 Hello everybody. My name is Lindsay Spector and I'm a digital media coordinator here at the U.S. Department of State. I'm coming to you live from Washington, D.C. at our State Department studios where we are thrilled to kick off our Y.C. Lee Tech Tuesday series today. Every Tuesday this month we will have a Tech Tuesday Facebook live chat with a tech expert on a different topic. Today I have the privilege of speaking with Joelle Seligson about digital storytelling. Joelle is a digital editor with the Freer Sackler, the Smithsonian Institution's Museums of Asian Art here in Washington, D.C., and she's going to talk about digital storytelling and why it's important for your social media or mobile apps. Please ask your questions for Joelle in the comments section below or on Twitter using the hashtag Tech Tuesday. Please also let us know where you're watching from. Alright, Joelle, before we get into the topic of digital storytelling I want to do a speed round of quick questions to help our audience get to know you and the topic a little bit better. So, you work for the Freer Sackler. What is that? The Freer Sackler are the Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art. Great. How long have you worked there? I've been with the museum since 2010. Awesome. What's your favorite thing about your work? I love being able to learn something new every day and that's from the Smithsonian's world-renowned experts, no less. Cool. What's your favorite thing about technology? I'm fascinated by everything that's possible with technology. What is digital storytelling? Digital storytelling is exactly what it sounds like. It's telling a story using digital tools and platforms. There are several ways to define that term, but that's going to be our definition for our purposes today. Great. What inspired you to learn about digital storytelling? I'm really interested in everywhere that marries language and technology. Cool. Are you excited about the rest of our program? Absolutely. Great. Me too. Okay. Now that we know a bit more about you, can you tell us why is digital storytelling a subject that's important for people to know about? Well, our audience is right now watching us on Facebook Live, so they're clearly a tech-savvy group. And as more and more people start describing themselves that way, it's going to be increasingly important to reach them where they are via these web and digital connections. True. I heard you have three tips for digital storytelling. What are they? So these are very basic tips, but I think they're pretty important nonetheless. So the first one would be to know and reach your audience. Before you start to share, you want to know who you're sharing with, who you're talking to. You want to make a connection, so you want to have a two-way conversation rather than a one-way monologue. You don't want to talk at people. And there are so many different platforms you can use to reach the audience. You want to choose the best one for the ones that you're targeting. My second tip would be to find the relevance. You care about your story, so now you want to figure out how to make other people care. Just like a journalist, find the angle that makes your content relevant now. And thirdly, educate, engage, and tell the story. You want to use every post to tell an educational message, even when it's engaging and entertaining at the same time. Awesome. Those are great. Can you explain a bit more about what these mean? I know you have an example of something that hits on all three of these points. Yeah, so an example that I chose is a post that the Freer Sackler ran on its Tumblr account a few years ago. So this is a photo essay that accompanies a short write-up. The text explains that in response to the September 11th tragedies, 20 Buddhist monks constructed a sand mandala at the museums in 2002. It was seven foot square, one of the largest ever created in the West, and the mandala was offered for the healing and protection of America. The post then links to the Freer Sackler website, which offers much more information about the project and about Tibetan mandalas in general. The photographs show the monks at work and the mandala as it was being created. So so far the post has gotten more than 6,000 notes, that's likes and shares. That's not the millions that most of the very popular social media posts might get out there, but it's evidence of steady and quality content and engagement year after year. So here's why it works. Back to the three tips. First, know and reach your audience. So this post is on Tumblr. Tumblr attracts a younger audience, and there are countless uses for Tumblr, but we find that our audiences for the Freer Sackler on Tumblr are there to explore, to create, to learn, and to discover. And visual content on Tumblr is a big driving force. So this post works well because it's understanding the platform, knowing that those series of images are telling a story in and of themselves. The second reason it works is it finds the relevance. So we posted this on September 11th in 2014. Every year since around this time, people rediscovered the post, reshare the post. And I'd like to think that they find it therapeutic in the same way that museum visitors did in 2002 when the mandala was being constructed. So here are just a few examples of notes that people have written over the years. Someone said, I never heard of this. It looks very beautiful. Someone said, peace and art and love and healing. Someone said it was amazing, so touching. Someone said that they were actually at the museum, watching the monks work on this beautiful prayer. So this shows that we're reaching people who both have visited the museum in person, and people who have maybe even never been in Washington, DC, but they're still finding connections to the content. And then finally, educate, engage, and tell the story. So this story is told with images, plus a few words. There's a link where people can learn more. There's a little bit of education woven in, so there's the beauty of the images, but then there's also a link where you