Storyteller’s Talk

About blogging and Storytelling

This message appeared on Storytell mailing list on the 20th of July 2007. I asked Tim permission to place it on this blog and he has generously agreed.

(Cross posted to the NSN forums)

Two great things about blogs:

1. They can capture the state of the art and the leading edge of a field;

2. They allow for a conversation about the state of the art in many industries, but notably the tech industry. Authorities in the field write on the state of their industry via a blog. For this, they get tagged with the nickname “thought leader.” Some of them were industry leaders before they started blogging. Some, with background in journalism, academia, or just nothing more than their own ego and opinions, became an expert by blogging. (Look at the impact of the political process of bloggers, who went from being hobbyists to being invited to sit with the press in the 2004 Presidential elections). My favorite industry that’s blogging right now is theatre. Some are critics, some are amateur critics. Some are directors, some are playwrights, some are in-the-trenches administrators.  And they are having passionate discussions and arguments about the state of theatre in America, in the UK, in Australia. About the art form and where it’s going, why it’s dying, what’s exciting and what’s cutting edge and what’s going to keep the theatre world alive. Which leads me to: Where are the “thought leaders” in storytelling? They’re not blogging. We see our “thought leaders” at festivals, but we usually only hear them tell stories. At conferences, we invite those in our community that we feel have wisdom to impart to be keynote speakers, or lead intensives, or workshops, but their thoughts, however valuable, are lost.

Conference proceedings aren’t published. Recordings are not disseminated. So wisdom - or challenges to accepted wisdom - appears once a year, at a conference in just one place, at one time. Maybe an abbreviated version appears in Storytelling magazine, but that’s a dead end too (an article in storytelling magazine is akin to packing knowledge away in a crate never to be seen again, like at the end of “Raiders of the lost Ark”). In some cases, we have to wait multiple years while our leaders in our field write a book. A book is not a conversation, and neither is a keynote speech.

Now, there are some folks in the storytelling community who blow my mind everytime I talk with them. They’re sharp, insightful, wise, and open to being challenged. And they do spread their vision, share it, pass it along… one on one, or in workshops, or at conferences. God bless them. But it’s slooooow. So I submit the most powerful thing that blogs do: blogs allow a conversation to happen globally. And in this way, collective wisdom can appear. It’s not the only way to share collective wisdom, I know. Some [I've cut the names out since I did not ask for their permission. Limor] are visionaries whose sites have been created from the beginning to allow for multiple perspectives, to invite participation, and to open up the conversation. I’m all for the articles and resources that people like them [names cut out] share via their web sites. Those sites are great reference sites. But they are akin to a keynote speech, a book, or an article… a one time snapshot of wisdom. Granted, more accessible than a speech at a conference, and more wodely available. And great fodder to start conversations. Great tools for research, for professional development, for generating new skills and ideas.

These kind of web sites are necessary… but they are not sufficient. That is not to say that having a blog automatically makes you a thought leader. There may be some [names cut out] pioneers in putting thier storytelling journey on the web in blog form… but basically those blogs (which each have a place in my news feed) are public journals. I find that friendly and accessible information, valuable to me and an essential part of the storytelling community… but it’s not the big picture blogging I’m craving.

I want the buzz I get at a storytelling conference [again, name cut out]. It’s a shame that so few folks are joining in the conversation. Will we see more state of the storytelling art blogs in the future? I hope so. Recently I set up a “news” page that would show me, or anyone else who looked, at a glance, the state of the storytelling world. The problem: you can do that only by aggregating RSS feeds. There are two places to find RSS feeds: blogs and online newspapers. Asking a computer to automatically pull any news article with the term “storyteller” is useless.

So I have to rely on blogs. And do you know what? There aren’t enough to make a daily news page. Maybe I’m - to use a phrase I’ve invoked many a time on storytell - beating my head against a wall. Maybe storytelling is too obscure a niche to have a lively agora on the Web. But I can dream, and hope, and nudge, and more. More about “and more” as I come to a decision.

Tim Ereneta

http://www.storyteller.net/tellers/tereneta

http://www.myspace.com/storiesbytim

Notice from Limor - you can contact Tim via these addresses. The sites of those storytellers whose names I’ve cut out will appear on the blogroll sooner or later.