Stories
These blog posts are about stories and how we tell them, share them, and make sense of them.
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Cleaning the office again (and what stories are for)
So I’m working on another crazy new business venture (you’ll find out soon enough), and when I start a new venture I always feel the need to clean my office. What are stories for? Here’s a thing I came across in my cleaning that I thought you might like to see. Years ago, I wrote Read more
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Guest post – Before anything, storytelling is a conversation
Readers: I don’t think I’ve ever done this before, but I’d like to do it more often. This post was written by Juan Manuel Rodríguez Bocanegra of the Haki Storytelling blog. I am sure that you will find Juan Manuel’s insights valuable. Last year, I contacted Cynthia Kurtz and asked her to be a guest Read more
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Story the Future summit Sept 10-30
So a while ago I got an invitation from David Hutchens, who wrote Circle of the 9 Muses, to take part in an online summit he and some others were putting together on the future of story work. It seemed like a good thing, so I said yes. Then he asked me to tell you Read more
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The neverending story of personal storytelling (part three)
This essay is in three parts, of which this blog post is the third. Click these links for parts one and two. What Mr. Coreander’s choices tell us about personal storytelling I said above that I was going to work my way through the significant choices made by each of six functional characters in The Read more
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The neverending story of personal storytelling (part two)
This essay is in three parts, of which this blog post is the second. Click these links for parts one and three. What The Neverending Story tells us about personal storytelling Now that we’ve worked our way through all the elements of The Neverending Story, I think we are ready to explore what the book Read more
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The neverending story of personal storytelling (part one)
This essay is in three parts, of which this blog post is the first. Click these links for parts two and three. I’ve been waiting a long time to write this essay. I thought of it four or five years ago when I was writing a series of posts about natural storytelling. I never wrote Read more
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It’s a great big box of chocolates (Circle of the 9 Muses)
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 Read more
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Of cookbooks and story books
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. Read more
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Stories in search of characters
I thought that in returning to blogging more regularly I’d write one of my old-style blog posts, the kind where I take a handful of thought pebbles out of my pocket and line them up on a table for us to look at together. (I tend to find them in the places where things foam Read more
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The Mistake Bank book
Hey everybody, John Caddell’s Mistake Bank project, about which I’ve written here before, has swung into high gear in the final days of getting it out as an awesome book, with a Kickstarter campaign. Drop everything and go get your advance copy! The book is called The Mistake Bank: How to Succeed by Forgiving Your Read more
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What has never happened to you?
Here are some ideas that have been bouncing around in my mind for months. I’ve tried to write them down a few times now, but I keep being held back because the ideas are not fully formed. However, today I correct myself on that point: such thoughts are against my rule on this blog. The Read more
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Do that to me one more time (more on the reading experience)
This is going to be one of those rambling blog posts where I start by describing an experience I’ve had which nobody but me could possibly care about, and end by making statements about life, the universe, and everything that … nobody but me could possibly care about. So if you came here while hopping Read more
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Peaceful
It’s a little thing, really. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Lately my son and I have been totally caught up in a new computer experience called Minecraft. Minecraft is a curious concoction. At its core it is a virtual world where an avatar that represents you walks around in a landscape of voxel Read more
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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