Kurtz. I will release a completely new, expanded version as a chapter of a collective book to be released by mid-2010.

What I expect from these initiatives is a reverse, boomerang-like effect in France, in addition to the somewhat “frontal attack” I’m implementing.

In addition, I’m working on some projects to organize training sessions in France, with trainers coming from the “expert countries,” hat is to say the anglo-saxon ones — sessions conducted by renowned storytelling consultants are good tools to expand storytelling in the country.

Books on My Sidebar and The Spirituality of Imperfection

Posted on June 21, 2009 by KatHansen

Down at the bottom of my sidebar, I have a large widget under the heading “Storytelling Books.” A few notes about these books… They fall basically into these three categories:

Books about storytelling, primarily applied forms of storytelling, such as storytelling for healing, organizational storytelling/business narrative, and storytelling in career and job search.
Storytelling how-tos, such as how to journal, how to craft your life story, how to do digital storytelling, how to use stories in presentations, and how to use stories in training and communication
Books that are told primarily in stories, including entire books that are a story or fable, such as Peter Weddle’s Recognizing Richard Rabbit and the business novel Edge by Corey Blake et al, as well as collections of true stories on similar themes: how people got their jobs, interesting careers people have, how people escaped from corporate America, stories of marriages, workplace stories, stories of the Great Depression, stories of science, and stories about values.

The other thing I need to say about these books is that most of them are not exactly recommendations because … I confess that I haven’t read most of them. Yes, I’ve read some and can heartily recommend them. The books are on the sidebar because I have come across them while researching entries for A Storied Career. I own many of them.

But I am a slow reader to the point where my deficiency in reading speed is almost a learning disability. I once took a speed-reading class in which I discovered that I didn’t really want to read faster. I will confess, however, that my slow reading has been problematic — in graduate school for example. I have also developed a pattern of reading myself to sleep, so anytime I read, my body starts to think it’s sleepytime.

This summer, I’ve made a commitment to read a good chunk of the books on my sidebar. I just finished the book I was writing (I think I write books faster than I read them), so I have a bit more time.

My first selection was The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, which I had come across multiple times in research for this blog. I had seen it mentioned in both storytelling circles and addiction-recovery circles. Both are directly relevant to me because I am a 26-years-sober recovering alcoholic.

The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham essentially embodies the spirituality of 12-step groups, particularly Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not use AA in my recovery; I quit drinking cold-turkey. But this book made me realize how important storytelling is for recovery and made me long for a 12-step group even after being sober for more than twice as long as the 10-year period during which I was drinking.

It’s a beautiful, gentle, inspiring book. At first I was puzzled about where the storytelling element was even though the book is full of illustrative stories.

At this point, it occurs to me that this entry is getting kind of long. I want to share with you some of the storytelling wisdom of The Spirituality of Imperfection and thus, the sharing continues in the next entry.

Story Wisdom from The Spirituality of Imperfection: What We Used to Be Like, What Happened, and What We Are Like Now

Posted on June 21, 2009 by KatHansen

Continuing my post about the wonderful book, The Spirituality of Imperfection …

It was on page 63 that I finally began to understand the book’s subtitle: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. I want to share with you some of what the book says about storytelling and how important stories are for sharing our common humanity and imperfections. Here are some passages from The Spirituality of Imperfection:

Listen! Listen to stories. For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-up-ed-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another’s story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy — and therefore our very human-ness.

The stories that sustain a spirituality of imperfection are wisdom stories. They follow a temporal format, describing “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” Such stories, however, can do more: The sequential format makes it possible for other people’s stories to become part of “my” story. Sometimes, for example, hearing another person;’s story can occasion profound change. Telling the story of that change then follows the format of telling a story within my story: “Once upon a time, I did not understand this very well, but then I heard this story, and now I understand it very differently.”

When a [person] comes to you and tell you your own story, you know that your sins are forgiven. And when you are forgiven, you are healed.

Stories help us attend. And “attending” in a setting of storytelling and storylistening, helps us to remember… “Memory” is communal.” Thus, although a spirituality of imperfection insists, “Pay attention to yourself,” such attending is not self-centered self-seeking but an awareness of oneself as related to others, as a member of a community.

Spirituality’s long-standing connection to story and storytelling ensures that we will never be alone in the spiritual way of life. For whenever and wherever there is a storyteller, there will also be a storyhearer. In the communal act of telling and listening, listening and telling, the sense of belonging begins.

If we would listen, we must also tell; and if we would tell our stories, we need places where we can tell and listen.

