April 8, 2016
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA

ATTENDEES

  • Dave Toole- tech industry veteran; incubator founder; found of MediaMobz
  • Laura Guzman – marketing / operations, business storytelling for getting everyone on the same page; agricultural & science communications / PR / marketing
  • Kendall Haven – environment & science communications; science of storytelling
  • Jennifer VanSile – film, screenwriting teacher; author of “Cinematic Storytelling”
  • Jason Wilmot – communications for Stanford, MediaX U
  • Richard Okumoto – teacher, pursuing doctorate in Digital Storytelling
  • Lily Chung – engineer, consulting @ Deloitte, teach clients “art of storytelling” (2-day course) (“people remember how you make them feel, not what you tell them”)
  • Pam Reed – former communications for Applied Materials; communications for Cisco
  • Patty Zuboff – TV / video producer; former News Travel Network; Plutonic TV; interest in democratization of video
  • Jay Durgan – MediaMobz; formal global entertainment marketing
  • Raime Heineken – Symantec communications; marketing for mobile app startup
  • Dan Gato – MediaMobz; broadcast communications @ ESPN
  • Neil Burns – faculty U of TX Austin and professor @ UCSF; former NASA research team; director of marketing at Honeywell; started ad agency
  • King Guthro – attorney; Digital Ocean nonprofit
  • Davis Maston – grew up in Studio City; chairman of Chuskin; science of communications; on board of Quantified Self Labs and Quantified Communications; project called “drop dead happy”
  • Martha Russell – Exec Dir, Stanford U MediaX;
  • Kelly Palmer – education technology masters; learning & development for big companies; chief learning officer of LinkedIn; how learning can impact happiness at work and in life, and how to convey through storytelling
  • Ryan Richardson – run training company, doing training in storytelling; storytelling curriculum for corporations
  • Loreta Tarozaite – journalist, news anchor / reporter; video producer
  • Benjamin Wong – venture capitalist, serial startup-ist; how to tell entrepreneurial stories; running consultancy for mobile apps, bio med sites, other products launching
  • Miles Lee – MediaMobz, video editor; music production
  • Angela Simoes – high tech PR, Autodesk; podcasts (including “From Quantified Self to Qualified Self”)

Breakout Session (hosted by Martha Russell)

 

Team Breakout 1: What were the elements (gold standards) of best story you ever heard?

  • emotion
  • personal connection
  • structure

 

Team Breakout 2: What are the gold standards of a digital story?

  • same as story
  • succinct
  • shareable

 

Group Exercise 1 (post-its): What is it about digital that interests you?

noname

Group Exercise 2: What concerns do you have?

 

  • volume
  • overstimulation
  • lack of control
  • reduced impact
  • longevity
  • quality
  • audience low expectations
  • responsibility / ethics
  • replacement of human self consciousness
  • Machine intelligence

 

 

Group Exercise 3: What insights would you like to have that would help you with what you would like to do with story?

