Introducing the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network

Today I want to talk to you about the PNI Institute, its history, its ending, and its successor.

(Book update: I am still working on the last chapter. It is shaping up well, though more slowly than expected. I hope to be ready to send the book to my early readers in the next 3-4 weeks. If you are not on the early reader list and want to be, send me an email.)

The rise and fall of the PNI Institute

The PNI Institute was created by myself and three colleagues in the fall of 2014. Our goal was to support and advance participatory narrative inquiry. Over the past six years, our main activity has been a monthly Zoom call. We have had about sixty Zoom calls. Many have been excellent conversations, with lots of attendees, lively discussions, surprising insights, and plenty of camaraderie.

However, the original energy of the group has waned. Two of the four founders dropped out almost immediately (for reasons they could not foresee or change). Myself and the other remaining founder kept the group going for about five years. For the past year or so, it has been mostly me keeping the group going. In collaborative efforts, I believe, whoever does the work should get to say what happens. At this point, I think I have earned the right to decide what happens to the PNI Institute. And I think it's time for a change. 

To start, I never liked the name. It has been a thorn in my side all along. It seemed, and still seems, pretentious to call a bunch of people chatting an "Institute." Also, call attendance has been dropping off over the past year or two. Often it is just me and one other person on the call. The calls I looked forward to six years ago have slowly descended into obligations I would rather do without. 

None of this is anybody's fault. It's just the normal ebb and flow of a social group.

What should come next?

This fall, I put out a survey to ask people what they thought the PNI Institute should do next. Out of over 130 people "registered" on the site (all of whom got a pleading email), there were 11 responses. From the low response rate, and from the responses themselves, I got the sense that there is only weak interest in the PNI Institute continuing and growing into something bigger.

This lack of interest dovetailed with a concern that has been growing in my mind for the past year or two. I keep seeing people mention PNI as though it belongs to me. As though it is my thing, as though people can use it but can't change it. That was not what I wanted. 

I wrote a book about PNI, but I never wanted to own it. I still don't. I want to share it. I want people to join me inside PNI, to work on it with me, to improve it and enlarge it. Of course it will change somewhat as people do that; but I've always been okay with that. I've been hoping to see more books come out about PNI, or at least some book chapters. A few articles and a few Ph.D. dissertations have mentioned PNI. But I had hoped for much more.

One way I can counter the PNI-is-me trend, I think, is to stop talking only about PNI. Having a group that talks only about PNI keeps it separated from other approaches. But the truth is, most of the people who use PNI use it alongside other approaches. Hardly anyone uses it all by itself. I see that as a good thing, and I would like to explore it.

So I have decided that I no longer want to run a group that talks only about PNI. I want to talk about bigger things, wider things, of which PNI is just one part. I think that might be the best way to help the approach survive and grow -- as part of a family of approaches.

A wider view

What should a group that goes beyond PNI talk about? Should we drop the participatory part of it, and open the door to non-participatory, extractive methods? No. I would not want to join such a group. It would suck all the joy out of it for me. Helping ordinary people make sense of their lives, families, communities, and organizations is why I do what I do. 

What about a group that discusses participation but without the narrative aspect? Again, I would not be interested in joining such a group. I have a special fondness for stories. And, I believe, they are being used too little to help people and too much to manipulate them. I want to keep talking about helping people work with their own stories.

What about inquiry? Could we talk about participatory story work that does not (necessarily) focus on finding things out? 

Of the three possibilities, I am most open to this one. I care about people and I care about stories. I don't care as much about data and trends and proof. Besides, the sensemaking that is at the core of PNI happens whether or not you gather reams of data. I have always seen that part of the work as optional, nice to have, supportive but not central.

Introducing the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network

I would like to invite you to join a new discussion group: the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network (PNpn). 

In this group we will talk about many approaches to participatory narrative, including: narrative therapy, narrative medicine, narrative coaching, appreciative inquiry, participatory narrative inquiry, oral history, action research, and participatory theatre. (We may change this list as we talk, but that's what we have right now.)

If you are a practitioner or a fan of any of these approaches, we would love to talk to you. Whether participatory narrative is the only thing you do, or whether it is one of many tools in your toolbox, we invite you to join us. You can read more at the group's new web site, pnpnet.org, which I encourage you to look at.

We will continue the same Zoom calls as we had for the PNI Institute, but our topics will range much more broadly than they did before.