It is … a human truth that we are able to listen only when we know that in time. we will be able to tell our own story. Perhaps the main benefit of thr storytelling format … is that it invites, enables, and teaches listening. When we are able to tell our storied, when we are urged to stand up and tell them, we learn respect for other people’s stories and for the need to tell them. The practice of telling stories gives birth to good listeners.

… Community is where we can learn and practice storytelling and its virtues.

That [sober alcoholic] way of life, [early AA members] discovered, could be learned and taught only through the process of telling stories — stories that disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.

Discovering a new “map” through storytelling:

When newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous become immersed in storytelling and storylistening, they begin to see the form and outline of a new map, which details where they are, and how they got there, and — most importantly — the way to get where they want to go. … Through the practice of hearing and telling stories, we discover and slowly learn to use a new “map,” a map that is more “right” because it is more useful for our purpose. … what happens in the remapping of storylistening and storytelling is that in telling our own story, we come to own the story that we tell.

At times … adulthood seems to consist of fending off others who try to impose on us their ideas of what our roles should be, their versions of our stories. Our spiritual problems stem, at least in part, from the fact that we continue to allow someone else to tell us our story.

Recovering our own story, our own spirituality:

The spiritual leaders recognized as “great” … invited their followers to question the handed-down maps by making their own maps — their own stories. Rather than trying to tell their listeners’ stories, rather than imposing interpretation, the sages and saints told the kind of stories that invited identification. For they understood what the ancients had discovered: The best way to help me find my story is to tell me your story.

More in the extended entry.

Why stories and storytelling are crucial in piercing denial:

The practice of telling stories of “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now” helps to make whole because it makes available one’s real identity. In bringing us face to face with our own imperfection, stories confront us with our self in a way that helps us to accept the ambiguity and mixed-up-ed-ness of our human be-ing. Storytelling helps us to create a “whole,” a whole that does not deny that it is made up of incongruous, fractured pieces, but whole nonetheless.

Storytelling in and of itself conveys that there are no quick fixes. The storytelling format of “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now,” emphasizes a process through time and so points to the healing of time. By telling of a past at work in the present, that story-format effects a kind of re-creation of self by the self. In presenting ourselves as we were, we exercise the right to recover possession of our present-dat existence. We do not recall the past for the past; story calls up the past in the present, for the present, making present that which gives meaning and value to today. “To create and in creating to be created” perfectly describes this kind of storytelling.

We cannot command precisely those realities that we most crave. But we can tell stories about them; and our paradox unlocks with the discovery that storytelling (and storylistening) opens us to the experiencing of those realities that we seek. The A.A. storytelling style of — the general format describing of “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now” shapes a language of recovery that acts as the key that opens the door to experiences that are spirituality. In telling our stories and in listening to the stories of others, we actually come to experience the powerful spiritual realities of Release, Gratitude, Humility, Tolerance, Forgiveness, and Being-at-home. … The “language of recovery” works not because those telling their stories describe experiences of Release, Gratitude, and so on, but because, in the very telling of their stories they actually experience those realities.

The vision of “giftedness” is transmitted through stories. Stories speak the language of the heart, giving us the means to express our gratitude.

When alcoholics stand up at A.A. Meetings and tell their stories, the experience of tolerance is almost palpable. Stories invite tolerance because they sensitize both hearers and tellers to the richness and complexity of our diverse possibilities. Each human being has his or her own story, and every story is unique. But the telling and hearing of those unique stories takes place in a setting where each participant is conscious of an identity rooted in limitation. … Stories founded in an identity defined by limitation and shared with others who acknowledge the same limitation involve less the “discussion of weakness” than than the acceptance that one has much to learn from others. Such storytelling testifies that one is teachable. For in the setting of A.A, storytelling and storylistening, two paradoxical things happen. First, participants discover their shared story; and second, they come to realize that each of their stories is unique. But the discovery of the shared story must precede the realization of uniqueness and difference: for only the foundation of shared weakness, shared limitation, and shared flawedness can sustain the openness to difference, the attitude of “teachableness,” and the vision that undergirds tolerance.

True community requires more than the sharing of stories — true community requires the discovery of a story that is shared.

A Brave Personal Story of Abortion and Abortion’s Connection to Career

Posted on June 20, 2009 by KatHansen

This week, well-known career blogger Penelope Trunk bravely told the story of her two abortions on her blog Brazen Careerist.

Even more interestingly, she connected abortion to career. The entry’s title is “What’s the connection between abortion and careers?”

In today’s emotionally charged climate, it takes a lot of guts to tell a story like Trunk’s. Not surprisingly, she’s gleaned 335 comments as of this writing.

Trunk says she had her abortions to preserve her career. But she also admits she is not sure her life would have turned out differently had she not had them.