  • How do we source stories?
  • Identify the elements of engagement & empathy on the part of the audience – what works, what doesn’t, what makes a good story?
  • What attention / retention hooks, what pulls people in and makes them hold onto it?
  • What universal cultural symbols can we use?
  • What is the business model?
  • What distribution models?
  • Effect of changes and expectations (generational?) or are our belief in changing expectations driving
  • Influence of content
  • What content is hard wired? (i.e., Cultural interests in specific genres? Religious / universal stories?)
  • Are there any real negatives of digital storytelling? Or is just how / where you use it?
  • Why do they want story? how did they get to the story?
  • How to get funded?
  • How to be better collaborators?
  • Anticipating what’s next in storytelling? (i.e., what’s after VR…?)
  • Replication of the story
  • How to create ROI?
  • AI – can it really have the
  • Embedded systems + how embedded in us
  • How we use digital storytelling to help people change their behavior, incite action, achieve different actions
  • How do you get the data, data analytics
  • How to get fUnded
  • What’s most liked / shared / memorable? (leveraging data)
  • What are exiting new ideas?
  • Honest from the client
  • How can my story stand above the rest?
  • What is considered a great story?
  • How do you get through anywhere?
  • What is the impact of new tech for storytelling on learning / understanding, experiencing the story, contributing to the story, and inciting action?
  • How can we centralize our stories?
  • How can we generate action?
  • Effect of delta in expectations
  • Improved neural signature for story reactions
  • East of engagement
  • Dwell time
  • Replication
  • ROI
  • Audience
  • Source
  • Purpose
  • Connection
  • Distribution
  • Library of content
  • How to change behavior
  • How do you know / define success up front?
  • Behavioral analytics
  • Is it one-and-done? What’s the shelf life / longevity?
  • How do I build / keep anticipation in very short stories?
  • How much do words matter over visual / audio in order to resonate?
  • Storytelling using technology
  • Storytelling to help engineers / scientists communicate
  • “Architecture” of storytelling
  • Intercultural communications
  • Competence
  • Foundation for digital storytelling
  • Universal cultural communication / symbols
  • Direction of storytelling as a learning tool
  • Best attention / retention hooks
  • What is our purpose?
  • Construct a body of knowledge (domain knowledge + domain network)
  • Who downloaded / listened to / read
  • Why did they want the story? (i.e., social networking, googled)
  • Did they want to keep the story
  • Storytelling structures
  • Source of stories
  • Identifying elements of engagement / empathy on the part of the audience
  • Managing method of the telling itself
  • Importance of purpose
  • Retention, connectivity, duplication / disseminations
  • Changes in expectations? Or is it our believe in the need to cater to their changes in expectation?
  • Motivation – audience v. teller-driven
  • Collaborative potential
  • Durability
  • Tell me where & when and who the audience is
  • What is the best channel to reach audience
  • How can I scale?
  • How can I tell a story interesting enough to capture attention and be memorable? Can I make them act?
  • Source good, authentic stories
  • Attention / retention hooks
  • Why did they want story?
  • Better collaboration
  • Business model
  • Changing belief of expectation
  • Hardwired content
  • What is the most important element in a digital story?
  • how do you target an audience when you don’t have access to them?
  • What are the negatives of digital storytelling?
  • What is the true “importance” of quality of the media?
  • Behavior not seen as learning
  • Adopting new technologies (i.e., VR, drones)
  • Helping tech businesses find their stories
  • Within all the complexity, how do I keep it simple?
  • How do we make science relevant?
  • How do we help people discover the science all around them?
  • How do we use digital storytelling to help people change their behavior?
  • How do you identify the path to your audience?
  • How do you build stories worthy of sharing?
  • How do you surface stories with purpose?

 

Group Discussion: What could a group of people like this do for digital storytelling that would be useful?

  • Having regular conversations like this (not online; presence / F2F important)
    • or telepresence – set up in centers so we can collaborate with people in other locations / countries, etc
  • Sharing best practices, collaborating on activities
  • Should we construct a body of knowledge / library
  • Form a domain network to accelerate all the work of the network
    • What skills do we need from people in the network?
      • psychologists
      • experts in story construction
      • social / behavioralists
    • Clarification / contextualization
      • ID individual areas and dive into these areas
    • Support group – network to brainstorm with or go to with help
    • Invite NGO’s or other organizations struggling with their message (1x/qtr come in and help)
      • develop pitches / stories
    • ID a cause or a specific problem to solve
      • e., how do we get more girls into STEM
    • What people are reading and seeing
      • get top 5 books, podcasts, videos, resources, etc
    • Share everyone’s contacts after

 

Summary Thoughts: Martha

Enduring aspects we identified

  • Engagement
  • Retention
  • Inspire to influence

 

Novelty that digital brings

  • Time
  • Location
  • multi sensory layering can create a difference sense of presence

 

Uncharted territory

  • Distribution
  • Models
  • Business models
  • …and how all these will come together

 

Standards that this group can develop

  • The craft
  • The control
  • Desire for establishing a sense of excellence
  • Share what we know
  • Fill in the gaps
  • Collaborate with one another

 

ADDITIONAL THREADS (DAVE TOOLE)

  • Millennials not in the room today, but need to be
    • they don’t consume media / messages / stories in the same way…how do we address this?
  • How do we tell stories with purpose?
  • In the last 2 days there was more content created than in the history of the planet….how do you find stories that resonate btw all the noise?
  • So many forms of storytelling…consider music

 

NEXT STEPS

  • Come back together in July
  • Think about other people who might benefit from / contribute to this conversation
  • Ponder the questions brought up today…
    • In 2020 what are the stories we will be telling?
    • Do our stories have purpose?
    • How can we shift the way we tell stories?
    • What are the tools we can use?
  • Assemble a location to collaborate
  • Post reading / viewing / content lists