The stories of objects

During each of the last couple of moves I've helped with, I've found areas of surprise & delight. Themes that keep popping up and bring a smile and giggle each time they do. Giggles that can be shared with the others in the house because the themes are so universal for that particular case. For dear Jenny, it was marveling at the sheer number & variety of her collections :).

At my parents, it was Dad's paystubs. For the past 20 years or so, he would collect his weekly paystub at the store, bring it home, and tuck it away somewhere "safe". We found them EVERYwhere, tucked into drawers, corners, shoeboxes... We took a paper-box of them out to a burn barrel in the backyard and fed them in bit by bit. And still found more.

I find it exciting that even such simple things can generate a story. Mom and I will be able to giggle about this months from now as we recall the move.

My parents move brought a lot more stories to light, especially because we had a little more time to pack than expected... The outfit I wore in kindergarten that our neighbors, the Goebbels had given me. Dad's Boy Scout uniform. Strange things from Danny's closet, like art projects none of us had ever seen before.

I think that's part of where I got my appreciation for story. When we were kids, we moved several times - the longest in one place was 4 years (until the house my parents just moved out of, where they had stayed for 20+). Mom asked this time why it was so much harder than when they had kids to herd and our stuff to deal with. I think the relatively frequent moves forced us to create a system. Each kid had a paper box of their important stuff. Each kid knew their room & stuff. There was a tomato box of pictures. As part of this system, we reviewed the contents of these boxes. We shared the stories of what was in them and why it was moving with us. All very informal, of course, and I probably see more of a pattern than my brothers might.

But I appreciate it, these stories of objects - important and trivial - in our lives. I'm adding them to the pile of story types that I want to explore further.

Psyched to meet some storytellers

I'm in NYC tonight for the #140conference - a gathering of hundreds of Twitter folks telling stories about social media, technology, education, and connecting. I'm very excited! I have interests in many of the topics, as I believe all feed into the storytelling strategy I'm about to start drafting - and to my general appreciation of and understanding of storytelling overall. (Plus I get to meet Twitter friends IRL!)

PSFK has a post about a presentation by Jonathan Harris. In it, he talks of Werner Herzog's two ways of viewing reality "accountant's truth" and "ecstatic truth". To Harris, gathering status updates and tweets provides an "accountant's view" of reality. For the storytelling that moves souls and mountains, we need the "ecstatic" - to build on the accountant's view with emotion.

Ideas are bubbling. I think I'll force some retreat time on Thursday, after my great encounters this week, with my whiteboard, colored pencils, and colored paper and see where the bubbles take me.

The wonder of stories

I left ... that afternoon, marveling at how different stories can be, how some stories can make us laugh, while others make us cry. I thought about bedtime stories, which send us off to sleep, and Zen stories, which wake us up with their strange paradoxical twists.

In his book, The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness, Joel ben Izzy explores the power and meaning of story. As a travelling storyteller who loses his voice, ben Izzy takes us along on his journey of discovery. A wonderful, quick read - interspersed with classic tales that have a direct relationship to his path.

It's the beauty of stories; whatever you give, you get back more - if you listen.

I am excited to listen and absorb the stories of those around me - and learn from them how to help others build their own.

Where I'm headed right now

A couple of events converged recently to get me seriously thinking about career stuff again. I grabbed my favorite bright paper and sat down to map out my thoughts in an effort to figure out where I should be going.

As I worked, it became clear that a common thread ran through both my external interests and my highest passion points about my career. Storytelling.

If you read this blog at all, which I know not many do [YET, Aprille, YET], then you've seen that fascination here.

As a kid, I thought I'd become an author. I still might, although I don't feel the nugget of a unique, unborn story rattling around my head at the moment. In high school, I wrote many Twilight-style short stories - typically an underappreciated witty, spunky village girl who wins the affections of the sarcastic on the outside, but really quite sweet prince.

My years in market research were focused on building stories from the data we gathered from our potential customers. The real plus to me about working in the company I do - we are a significant player in helping people to build & revisit their own stories. (Insert Italian handgestures here).

My fascination with stories is broader than creating or telling them, though. It's how they're told, what they mean, how this changes with technology and multimedia mashups, across geographies. What are the psychological principles behind them? How can companies help? Besides the straight-up reliving of memories and bed-time imagining, what role do stories play in how people learn? Heal? Grow? How can stories be used to better communicate what people need in products to companies? To better share what companies have to offer to people?

I'm really excited by this discovery, which was really right in front of me. I think becoming a storytelling subject matter expert (or storytelling "master") is something tangible that I can do for my current employer and it lays out potential opportunities ahead, if that is the path I choose or need to take. I can also see it shaping the crafting and reading I do in my personal life. Oh, this will be fun!! Let's go!

In that light, I reach out to you readers and those I'm pointedly sharing this post with.

Any book recommendations? Conferences? People to connect with? I'd love to hear suggestions. I have some initial ideas, but want unbiased suggestions first.

More to come!
[Funny, as excited as I am, I'm nervous too, and sat on this post for a day after completing it]

Ghost stories

In Haunted Providence, Rory Raven talks of his penchant for collecting ghost stories. Even though he is very much a skeptic, he enjoys the tales people share. He sees ghost stories as a "gateway" to spur interest in history.