can go to the Fear Sackler and find out more about mandala's, Tibetan Buddhism. This also incorporates two more E words, which are emotion and empathy. There's the universal theme of pain and of healing that any reader can relate to. Since we were just talking about a Tumblr post, I think this would be a good time to discuss digital storytelling for blogs and social media in a little bit more depth. As a reminder to our audience, please ask your questions for Joel in the comments section below or on Twitter using the hashtag TechTuesday. What do you want to know about digital storytelling for blogs and social media? And while we're waiting for our online questions to come in, I want to ask you, Joel, where do you get your inspiration from? When you're searching for stories to tell or searching for creative ways to tell your stories, where does your inspiration come from? We start with the basics that I mentioned before. Considering what the audience wants to know about who the audience is, what might be relevant to them at this time, and then how I might tell that story in an educating and engaging way. And of course, for the Smithsonian, for the Fear Sackler, we're also driven by what's going on there. So our exhibitions, our events, our reopening coming up on October 14th. So the challenge would be then to tell those stories to the right audience in the right way. For more general social media posts, if you just want to start stirring up some engagement, maybe have a little bit of fun. It's always good to look at what's trending, maybe those micro holidays, say National Cat Day, see what's coming up and then find a way to make a connection to your own content. So do you have any tips for people who get writer's block? What can people do if they have trouble finding stories they want to tell? Or if they're not sure how to tell the stories they have? I always say there's nothing scarier than the blank page. So I say to get out your piece of paper, get out your Microsoft Word and just start outlining, start sketching, get something down, and then refine it from there. I'm an editor, I know editing is easier than writing, so start writing, then edit. Sometimes I just take a walk outside, I just go and clear my head, get some inspiration out there. How can you increase your audience engagement on your social media platforms? A lot of it is trial and error. You want to watch your statistics, and I think anecdotal evidence can work too at the very beginning. But just see what audiences respond to, what works and what doesn't. Maybe your particular audience is much more inclined to respond to a post with a sense of humor than one that's very straightforward. Maybe they're more interested in a photograph than they are in just a text post or maybe even more interested in a video. So just try a number of things, see what works, and then build on it from there. Sounds good. What do you view as the difference between using visuals and text for storytelling? So you're talking about how some are different than others, depending on your audience. Are some stories better as a photo essay or as a written narrative blog post? From my perspective, museum audiences obviously are going to be driven by gorgeous visuals. So I say if you have amazing photographs, amazing media, use them. You can tell a story that way. But that's not to say that if you have a compelling text based story without that many images to back it up, that that shouldn't be shared. I think both can work. Great. Crystal from the Philippines asks, how do you prepare content for all types of audience? Or do you prepare content with a target audience in mind? That's a great question. Obviously you want to reach as many people as possible. It's always helpful to know your target audience because that way you can write to them. If your target audience is kids, you're going to write to them very differently than you would to a target audience of academics. So you want to reach as many people as possible, but you want to be realistic of who it is you're trying to talk to. Sounds good. Sandy asks, how do you empower your digital audience to take an action in a specific issue or cause? For example, biodiversity conservation. That's also a really great question. I think you want to provide them with resources, provide them with things that they can do easily, quickly and easily, or even just encourage them to share a post that might spread a message and get other people involved and informed. Right, so calls to action can be big, take this action, or it can just be start a conversation with your friends about this topic. Exactly, take it home, word of mouth, that's very powerful. Awesome. If someone doesn't have a large online audience for their program or project yet, where should they start when building their online presence? For example, maybe they have a new startup company they want to promote. Where should they begin? So you want to always start by looking at what else is out there. Find a project, an organization, a cause that's similar to yours, that's doing things successfully, that has a lot of followers engagement. And check out what they've done, maybe you can even get an informational interview with someone who works for them to ask about their strategies or else you can just glean information by closely following them on social media, looking at their website. But get a sense of what they've done, how they've approached things and then try it for yourself. Do you have tips about telling stories with long form versus short form content? How can you tell if stories are better told with a long blog post or a short social media post? I think there again, there's room for both. What we tend to do at the Fair Sackler is we have our longer form posts on our blog and then we'll do a very short post, a tweet obviously has to be very short that teases out what that blog is all about and hopefully gets people to click through to learn more. So you tell the nut of that story and a tweet that leads them to the bigger story. So what's the hook that's going to draw them into