 So, here is today's session. It's called Why the Story, Why the Story Now. It's the Art of Impactful Storytelling. Storytelling facilitators Rob and Allison will share approaches to helping individuals, communities, and organizations uncover the stories that really matter. Featuring creative and break-up sessions and opportunities to share, you will practice the use of story prompts, discuss creative solutions, and explore tools to support self-expression, creative practice, and community building. Our workshop leaders, as I may have quickly mentioned, is Rob Kershaw, the Director of Public Workshops for StoryCenter. Rob is a writer, photographer, and film editor who discovered digital storytelling while working with northern communities in Canada. Before StoryCenter, Rob published a world newspaper and ran his own communications business. He's the author, editor, and designer of four books about Canada, and has assisted hundreds of individuals telling stories. He has a degree in ecology and communication studies from the University of Calgary. And his co-host is Allison Myers, the Program Director for StoryCenter. Allison's background as an artist, educator, community builder, and lifeline appreciator of story have all served her inner work at StoryCenter. She brings over two decades of personal and professional experience in international and cost-cultural settings, including four years as Program Coordinator of a U.S. Department of State-funded international exchange program with community colleges. And with that, I'm going to jump out of the way and let you bask in the wisdom of our experts. So, share screen off. Oh, thank you. I loved when, I don't know, there was something said, and all these emojis came floating up when there was something that I had done in my life and all these emojis. So, thank you for the love. Thank you for the love, everybody. My name is Rob Kershaw. We're going to jump right into it. I'm going to share slides. One thing I will say that's a little different, given the number of people here, and that I love it, it's like, no, we keep going up, is we won't do this small break house. And I, we're actually stronger in the Mighty Two rather than the one with 90. We'll go two with 180. And we'll just do this, try and make it as intimate and interactive as we can, given the number of people. So please use the chat, Q&A, so we can respond to your needs. But I'm going to obviously use a presentation to lead us through to get through some of this stuff. And hopefully some of the things that you came here for, you will receive. But it really is ask, and you will receive is the mantra. And I just, if I slow down a little bit with air meat, then I don't know what's happening here. Eli, choose the application or tab. Why am I not seeing my, oh, I have to go to my presentation. Perfect. Cool. From there and then hit, yeah, the present button. You can see. Okay. I had. All right. Thank you. Looking perfect. Please proceed. Thank you. So when, when Eli and Susan would text you contacted me and others at story centers to do a presentation, always, what should we call it? And we decided, at least I decided to call it, it's why the story, why the story now. Because we wanted to talk about something around the artist's impactful storytelling. And those two first, notice how they're not question marks, but it is a question to ask of yourselves whenever you're doing story work, and especially if you're doing story work that you're trying to share out to your audience. And you might even have this third question is, who are you telling this story to? But I'm going to leave it with why the story, why the story now in the statement of that rather than the question, because what we want is people to understand for themselves. Yeah. Why I'm telling this story is this. A question into themselves, not a question that you're, I'm asking you to tell me what my story, why I'm telling the story is up for me as the storyteller to be kind of assured why I'm telling the story. That's why they're not question marks. All right. It's going to be a packed agenda. We want to do a little bit more background to story center. We, Eli, obviously used said, I am the director of public workshops at Story Center and Allison's program director, but who is story story center? And what do we do and why do we do it? We do want to drill down a little bit into this, why the story, why the story now? What we mean by that, we're going to look at a prompt. We're going to not story circle because of the size of the room. Then we're going to look at some strategies, the four C's being one and some other strategies on how to direct that story, that story idea and move it towards something that you want to ultimately share to an audience. And through that, we will have some time for you to write to a prompt or a series of prompts and choosing one and we'll have a little moment where you can write. And hopefully a little tense to rewrite after we go through some of the strategies of editing. And then if people feel bold and there's enough time, we'd like to maybe have one or two of you, if not more, just share whatever you wrote and these are short little bits. They don't have to be fancy and they don't have to be perfect, but we would love it if we could hear from you at that point. And then some final thoughts, which is the same thing as a Q&A. We'll stick around for a little bit longer past the half of the hour. So Story Center has been in existence, started in the Bay Area in 1993. It was known then as the Center for Digital Storytelling. And it brought a practice of media making into community, even though it was the Bay Area, it did not come from the original dot com era where all the tech companies were starting up. These small startups were happening in the early 1990s in the Bay Area. It actually came from community theater practice where people were doing storytelling and live events to talk about the issues that were most important to them in the neighborhoods and the communities that they lived. Through that, they developed a process of doing storytelling workshops, particularly story workshops that focused on the making of small little films. These are personal first person stories where people would use their own media, their own photographs. Back then, nobody was really shooting video because no one had these devices in their back pockets that are always butt dialed. But they were still, there was photographs, there was lived experiences. And it was the stories that weren't being heard on the mainstream media that Center for Digital Storytelling was interested in hearing and ultimately helping people facilitate them in telling those stories. So that was 27, 28 years ago that they were entering into this world of digital storytelling. Over time, we have done this work, I think, with Alison, 48 countries. At least, yeah. At least Alison now based out of Portugal and doing all this work in Europe. It's grown and expanded and we have quite a large community of practitioners and what we call digital storytelling in the facilitation of helping people, ordinary people, people like yourselves, maybe outside of your job, but also inside of your capacity as a community organizer, communications director at a nonprofit or someone that works maybe in academia, in an educational institution, a teacher, wherever you are. We're interested, obviously, where you are and what you do, but who you are. And it's the stories coming from who you are that we find really fascinating. And sometimes we still find missing even in really well intended stories. So it was the question, well, who's telling that story? Who are you? Why should I be paying attention? So what we like at Storycenter is demystifying and sort of taking the power out of where the normal storyteller was situated. And we're really interested in helping people tell the stories from wherever they are at. And so this idea of power and faith, we want to address that. We want to address this idea that it's power differentials and we're not hearing from people and from organizations that are doing good work. They get drowned out. And so how do we support them in getting their story heard? And the one thing about Story that over the time that we have found, it's not necessarily just information. It's not a brochure. There's something, there's a quality to it and this sort of integration of something that comes out of ourselves, our imagination and the real lives that we live and how we want to interpret those and how we want to express those. So there's this creative side. And it's the combination of that creativity with the reality of our lived experiences that we see this authenticity. And we have a faith in that. It's not that a bunch of data is thrown at us and we go, oh yeah, now I know how to act. There's something else in storytelling that compels us to act. And it's that something other that we want to sort of get to know today in this presentation. What is it other than just information and data that we want people to pay attention to? Because that really is the ultimate part when people hear stories that makes them think differently. I often say in my workshops, one of the best responses to a story that someone tells a story or makes a digital story is someone in the room says, huh, or wow, I never thought of it that way. And immediately as someone acknowledges that this is a new perspective, they've moved out of that paradigm of where they always saw an experience, where they always thought the story was and they've taken one step to the right or one step to the left and they see the world differently through the eyes of the storyteller. And I just find that it really touches me when someone responds in that way and we hear it all the time. And ultimately, stories don't tell us what