Here’s the link to the event’s Facebook page.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Sean Buvala has just published a nifty multi-media training kit on writing “about me” pages, bios, and the like. I plan to review it in greater depth, but I wanted to mention it today because Sean has a special deal going on the kit.

The kit is just $7 if you buy it TODAY, May 2, but, if when you visit the site the price has risen above that special launch price, use discount code “newslettermay” (no quotes) to still get your copy at just $7! (Coupon code expires May 7, 2012).

Here’s how Sean describes it:

Sean Buvala’s new multi-media training kit to help you build your business and connect with your clients, customers and audience by creating a great About Me. Create a story-infused personal bio for any situation. Get your copy today! Downloadable manual, audio and videos help you learn.

Learn more here and also in this blog post.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

NFL player … turned playwright … turned story evangelist? Really? Reinvention Summit 2 was my first introduction to Bo Eason, whose one-man play, Runt of the Litter, is a semiautobiographical account of Eason’s life and career as a safety for the Houston Oilers in the 1980s.

Eason’s session provided a glimpse of his teachings and beliefs about the power of telling your personal story, and happily, we don’t have to be satisfied with a glimpse, thanks to the rich list of resources that an attendee shared; they appear at the bottom of this post.

But here’s an overview:

Eason says he got to be the best by following his own story. He describes the pivotal moment that set him on his path to being the best and determined what his story would be. As a boy, he was denied his fondest dream of playing Little League with his brother. Indeed, for a brief moment, he felt life was over if he couldn’t play with his brother. But the next moment, he made up his mind, “That’s never happening again. I have a better story.”

Something happens where your heart is cut out, and you decide it’s never happening again, Eason says.

“Most of us don’t think our stories are dramatic,” Eason says. On the contrary “to live in this world is dramatic beyond belief,” he insists. It is, in fact, “out of bounds to say you don’t have a good story.” Eason believes we should be able to say of our stories: “I love my story more than your love your story. I’m more generous with my story than you are with your story.”

As storytellers, Eason asserts, we need to train ourselves to have courage and resolve. Resolute courage, in fact. Of our listeners, we must think: “Let them deal with MY humanity.”

We make a decision, he says, to fight, go to the mat for beliefs. We need to “fall in love with the pain.”

Host Michael Margolis illuminates: “We collect experiences to have stories to tell. The things we think people don’t want to hear are the source of our greatest power.” Eason adds: “Surrender is the golden goose, the key to the kingdom; all roads lead from your story, which is your wound.” We need to ask ourselves, “What is the thing I’ve always been trying to heal or fix?”

Eason wound up with three messages he wanted to convey about our stories. I’ve included my comments on these [in brackets]:

1. The more personal you tell your story, the more universal it becomes, the more it connects with others. [Yes! I completely believe in this one.]
2. You most physicalize or embody your story so it’s encased in you 24 hours a day. Here, Eason tells of an encounter with Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose mangled feet told the story of how much he puts into his art. “We believe the body 100 percent of the time,” Eason says. “The body can’t lie.” [I’m sure this is true for Eason and many people; Eason is an athlete, whose use of his body as his instrument has been important since childhood. I’m not sure it’s true of everyone.]
3. Generosity = money. Your bottom line is directly proportional to how much you give in your arena. Whoever is the best in the field gives the most of themselves. The more you give, the more you get paid and the more influence you have. [Generosity is the most distinctive characteristic I’ve observed of story practitioners in the seven years I’ve reported on them. It just may be the secret sauce of storytelling.]

Eason closes by discussing the “lost art of giving all of yourself all of the time.” He says: “You are not your feelings; you are your commitments. Your commitments override any feelings or fear you have.” We must be committed to having an impact, making a difference, he says. Below are examples of how Eason is having an impact and making a difference.