What are we not going to talk about? Story work whose primary goal is persuasion, promotion,  influence, self-expression, performance, or entertainment. There is nothing wrong with any of those goals. They are just not what we plan to talk about.

To join us, send an email to the address on the PNpn web site (it comes to me) and tell us why you want to join. I will send you an invitation to join our Zulip chat server, which we are using to talk between our Zoom calls. All details of the calls (dates, times, topics) are on the chat server. If you have any questions, send them to me via email.

Questions for you, questions for me

Two posts in a row! Hooray! To be honest, I miss writing in the blog. It was fun. I'll see if I can start doing it at least once a month again. However, I will need to hold myself back from writing those long essays that took up weeks of my time. Must not get in too deep. Must not get in too deep.

Anyhew, I have been thinking a lot about the PNI Institute lately. We started it six years ago, and it has not grown into what I hoped it would become. This is what I was hoping to create:

1. A lively discussion
2. A free online quarterly or biennial peer-reviewed journal for PNI practitioners, with papers that spread techniques, share tips, recount experiences, and play with ideas
3. An annual or biannual online conference that brings people together to brainstorm, learn, talk, share experiences, get to know each other, and help PNI thrive
   

We have done the first of these things, with 60+ phone calls during which we talked about many things PNI-related and PNI-adjacent. In that sense the effort has been a success.

However, I still want to do the other things. (I always say "do the other things" in a JFK voice.)

On our last phone call in September, we talked about doing two new things:

1. We will hold a series of three special calls, starting in January, to discuss The Future of PNI and the PNI Institute (please say that in a Carl Sagan voice). We will talk about how we could ramp up to a bigger and better PNI Institute that better supports PNI practitioners.
2. I have set up a survey to find out what people want from the PNI Institute in the future. If you have used participatory narrative inquiry, or even if you are just interested in it, I would very much value your opinion about what the PNI Institute should do to support you. (Please fill out the survey in your own voice.)
   

That's it!

Wait - one more thing. 

A colleague recently sent me an excellent question about PNI in practice, a question that had come up in a workshop. I answered the question, and then I thought - Hey, wait a minute. I used to have a "mail bag" series on the blog, where I would post answers to questions I got in email. I stopped doing that, but it was a good way to feed the blog.

So here's the deal: if you have a question about PNI, send it to me in an email. If I think everyone would benefit from the answer, I'll answer it here. (Otherwise I'll just answer it to you.) Deal?

Now, I don't want to push this blog post off the top of the blog, because I want people to fill out my survey. So I'll just tack my "mail bag" answer on to this post. 

 The question was:

In our story sharing session yesterday, we had a discussion about removing data such as a telephone number and a name that someone mentioned in their story. Some people said they thought removing the information would hurt the integrity of the story. Others said it wouldn't. What is your opinion?

What belongs in a story and what doesn't belong depends entirely on context. In some groups and communities, at some times, about some topics, and in some circumstances of story collection and spread (meaning, who told the stories and who will see them), the inclusion of personal information can contribute to the integrity of a story. However, context can change in a second.

When people are sharing stories in person, they constantly renegotiate what belongs in the story and what doesn't. For example:

• A person who is in the middle of telling a story might suddenly change tack and reduce the amount of personal information they reveal when a new person enters the group.
• On the other hand, if the new person shares telling rights and can corroborate what the storyteller has been saying, the storyteller may gain confidence and add more personal information, because they now have backup.
• If a person they are nervous about leaves the group, a storyteller might shift to telling the story more openly. Conversely, if that person was providing the storyteller with social support, the story might suddenly become more circumspect.
  
• Say a group is walking together and they pass from a quiet corner into a busy hallway. The story that is being told may suddenly shrink until the group gets back to a quieter place again, when it may expand.
  

In other words, from moment to moment, stories shift their shapes depending on the shifting contexts in which they are being told.

The problem with collecting stories is that once a story has been recorded or written down, it can no longer adapt to its environment. It has been frozen in one contextual state.

Thus when you collect stories among groups of people who are talking to each other, their stories might become frozen into states that make less sense, or sound strange, or even pose dangers to the storytellers in other contexts.

It doesn't seem to me that people are aware of this. They don't notice that they are renegotiating the shapes of their stories as they talk, and they don't realize what freezing their story in one context and thawing it out in another is going to do. 