the longer narrative? Right. Awesome. All right, it's almost time to move to our next topic, mobile app strategy. But before I do, I want to flip things around and ask our audience a question. What is your favorite app and why? What is your favorite app and why? I will read some of your answers later in the program. Just write your answers in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag tech Tuesday. I'll give my answer right now. My favorite app is the Google Photos app. It automatically backs up all of my photos and videos so that I don't lose them and so that I can save space on my phone, which is a huge deal for me. I'm always running out of space. Then it organizes them by date and theme so I can find them faster later. And I can even use Google Photos to make animations or videos from the photos I take. So that is definitely my favorite app. Okay, let's move to our next topic with Joel, mobile app strategy. Joel, how do mobile apps relate to digital storytelling? So we talked a little bit about the different platforms you can use to reach different audiences. So apps is another platform. It's one of the plethora of digital tools that you can use to convey a narrative in a really creative and interactive way. Great. Can you briefly explain the app you helped develop for the Free or Sackler? Sure, so this is actually one of a series of apps, the one that's coming out next. It's called Sacred Spaces, Tibetan Buddhist Shrines. We're releasing it along with our forthcoming exhibition, Encountering the Buddha, Art and Practice Across Asia, opening October 14th at the Free or Sackler. It's centered on the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room from the Alice S. Kandel Collection. And the app allows users to explore how Tibetan Buddhists encounter and engage with art objects in sacred spaces. In the three-year exhibition, the app will complement and enhance the immersive viewing experience of the Shrine Room. But also at home, the app offers virtual access to the Shrine Room and is a tool for understanding Tibetan Buddhism, its sacred spaces and the activities and objects they're in. So I was the editor for the app, working with subject matter experts at the museums. That would be curator Deborah Diamond and fellow Becky Bloom, whose beautiful descriptions and images bring life to these various facets of Tibetan Buddhism. And we then, in turn, were working with developers and a publisher, Giles Limited, based in London. That's awesome. This was a big team effort. Exactly, always. That's great. Before you even get to the code and other technical requirements for building an app, you had a plan. Can you share the steps you took to create this app and steps our viewers should follow when they are thinking of creating their own apps? Sure. And again, this is a simplified approach, but it gets to the basics. So you want to, again, start by determining your goal and your target audiences. So if you've decided you're creating an app, you've already determined what your platform's going to be, right? So now you want to know which users within that platform you're trying to target. So our goal for the Free or Sackler Sacred Spaces app was to reach as broad an audience as possible, but especially those who are going to visit the exhibition or who might want to learn more about it at home. So that means we're aiming toward people who are interested in art, in Asia, maybe in Buddhism in particular. So that influences how we've written and designed the app. So next, you want to see what else is out there. You want to do your market research. So you want to assess what exists in the market, what works, and maybe what you think doesn't as well. And then you want to see what gaps are out there that your app might fill. Next, start outlining and sketching. Take that blank page and put something on it. You want to start with your broad strokes, the very big picture of what your app is going to look like and contain. As with any project, you want to set deadlines. You want to project manage. Set up a schedule that has very detailed milestones, every back and forth, every review process, and make sure everyone involved reviews your milestones and signs off so everybody's on the same page from the start. Throughout the process, you want communication. You want to be able to be on the same page. Then you start writing. So you want to source your media. You want to check all the credits. Make sure you can use all that media. And then you want to get everything down, all your details that's going to feed into the app. And the media is, of course, going to be essential. So once you all have that all in place, the developer is going to be creating the wireframes. So those are the basic layouts and structural guidelines of how the app is going to look. It's going to help you sort out your vision and the interaction before the developers get too far along with things. Once everybody is happy with the wireframes, then the developers are going to come up with the prototype. That's a more advanced version of the wireframes. So that's going to have some basic structure and functionality. And once everybody's good with that, then you move on to the beta. And that's the full-fledged app before it's ready to go live. And you want to test, test, test at every stage of the game every little detail to make sure it's working the way you want it to. So once you have your beta, everybody's signed off on the concept and the look and the interaction, then you want to prepare to submit it. We're submitting ours to the Apple Store. This can be a very complicated process, but your developers will help you. They'll be used to this. But do be sure if you're submitting to the Apple Store to give plenty of time for them to approve it before you expect to go live. And now you're at the stage that we're at right now at the Freer Sackler final sign-off. It's your last chance to make changes, so make sure you think everything is perfect. And then you have your next step, which we are looking forward to, which is to submit and go live. And