I’ve got the SlideShare religion. Ironically, the use of slides, so often associated with mind-numbing – if not sleep-inducing – oral presentations, makes for a terrific storytelling platform for reading. Earlier in the year, I posted on “Telling a Story Through Visual Means” that reverse-engineered a charticle in WIRED Magazine. In a sense, SlideShare encompasses the …more
I spoke at the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing on storytelling a couple weeks ago. The talk triggered interest from a Chinese publication which asked me two questions via e-mail: How does storytelling impact today’s traditional media as well as social media? How does storytelling benefit business executives and their respective companies? …more
I’ve got the Twitter religion. I’ve experienced its power in the form of crowd sourcing, research and new connections. But Twitter is not a platform for storytelling. Mark Drapeau who pens the blog Cheeky Fresh makes this very point in Microstorytelling Overkill and the Conundrum of the Exciting Event (must be nice to not have …more
It’s standard practice for journalists to put a “face” on a crisis. It’s called humanizing the story. Which brings me back to the Toyota debacle which I addressed yesterday in the post “Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole.” As you would expect, the reporters crafting follow-on stories to the Toyota crisis are indeed striving …more
The movie business provides a window into how people like their stories. The path for movies can take many forms, but they end on a positive note 99 percent of the time. That’s the way we like it. Shrek gets the princess (albeit, with a revised look). Michael Oher goes on to play offensive tackle …more