I have known near and dear ones whose abortions were at least in part prompted by that same desire to preserve their careers. I also know one young woman with a thriving career who made the courageous choice to give up her baby in an open adoption.

This week I also watched Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee debate the abortion issue. Stewart admitted that of all the “liberal” positions, his pro-choice stance is the one his feelings are the murkiest on (for the record, I don’t think he used the phrase “liberal positions”).

Stewart pointed out early on that it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for men to debate and make policy on the issue. They are not the ones directly affected.

That’s why it is so important for women on both sides of the issue to speak out — to tell their stories.

I applaud Penelope Trunk for having the courage to tell hers.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Sean Buvala: Corporate Folks Must Take Storytelling Skill Seriously

Posted on June 19, 2009 by KatHansen

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

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Question 8:

Q: You coach storytellers, including corporate storytellers, and on your site devoted to that effort, you note that “Corporate storytelling is hard work.” What’s the hardest part about it?

A: The hardest thing is doing the work to master the skills. Corporate folks must take this storytelling skill seriously. To really be an effective corporate storyteller, you need to be devoted to being the best storyteller you can be.

However, many people think of storytelling as an adjunct or soft skill in their repertoire of communication skills. We certainly saw the potentially career-ending and dangerous misuse of storytelling in the televised speech by [Louisiana] Governor Bobby Jindal [after President Obama’s State of the Union address]. I imagined that he probably searched the Internet and found this interesting idea about storytelling and figured that anybody can do it. Well, he found out quickly that storytelling is a powerful tool that requires training in order to be used well at such a high-level. I think that if I had to use a jackhammer for something, that I would want to be taught how to use it rather than relying on my previous experience of watching one be used as a punch line in an episode of “Sesame Street.”

Storytelling is a “hard skill” and must be mastered in business. You cannot “sort of” use storytelling any more than your accountant can “sort of” know about money and taxes. I have been teaching for years that storytelling is an Intentional process by using my “Interpret, Express, Integrate” method. There has to be a balance of theory and technique for corporate storytelling. Unfortunately, we have many of the business storytelling gurus wandering the countryside able to teach theory very well but not so good on technique. There is a danger in corporate America in that we take ourselves too seriously, hoping our statistics, buzzwords, and projected pie charts are a replacement for actual skills. You cannot fake authenticity and still be a good storyteller.
In my experience, the most receptive audience these days to learning corporate storytelling are the entrepreneurs and small business owners. These leaders understand that they must master their Story; most often the only thing that separates them from their competition. They know that their image and theory will not help them pay the rent. Our story and knowing how to tell it is about the only thing that really sets us apart from one another. When a company loses touch with its story and how it is presented, we get the disasters we have seen recently in the auto and finance industries.

Should Resumes Die — Or Simply Evolve?

Posted on June 18, 2009 by KatHansen

Last week, Michael VanDervort blogged on RecruitingBlogs.com that resumes must die. He asked the question: Are resumes obsolete?

To illustrate the flaws of resumes, he took up a large chunk of his entry with his own fairly lame resume from 2007, which he had built using a Careerbuilder template.

He then condemns “Careerbuilder for creating a template that takes 23 years of professional work experience and turns it into a jumbled, difficult to read mess.” He also says the resume doesn’t represent who he is in 2009.

I don’t disagree that VanDervort’s 2007 resume is a mess, but just to play devil’s advocate:

Don’t use marginally effective job boards like Careerbuilder.
Update your resume if you want it to represent your current professional self.

VanDervort goes on to say, “I would much rather have my current body of social media work representing me in the market place than even a cleaned and pretty copy of this resume.” He says an ideal resume would contain things like his LinkedIn profile, his tweets on Twitter, and results about him from search engines.

OK, good argument for a Social Media resume like mine. Personal-branding guru Dan Schawbel’s quintessential article on how to create a social-media resume is here.

VanDervort also cites the argument “your blog is your resume.” This line, which I’ve discussed on this blog and here, is starting to feel a bit shopworn and really applies to a very small subset of job-seekers (techies and social-media strategists, perhaps). Not that I’m the world’s most brilliant blogger, for example, but I’ve never had a flicker of interest from an employer based on this blog or any of my other extensive social-media efforts.

Louise Fletcher, who runs the excellent Career Hub blog, reacted to VanDervort’s post over on CollegeRecruiter.com, (especially his contention that his resume “does nothing to communicate anything at all about me that I would want to put out if I were job searching”) writing:

People say to me all the time “I can’t capture who I am in a resume” and I always ask them the same question: Why not? Is it because words are just not adequate to describe the wonder that is you? Unlikely!