to do, they don't tell us how to feel, and they don't tell us what to think, but they invite us to go on the journey with the storyteller. And it's that journey of discovery that allows me, the audience, to find my own meaning in the storyteller story. So that's our goal. I hardly ever used the word impactful and I always, you know, I even said, is that even a word or is it just something that's become jargon? But it is, I Googled it and I said, well, what does impactful mean? And it comes up with just a laundry list and, you know, words are words, but it still to me doesn't give the essence of what impactful is because for me impactful is not a definition of it, but my response to it. And if you think of all the stories that you've listened to and heard, it is the response to the story that makes it impactful. It is that, huh, wow, I just never thought of it that way. I'd always thought of it this way. Your story is making me think differently about the world I live in. That's impactful. You know, if you look at these sort of ripple effect circles, maybe you say you identify where you typically in your organization has been telling stories. Maybe, you know, I'm here because nobody's responding. I don't know even if I have a story. Since you're here representing most of your organization, you're going to be in those first three. It really is important to tell the story coming from who you are, you know, why you are, what community you're from, right? Or what organization you're from. You're not telling the story about others. Even if you're talking about someone that you represent, the work you do is with this constituency, I think the important thing to take away from story is make sure that you own that relationship between whoever it is you're telling the story about, that we as an audience can understand that you are complicit in the story. You are at some place, not necessarily at the center, but the story has a component of you that represents an organization that is supporting this community in whatever capacity. Does that make sense? Right? We're trying to stay away from the observational, parachute in, describe something and then leave. The investment isn't too important. So you've got to put yourself in there two feet in and kind of get messy and get dirty and get engaged with the story you're telling before all of that other stuff, that sense of faith and power, before we can break away from all these constraints in the stories that we hear too often. I think it's also important to understand just in sort of an ethics of the story work we do that some things remain invisible. That what we're trying to do though is let those silences speak. So if there is a difficult story, the story is not one that you want to share all the details to, it's in the storytelling that we understand that that silence is as much about what the story's about than information, description, right? That we as a viewer see the sanctity of that relationship of you the storyteller, whatever the story you're talking about or telling. And to that, we always say at Story Center, we listen first, tell story second. You say sometimes listening is our core technology. Storytelling starts with listening. You have to be aware of your surroundings. You have to be humble to those surroundings. You just, and it's not from a place of bravado in this world of celebrity, of being loud and being big. At Story Center, we're interested in the listening and the paying attention and the sacred safe space where stories really reside. They reside in the sort of intimacy of the relationship between the storyteller and the audience. And that to us is sacred. Impactful stories. I'm gonna give you an example here. Allison, do you want to set this up? This is the work that you did. Sure, sure. This is a story from someone who is the Executive Director of an organization called Exonerated Nation. Just to give you that front, he was roughly imprisoned for 17 years in the US. And this is a story that, and he's told a story many times, a big story. He's been on the news, you can Google him. But this is a really great example of, I said, oh, we've got about, we wanted 350 words. What's the story that you, I mean, lots of people who've had this kinds of experiences can tell the big idea story. But what is the story that you want to tell right now? The story that only you can tell. And this story came out of that session, that workshop, and he said, I've been on the news, I've never told this. And as you're watching and engaging in it, just think of some of the questions that come up. Maybe some of the moments that you went, huh, I never thought of that, where somehow you feel something has changed in you as the listener, as the viewer to this. Just, and maybe put them in the chat. Also, turn your volume up on your computer. These are embedded in the slides, and it might be a little faint, but just keep your volume turned up. You can see a gang, I've been trying to shake how people see me forever. And I wasn't helping them. I was accepting that the guy behind me in class would see if he was from a different gang, separated, don't come over to me. So, I became the coach of that guy. I reach out to the prisoners, close our eyes, and describe how we see ourselves. I see myself in the prison kitchen, cackling, blood down shirts, braids, smart butt, hands together. Is that who you are, brother Tariqa? No, it's not. And it's not who I want to be. I can see all of that. The kitchen, the yard, the fire wire, the textures, the frames, the murders. Pimps start winning, my 17 years lost in prison. Brother Tariqa asks us to try again. I wanted to see myself with a dress pants on, a suit, a nice cut, behind the desk. Leave the work in front of me, responding thoughtfully to people. I think the first time I saw myself as a helper, there was a riot between messengers and black people. It was going on, bam, bam, go on. My feet set feet. The message dude, I moved from the laundry room. I mean, Jerky actually wants to get in there, grab him in the mouth. Or, when me and Marcelli took our laundry money, made burritos for everyone in the flock. Wasn't nobody else looking out for it. But I've never seen myself going to the capital, speaking at colleges, running a mastermind profit, being actively. I was supposed to die and for now I'm home, I'm free. When someone from inside those walls reach out to me, think of that detective and say, how can I help? What's around me now? It's a lot of people need help, I need to help. I'm not that guy in the street, gang bang. I ain't a guy behind me. I'm a guy looking out when we got it on. Yeah. Just give some thought. I'm not, I'm going to keep my screen shared. So just see if there's anything that's come up in the chat. You know, Allison worked with Obi. I did a little bit of the post production with that story. So I've seen that story and I find something new every time in it. It continually, in the same spots, it still stirs me. It makes me think differently about the world that I walked through and that Obi has walked through and out, thankfully. So, you know, sometimes that question of why it's not an overt, why I'm telling this story, he doesn't lead in with that. Why this story now? But if you hold those two questions, you know, Obi has those questions in the facilitation of that story, in the conversation, in the safe space that we provided for Obi and others with Exonerated Nation. Allison and I have both done work with other exonerees. When you ask that question, it'll give them permission to tell the story that they, as Allison said, that they want to tell. Is there anything in the Q&A or the chat right now that? Yeah, I'm just responding. People, you're welcome to, I know some people had a hard time hearing. Hopefully you got the link. We are going to be sharing, you know, the PowerPoint and the links to the stories. But if you have comments, responses, thoughts about the stories, feel free to write those in the chat and I'm paying attention to what's in the chat. And if any questions come up in the Q&A or the chat, I'll make sure to answer them or convey those to Rob to answer for everyone. So. And apologies on the volume. And again, just see if you've got, if you're just maxed out, turn it down when I'm talking and turn it up on the story. Now show another one and then we're going to sort of break some of the processes that went in to making these stories happen both from a kind of structural storytelling component. You know, Obi would is, we are all storytellers that start with that, but in the sense of making a story to produce a story that is shared, in this case, a video form. You know, the people that come into our circles are not professional storytellers. They are not ones that have necessarily considered themselves writers or photographers or videographers, they all are video editors, but they all become that in some way. And so part of being the storyteller is being in charge and controlling and owning all the aspects of it, right? And I know in small nonprofits, and we are one too, you know, we have to wear multiple hats. And sometimes we find ourselves in some of the nonprofits we work with, someone's being tasked to tell the story of the organization or tell something in the way of a story that can go up in the organizational website. So I said that pretty daunting task to be put something in front of you that you feel you don't have the experience or expertise. We want to say part of that reason we don't have the expertise is perception. There's always practical technical skills, but first thing we always do in our workshops with our work with storytellers is just to honor the fact that they are storytellers, that they have lived experiences, that we walk through life and navigate our relationships to our place that we