When I was a kid, and into my early adulthood, there were still many great storytellers on radio in the US. Jean Shepherd, most famous for his “A Christmas Story”, was on the air every night with his stories when I was a teenager. Paul Harvey would tell us “The Rest of The Story” which I would listen to midday, usually  in my car while on the road as a sales representative for that computer company named after a fruit. I thought these guys were amazing craftsmen, keeping me riveted and my mind whirling as they’d get to that final finish. What satisfaction, to be immersed in this story for 10 or 15 minutes, forgetting about my homework or, as an adult, sitting in horrible traffic jams.

As much credit I give these storytellers for using their creative imagination and their voices to spin great tales, I realize that the stories were created in partnership: as a listener, it was up to me to create the visuals in my mind, to fill in the gaps where the storyteller would jump over details, or to decide who was a hero and who was a villain. Listening to those storytellers over the radio was an active process, and now I’m engaged in even more active storytelling by following a stream of tweets about a handful of characters wrapped up in a story about getting married, breaking up, having a baby, falling in love.

Toronto-based screen-writer/author Jill Golick decided to use the tools of the Social Web to tell the story “Crushing It! A Social Media Love Story”. It’s a comic soap opera, that takes place over the course of five days, specifically during Social Media Week,  with a cast of characters that would most believably use Twitter, Facebook, blogging and YouTube in their everyday life. She hasn’t made the story strictly about social media either: the focus is on a couple about to get married, and there are no Social Media Gurus directly involved (although the title is a tribute to Gary Vaynerchuk, an early adopter of marketing his wine store through the Internet via his Wine Library webcast, and has since become an author of the book Crush It!, to inspire others). There is the best friend of the groom, co-workers, an extremely-pregnant best friend of the bride, a mom trying to figure Twitter out to keep up with her son…and intrigue! A “secret” twitter account, a spilt cup of coffee that leads to romance…and you, the audience, following on Twitter using the hashtag #cistory, gets to decide the ending.

The core story line is a work in progress, influenced by audience participation. It’s told in short bursts over the course of the day on Twitter, with additional entries to blogs and YouTube that fill out the background, enriching the experience. This is truly what transmedia is about, where many forms of media are used to tell this story, and real people interact directly with the story, affecting characters and outcome. Even Gary Vaynerchuk has started to follow some of the characters—who knows if he’ll offer some advice or get into the action?

What I find most interesting about the process is how the audience will mold and move the story. Much as Scott McCloud would say concerning cartoon/comic or sequential art stories, it’s about what happens between the panels that moves the story along.

I invite you to watch via twitter: http://www.twitter.com/crushingitstory/lists/crushing-it-story or following the hashtag #cistory. You can go on the website http://www.crushingitstory.com for more background on the story, the characters and credits as well.

Here’s the first video from the character Barbara Marks’ YouTube account, talking about how she’s about to get married (or so she thinks):

The story will take place from Monday, February 1, 2010 through Friday, February 5, 2010. Keep me posted on what you think by adding your comments here or on the website.

In the spirit of giving full disclosure about my involvement (and enthusiasm) with this story, I created the web site and am functioning as the administrator of the site. Although I’m not writing a character directly, I do play a part in providing the framework for the action to play out, and I’d like to hear what you think about the whole experience.

Recently, I sat mesmerized while listening to an executive’s explanation of how he prepares to give a quarterly report to his board of directors. After listing the facts and figures that the board “most definitely wants to hear”, he finished by glancing around the room nervously and becoming silent. Eight other smart executives were there as well, looking at him, or through him: it was hard for me to tell. I don’t however, think they were as fascinated. Now, I have to tell you, I was not interested in the actual list of numbers he droned through. I was taken by how this intelligent, interesting guy, who had a lot to say about sports, family, and the current economy’s effect on business while chatting informally with his colleagues just 1o minutes before, had turned into a soft-spoken and perhaps inconsequential bore. No passion, no information analysis, and no indication of just how smart he is and why he’s good at his job. And I wondered; why I would ever want to friend him on Facebook, or connect with him on LinkedIn, or, worst of all, follow his tweets on Twitter? Who would this fellow be if he is representing his company in the social media environment?

As smart and engaging as he is personally, once he stood up to talk as a corporate executive (and, I would assume, if he had to speak to others as a “businessperson”), he lapsed into a dialect of thick corporate speak; a concoction of numbers, catch phrases and acronyms. In the 5 minutes he spoke, he never told us what course of action to take based on the numbers he disclosed nor did he reveal the consequences of what might happen if nothing changed. Sadder still, I doubt the board would have gained anything from his report, even though they really want to know what matters and what he would recommend.

So, with everyone rushing to get companies on the bandwagon of Social Media, I am concerned that there can be a wall that keeps content of value safely locked behind boring, undigested informational blather. The idea of  “safety in numbers” has an ironic twist in meaning when executives and professionals do not offer insight or comprehension to the conversation, hiding behind the less-risky method of offering volumes of content with little depth. Data gathering is not enough, it needs to be pressed into service and given meaning.