Summit participant Kimberly Burnham shared her favorite Bo Eason resources:

• 7-minute clip of Bo Eason as part of a set of teaser videos for Reinvention Summit 2
• Awesome Bo Eason 40-minute video, “The Power of Personal Story,” about telling your story, right after he performs his one man show, Runt of the Litter
• Bo Eason at the Fulltime Messenger program (1 hour, 25 minutes)
• Bo Eason show clip (10 minutes)
• Zsuzsa Novak, Hungarian Freedom Fighter shares her story after the Bo Eason Event (Podcast)
• Amazing sharing from Marisa Murgatroyd at the Bo Eason Personal Power Event (about 15 minutes)
• MISFIT by JK at Bo Eason’s Power Story telling Event (about 10 minutes)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Reinvention Summit 2012 starts a week from today!

One thing I haven’t touched on in all my promotions of the event is all the amazing, enduring stuff you get to enhance your professional and personal development:

• Twenty 60-minute sessions with leading storytelling experts – including live, interactive calls, plus Q&A time. Live sessions are Mon-Fri, 12-2pm ET (NYC time) and 4-6pm ET (NYC time).
• Unlimited access to recordings of all sessions (listen online or download the mp3 file to your iPod or audio player)
• Action worksheets with exercises designed to reinforce lessons from each session
• Access to private online community to connect and engage with other participants
• Exclusive Bonus Session with Michael Margolis, Dean of Story University
• Lifelong storytelling practices that will transform your message and grow your business
• Opportunity to become connected to a global storytelling tribe
• PDF transcripts for each of the 20 sessions

…Everything will be available (audio, slides, and PDFs) to you online and as a download right on your computer, and you can make your own copies of anything you need!

Trust me, this is great content that you will get use out of for a long time to come.

Time’s growing short. I really hope to see you there!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Huffington Post has launched a new project called “The Moment I Knew,” a user-submitted video series in which readers tell the stories of life-changing moments they have experienced. Each section of HuffPost has chosen a different theme — whether it was the moment you knew you were in love, the moment you knew your marriage was over, the moment you knew you loved college, or the moment you knew you were broke. You can also tell about any other life-defining moment you’d like to share.

You can create your video using YouTube or Vimeo and send the link/URL of the video to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com. If you create your video using your laptop or mobile phone and have a video file, attach the file in an email to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com. Your video submission is subject to HuffPost’s User Terms. Make sure to include your full name with your video submission. Each video should be 30-60 seconds long, and should feature only you, speaking right into the camera telling your story. You are asked to start your story with the words “The moment I knew…”

Hashtag for the project is #momentiknew.

You can check out and subscribe to “The Moment I Knew” YouTube Channel.

Email questions to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Did you know that if you buy a ticket to this month’s content-packed Reinvention Summit 2012, it’s essentially half price because you also get a ticket for a friend?

Did you also know that you can pay for the summit in two easy installments — and still get the 2-for-1 deal?

Based on the 2010 Summit, I can promise you won’t regret your investment in this brain-feeding, idea-breeding, bond-building, eye-opening, business-boosting, spirit-lifting, and possibly life-changing virtual event. All without even getting out of your pajamas. (I know you wouldn’t stay in your PJs all day during the summit … but you could.)

The Summit is less than two weeks away. You’re gonna wanna get in on this one!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Mary, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Mary Daniels Brown, Question 2:

Q: To what extent do you believe people construct their narrative identities differently in the digital world — for example on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs — from the way they do “in real life”?

A: I used to think that perspective was the most important aspect of a person’s self-defining life story. But I’ve realized that context is just as important.

The contrast between the identity we create in the digital world and the identity we project in real life is a good example of the importance of context. In fact, the dichotomy of digital identity vs. real-life identity is a gross oversimplification. We all contain many, many selves, and which one we present at a given moment depends on the social situation. Although most of us have a basic core identity that remains the same, we project variations on that core identity in response to the social situation we find ourselves in.