Of course, sometimes there are no freezing-and-thawing problems. But when the topic is personal or emotional, freeze-thaw damage can be significant. And it's invisible. It's not like people are going to tell you that they regretted participating in your project once they saw their story in another context. They'll just walk away the next time you ask them to tell a story. Or they'll tell you a safer, less meaningful story. And you won't know why.

I feel like it is the responsibility of the facilitator to help people avoid falling into situations they would never be in without the artificial freezing of their stories. That's why I ask people to leave personal information out of the stories they tell, even if they are talking to other people in person, and even if it supports the integrity or meaning of the story in the present context, because what they say will be heard in other contexts than the one in which they are telling it.

I have even gone so far as to remove personal information from stories to protect storytellers from contextual changes they didn't see coming when they told the stories. For example, in one project where stories were collected over the web, lots of people put their names and phone numbers, and the names and phone numbers of other people, into their stories (even though we asked them not to). If that information had been kept with the stories and posted somewhere, say online, it could have led to harassment of some people. I felt that it was important to take that information out of the stories, partly because I myself didn't know in what contexts the stories would end up being read.

For the same reason, I like to give people in story collection sessions the option to review their transcripts afterward and ask for changes. Hardly anybody ever asks for changes, or even asks to see the transcripts, but I think that knowing they can change what they say later on helps people to open up and trust the process.

I guess I would say that storytelling is both powerful and dangerous, and that the power of stories to communicate and make sense of the world cannot be accessed until the danger inherent in telling stories is kept under control.  

That's my answer to one of your questions - now what are your answers to my questions?

Writing here and there

Lately I've been writing less here because I've been writing more there. On the PNI Institute blog, that is. So right now, if you want to read the new stuff I'm writing, go there.

Why am I writing more there? This year, in our monthly Zoom calls, we've been going through the purposes of participatory narrative inquiry, as described under "Why work with stories?" in Working with Stories. To prepare for the calls, I've been trying to write blog posts about each of the PNI purposes. I haven't managed to do it every month, but these links show what I've written so far, as well as our discussions.

• April - Finding things out: Research and discovery with PNI (no post) (call recording)
• June - Catching emerging trends: Weak signal detection with PNI (post: A signal is a choice) (call recording)
• July - Making decisions: Decision support with PNI (no post) (call recording)
• September - Getting new ideas: Innovation and future planning with PNI (post: Tell a story that must never happen) (call recording)
• October - Resolving conflicts: Dialogue and understanding with PNI (post: Sharing stories with strange people) (call recording to come soon)

These calls are yet to come (and hopefully to be written about):

• November - Connecting people: Community building and maintenance with PNI
• December - Helping people learn: Knowledge management and organizational learning with PNI
• January - Enlightening people: Advocacy and education with PNI
• February - Combinations of purposes

I'll post those links here later (or you could just go and look at the blog there). Calls take place at 2pm New York time on the second Wednesday of each month, here. Everyone is welcome to join us, and calls are recorded and posted as well.

Since my method in writing these posts is to just sit and wait for a while to see what ideas rise to the surface, the posts are starting to form a sort of update to WWS, in the sense of new things I've been thinking about lately with regard to the uses of PNI. So if you are interested to see where PNI is going right now, these posts and discussions might be interesting to you.

A Connection Language: Dialogue, Methods, Collaboration

A few of you might remember that when I posted my observations from the NCDD conference in October 2014, I mentioned the idea of a "connection language" to interpolate between different dialogue methods.

I've been playing with that idea ever since. I've told about a dozen people about it and gathered feedback. Based on that, I've been working up an elevator pitch to work towards an eventual real project. (Okay, an elevator in a really tall building.) I've been passing this pitch document around in email, but the other day I thought: the blog is hungry, so why not feed it this thing? So here it is. See what you think.

The need

These are some things I’ve noticed over the past several years, as a person who has been developing and promoting a dialogue-based method (participatory narrative inquiry).

People who are interested in dialogue can turn to a large number of useful methods, in the dozens (or hundreds, depending on how you divide them up).

Several excellent lists and frameworks have been built to help people make sense of all these methods. These include the NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework, participedia.net, The Change Handbook, Liberating Structures, the Group Works Deck, Tom Atlee's Multi-Process Public Participation Programs, and others. People use these lists and value them.

The number of dialogue methods keeps growing.