live, the neighbors that we have on either side of us, the people that we share in the house and our work colleagues who are always sharing stories. And so what we always like to do is trying to tap into that natural human quality and skill as a storyteller. This is a story that came out of, if anyone hasn't heard, we are, I've been living in a pandemic for the last 18 months. So we started doing work just in a kind of pro bono space, some of that was funded by, I think the Payne Foundation, a nonprofit to allow people to just enter a space and that we're always about opening up a space for people to tell stories, to talk about whatever, why this story, why this story now, what's going on in this year of COVID. And we've had a couple of really, really moving emotional screenings of these stories. They've been very, Alice, I know, has hosted some of these, is it weekly or monthly events where people just show up, we give some prompts and we let them write and share. Sometimes there's 20 people, sometimes there's six. And it's just a place for people to situate themselves and just kind of feel what's going on in their life right now and finding ways to express things that they want to express. This is a story that came out of that. Again, turn up your volume, hopefully you can hear it. But just look at the whole presentation like the brevity, where it starts, what's happening in the middle and how does it end? All the elements of story we'll get into in a moment. What would it be like to have enough to be enough? These questions, Ricochet, inside me as I go about my days. Now altered and contracted by the coronavirus. Writing the urge waves according, toilet paper, dried beans, rice, goat cheese, fresh vegetables, medications, moments alone, yet not lonely. I think of my mother deceased now for 12 years. I am glad she is not living still to be in the path of the rewrote-less virus. She was a child of the Great Depression, sustained through lean years by stale government issues, dried health milk. She described as rancid. Her mother forced her and her younger sister to drink at least two glasses each day along with cod liver oil, the ward off rickets. My mother was not a hoarder, but she had cored waste of any kind. Food, especially vegetables and fruit, she and my father grew in a large garden and what she canned or froze to use year round. Scraps of cotton calico fabric from clothes she sewed, which she turned into quilts for our beds. I was born in the year of the rat in 1960, the year that millions of Chinese people starved to death in a mass family that the rest of the world did not know about until much later. This year, another year of the rat, my 60th year and the completion of a life cycle in Eastern tradition. Hunger, widespread and deepening hunger is back in our world now as a side effect of the pandemic. Hunger is here in Seattle where I live. Neighborhood, little free libraries are being turned into little free pantries to help feed people in need. Tens of tuna fish, jars of peanut butter, bags of rice and books. They give me hope. Well, I've been informed that my mic's not muted and so you can hear all my shifting in the chairs and such. And I'll just say, Eli, I don't know how, I don't can't see any menu, the mic menu when I'm sharing full screen. So I don't know if you can mute me at your end. No, no, it'll be fine. Basically, yeah, avoid muting, but just if you just pull back from the mic a little bit just so you'll pick up as much of your breathing during the videos, that's perfect. But thank you. So we've just seen two short stories. The first one is around four minutes. The second one was two and a half minutes, even less with the credits. So let's talk a little bit about the process that got these lived experiences a year in COVID and then at life, 17 years incarcerated for a crime you didn't do. And how do we get that down to that essence? Always holding that why this story, now is as one of the two defining questions to allow you to first permission and also to think about some of the motivations behind the stories. And I think it's always important to be very clear and you don't have to be clear out the gate when you're telling a story, but as you're creating your story to get clearer is to your own purpose. Why am I telling this story? It might be I'm telling this story because I need to get funding for my project, but owning that, why this story? Asking the second question, why this story now gives it a sense of urgency and it adds to the sense of purpose. Why the story now? And just sitting with those two questions as you move through what we call the seven steps of digital storytelling. We're just gonna cover the first three. So the two you saw that what makes them in our world of digital stories, they have this visual audio component to it. They are not sitting as a PDF or downloadable document with words on a page. They come alive through what we watch them. We experience them as an audience through the watching and listening rather than the reading or just listening. This combination of audio, visual that makes digital stories unique in our world. There are seven steps to digital storytelling. The first three are in my opinion, and I think at everyone's story centers, the three that are always involved in storytelling. So owning your insight, owning your emotion and finding a moment. And some people might think, well, owning your insight is just, well, I know some things. I've had some experiences. I sit in this position with my organization that provides you insight, but not all insight is story. Not all experiences are sort of fuel for a story. What insight, the insight that is is the one that is why this story, why this story. Now, the one that actually has juice to it. I really, and sometimes it's in how you express it. If you've got some story ideas down, which is the one when you actually look at your laundry list of possible stories, that feels something in you. And there's some other connection and it's the emotional part. It's the part that actually you're not in your head anymore. There's an embodied experience to that insight. What I really want to talk about is this. This is the most important thing. And just the expression of it in that way with that kind of emphasis says there's something there, right? It's just not a checklist. We can do this, this and this. Always looking for that combination of what you know, what you've learned along the way and what you've learned along the way that really has changed your organization, changed you as a person, right? In the context of a year in COVID or coming out of 17 years being incarcerated, right? And it's the two insight and emotion are inseparable when you're telling stories. Stories void of emotion are, and we've seen them, right? They are stories that we could take or leave. Why do we hold on to a story longer? Is it just the experience? Is Obi's story just, oh yeah. 17 years wrongly, no. We're like, whoa, 17 years in prison for primate and someone who's pulled themselves out and applied themselves to help others. Even as I talk and using that tone, that story, what makes that story impactful, connect, poignant, all of those, that laundry list of words, synonyms for impact. Are in the emotional component of that. That's the impact, right? So what you know, why it matters what you know. Those are the two things you've got to really, right? Be clear about or start to get clear on when you're making a story. Finding a moment, we're gonna get to that when we talk a little bit about what we call the foresees and scene making is our lived experiences, right? Big ones and little ones are all happened in time and place, right? Stories do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in the, you know, we're talking not fictional, but even fictional, we're always putting things that we know in our lives into our fiction, if you need. But in our real stories about our real lives and our real organizational experiences and all that, it happens in time and place. Incidences have consequences, right? You walk out the door, you meet a stranger on the street, someone knocks on your door, a stranger comes to town. All of that is in this idea of a moment. And if you can identify that moment or moments where the story actually is happening, where the insight is starting to reveal itself and where the rubber of the motion is hitting the road, those are the moments you stay with. The other stuff becomes extraneous. It's not important to the story, right? In Obi's story, there's that text on screen. What a wonderful way to set up the sort of brochure details, right? Outside of that moment. But he tells you this story and then we get all this other material and we now have an emotional connection to want to know more about exonerated nation and more about others like Obi. And then we look at the numbers and how many years that it totals up of being incarcerated for crimes not committed. And all of a sudden, the weight of that is just not a number anymore. It's a data point with a story. So owning insight, owning your emotion and finding a moment are key to an impactful storytelling. You have to have those and you're gonna explore them. Necessarily know it's gonna be this moment or that moment, which you have to be thinking in these three areas. What is it that I know? Why is it important that I know that? What is it about that that I'm trying to say? What is it I'm trying to say? And when did it happen? What was going on? Where was it? Who was in the room? What time of year was it? All those little details are at the heart of story. The senior story, hearing your story, assembling is all this production part. We're gonna talk a little bit about the writing aspect of that to get to a sort of condensed idea of taking lifetime of moments and