He also touches on the impact our beliefs have on the volume and impact of ghost stories in a culture. In discussing Native Americans (and he admits this is a generalization and is not based on knowledge of all tribes):

"Most tribes have a tradition of feeling very connected to the spirits of their ancestors in general. This tradition is often a source of great comfort and even strength. Their spirits are there to help, not to haunt."

Raven has found little evidence of Native ghost stories prior to the arrival of the white man. After their first encounters with Europeans, ghost stories increased - where ancestors returned to warn their kin of the danger and evil of the whites.

This fascinates me - how would a different perspective on death, a different perspective on what, if anything lies after, and different encounters change what we share? That needs more thought and another post.

Ghost stories thrill me. Partly because I love the idea that something unexplained and funky is out there. Partly because of the personal histories they reveal - the personalities of those who once occupied (and maybe still do) a certain spot. They give depth to a building more than the 5 senses can reveal. And partly because of the oral tradition they represent. Gathering around the campfire and scaring each other exercises our minds, our imaginations, and brings us closer to the people we're sharing with.

So pull up a stool, and let's tell tales. To start, let me tell you about an apartment I lived in ...

Connecting

I had the pleasure to hear Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs speak in Rochester the other day at the SM2Day conference - and the thrill to meet him in person (and even though he's quite friendly and I've talked to him on Twitter before, when he's behind a table signing books and there's a line behind me, I turn into bashful mush-mouth. Silly.)

He's an excellent, casual speaker and, much like on his blog, treated the presentation more as a conversation with the people in the room. You can look for video of his talk here.

There were a couple of things he talked about that, combined with other speakers at the conference and other things I've seen recently, struck a chord. These really center around connecting with people in marketing and communications efforts.

First, Remember Mobile -
Mobile phones are increasingly important in our lives. As Chris pointed out, we won't go more than 10 paces from our phone, even when we leave wallet, keys, etc behind. Research shows that higher and higher numbers are accessing social networks from mobile devices, and that more people are shopping on mobile devices, too. Companies need to communicate with their customers as people in this space.

Imagine the power of a conversation with customers as they're making a purchase decision via the social networks they look to for advice.

Second, Customer Service -
Conversations with customers need to shift from product push to customer service. To tending relationships. Enabling the people having conversations to resolve customer problems. This builds trust, appreciation for any brand.

Third, Make More Connections in Person -
Meeting Chris IRL, connecting with SMC Rochester folks who I don't see often enough at meetups because I'm a slacker and don't go. It's warm fuzzies. It gives that extra layer to stories and conversations. While connecting and storytelling in new media is powerful and revolutionary, even, the handshake still has a ton of value. That can be easy to forget as tweets pop up and pics are posted on Facebook - it's nice to be reminded. A bit like Drew Olanoff's talk at the 140 Conference in LA - reminding people about phone calls.

Some new storytelling thoughts coming in the next day or so. 'Til then - enjoy.

The stories we tell shift with the language we speak

When I was a kid, my cousins had a game that intrigued me. We never played, but it became associated in my head with a spy-mystery who-dunnit where "The Brain" was actually a villain behind a vast bank of consoles and controls which he used to control the world. The metaphor stuck.

I have long been fascinated by how people perceive and process the world. What does that console look like for them? Do other people have the same type of running monologue in their heads - with the occasional conversation run-through every way possible - that I do? What's the impact of differences in culture, background, disabilities/ abilities? I think this is a large part of the appeal that Oliver Sack's works hold for me.

My brother is colorblind, with a red-green deficiency. To him, the lawn is orange. How does that impact his appreciation for stories where color plays a key role? Take that to an even higher level for my Uncle, who sees in black, white, and shades of grey. I remember how frustrated he got playing Trivial Pursuit, because he never knew which category he had landed on. In Island of the Colorblind , Sacks describes a society where color does not play a role (or just a very minor one). He also tells of colorblind artists who paint with such subtle shifts in greyscale that color-sighted people cannot distinguish the patterns that my Uncle, for example, would.

I just read an article by Lera Boroditsky, titled "How does our Language Shape the Way We Think?". Fascinating! She details experiments that compare and contrast perceptions between cultures with very different language structures. Like considering spatial orientation/ reference in English, where the reference point is our body, to a tribe where the reference point is the compass. Because their language is so tied to compass directions, they always know which way they face. Or how visual cues relate to perception of time in English, where time is tied to distance, vs Greek, where time is volume-related. Very cool. How does this impact how we tell stories? How and what we choose to mashup in online storytelling? Would love to hear folk-tales from the tribe that points to the compass.

Creoles themselves, as a language mashup, must get interesting. I'll have to dig more to see if they tend to stick to the same fundamentals, make new rules, or pick and choose from the source languages. Imagine being part of the emergence of a Creole tongue that not only is a new way of expressing yourself - but could be a total right turn in how you perceive the world, as well.

What have I read in Haitian Creole, in French, in translation that did not take into account these differences? Has it impacted my experience of the story?

Now I have to learn a lot more languages. Or at least understand how their rules are built to make sure I get these subtleties.