I have noticed from conversations with people that:

• People seem to “shop” for dialogue methods, choose a small number, pay attention to them, and ignore all others.
• People sometimes act tribally about the methods they have chosen, promoting them as best, acting as if people who also use those methods are on their “team.”
• When I tell people about the method I work on/with (participatory narrative inquiry, or PNI), I find that there is a U-shaped reaction based on how much experience people have in dialogic practice.
• People who are unaware of dialogue want to hear about PNI (and PNI only).
• People who have some (but not that much) experience with dialogue don’t want to hear about yet another method, say they’ve already heard of Appreciative Inquiry (or some other story-based method), and get too busy to talk to me.
• People with lots of experience want to know how PNI relates to other methods. They want to learn about it so they can consider incorporating some of its ideas into their practice.
• When people ask me about PNI, they are often surprised when I point them to literature in overlapping fields like participatory theatre and narrative therapy. They find it unique and novel.

My guess is that all of these things relate to Dunbar’s number, that is, the number of relationships people can keep track of. We can be aware of 100-150 methods (our village), but we can be familiar with only about 10-15 (our family). These behaviors – the ignoring, the tribalism, the U-shaped curve of attention, the surprise – all have to do with cognitive limits.

The sociologist Harrison White posits three “species” of interaction among people: selection (choosing among options), mobilization (gaining influence), and commitment (getting things done). When I look at how people use dialogue methods, I see a lot of selection (shopping) and mobilization (tribalism) going on, but very little commitment (making things happen).

I think the world of dialogue needs more commitment interaction.

My concern is that we may be reaching a point where the very instruments we use to bridge differences have developed differences that need to be bridged.

Many dialogue methods are more complementary and synergistic than people (especially newcomers to dialogue) realize.

The most experienced practitioners of dialogue don’t shop for methods, and they don’t promote methods. They grow their own solutions, unique to each need, based on what they learn from all over. Harrison White would say that they work entirely at the commitment level.

In my experience, dialogue is more effective when people know why they are using what they are using, learn from many sources, and can craft unique solutions for unique needs. I would like to see more people doing this.

It should be possible to help more people get to the point of understanding how to grow their own solutions.

I’m surprised how hard it is to find out how different methods are related. The people who developed the methods usually know about relationships among methods, but there is little for the practitioner to find on the subject.

Maybe better information on how dialogue methods are and can be related would help people move beyond the current state of affairs. Maybe it would help people make more informed choices, do less “campaigning” for their favorite methods, listen to people who use different methods more carefully, and create better solutions for their needs.

Based on all of this, I’ve been pondering this question: how can we, as developers of dialogue methods, help people use the synergies they need to make our methods work for them?

I think it’s time to take the next step beyond lists to a networked model that helps people find “yes and” synergies among relevant methods. 

Here’s how I think we could do that. (I don’t know who “we” are at this point. It could be anybody.)

The idea

Christopher Alexander is rightly revered for his idea of a pattern language, a structured way to talk about patterns in – anything.

"... the elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice."

You could say that dialogue methods are like patterns, because they present solutions for common problems. In fact, the Group Works Deck treats them exactly as such. [Edit: This isn't exactly correct. Tree Bressen, one of the originators of the Group Works Deck, says that it represents "underlying patterns and similarities" that make up dialogue methods (not the methods themselves).]

I think we could take the idea of a pattern language and apply it to relationships between methods. I’ve been calling this idea a connection language.

By creating a web of pairwise connection patterns, we could build a learning network people could “walk around on” to better understand how dialogue methods are related and to find the best combinations of solutions for their needs. Because a connection language would create explicit relationships between methods, people would be able to move beyond shopping and tribalism. They would be able to move into a more effective, committed use of the available methods for their unique needs.

The basic idea of the connection language is simple. In Alexander’s terms, a connection language ought to ask, “What problems can these methods address, and what solutions can they provide, together?” The answer to that question is a connection pattern. Through a dialogic process, two or more people who represent paired methods work together to describe how the two methods are similar, different, and complementary, and how the methods can be (and have been) used together. A collection of these connection patterns creates a connection language.

Alexander and his co-authors called their book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. As I see it, dialogue is the town we are building together; our methods are the buildings; and collaboration is how we are building them (and how we are connecting them). (I had "approaches" in the place of "methods," but methods seem more like buildings. "Approach" is too nebulous a word. But it could be the right word anyway.)