organizationals. Like, I looked at some of the things in the take action setup is like, how to tell your story, your organization story. What is that? It's like, you can write a book about that for some of these, right? And is that even the story? What is the story? Well, the stories typically are little moments in the large lived experience, right? Sometimes we say, if you were to write a chapter book or write a movie about yourself or in this case, an organization, what is the one scene that absolutely has to be in there? And then you write that story. Here's some questions to ask of yourself when you're looking at these three key components to good storytelling. We'll send you these slides. I won't go through them. I sort of just talked about them in an overview, but I will stop for a moment and just see if there's any questions. I want to get to a writing prompt shortly. Alison, anything? I haven't seen any questions yet in the chat, but people are, yeah, if you have a question, you're feel free to ask it in the chat or... And maybe it's not so much what I'm presenting or it's what I'm not presenting. Maybe there's a, I need to know this, right? So even questions, so maybe you're just absorbing it or it's going in one ear out the other, but maybe there's something that you know that we should know about what makes good storytelling in your experience. So we want to make this sharing. I don't want to always, we're not experts. We just have a particular way of approaching and it might not, we're always up to learning what other people... So Rob, I have a question. Somebody asked, what is the best play time for a story? Our stories are typically, you know, two to four minutes. The story is not our stories, the stories that people create in our workshops. As you know, people have super short attention spans and nobody is going to hang out for a really long story. So typically we say 150 to 350 words. That's about the range for most of the stories you'll see that come out of our workshops. Right, the scripts typically are 250 to 350 words translates to two and a half to three and a half minutes. The one thing I'll just say to that is if it's a good story, you lose your sense of time. Does it matter that Obie's is four minutes and Jennifer's is two and a half, they're different stories. What's our level engagement? If we're compelled to go on the journey with a storyteller, we suspend time. We sit and watch two hours of movies without a blink of an eye. So one of the things is we know though, those moments of all the things that happened, that one scene in your organizational's life, you know, how to tell an organizational story in one minute, I'll be bold and say it's impossible. Absolutely impossible to tell an organizational story in one minute. You might be able to put some details down that move people to want to find out more about you, but to tell a story to go on a journey does take some time. And so, you know, don't forsake story because you want to put out blurb. Blurbs are good, memes are good. All those things for attention span are good, but storytelling is a bit more of a craft involved and you need to be willing to accept the challenge. Now brevity is one thing and we'll talk about that. So Rob, I have one other quick question that Sammy asked just to address the idea of having people tell their own stories. I'm sorry, it just moved in the chat, hold on. Sammy, yes, so that is a great question and that typically we work with a lot of organizations just like this situation that you've described here. For those of you who don't know the question is in that has been posted, but that is why we, that's one of the major reasons we have people tell their own stories. So we, instead of, because people are the experts of their own stories, they should be able to represent themselves and decide how they want to share it, tell their story, how they want to share it, who they want to share it with. We know that's not always possible. Sometimes when you're doing organizational storytelling, but as much as possible involving the storyteller deciding how the story is told. And so for us, all of that work is first person storytelling. So people are telling their own stories. I don't know if that directly or fully answered your questions. I'm happy to chat more about it later, but that's the short answer to that. I hope that helps. You know, we have people tell stories. You know, the seventh step was sharing, right? Sharing is your relationship to an audience, right? First, we sometimes tell stories to ourselves and maybe to intimate our colleagues. And then you say, but I want to share that out to a larger public, right? And that shifts. It shifts the why of the story, why the story now doesn't shift. But what you decide to share does, whether it's I need to add more context and details, I need to be less personal and a little bit more professional, if that's the right word. Although I think vulnerability and professionalism should go hand in hand. I think we solely lack a vulnerability in our leadership right now in leadership. It's not about bravado, it's about vulnerability because everybody else in the world is feeling vulnerable and exposed. So our leaders, sometimes good leadership is to empathize with that. That said, it still is this idea when you're telling a story and maybe you're not at the center of it, but you're connected to it and you are really compelled to tell it as the witness, as the brother, as the colleague, as the one that has to turn the lights on every day at the organization as it's, you see funding at the door. But if you place yourself in that position of why it matters, you're gonna tell a story differently than if you're just trying to put the details out. Some things, just because brevity has come up, let's hone in on this, give you a few more tools, some more things to think about before we go into the prompts. When someone asks, if I ask people, tell me a story and my daughter does this to me all the time and my son, they'll say, tell us a story, and I get flummoxed, right? It's hard when someone says, tell a story. First of all, what story to tell, all the lived experiences. But if we do jump in, we kind of start at the beginning, right? And you can just imagine, if you start at the beginning, if you try to tell the story of your organization in one minute, you're gonna have a minute gone. I mean, I spent three minutes trying to give you a little background to the story center and that wasn't a story, it was just some dates and some origins and some names and, right? It's not a story. And I was three minutes in. So the challenge is there, right? So what we tend to go, we say, where did it all start and move through it? And we always feel that we need to sort of like justify why we're telling the story. The reason I'm telling you the story is this and this and this and this and all what we do, right? Again, in my setup for story center and I gave a bunch of context, I still hadn't told you a story. I didn't tell you the story about Dana Ashley or Jill Lambert or the first workshop at the American Film Institute. That's where the story is, but I gave you some other stuff. So we tend to put a lot of stuff down that when it comes down to actually telling the story, is just set up for you to get things on the page and it can probably be discarded, right? So good storytelling is about first trusting yourselves and then trust the audience to infer the obvious with the appropriate hints. You don't have to give every detail. Good storytelling is allowing the audience to feel something and go along in the journey as the story reveals something towards the end, right? That's key not to go into the chronology, not to just sit in memory, but to start to eliminate things that are not, they're important for you to give you permission as a storyteller, but they're not what the audience needs to hear. So some of the things that we like to talk about, and this is what we call the four C's of a narrative or a structure, there's other ways to structure a story. The narrative is a structure to a story, but here's one possibility is connect. There's that idea of the scene, just put it somewhere, right? An opening line, something that was said, the light turned on, the door slammed, right? The letter came in the mail saying the funding was cut or you got the funding, what a wonderful connect, right? Well, you started your journey of the storyteller. You gave us a moment when something's happening. Context is like, well, as the audience is, why does that matter? So the questions are always going, why? So what if you got funding for what purpose? And context adds the meat to that first bone, right? Your first scaffolding is connect. And then you say, what do they need to know just enough to understand that this was a big deal, getting that application in, and I'm staying in the nonprofit world, we just got a really big grant thanks to Allison and others. It's like, woo-hoo, right? And the context is like, why that matters? Well, we might have had to turn the lights off, right? And all of a sudden this came through and there's some context why this really matters, right? So you add that and change is something that you have to think about because if all stories are moving in some direction, they're going to some other point that's different than the start. If you started something and at the end, you just gave a bunch of data, nothing's changed, just got all the info out. There's no story. But if something that as you move through some context, some matter, some details, and someone says, wow, that's a big deal. You almost were what? You're almost gonna have to close your organization down, right? This, all of a sudden that context of the grant coming in says change, this was a big deal. And we feel that as