In terms of online identity, for example, I have three accounts: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn is a site for professional networking, so on that site I focus on my education, my skills, and my professional experience and accomplishments. I don’t express my political leanings or my views on current issues such as abortion or gay marriage. However, I use my Facebook account to keep in touch with a limited group of family and close friends. My Facebook updates express my social values and political beliefs. My Facebook identity is much more informal than my LinkedIn identity. And I use Twitter mainly to showcase my professional interests, although I also try to include enough personal details to make me look like a real person. Last fall, for example, when my hometown team, the St. Louis Cardinals, improbably won the World Series, I tweeted my moments of agony and ecstasy during the games. So my Twitter identity is somewhere between my LinkedIn and Facebook identities. Some people even have separate professional and personal Twitter accounts. But I don’t have “an online identity.” I have several slightly different online identities that I use for different purposes.

Most people also have several variations of their “real-life identity.” For example, we act differently in a meeting at work than we do when watching the Super Bowl on television with a bunch of friends. When we create a particular identity for a specific social situation, we are not being hypocritical but are making a prudent assessment of what aspects of ourselves we find appropriate to reveal under the circumstances. We match the narratives we tell about ourselves to our perception of the social context.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

You’ll find little of what follows that hasn’t already appeared in this space. The following is the text of a speech I gave last week in Toastmasters. My assignment was to explain an abstract concept. I chose “the spirituality of imperfection,” which I’ve written about here a number of times. I wove a bit of my personal story into it, something I’ve also written about here. A new addition had to do with Toastmasters itself and how it is a safe place to tell personal stories. You can also see a video of me delivering the speech in the extended entry.

By the way, one of the books I’ve most enjoyed over the last year is Life Itself, Roger Ebert’s memoir. Roger tells his personal story of his alcoholism in this terrific blog post.

My name is Kathy, and I’m an alcoholic.

If I were at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, that’s what I would say. I haven’t had a drink in 29 years, but I am still an alcoholic because if I ever took a drink again, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

I was inspired to tell a bit of my story after [a member] mentioned during Table Topics that he is in recovery. [Member’s name] told me that he was planning to start a 12-step group here at this church because he feels it’s important to tell his story so he can help others. Later, [another member] spoke about her experience with a 12-step program.

Thus, my peer Toastmasters and honored guests, I want to share with you how important stories are for sharing our common humanity and imperfections.

A few years ago, I was drawn to this book, The Spirituality of Imperfection, partly because of my own experience with addiction and partly because of my passion for storytelling and the book’s subtitle, “Storytelling and the Search for Meaning.” The book explains why personal storytelling is at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs.

“In the mirror of another’s story,” the book says, “we can discover our tragedy and our comedy — and therefore our very human-ness.”

My tragedy was that I spent 10 years of my life drinking — from age 18 to age 28. I did many things I’m not proud of, including blacking out and waking up with no memory of what happened in the preceding hours. Back then, I could not imagine participating in a social event without the lubrication of alcohol. A cousin once told me, “You don’t bother to have a personality unless you’re drunk.”

After I quit, dealing with my shyness in social situations was extremely difficult, and is to this day. But I would never go back because my life is unimaginably better without alcohol.

Let me share with you a passage from The Spirituality of Imperfection that explains how sharing stories helps others:

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.

This format, the books says, of 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.

It may not be easy to understand how this story-sharing is spiritual. The Spirituality of Imperfection notes that the great spiritual leaders told stories that invited identification. If you look at the parables of Jesus, for example, they are all stories that his followers could identify with, could see themselves in — The Sower and the Seeds, The Prodigal Son, The Good Samaritan. As The Spirituality of Imperfection states, great spiritual leaders have understood that “the best way to help me find my story is to tell me your story.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I had two occasions in the last couple of months to see the “About” pages of many Web sites and blogs. In the first, I had a few dozen story practitioners that I wanted to invite to participate in my Q&A series. In the second, I visited many sites and blogs to glean a short description of each so I could list them on my inside pages.

Both activities had maddening elements.