The process

The process of connection pattern creation, to be carried out by two people or groups who volunteer to represent each method, might have a structure something like this.

1. Reflect. The two people/groups send each other a few brief but essential documents to review. Each person reads and highlights words, phrases, and sentences that stand out as resonating (yes we do that too), contrasting (that’s different), or just interesting (you do that?).
2. Share. The two people/groups have a physical or online meeting to talk about the words and phrases they highlighted in each other's documents. They use these markings as a means to explore how the two methods are similar, different, complementary, and synergistic.
3. Build. As the people emerge from their discussion, they create a first draft of a connection pattern (see below for its structure).
4. Refine. As they improve the pattern, the people open it up to others, to add more detail and to test its utility.

The pattern

A connection pattern might have a structure something like this.

• Introduction. The pattern starts with a brief introduction to each method that explains its purpose (why it exists), its origin and context of development (where it came from), its core concepts (the ideas it relies on), its practical uses (what it's good for), and its limitations (what it's not meant to do). Note that this part of the pattern only has to be written once for each method. However, the parallel structure keeps methods from veering off into their own ways of describing themselves, and it helps people compare methods on equal terms.
• Table. Next there is a table that links the two methods together. This is the crux of the pattern. The columns have the titles "Similar" and "Contrasting". The rows cover goals, history, concepts, and techniques. In the cells are brief summaries of ways in which the two methods are similar and different/complementary in each area. (See the example table below.)
• Dictionary. The major terms unique to each method are defined in language that makes sense to people who know only about the other method.
• Diagram. An optional diagram shows how the two methods are related visually. The exact form of this diagram emerges out of the discussion between the two people/groups representing the methods.
• Case studies. These are real or imagined stories about the two methods being used together. Ideas are suggested and experiments are described where the methods are used in various ways (e.g., sequentially, with ideas from one influencing the other, with phases interleaved together, etc).

The language

I envision the connection language being built on a web site, with a semantic wiki (a wiki with forms) providing structure. I would also like to see opportunities for practitioners to have conversations and ask questions about using dialogue methods together.

The obvious difficulty in building such a site is that if there are 100 methods there would be 5000 pairs of methods. My feeling is that the people who choose to represent a method (its developers, people who use it a lot, people who champion it) would take on the responsibility of choosing some number of connections they think are the most useful. Some combinations would “cry out” to be examined more than others, and I expect that eventually a critical mass would emerge.

Along with lists of links on each page, I envision a visual navigation system that looks something like visuwords.com, where clicking on the lines between methods leads to viewing the relevant connection patterns. We might even be able to annotate the visual diagram with summaries like “whole system in the room” (similarity) or “big versus small groups” (difference) or “gather stories first, then brainstorm lists” (complementarities).

My original idea for making the connection language happen was to gather a task force of people who think this is a good idea, and get each of them to contribute a small amount of time and money to get the site going. (It would cost a little to host the site.) However, I’ve been thinking lately that the idea might be better supported by some collective entity that is already helping people with dialogue. The project would reach more people that way, and it might gather more contributors than I can gather on my own.

If anybody has ideas about how such a project could come to pass, please let me know. I don’t have any need to “own” the idea, and even though I’d like to get some credit, I’m happy to share the idea and project with anybody who thinks it’s worth pursuing.

An example

To test some of the ideas I describe above, I worked with Stephen Sillett of Aiding Dramatic Change in Development to create a first-draft table for a connection pattern between Participatory Narrative Inquiry and Socio-Drama Topography. SDT is a large-group facilitation process that draws on participatory theatre, sensemaking, and narrative to create "deep, open, and strategically relevant conversations." SDT is "designed to reduce barriers to participation faced by marginalized communities, including those relating to varying levels of literacy."

I include this table (with permission) as an illustration of the kind of resource that might come out of the connection language process.