the audience. And as a result, we can continue doing the good work. So that's the change part. Enclosure is just, we don't need all this other, in Obie's, it was all this other stuff after, it was like a coda. The story ended, right? Yeah, I'm that guy. Just think of the privacy of that. You set it up, you know, yeah, that's me, I'm that guy. And we get it. And it just closes and we go, right? Close it, take a breath. What just happened? I wanna know more about Exonerated Nation. Who is this Obie? What else is going on? How can I help, right? The impact of that, all of the other stuff comes after. Connect, context, change, something that shifts, that we feel something shifting, and then close it out. Closure doesn't necessarily mean either all tied up the ribbon with the bow, right? Obie doesn't say anything, he says, I'm that guy. Just the realization that he is somebody he always in deep down probably knew he could be, but was never given the opportunity and it looked like it wasn't it, he was never gonna get it, right? That it just, we get all that. We want to know what happens, where's Obie going? We're now in his camp. We're now an ally, we're now invested in him. So again, connect, context, change, closure, some prompts. Okay, let's do a little bit of writing. Stay with us. Writing prompts can make people want to run and hide. We use them sometimes, but even if we're not directly given a prompt in our workshops, there are ways that we can ask a question of a potential storyteller. We're listening for a time when, right? Something that maybe didn't go right in the person, right? And the story might be in the sort of mistake that they made or the story is they're starting to talk about something about like an Obie's, a goal that was reached. Tell us more about that, right? So just keeping it into these little prompts, prompts, we call them writing prompts, but they're just ways to ask questions of inquiry to get people to open up about something in their experience. So here's four. And that third one, the fourth one, I leave in all the time because it's a little less pressure. It's a little bit more open. Sometimes we say, tell us a scar story, but I took that one out. A third place in your life, not your home, not your work, but a third place, however you imagine that. And think about these as your writing. We're gonna write for, I'd say, what do we think? Let's write for six minutes. Bullet points, laundry list. It doesn't have, we're not talking about necessarily a structure, but think connect. Think context, closure or change in closure. Just if you want to put those four C down or write one or two sentences or some words to connect, right? However you want to structure it. Why do you choose this prompt? Why now? What relevance to the story have for you today? Well, Rob gave us a prompt. That's a good one. But it may be that some of these prompts resonates in something else that's going on in your experiences. And think about who this story might be. So let's take six minutes. I'm gonna start the clock. Do your best. No right or wrong. And go. Halfway through, another three minutes to go. Just a quick no, you're not gonna be posting your stories in the chat. We, if we have some time at the end for a couple of people to share, we will invite you to. But you write whatever you want to write. You will not be posting it in the chat. One more minute. And just wrapping up here. No scrambling, nothing. No test at the end. Just wherever you're at is where you're at. Okay. Let's just take a pause. I'm gonna show a story while we're just, and it's a story that came out of the, that someone took the first prompt, a time when your life could have gone in two directions. I'm gonna put the back up here. I did. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about whatever you've got, how to work with, argue, you know, knowing it. You only had six minutes. I was gonna show you this story that came out through refinement and adding this other element of the story to allow other parts of the story for the engagement. So this is a story that came out of one of our public workshops. And it was about the prompt. Life could have gone in one of two directions. And this is what ended up coming out of that. Again, turn your volume up. We sat side by side and I told her I was leaving. She grabbed my wrist and held tightly. I had been there a scant four months, but I knew in my heart that children deserve better. I wanted to walk away then, but I just sat there with her rigid grasp on my wrist. Suddenly I was 10 years old again, small and trembling in that long, luminous hallway. My teacher and principal, giant shadows in my memory, scolding me for telling on the aggression. They told me I would recant my story. I didn't, but I did remain small in my way of being in the world. This moment revealed to me that which needed nurturing. And I wondered, when we said that we go to mend the tears cause the fabric to break. Remember that there was a slide, I think at the beginning, I think I put it in. The stories it's in the, sometimes the speaking is in the silence. That story, the distillation of that. Do we need to know the discretions? Do we need to know where the story is? In this sense, those details aren't important for the story to have an impact for us to sort of reflect on the times when we were disempowered or people that we work with are in a place of disempowerment. What does that dynamic feel like? The story is beautiful down to the essence of Vodine knows what she knows, knows how that makes her feel and has two moments. One as an adult and one as a child, both in a school system that was unsafe. We get all that. We can then enter into that story in a different way. We have to enter into that story because the invite is there to feel something. And if it's just full of all the details, we get to sit back and not get invested into it. So this idea of brevity is as a trust in just say all you want to say, all you can say, and then if you own that, the story will not write itself, but it'll be just enough, it'll be just right. Also, you'll notice in all these stories that there's a lot of support in the visuals and the audio. So good storytelling, even if you don't have the visuals and audio, you have to bring some other depth of meaning and engagement, right? That's why writers are very skillful, right? They're skillful and bringing that other element. We hear something in sometimes in people's writing. We see things in something. But when you make a story into a little film like this, and I think a lot of the presentations are about film and editing and shooting video. And this was just a bunch of video that she took when she was in Korea on a trip to Korea that she used in dialogue with her as a way to avoid, you don't see who she is, you don't know any, we don't see the characters, we just feel the power dynamic in the relationships. As we look at these really evocative, beautifully edited B-roll video clips of a trip to Korea. And she'll have her own reasons why, but just the beauty and the simplicity and the calmness of those pictures, but also something, the power when those guards just their feet. So all of that sort of what we call implicit imagery. It just creates a visual canvas for this story to reside over top of, and the music, the same thing. It gives us this underpinning, this sort of under, this foundation to allow those words to be all you need to say is all she needed to say. And we don't ask for anything more. So when you have your pieces of writing and you'd go at it again, I don't know if we'll have time to do that. So we might ask people just feel comfortable wherever they're in their quote unquote rough edit is look at it. Look at the bones. What is the structure of the information presented? Is it chronological, right? We talked about chronological, if you get you caught, you know, you get all, you start chronologically, how do you get out of that, right? And is it so much exposition? Is it full of details and too much context, right? What's the story in it? Where's the story elements? And how did you deal with chronology? Did you start with the scene and say, well, let me get you, take you back. You know, the flashback is a structure. Here's what's happened. What's happening? Let's get back to how we got to where we're at. And you, right? All of a sudden you do that, you're playing, you let go of chronology. You don't have to give the truth of every moment leading back up. You can start to leap frog around until you get back to the moment at hand. Take a look, am I talking about two things? If you are, two insights, both emotional, somewhat connected, but which is the one that actually, why this story, why the story now? Keep asking that question. Well, if I really have to make a decision, why this story, why this story now is a good place to start to make a decision. You choose one, right? And that's the one that carries the narrative. You can refer to the other thing because they are hand in hand, but it's the main one carrying the story is the theme you want to build up. And the other one is just a tangential. It's parallel. It could be in the visuals, something that coincides, but you want people to pay attention to this theme or insight. And disjointed or fragmented, does it hold together? This is where, you know, sharing it out with the colleague is important. They're like, what are you saying? Was this last year or two years ago? Like just little details like that are really important. So, you know, it's great to, you know, and I think actually in our workshops, the group process facilitated, we're not the editors of their story. We don't, we tell them what to do. We give them a framework to work within. And then the other storytellers are like, well, why don't you try that? If we're my