Probably about a third of the “practitioners” provided absolutely no way to contact them. These were mostly bloggers. I do understand that blogging has its roots in anonymity. While most bloggers identify themselves today (Is that a true statement? Any stats on blogger anonymity?), some still have legitimate reasons to hide their identities. They may not want their employers to know about their blogs, for example.

But note that I perceived these bloggers as practitioners in the story world. That means they appeared to be interested in selling their services — so how do they expect to do so if they provide no contact information? Some provided only a first name; a few provided no name at all.

I don’t get it.

The other maddening phenomenon involved sites and blogs (and here I also refer to the businesses or organizations behind the sites) that provided little or no idea of what they are about — their purpose, mission, premise, etc. In at least two cases, I had to turn to third-party sites to get a description of the thrust of the sites I wanted to list. That’s just pathetic, in my opinion. Common situations:

• Absolutely no About page at all and no description on the home page as to what the site is about.
• Descriptions on the About page of people behind the site, but still no hint of what the site is about.
• Long — often nicely written and even storied — descriptions of an overall philosophy, but still no concise statement of what the site is about.
• Worse, a long, boring chronological bio with all of the founder’s credentials, but again no concise statement of what the site is about.
• Site where one could probably figure out what the site is about by using it, but the user must register to do so.
• The user has to watch a video to find out what the site is about. Sorry, I don’t have the patience for that.

Here are the two crazy-making examples from my recent endeavors for which I had to consult third-party sites to get a description:

The much buzzed-about Dear Photograph: Now, it’s not hard to figure out what this site is about by looking at it: Submitters take a snapshot — usually one featuring one or more people and dating from the film-photography era — and hold it up against the original setting so that past and present blend into a new work of art. They also write a brief piece about the work. But would it kill founder Taylor Jones to have an About page? I’d love to see how he sees the site, what his vision for it is, a description of it in his own words.

Small Demons: No About page. You’ll find a fair amount of text on the home page for this tool. But none of it explains how to use the tool, what the purpose is, and why you would want to use it. In fairness, a 1:49 video gets the user a little closer to understanding — but still doesn’t tell us how or why this tool is useful. We could also perhaps figure it out if we registered on the site. Personally, I’d like to know what I’m registering for before I register. Could we not get a simple explanation of a couple of sentences that tells us what Small Demons is good for? Something like these sentences I resorted to from Cool Hunting: “Collects and catalogs the millions of references to real-world and fictional music, movies, people, and objects that are found in literature and provides a place — a Storyverse — where users can draw meaningful connections between stories and everyday life.” I can only wonder at how many more users Small Demons would get if people could figure out what it’s about.

Not long ago, the About page of blogger Len Evans’s blog, “Looking Out from My Little Place was cited as a nice, storied example of an About page (I’m sorry that I forget who pointed it out.)

The story is indeed charming, authentic, and personal, especially when juxtaposed with the link Evans provides at the end of the story: “The Blah, Blah, Blah Bio” (also charmingly, there’s not all that much blah, blah, blah).

Evans’s story isn’t perfect. It’s a tad long. He says what he’s about but isn’t explicit about what the blog’s about. A quick look, however, reveals that his “about” and his blog’s are one and the same: “pastoring youth pastors and youth workers, helping build healthy local youth ministry networks, providing youth ministry training and walking alongside churches with a process so they can discern and discover what a healthy youth ministry means in their context.”

Still, it’s a refreshing About page compared to many.

Karen Dietz included in her Just Story It Scoop.it curation today Sonia Simone’s article on this “About” subject, Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page?, which covers many of the same complaints I’ve just ranted about — plus more:

1. You don’t have an About page.
2. I can’t find your name.
3. I don’t know what you look like. (Not a huge complaint for me, but a photo is nice.)
4. The writing is boring.
5. Using video alone.
6. You go on (and on and on).
7. I bet you think your About Page is about you.

The article also generated 113 comments (at this writing), so it’s a great discussion of the issues of About pages.

Why do you think so many Web folks and bloggers fall down in the area of About pages, and what are your pet peeves?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.