	Similar	Contrasting
Goals	Interaction among levels. Both methods create interactions between micro, meso, and macro levels. Bottom-up. Both methods attempt to drop down below the meso layer and include participants at the micro level. Pre-decision. Both methods focus on exploration, listening, and sharing in advance of decision making, not on decision making itself.	Reality vs imagination. SDT, on a spectrum from representations of reality to aesthetic resonance (imagination), lies more in aesthetic/performative and less in reality. PNI starts in reality and moves partly into imagination (but not that far). Scope. SDT focuses on building strategic capacity. SDT is a large group process that makes sense in relation to a defined theme/context in which it is strategically deployed. The journey within the workshop has been designed upfront to get the most out of the 3 days (people are being asked to make a big commitment of time). In contrast, PNI is not focused on capacity; it is focused on helping people make better decisions (large or small). Though PNI projects can be large and can build capacity, PNI more typically “scales down” to fit into the available opportunities for story work, which range in time and mode of interaction. Depth. If completely extractive work (e.g., survey-based research) is on one end of a spectrum (call it 1) and fully immersive experiences are at the other end (call it 10), SDT has its center at about 7, and PNI has its center at about 5. PNI attempts to create a bridge between shallow and deep exploration by ranging across the spectrum within one project (from shallow, wide story collection to deep, local sensemaking). SDT bridges a similar gap by gradually drawing (the same) people closer to a deeper experience.
History	Participation. Both SDT and PNI have sought since their beginnings to enable participants to be the drivers of sensemaking and meaning making.	Context of development. PNI arose in corporations centered on decision making. This is one reason it works with minimal participation, grudging permission to include everyone, and short time frames.  SDT arose in opening up youth to participate in forum theatre in communities. This is one reason it builds on creativity and passion in its participants. Parent fields. SDT is arts-based; PNI is research-based.
Concepts	Ground truth. Both methods focus on depth of insight, ground truth, and personal experiences. Play. Both methods use the power of play, “the partial suspension of the rules of the real,” to help people create positive change. Adaptation. Both SDT and PNI are processes whose design is adapted to particular themes and contexts.	Performance. SDT has a strong performative component. PNI can include performative elements, and has some weaker manifestations of performance (e.g., during sensemaking), but performance is not the core of PNI. Geography. Having a common geographical area is central to SDT. It is not important to PNI. Dialogue. Both processes are dialogical; but SDT is intentionally dialogical (using aspects of Bohm dialogue), while PNI relies on the innately dialogical social structures of story sharing. Cycles. In SDT, much attention is paid to cycles during which the project is tested and matures. In PNI there is less attention to longer-term cycles. PNI projects do sometimes feed in to later projects, but there is less of a long-term expectation of continuity. Participation. PNI runs on "micro-participation," emphasizing breadth over depth (at least at first, during story collection). SDT runs on "macro-participation," emphasizing depth over breadth. PNI “makes do” with whatever participation/permission it can gather; SDT gathers the participation/permission it needs. Locality. SDT is "hyperlocal." PNI can be hyperlocal, but it can also be broad and shallow.
Techniques	Landscapes. Both SDT and PNI include the group creation of a physical map or landscape.  (But see the “Landscapes” difference.)	Numbers of people. SDT works in large groups of 20 or more, attempting to get “the whole system in the room.” PNI works with varied levels of participation and group sizes; typically many people tell stories (possibly hundreds), but fewer work with stories in groups (anywhere from several to 50). In PNI the stories represent the people who are not present (sometimes because they are not willing or able to be present, sometimes because others don’t want them to be present). Non-verbal communication. SDT has strong elements of non-verbal communication. PNI does include a little non-verbal communication during sensemaking (the creation of physical artifacts), but this is not a core of the practice. Landscapes. In SDT, creating a landscape is at the core of the method. In PNI, creating a landscape is one of several possible sensemaking exercises. In SDT the landscape is gegraphical and conceptual combined. In PNI the landscape is not usually geographical. Space. SDT, because it makes use of physical space in its processes, places great emphasis on the physical space in which engagement occurs. PNI needs space for its activities, but has lesser requirements for the quality of the space (because it is not used in the same way). Training. SDT, because it is a large-group process that typically takes on large, long-term projects, has greater training needs than PNI. To address these needs, SDT seeks to train up local staff for greater sustainability. PNI tends to start with small projects and grow in ambition over time as practitioners become more skilled. On large, ambitious PNI projects, helpers may be trained, but this is not common.

Conclusion

The connection language idea is still in its infancy. I’m eager to connect with people who want to make it happen. I’m open to many ideas about how it should develop and where it should end up. I think it’s an idea the world needs. What do you think?