story, I might do this. So the idea of, for most of us, aren't gonna sit there in that little writer studio, right? And if you are put in that little cubicle and say, now pump it out, that's not very supportive. You need to have someone that you can bounce an idea off of, show a bit of writing, put something together and say, what do you think? What works? What doesn't work, right? And have people, first of all, that what you did must have been really hard and I can't believe you got this far. But if it were my story, maybe this, or I see two different things, they seem like I'm hearing two different stories or it's conflicting, it's fragmented. So you need to share it in its rough form. And then the emotional center is always coming back to that. The parts that stick with you when you're writing, if you start to get energy or something starts to kind of like, ah, but that's the part you wanna stay with, right? If it's just rolling off like a laundry list, then there's no meat, there's no emotional kind of connection. So you're looking for the places where something feels like it lands. And it's also really good to share it out because the person that maybe you were saying, take a look at this, not for the spelling corrections or the grammarical adjustments, but where it touched them, where it resonated, what moved them, what was interesting to them. And if they identify something, then that's the part where you focus in on and you start to see what can fall away to the side. Just looking at, you know, scene-making, there's just enough and dare to fray to kind of give us a sense, right? Just by saying 10 years old, it's the classroom environment. We don't need to know where that classroom was. That's irrelevant to some extent. It really is down to the essence of the relationship between the person who had power and the person who didn't. But in both cases, that person stood her ground, right? Bodine, the storyteller, didn't waver. And that is just, for me, as I even articulate that, that's part of what makes that story so moving for me is she didn't, she didn't back down. She still remained small in this world, but she stood strong and tall, even in fear. And that, it's me, is why even, and it's now in my head, I'm articulating it, but that's why that story resonates with me. And think of all the times when we have been in power and maybe, you know, use that power, what was it doing to the other person or we're in the receiving end of power and how did that make you feel? How did you stand your ground and how did you move forward? So what happened right before, right after, whether you give all the details, she doesn't say, and now I'm doing this. Now I can stand up to authority. Well, you already did. So we don't have to go there. But she knows that this moment, this scene, these two scenes embedded into the story, there's a trajectory leading into it and a trajectory coming out. And we feel that. We don't see these as an isolated, you know, boxed in story. It's part of life. It's part of Bodine's existence. We're not gonna have time to, but I wanna open up the mics and see if anyone reads. These are some things to take back into whatever, you know, the writing you did in the prompt, or if you've got something on your desk, any of these, the four C's, these approaches to editing, looking at, is there any insight in what I'm, this proposal I'm writing or whatever it is I've been asked to write and it's sitting in there in my email. I haven't got it done yet because I'm stuck. Start looking at seven steps, four C's and some approaches to editing. As always, the more you can put your, not yourself in necessary details, but who you are, why this matters, why am I telling this story? Well, my boss told me to do it, but why do you wanna do it? Find your own relationship to what it is you're writing and telling a story about. Find why it matters to you and that'll stir up the emotion and the energy to finish your story. Well, we'll come back to it. Just, you know, I wanna let hair people, so we'll come back to the slide. Let's jump out of here and see if anybody wants to, oh, people are leaving. The people that don't wanna share are running away. No, I'm just kidding. Does anybody, so this is just, you know, we're gonna share a space. We're all here for, you know, similar reasons. We want to be supportive, but just curious if anybody feels they have something either they didn't write it, but now something is something that they want to talk about in the way of a story or maybe something they've written from the prompt and just share. It would be great and Eli will unmute you. You can do it by a show of hands, maybe? Carlos Salinos has a story. Perfect, Carlos, I'm gonna bring you on to camera and mic. Raise your hand, which is the right way to get in there. And so, Carlos, when you're coming, you'll have to turn your camera and mic on using the buttons on the screen. All right, can you hear me? I have 313 words. I hope it's not long. Ceremony can be scary. The yajé takes over in a way that nothing else does. You cannot leave the space it has decided to take you. Once in, grin and bear it. I had been left with fear during the last ceremony. I clearly saw the growl that woman made before she violated the sacred space. I felt the presence that came through her. It was something not meant to be. I was now afraid of going into the forest. Ceremonies at night. The only place to relieve oneself is in the forest. We were in ceremony in a new place, at least new to me. And I had heard that the paramilitaries might be camping in the immediate zone. It was, after all, the Colombian Amazon. I asked the yajé to free me from fear. It was raining, of course. And as it happens, I had to go relieve myself. Found the space in the forest. Felt much better. Started on my way back and then realized I must have taken the wrong path. The dried palm crunching beneath my feet ended on a wall of green. I retraced my steps. Started again. That end. One more try. Realized I had no idea where I was. I turned off the flashlight, hoping to see the light from the ceremonial house. But the forest was too thick. I stayed very still to try to listen for the chance of the taitas, but could only hear the rain, terror. Then an immediate thought, I have no time to be afraid. What do I do? Only choice, stay put. Sooner or later, someone will notice I'm missing. And they'll quickly find me. Settling in for what could be a very long stay, I lit a cigarette. But as soon as the smoke filled my immediate surroundings, I saw the path back to the ceremonial hut. I walked back. The fear was gone. Nicely done. Thank you, Carlos. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else want to share? Thanks for going first. Yeah. And friends, if you're interested in contributing, go to the tab which says raised hands. And basically, yeah, use the raised hand functionality. And I'll just. I know someone comes with a beautifully rendered 313-word script and a six-minute prompt writing exercise. That's set the bar high. That was beautiful, Carlos. And I know personally, prompts are a bit of a nemesis for me. Work hard to realize their value. Sometimes people have beautiful bullet point lists and ideas that those prompts came up. There's nothing structured here. Totally welcome to even just talk about an idea that bubbled to the surface. So here, I can dive in, actually, next and give a lower the bar, don't you worry. So the prompt that resonated with me was the one about the third place. And so for me, the place that comes to mind is the production office of the Edmonton Hope Music Festival. And the reason is it was the first time that I ever felt capable. Like it was actually good at something in my life. Growing up, I feel particularly skilled at anything. I wasn't good at sports. I was a very lackluster musician, always less well-spoken than my very clever friends. But when I started volunteering as the production assistant for the festival, helping coordinate the creation of this small city, the tents, the stages, the fencing, the scaffolds, supporting this community of fellow volunteers to create this space where I could welcome $20,000 of my fellow citizens for a weekend of celebration and party. That was the moment where I finally, like the people around me, like hope I was good at something. And I felt really skilled at something. I felt useful and that was such a charge that that is a path I took for the rest of my career to be this person who could enable groups of people to come together to create something more than they could individually. Beautiful. And since I've been to the Edmonton Hope Festival, I was the beneficiary of your skills, I'm sure. Beautifully run festival. We're coming up to the end. Does anyone else just want to squeeze in one more if possible? All affirming here. We'd love to hear from you. All right. Well, I don't want to leave the awkward silence as nobody is. And so we're at the half hour mark. I would love to, if people wanted to be a bit more Q&A, we have an extra 15 minutes. I think as a kind of buffer, do we want to use that? I am more than willing to hang out until for another 15 minutes if people want to be a bit more informal and just open up the mics, or we can scroll through the chat and expand. There's some questions I couldn't get to. Yeah, others have now dived into the raised hand. So Abigail, I'm going to feature you next. You'll have to turn on your camera and mic once I bring it. I love the name of your organization. I created an organization. Can you guys hear me OK? I have an organization called Golden Rule Reentry. We're based in Southern Oregon, and we work with people that are coming out of prison. And we're trauma-informed. We're community-based. So we're not really an agency. We're more like where the community meets