More likely it’s because you are being limited by what you imagine a resume should be. If you step outside the box (sorry for the cliche!) a little, you might see lots of ways to convey who you are and what you have to offer a company.

Yes. What the world needs is an outside-the-box incarnation of the resume.

Fletcher and virtually any professional resume writer can do a far better job than VanDervort in crafting a compelling resume.

But the drum I’ve been beating for a long time is that a new form needs to emerge. The key is in these words, “a resume that captures who I really am.”

In other words, tells your story.

To support his “death to resumes” argument, VanDervort cites a blog entry from marketing author Seth Godin in which he asks the question, “Why bother having a resume?”

I would cite Seth Godin, too, for my argument for the Storytelling Resume. In fact, I have cited him in my book, Tell Me About Yourself, but in a different way:

Godin … does not believe marketing without story is possible: “Either you’re going to tell stories that move people, or you will become irrelevant,” he writes.

If marketing products and services without storytelling is not possible, then neither is it possible to market oneself without storytelling.

The Storytelling Resume must and will emerge.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Sean Buvala: You Must Tell Stories to Get Better at Stories

Posted on June 18, 2009 by KatHansen

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

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Questions 6 and 7:

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

A: I am not so sure that transformation comes from story. I think stories of transformation are powerful, but not sure story alone causes transformation. I have many stories about how the use of “community service” has transformed teens, for example. If in some way the sharing of these stories creates an open door to other opportunities for service, then that is a good use of the story.

In most cases, I think story is there to “frame” the facts, ideals and purposes of groups, actions or information. I know recently a woman, who was in one of my youth programs two decades ago, found me to tell me about her life now. She shared with me how one of my stories in particular led her to her public service. Did the story cause that transformation? I do not know. More likely, it gave and gives her a framework from which she moved forward into community service. Stories carry the message but I am not sure they are the message.

I also have experiences of storytelling in corporate training that caused people to both recommit to their jobs and also caused at least one person to quit. Story, in those cases, was an amplifier of values and decisions already in existence in the listener, the catalyst to have them take transforming actions.

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

A: You must tell stories to get better at stories. You can no more be a storyteller by thinking about stories than an artist can create beautiful water-color paintings by thinking about paint. One must pick up the brush or open one’s mouth as the case may be.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Sean Buvala: His Site Aims to Create Community

Posted on June 17, 2009 by KatHansen

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

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Questions 4 and 5:

Q: Your Web site, Storyteller.net is a major resource for performance storytellers and others interested in storytelling. The site is almost 12 years old, and even at age 10, you noted, “Ten years is forever in Internet terms.” What inspired you to start the site, and what has motivated you to keep it going?

A: Thanks. It is always interesting to see how people perceive Storyteller.net. It is not as much of a performance storytelling site as it is a clearinghouse for the many ways story can be expressed. When we began Storyteller.net a dozen years ago, there was nothing like it on the Internet. Actually, there was barely an Internet. We are older than Google. Our goal, back in 1995, was to expose people to storytelling in ways they might not have thought of before going to the site. It was unheard of that you could listen to stories online. We hoped that people might turn off their computers once they experienced recorded stories and book one of the storytellers in the directory to help them create storytelling in their schools, workplaces and other places in their communities.

We also wanted to create community online via such offerings as the articles, written and audio stories, events calendar and even, at one point, a “playground.” Back in our earliest days, the playground and the “storytelling coloring pictures” were the most used sections of the site. I still get hits for “coloring pictures” several times a month. We pulled the playground from the site as we thought we were just promoting the idea that storytelling was just for children.

We really were on the cutting edge of blogging, article marketing, directory listings, and podcasting before any of those words existed. The technology barely existed. Now, all the things we built and systems we set in place are ubiquitous for everyone on the Internet. Back then, storytellers trembled in fear about putting their faces, stories and contact information on the Web and we had a huge job in front of us trying to help folks see the future. I am tired just remembering all that work.

We are in need of a face-lift and few new “cool” features, with our last major revision back in 2002. That may take place later this year. I have plans! We are privately funded, that is, my wife and I pay for the site, so we have to work out a new budget. However, even with our need to update, storytellers in the directory are always telling me that they get many bookings from Storyteller.net. The articles and stories, which we are always adding, get plenty of traffic. We have very high Google search-result rankings. So, we are very much alive and well at Storyteller.net. It is our gift to the community.

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: Just quickly, non-profit organizations must make better use of their stories. People give their money to organizations that have stories (results) that resonate with the donor. For all the years that I worked in non-profit groups, I can tell you the money followed the value of the story, not the spreadsheet.