It's a great big box of chocolates

I just now posted this review on Amazon.com. It's about David Hutchens' new book about stories in organizations, Circle of the 9 Muses: A Storytelling Field Guide for Innovators and Meaning Makers. I first heard about David's book project two years ago, and I've been an enthusiastic supporter ever since. I'm excited to see how well the book turned out. Five-star recommendation.

Here's the review:

Full disclosure: I work in the story field; I was one of the people David talked to while writing his book; I promised him I'd write a review.

Things I like most about "Circle of the 9 Muses":

1. It's a balanced look at the story universe.

If you start looking at what you can do with stories, you will find lots of information about what you can do by TELLING stories, usually to convince people to buy or do something. There's nothing wrong with that! But telling stories only scratches the surface of what you can do with stories. LISTENING to stories is just as amazing, if not more so, and it's not well represented in books and other information. I was excited to see that "Circle of the 9 Muses" gives storytelling and story listening/sharing roughly equal time. That makes the book uniquely useful if you want to learn about a wide range of possibilities in story work.

2. It draws on collective wisdom.

David is an experienced practitioner of story work, and he could have written a book using just what he knows. But he didn't do that. He reached out to dozens of people in the story field and drew from all of their experiences as well as his own. So what you're getting in this book is a unique distillation of LOTS of great ideas about doing things with stories. You could think of it as a story-work sampler. Of course, there are aspects of story work David doesn't cover. I would have liked to have seen exercises drawn from narrative therapy and participatory theatre, and lately I've been learning more about narrative coaching, where there is even more to discover. But those are small omissions, and this book will definitely get you started on the right foot.

3. It's a great big box of chocolates.

The most exciting thing about David's book, to me, is that every one of its eighteen chapters gives you real methods you can use right now. For the chapters with methods I know well, I can vouch that the steps David describes work well (and aren't hard to make work well). The chapters I don't have direct experience with I'd like to try. That's saying a lot, given that I've been working in this area for sixteen years. If the chapters in this book seem like they are worth trying, you're right: they are worth trying. Now you know how.

4. It's a great big box of CHOCOLATES.

I always say that story work is bigger on the inside than the outside. From the outside, it looks small, silly, useless, just another fad. But when you come inside, you can see a whole universe of meaning and relevance. David's book does an excellent job of drawing you inside the world of stories by communicating the excitement of story work - without promising that it will always be fast, easy, or perfect. In the process he lets out our most important secret: story work is important, ancient, and powerful.

In summary, I can definitely recommend "Circle of the 9 Muses" as an inspiring, practical, useful introduction to story work.

There were two things I didn't mention in my Amazon review, because I don't think people reading Amazon reviews would find them useful.

The first thing is that I was ever so slightly disappointed to see that David forgot to fix an issue with the "Twice-Told Stories" chapter. Evidently Paul Costello and I developed pretty much the same story exercise around the turn of the century. I knew nothing about this parallel work until I saw David's manuscript about a year ago. I had described the "twice-told stories" exercise in my book's first edition in 2008. Nobody ever told me that anything similar existed, or I would have been sure to mention it in my book revision.

I'm not surprised that we developed a similar exercise, because the exercise fits very well into the ways people naturally exchange stories. It did take my colleagues and me a year of research and testing to develop the exercise, and I assume something similar happened to Paul and his colleagues. The two exercises are not identical because our purposes were not identical, but they are close.

So why does Circle of the 9 Muses use my name for someone else's exercise? Apparently David talked to Paul first, but he also remembered reading about the exercise in my book, and he put the name of the exercise from one place together with its history from another place. I noticed this about a year ago and pointed it out to David. He told me he would change the chapter to say that Paul and I independently derived very similar exercises, and that the chapter name comes from my version. Apparently in the rush of publication he forgot to do that. I can understand that; I've done similar things myself. It takes a lot of careful attention to draw together the work of many people like David did. I don't think anybody could pull off a task like that without forgetting a few details.

I don't mind if people think Paul Costello was the only one to develop that particular exercise. I don't need to own it; story work belongs to everyone, and lots of similar ideas have been independently derived. My concern is that it might be confusing to my book readers to find another book with the same exercise attributed to someone else. I wouldn't want people to think I stole the exercise or lied about my work on it. I have added a mention of Paul's method to the errata page on my book's web site, just to make things clear.