the agencies. And so this is more of a bullet point thing. But the third place also caught my attention. And as I thought about it, I was thinking about my car because my car is an absolute alchemical connector. And the reason that it is is because when I get in my car, I drive to meet with people. And then I drive the people that I meet with to meet other people. But the main thing that I do in my car with people is I use that as a place of connection. So once people get in my car, we have that opportunity to connect. And because we're trauma-informed, we connect by looking outside the window. So what I do is I drive people around. We live in Southern Oregon, so it's beautiful here. And what I have found is most of the people we work with, they're grinding. They're grinding through life. They're taking the bus everywhere. Everything's a thing they have to accomplish. So I pick them up. We get coffee. We drive around. We look at beautiful things. We're able to talk about things without looking at each other, which makes it easier to talk about really personal things. And I have found 100% when I pick up a new person and we drive around, get a coffee, that when we get out of that car, there's a really, really special bond that we've created and a level of trust that just wasn't there when I picked them up. It's magic. And so I know that was a very eloquent or poetic, but it really got me thinking about my car and how you could actually build a story around that and use it actually to train our volunteers as well, how it's really not a big, special, formal process. It's more like these little things. So thanks for that help. Can I? I'm sorry. Before we check, Abigail, where are you from originally? Originally I'm from England. And I live in Oregon. OK, I'm so sorry because you look exactly like my college roommate whose name was Abigail Lewis and I was freaking out. So I'm very sorry. OK, exactly like her. You two need to get into a car and go for a long drive. We do. Abigail, thank you for that. And just one of the things about the third place, but whatever the car, stories are in containers. Our stories are in the we have our lives. And if we can find the container, there's that scene. There's that I went for a drive. And I had this person sitting next to me. You have the elements of the story. So you gave us all why the third place matters this. And now, of course, it's like, how has that changed you? How is those experience, that driving, what do you see differently? The other thing about storytelling and why I think what I'm hearing without even saying it, is that car, as you're hurtling around in a car, a projectile, is it's a safe space? There's an intimacy. And storytelling, if you can find yourself in a place where you feel safe of expression, right? So again, in work, if you can help them say, yes, say the story you need to say, that's going to allow you to use the storytelling for. We always work on creating a safe space for our storytellers. Might be in a car, right? It might be a workshop environment. It's all about a safe and welcoming space. So thank you for offering that to your travelers. Well, thank you. Thanks for this opportunity. Awesome. We have room for one more. I'd like to next bring up Emily Barker. Hi. So my husband may or may not hear this story. I hear part of the story and I'll try not to. He's in my office mate's here. I went with the first one where something could have gone one of two ways. I learned once why you should probably listen to the shouts of random strangers. My husband and I were enjoying a picnic lunch on the side of a snow bank on a mountain in Glacier National Park. We'd opted to go past the warning sign telling us that the trail was largely impassable. We just wanted to go a little further to enjoy our food. As we sat there in the sun, we heard the shouts. But knowing no one else on the mountain, we figured it was for somebody else. And then I saw the bear. It was a young gris ambling its way down the mountain, probably as unaware of us as we were of it. And as our brains processed the shouts and the bear, my husband jumped up and shot past me down the mountain. A roar of laughter erupted from below as his bright yellow shirt and my bright red shorts made for quite a show even from a little ways down. Fortunately for us, the young animal started to slide down the snow bank and was out of reach of us in just a few seconds. I think about this though, because had that bear gotten across, we may have had to share that lunch. And I'm glad that we never did. Yeah, you had me right at the beginning, where everybody's like, okay, something's gonna happen. You go onto a trail in Glacier National Park. It's like something was gonna happen. That was really, really good. And I have a beautiful vision of bright colors scrambling. I also said, maybe you've talked about this to your husband, he took off. Reminded me of a Gary Larson comic, which I won't. Thank you, Emily, thank you, Emily. My wife is Emily and she has a bear story that's very similar to that. I used to live right across the border from Glacier National Park. So I know that park very, very well. Stories that connect us. Anyone else wanna share a bit of writing? These are wonderful, thank you for doing that. Is there any questions that we want to address in the Q&A? Is that mindful of? Glenn, I would love to feature you. If you can hit the raised hand feature, I can then bring you onto stage. Got it, you're on your way. Hello. So I did the one on where you're challenged and you went beyond what I guess you thought you could have done, I think the second one. I was forced by the diagnosis of my daughter who was diagnosed with a fatal disease to try to figure out a way to help her and help children with this disease. I was frantic, obsessed, and felt like I was going insane. Every second my daughter was getting worse from a neurological disorder, the disease was taking hold. She was three years old. We did have some hope, a goal, a target, a possibility that if we could find, fund this clinical trial for children, but money stood in the way in a lot of money, $2 million. So I set out trying everything and anything I could, thinking and talking to anyone I could. Many led to dead ends, but somehow, almost magically or spiritually, people came into our lives. Long shot ideas that I had started to take focus and develop. Could we tell our story to the world? That's what needed to happen. The world needed to hear this. A video was created for us by an eccentric photographer for free and he was a brilliant mind who knew what pieces needed to go into the story. I have to release the video and campaign and love for my daughter went viral and more than that, our call to action resonated. In the first 15 days, 500,000 was raised. A month later, in a month, 1 million and just several months later, the 2 million that was needed was raised. This really unbelievable tale put us all on all the major news networks that today show Doctors TV show International. From there, my daughter was chosen and treated first in a clinical trial, but all fairy tales don't have story book endings. The disease continues in my daughter. She was too old when she was treated, but our foundation, our cause for children gives her life and my life purpose to cure the disease San Felipe syndrome. And it wasn't because of me or what I did, but it was because of the people who came into my life. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn. Thank you. Just that last line, right? You know, we are focusing on your daughter, but how you open that up and you're thanking people. And it's just that part. Just, you know, here's the thing that changed my life. We're like, oh, Glenn's doing all this work and his daughter. And then you just open it up to those. That's that closure that just is like, right? That it's about others. It's about, right, the relationship with others. That was beautiful. Thanks, Glenn. Awesome. Thank you so much. I think we have room for a couple more questions. So let me dive into the Q and A tab. So here's one question, which is really about closure for these events. So what are some of the lenses you use when you are going through a story and because when you're trying to identify like that, that whoa line that you leave people with as you close out the story? It's usually cut the last paragraph. It's usually the closure is usually somewhere. And then there's the summation. That's just generally people think they think the closure is I need to just sum up what I have just told you in my story. And as soon as like, so therefore, right? It's that anything that leads in with that usually is the thing. Cut it. Cut it. And as a storyteller, it's usually something you want to leave them with. And sometimes in our work, it's not the last line. It's the last image or it's something that somebody said back to you as the last, right? So if the story's about, you know, Glen, you know, this beautiful heart-rending story about San Filippo disease, but then there's this beautiful line about all the love that's come back. And that's closure. It's like the connection that has been made, the reaching out for help, the people, right? The outside help came and now there's this beautiful connection that's happened. And all the website stuff can go at the end of his digital story that he'll make because he's going to come to one of our workshops. So that's usually it. It's usually somewhere, roll back. And it's usually- Yeah, I think the main thing is just not trying to explain it at the end. And sometimes, you know, yeah. And think about Obi's story. Yeah, I'm that guy, you know, which circles back around to how he started out. I'm the guy that's the fall guy, right? And so it wasn't a contrived ending. It's just like, yeah, no, this is the guy I want