then you just want to get ready to promote your app to the target audiences you identified in step one. Awesome. That's a lot of work. Thanks, Joelle. That was super informative, and I think it was helpful for our viewers. Now, before we get to more questions from our viewers, I want to read off the results of the question we asked earlier in the program. What is your favorite app? So Carissa from Malaysia says her favorite app is Twitter. Makes sense. I love Twitter as well. Nurama Trong says Instagram. Also love Instagram. Tan says Facebook and Instagram. He gives us a tie there. Rani says my favorite app is Pinterest. I like it. Noonan says my favorite app is Facebook and Instagram, another tie. Great. So Joelle, what is your favorite app? Well, definitely all of the ones that people have named I'm on all the time. I would say my favorite app is Reddit for being the front page of the internet and getting to everything first. Do you get your inspiration from Reddit sometimes? Sometimes, sure. Mostly my laughs. Keep putting your questions in the comments below on Facebook and on Twitter using the hashtag tech Tuesday. I know some of you said that Facebook and Twitter are your favorite apps, so I hope you're on your phone right now asking your questions for Joelle. We said my favorite app is Google Photos, which I use pretty much every single day. And then Joelle said that her favorite app is Reddit. Tell us if you use Reddit or do you use Google Photos? Let's see. We have some more favorite apps from our audience. HalfDurall says their favorite app is Twitter. I get the news in real time. That's true. Everyone can be a journalist now. Crystal Eunice says I like applications that help me organize my life, currently enjoying the not application, which helps me prepare for my wedding, plus links me to helpful articles and preparations. Wedding is definitely a big undertaking, so I understand if you need an app for that. Vixay Lorvukam says I like the app Facebook. Aziya Mummari, some bottomists, says my favorite app is Stellar, Tumblr, and Instagram. Let's see. Loy Hattet Ong says favorite app is Snapseed. You can easily edit and make some weird effects on my photos. Awesome. Always good. I would love to hear more apps. Do you have other apps that you prefer to use for photo editing or video editing? These are great. Keep them coming. So what was your biggest lesson learned from building the app? It was a long process. What was your biggest lesson learned? I would say communication is key. I would say that you maybe want to communicate to the point of overkill, where it seems like, OK, I know. Just keep it going. It's better than having miscommunications happen. Makes sense, especially with a big team. Yes. I want to be on the same team. A lot of coordination. Makes sense. What is an important character trait for building an app? For example, patience, confidence, what do you think is the most important character trait? I would say probably an openness to new ideas, a willingness to experiment. I mean, this is such a new and rapidly evolving field that you really have to be willing to think on your feet and go with the flow. That's important as well. What's an app that doesn't exist that you would like to see? I'm sure we have some Silicon Valley fans out there who have already heard of this. But I want Shazam, which is the music identifying app, for all kinds of things. I want it for artworks. We sort of have some things like that already. But I want one for landmarks, architecture, plants, animals, food. I want it all. So you want to be able to identify something using your camera. Exactly. Awesome. I hope one of our YSEALI members builds it. Isaiah says, I want to create an app of my own, especially for learning English language. But I don't know where to start. Do you have any tips? Yeah, I would say go out there. Find some apps that maybe come close to what it is you're looking to do. And see how those are set up. Maybe even look at the credits page, see who the developers were. See if you can call them and ask them some questions. Have an informational interview. And from there, it depends on what side of things you're on. I'm on the text editing side more than the code side. I think it's always a team effort. But start googling and start meeting people and take it from there. Yeah, and I would also say network with your YSEALI members. If you are in a coder or a developer, maybe find a YSEALI member who is and go from there. Julie and Tara says, I am currently learning to use Office Sway. Have you ever used it for digital storytelling in a social media platform like Facebook? I haven't. I'll have to look that one up. But I know there are a lot of great tools out there and new ones coming out every day. So good for you. Yeah, you guys are all teaching us more apps. So keep them coming. All right, before we wrap up, I want to do another speed round of questions to pick Joel's brain one last time. So what was your favorite thing about building the app? I think similar to my editorial work every day at the Smithsonian, it was getting to learn so much about this subject as I was doing my work. And I'm also excited for what I think will be a really cool and eye-opening product. Great. What's a resource you would recommend to people who want to learn more about digital storytelling? I think the best thing you can really do to learn more is to just see what's out there. Follow your favorite organizations on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. It sounds like many of you are already doing that. See how they go about sharing their stories on social media. Follow your favorite news source, New York Times, Washington Post, whatever it may be. Go to their websites and see their interactive articles, which often incorporate a bunch of different types of digital elements to get a story across. Again, this is a really quickly evolving landscape, so the best way to learn about it is to immerse yourself and see what's out there. Great. Just get started. What's a resource you would recommend to people who want