The second thing I didn't say in my Amazon review is, even though I loved David's book, it did point out to me how terrible of a job we story workers have been doing on keeping up with each other. I should not be finding out about the work of other people in the same field by reading a book about it. I did want to participate in the Golden Fleece conferences when they were happening, but at the time I was a low-level employee/contractor at IBM and had no power to choose my own destinations. By the time I started my independent practice and could have participated in meet-ups (theoretically), the Golden Fleece was long gone. I did participate in some of the Worldwide Story Work phone-in sessions, but I don't believe those are still going on.

Lately some colleagues and I have been trying to create a community around PNI with the new PNI Institute. Our monthly Google hangouts are slowly gaining traction, and that's great, but I'm not sure if everyone who does any kind of story work wants to join us there (though you're welcome of course). In fact, our next hangout, on January 8th, is a repeat call about PNI as it relates to the world of story work. (Calls are always the second Friday of the month, at 10am New York time.)

How about a new discussion about bringing together people who do every kind of story work?

Let's talk

Over at the PNI Institute, we are holding our very first "Hangout" this Friday, July 5, at:

• California 7 00
• New York 10 00
• London 15 00
• Amsterdam/South Africa 16 00
• Melbourne 24 00

Our hangouts will be:

• Social: Connecting; networking; talking about what's going on in the world
• Practical: Helping each other solve problems and seek opportunities
• Collaborative: Discovering new ways we can work together
• Aspirational: Advancing the field by exploring new ideas

To avoid the inevitable problems using Skype with more than a few people, we will be using our new Mumble server. For details on how to connect, and to read more about what we plan to talk about in this and future hangouts, see my announcement post on pni2.org.

If you can't make this hangout, we will be holding more, so keep it in mind!

Of meals and membership

Would you like me to tell you how to cook pasta? No? Pretend you do for a minute so I can make a point. It's about stories, I promise.

First, choose a pot with a good thick bottom. If the pot's bottom is thin, the water will not boil evenly, and the pasta will clump. Fill the pot with enough cold, filtered water to cover your pasta, plus another inch or two. Put the pot on the stove. Add a teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Set the burner heat to maximum.

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To read the rest of this blog post (which is not about pasta), please visit the PNI Institute web site, where I've posted the whole essay.

Why is this blog post not on my blog? Because a few months ago I promised to write one short blog post for the PNI Institute per month. Since then I have succeeded in writing blog posts, but I have not succeeded in making them, um, short. So I will probably need to do at least a little cross-posting to keep up both commitments.

While you're over there, I encourage you to take a look at our new membership structure. We are actively recruiting new members at three levels:

1. forum members, who are interested in PNI in general (and who will participate in lively discussions on the site forums)
2. associate members, whose work overlaps significantly with PNI (and who will participate in forums and blog quarterly)
3. practicing members, who are actively engaged in PNI project work (and who will participate in forums and blog monthly)

If you're interested in any of these forms of membership, sign up on the site and tell us what you'd like to do in the forums or via email.

Introducing the Participatory Narrative Inquiry Institute

Well, folks, I've gone and got myself mixed up in another crazy scheme to save the world.

The PNI Institute is a new membership organization for people who are enthusiastic about growing and improving participatory narrative inquiry. It has been created as a collaborative effort by Aiden Choles, Ron Donaldson, Harold van Garderen, and myself.

Our group is in its early days, but we agree on a few important things:

• Our focus is on quality and constant improvement;
• we want to form a self-organized, fluid network of equals;
• our diversity is our strength;
• we want to share our knowledge with each other and with the world; and
• we want to keep doing PNI, so we will collaborate on getting funding for PNI projects.

You can read more about these founding ideals on our about page.

Right now the pni2.org site hosts a group blog, to which I will be posting monthly (don't worry, I will keep this blog up as well). I've already written my first post, in which I recount my history with PNI and list my hopes for the institute. (The other first posts are also worth reading. The diversity of the group is already exciting!)

We plan to expand our membership, though exactly how we go about doing that is still in discussion. An online forum, a collaborative wiki, an online peer-reviewed journal, and some sort of unconference are all being discussed as well. Expect to see more details on the pni2.org web site as time goes by.

If you have any ideas about what sort of organization you would like to see grow around PNI, or if you want to get involved in the PNI Institute, please let me know, either in the comments or in email. I'm all ears.

One more thing: I will be in Washington, D.C. from the evening of October 15 to the morning of October 20, to attend the NCDD conference. If you live nearby and would like to meet me in person, send me an email and we'll see if we can connect.