to be. Yeah. That's a good point. Sometimes if you're opening, the thing that connects to get us in, if you come back to that, but you come back to that when we have a new insight because the story has given us something else. So you're always saying, I started with this. I want us you to be on my journey from this point, take us back to the beginning. And it's not necessarily repeat that line, but it's like, what is it that is different? And just those two, the ending that sort of is the attachment to that beginning. It's the beginning with that little bit of, so the audience goes, right, got it. So let's try and do a couple of rapid-fire questions just to sort of work through a couple more before we come to the end. So here's a great question coming from Melissa, who says, our org is great at telling impactful stories, but our audience tends to be the people who have already been impacted, like the people living that. So how can we get people who haven't been impacted to be, but like many microadvocates on the issue. And in this particular case, we're talking about driving under the influence, but I think like more generally, how do we bring others outside of our core issue to be advocates? Allison, do you want to tackle that? Oh, I was answering somebody else's question. Sorry. If you have a thought, go for it. I think, why this story, why this story now and who this story is for? And it's, you have to think, the ones that are advocates, so if you're telling the story that's about all the good things you do as a kind of to get affirmation, and sometimes it's sort of like, you have to think about who it is you're trying to reach. If it is an adversary, then identify that. You can even start your story out. So it's like, we have many people that understand the impact issues. But this is like, you just own that out and people will hear it differently. So part of your connect with me, I want to connect with the audience that is not those already impacted by the issue. And it might be something that you know that they don't get. So you just put it straight out as your connect and start with that, say, it's really hard to get people to understand what it is. But don't just say that, say, understand and then be very explicit what they don't get. And just be very bold and honest about what it is that they're not getting. And once you get that there, then you can try and say, and here's how we want you to see it, right? So here's another question sort of around, like keeping the dignity and humanity of the people who are telling their stories, even if they have difficult circumstances. So Ashen asks, what's the best way to tell a story without downgrading a situation person into becoming that difficult circumstance, such as no job, no food assistance, et cetera. I think I did answer that in the chat, but I'm happy to just kind of to talk about it a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things, and we've talked about this a lot, is that having people tell their own stories, right? Where they're getting to decide how they want to represent themselves makes all the difference in the world. And also, I mean, even in that work, contextualizing a story in the larger situation, right? That it's not so that you don't play in only to tropes or to stereotypes, but even a person who's in a difficult circumstance in any of these situations that you're talking about has lots of other, that's not the only thing that defines them, right? And so thinking of helping them to find moments of learning or change or self-advocacy or inspiration. So finding, and again, but helping them to define the moment that they or the story that they want to tell and how they want to represent. I think those are the biggest pieces. Totally agree, totally agree. It's just the way you ask, don't ask the question that you think you want answered because, right, find the questions that allows them to express themselves. It happens in all our work. I've had people say we're seen as marginalized this way and that's not the way they see themselves. I didn't work with homeless. We're doing this workshop with homeless women and the research was like, what does home mean? Even the research question, they had problems with an expression. They knew exactly what home was. They all knew it. Like it wasn't like they were coming from some other planet. So it even changed how the researchers were framing the questions. So it's really important to have this open space to allow people to enter in and tell their own experiences and their own way of expressing it. Start there. Cool. And our final question here is for all of us who have ever put a camera in someone's face and seen people clam up. So Judy asks, how do we prevent the technology from like establishing a wall between the storyteller and the storyteller? That's a great question. I'm going to jump in. No, go for it. I have something to say too, but you and I know this one well. So in the pandemic, before we always, we did do some online workshops, but once the pandemic started, we were like 100% online. And we really worried about the shift in the nature of our work because we spend a lot of time and effort creating a really safe space, a place for people to feel authentic and invite them to share stories. Again, we've said it a bunch of times in the way that they want to. And we worried about things like accessibility and people who don't aren't as familiar with the Zoom and we're not in the room with them to be able to come and sit beside them at the computer and say, okay, hey, let's figure this out together. Don't worry. So all of that was gone and we have this much space to connect with people. I mean, I've found myself being more animated, but I think a lot of it is, I think the number one thing is listening. Being, listen deeply and being authentic with people, that's the most important thing that I think can create a barrier or take it down. And certainly if you're being aware of people's response to the technology, then you can make adjustments. But again, we don't do the camera and people's space in the sense of interviewing people in that way. But I think the more that you are authentic with people, the more that you open the space and really listen, not what you think they're gonna say or what you think is happening, but listen to what they say is happening or the story that they wanna tell. And I think that that's for me, that I think that's the number one shift and being authentic yourself. Right. So, and I'll just add, yeah, that there's a duality of that question of just the Zoom scape and the listener, let's find a listener and someone's telling me a story in a workshop, how do I be that better listener in this strange world of Zoom, AirMeat and all that. The other one is the other one I'm hearing a little bit, which is, Elijah was saying, you know, this idea of the camera is what you want this, when the listener and the teller seem like they're side by side. So in how the story, the teller says something and how they invite the listener to be next to them, it's a kind of intimacy that's created in the type of stories that they end up sharing. Part of it is because we always do it in a group process, it's not a one-on-one interview. There's other people just trying to figure this out and the support, it becomes kind of like family. And you know, if we're online for six weeks, I'm doing a 10-week course. We're all family and we know each other and we miss each other each week and it's so good to be back because we're all invited into each other's lived experiences. That helps too, is the waste stories, we help people, structure stories, is they say, I want you to come into my world and see it from the way I see it. They don't say, come and look at how I look at, look like. Which is always the problem with these interviews. It's not what they look like or what they're sitting in their books. It's how they see the world and what they want us to see from their perspective as they're telling their story. And that shifts it too. And all of a sudden that wall goes away of listener, teller, audience. Everybody's now invited in a common space. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much Rob and Allison. Super grateful for you to come and be part of this and work with our community to help them on how to pull good prompts and create prompts to really pull good stories out of the work we do. I also wanna be really grateful to everyone who participated by both writing the stories and giving us your time and attention and to those who are brave enough to actually come on stage with us, which is a big step. I'm really grateful for that as well. So with this, let me take you into the final three slides and we will wrap the digital, this lights camera take action. Yeah, I don't wanna be the one that holds you between you and whatever meal is waiting. I didn't realize you were the last one is like, some of us don't wanna be the way of between somebody and their food for a cup of coffee. Like that. Like that there. So as you go back into your lives, as we come out of this mini conference, we would love for you to share one insight or thing you learned through the course of these three days. Pop on the Twitter and then use the act tech soup handle and the hashtag and P story telling. And we'll definitely be there with you. We'd love to hear more from you. We will also of course be sharing the recording and the slides from this event and most of the other sessions from the last three days. Everyone who registered will get an email on October 12th. So stay tuned. And with that, thank you. We're so grateful for your time and your attention. And you know, more than 2,500 of you actually registered. So there was the real energy and we will be doing something similar in the future. Count on it.