to learn more about creating an app? Yeah, here too. I recommend looking at the apps themselves. Reading about it is always good, but I think you learn more when you're actually looking and seeing real-life examples. But if you want to see more of an editorial take on it, there are plenty of blogs and news sites, Mashable, say, The Verge, that'll keep you up to date on what's new and late-breaking on the app landscape. Great. If you have other apps and resources, keep putting them in the comments, share with each other. What advice do you have for someone who is intimidated by technology and not sure where to begin? It's a great question. But yet again, I'd say just dive into it, find the place where you are comfortable, and go from there. And I'd always recommend to Google your questions because someone else out there has asked it. Or you'll be the first, and then everybody will answer it for you and be glad that you asked it. And there are lots of forums and lifters and Facebook groups for other people who will probably be in the same boat as you. That's very true. I always find my answers on Google. Me too. What's your best leadership advice for our YSEALI members? Yeah. I'm repeating myself, but it's so important. Communicate. Communicate, communicate. Be open and honest. Manage expectations with everybody who's involved in your daily work. And that to me is always the key to success. Great. Hong-Fi Nguyen asks, do you think educational institutions should implement more digital storytelling for communicating about other cultures? Absolutely. I have a biased opinion because that's essentially what I do for a living. But I think it's very important, and I think it's such a great way to use all the tools that are disposal right now to get across these really important stories. Wonderful. Alex Blanco asks, how can I use digital storytelling more effectively in grade school classes, first through third grades, so for younger audiences? That's a great question, and what a fun project. I think that ties into your target audience, right? That's your first through third graders or your target audience. So you want to write toward them, and you want to find tools out there that would be more geared to them, so to their level, not maybe as sophisticated as an academic app, but something that's a little bit more basic and more fun. Awesome. Hong-Fi Nguyen in Finland, I visited the Sir Lachius Museum, mostly about modern art. And what struck me the most was their application of information, communications, and technology, ICT, and telling stories relating to history. However, when visiting US, especially the Art Institute in Chicago, I only admired objects, read notes on the wall, and saw some interactive screens. So my question is, do you think we or more specific educational institutes should implement and elaborate more digitalization and telling stories regarding cultures and other sacred values of life? That is a hot topic in museums right now, and it's a pretty contested one. And I think there are upsides to both including digital elements and to letting people sort of have the space within an educational institution to really appreciate the art itself. So I think it's striking that balance and not obscuring the art or obscuring the actual artifact with digital, but using digital to enhance what's there. Out of curiosity, I know that people in the education world use the hashtag edtech to talk about these topics. Is there a similar hashtag that people should look up for museums? There are all kinds of different museum hashtags, but I think if you follow MuseTech, you'll be able to find some that are specific to museums. Crystal Eunice asks, how can I effectively manage the timing of posts? Good question. So there are a lot of guides out there that try to give you the best practices for different platforms. They have a range, but you generally want to post the most on Twitter because they're so short because there's so much content coming through all day. Space it out a little bit more, say, on Instagram and Facebook, where you don't want to flood your followers' feeds with too many posts in a day. But it's, again, trial and error, watching your statistics, watching your engagement, and finding the right balance. Right, so there's no magic answer, just responding to your audience, responding to what the data is telling you. Yeah, there can be a range, but it's really going to depend on your particular audience. Lynn Long asks, which program do you usually use to build your apps? Are there most effective software or programming languages? So I'm on the editor side. I'm more of the words than the code. Our developers used a combination of different programs for our sacred spaces apps. They used one called React, for example. But I think the best answer there is to Google around and talk to your developer friends, and they'll be able to give you the right guidance. Wonderful. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have today to talk about digital storytelling. Please come back next Tuesday, September 12th, at the same time for our next Tech Tuesday Facebook Live. We will be talking about design thinking with the Smithsonian Institution's Adriel Lewis. And you can stay up to date on Tech Tuesday and many other programs and events by liking the YSEALY Facebook page or following us on Twitter at YSEALY. You can also connect by visiting the YSEALY website, ysealy.state.gov, where you can sign up for our email newsletter. I want to thank Joel Seligson of the Freer Sackler, the Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art, for joining us today. And I want to give a big thank you to you, our audience, for participating. I learned a lot about digital storytelling, and I hope you did too. As most of you know, a story we're really excited about telling is a story of the U.S.-Azian partnership. This year, we're celebrating the 40th anniversary of U.S.-Azian relations and the 50th anniversary of Azian. So we really appreciate you, the YSEALY community, for joining us in that celebration. Thanks, everyone.