Topics

• 2011-05-25

  Evaluations of story work

  Most of this blog post has been moved to (and revised for) The Working with Stories Miscellany. You can find it in Chapter 10, “PNI Perceptions.” I didn’t use the last part of the post in the book, so I’ve left it here. Means of evaluation, forms of evidence Now, as I was writing up Read more

• 2011-05-03

  What are you building?

  Here is a small insight, just a tiny one, that you might find useful. One of our every-spring projects is our gradual cabin. Last spring we learned how to set up and stabilize a foundation, so last year it was just a tent platform with a big tarp over it. This spring we are learning Read more

• 2011-04-20

  Practical ethics in story gathering

  This blog post has been moved to (and revised for) The Working with Stories Miscellany. You can find it in Chapter 12, “Practical Ethics in PNI.” Read more

• 2011-04-02

  Form, function, and phenomenon

  I have sorta-kinda written about story as form, function, and phenomenon so many times now that I wonder if people wonder why I keep glancing at it and never hitting it head on. The answer to that question is (of course) a story. The quiet question The Knowledge Socialization group at IBM Research, of which Read more

• 2011-03-31

  Stories of definition

  A few weeks ago I realized a mistake I had been making and corrected it. You may be interested to hear about both the mistake and the correction. If you have followed Kathy Hansen‘s wonderful series of interviews with people who work in the story area, you will have noticed the wildly varying answers to Read more

• 2011-03-24

  Context as trap and tool

  So I’m looking at an old copy of National Geographic a few weeks ago and I see an advertisement that makes me ponder. And ponder. And write. Two guys holding things The advertisement strongly featured two photographs. Here is the first. Being a visual person, my eyes immediately went to the photographs, and right away Read more

• 2011-03-05

  Narrative inquiry without the participation

  A colleague recently told me about a DARPA-sponsored workshop that was to take place in Washington, D.C. on the 28th of February (a date that has come and gone) to explore new directions for work on story for national defense. The description of the project sounded similar to the DARPA project I worked on from Read more

• 2011-03-02

  From garment to fiber in story work (part two)

  This is the second part in a two-part blog post reflecting on stories and story work through the lens of a journey through the world of textile crafts. You probably need to read the first part first to understand what follows. DIY story world What is the narrative equivalent of sewing your own clothes, weaving Read more

• 2011-03-02

  From garment to fiber in story work (part one)

  Here as usual is a perambulatory rumination on matters obliquely yet genuinely connected with organisational and community narrative. As always I beg your patience in seeing how it all fits together. An ever deeper journey I have been studying historical architecture for the past few months together with my seven-year-old son, and as part of Read more

• 2011-02-08

  E-books and the reading marriage

  Those who read the recent posts (one, two) about my attempts to recall novels I’d read on an e-book reader will be interested in some little recursive reading I’ve been doing lately on the neurology of reading. Pretty much what I said Recently Jonah Lehrer at Wired has written a variety of short pieces around Read more

• 2011-01-12

  Towards a more fully cooked blog

  So I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about this blog. I started it a little over a year ago, and I have tried hard to keep to my original rule of posting about once a week, following what seemed like blogging etiquette at the time. In addition to providing hopefully helpful Read more

• 2010-12-17

  Story games

  This post is about story games, in three ways. First, it is an announcement to my readership that, due to the lamentable fact that I am apparently incapable of making any utterance less than five pages long, I will be switching to biweekly posts for the foreseeable future. I just can’t keep up this level Read more

• 2010-12-10

  The healing cleaver

  Yesterday I posted about the issue of context in story listening, and how I try to preserve context and worry that I fail. Today I listened to two doctors tell stories about how listening to their patients tell their stories helps them work together to find solutions to problems. (This was on a teleconference from Read more

• 2010-12-09

  Severed stories and those who sever them

  One of my favorite moments in my work is when I’m sitting with a body of stories and their accompanying interpretations. This is a position I have been in many times now and have come to love, over and above writing or programming or almost anything else I do. Sitting with the stories, abiding with Read more

• 2010-11-21

  Lost in a book

  Here is a strange little story related to the post I wrote about two weeks ago in relation to reading novels on e-book readers. Having finished reading Little Dorrit and having slurped up both movie versions (each best in its own way), and having gone through the customary refractory period (for respect and reflection), I Read more

• 2010-11-04

  E-books, narrative context and the future of reading

  Here is today’s set of desultory thoughts, this time about where technology and narrative come together in e-books. The end of the line, or, a unique opportunity About two years ago I found that the time had come to read the works of Anton Chekhov. (Oh God, she’s on about literature again — No! It’s Read more

• 2010-10-28

  Selection and development

  I was looking at the blog Aid on the Edge of Chaos and followed a link to Owen Barder’s wonderful presentation titled “What can development policy learn from evolution?” I enjoyed the clear, thought-provoking presentation so much I wrote a comment to the post. However, the comment turned out to be much too long for Read more

• 2010-10-22

  Depth and breadth in organizational narrative

  Last night I finished reading The Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel by Ken Follett about the middle ages. I wanted to read the novel because I enjoyed the miniseries, which I fell into watching on Netflix purely by chance (all right! it was because I saw Matthew MacFadyen and Rufus Sewell in it). Read more

• 2010-10-14

  Life without … what?

  Recently I’ve come across three random tidbits that struck me as strangely connected. They are all narrowings of self-definition, of what it means to be a human being. Humanity = electricity My son and I have been enjoying some episodes of a television series called Life After People. The series examines what would happen to Read more

• 2010-10-08

  WEIRD research on WEIRD people

  To start, you might want to look at the interesting article by James Surowiecki in this week’s New Yorker on procrastination. Which brings me to my resolution: I am going to try to finish the rewrite of Working with Stories this month. My favorite part from Surowiecki’s article is this part: Instead [of fighting with Read more