So, please do not ask a C-level executive or, for that matter, anyone in the company, to jump into social media if that person isn’t willing or able to have a forthright conversation. If the person communicating from the company’s desk cannot speak clearly, with depth and presence, and project some real saavy about what’s going on, that conversation will end more quickly than someone can leave the room if they were there in person. Actually, we’re normally far too polite to just walk out of a room when we’re bored, but the online world is a cruel place, and being “unfollowed” is just a click away.

I’m not asking for flip personal conversation or chatty filler to seem “human” or that even more abused buzzword, “authentic”. Corporate communication cannot afford to be jargon-filled and rote or superficial; it must be active and authorities should speak, authoritatively and with purpose when speaking from a corporate setting.

Otherwise, whether it’s 140 characters or 140 pages, there is no reason for anyone to listen, much less be mesmerized, engaged, or even interested.

If you have the dreaded job of delivering reports on some kind of regular basis, I’d suggest first spending the time to create conclusions that make numbers, facts and calculations have relevance and meaning. Then, whether you share them in face-to-face meetings or use a blog or any other kind of media  to present them, you’ll have engaged listeners.

Whether it’s “We have a problem, Houston” or “We’re good to go”, putting thoughtful perspective on even the most routine information-sharing will be the strongest way to create respect and engagement.

Next Tuesday, I will be speaking at Jeff Pulver’s #140 Conf: The State of Now , in London. Dean Landsman (@deanland on Twitter) and I will talk about “Digital Presence: Now and Beyond”, and we’re planning on presenting using a combination of  pre-made visuals while I will sketch notes over them, on screen, as we talk. How does this hybrid concept work? And why would I do something so risky as expose myself by drawing live as we speak, while people tweet about the conference in real time and I might also be potentially on camera?

My answer is that this way of presenting is truly “The State of Now” – just as much as typing in Google’s Wave, where you can currently see each key stroke and erasure, or watch a webinar with someone fumbling through notes, or speaking live; it is the antidote to the perfectly buttoned-up and mistake-free studio version; it is the energy of a live concert where you don’t know how the singer will sound, it is the excitement of the promise of reality TV (although currently it has become a situationally scripted affair to ensure a story line with an arc). It’s inherent in the rhythm of 140 characters, where the story unfolds in short and often candid bursts.

So, I will draw, sketch, and doodle in plain sight as Dean L.  and I speak. I may erase lines or even start over; there will be very few if any perfectly straight lines, or circles that close exactly where they started; that is the state of now.

I do expect interest, I hope for excitement, and even more than that, I hope that exposing the stream of visualization that emerges will offer a better definition of who I am and how I think. The efficiency of a powerful image cannot be beat, and the process of watching my thinking unfold has no parallel. Tying this to the twitter stream, adding these images to my flickr library, or streaming the video of the presentation will strengthen my unique digital presence.

A digital presence, now and beyond, whether for a brand, an organization, or an individual, will and should have a strong visual anchor, and I don’t mean a logo or just one symbol. A digital presence can be associated with a visual style, such as the Matrix movies’ association with the slow motion action scene; Dave Gray’s company, Xplane, associated with information graphics that explain processes and methods through visual storytelling; or President Obama’s visual presence,where he is commonly viewed as looking up and forward, off  towards some greater goal, or smiling through adversity. We see this image projected routinely on television or, more to his digital presence, in his weekly YouTube broadcasts. A visual digital presence is a multi-layered thing, because we see, think and remember in images and words that combine sequentially to tell stories.

Avatars, photographs,  color choices, diagrams,  symbols, typographic choices, drawings, or video displayed on your blog, your facebook page, your twitter background, your YouTube and Flickr accounts ; there are so many ways to create a strong, memorable digital presence. If you remember the dream of the picture phone made popular in the sixties, that era is here.

Returning to why talk about visual concepts at a Twitter conference; if you have used TwitPic even once you have used Twitter to add a visual component to your digital presence. No airbrushing necessary. More to the point, why did you pick whatever you have chosen to represent you as your avatar? Do you get the reaction you expect when people talk to you about how you look on twitter? Your digital presence will be discerned by others not just through your words but the visual way you present yourself as well.

So, as the Clash said back in 1979,

London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won’t you give me a smile?

(Photos in article by Dean Meyers)

“What’s coming next?”

That’s the question you want every listener and every viewer to ask. You want edge-of-the-seat, gripping-the-chair attention. You want silence in the room as every eye is on you. If you’re using a whiteboard to make a presentation, you want everyone to get excited as you go to the board to draw the next chart, write the next big keyword, flip the page to make a point.

Beyond interest lies curiosity. That’s what drove humans to find better ways to hunt, explore new lands,  create art.

Examining your presentation, your graphic design, your next blog post, what evokes curiosity? Here are some tips:

1) Build the story. Give a setup: “here’s the situation, the problem”.

2) Describe the outcome that is hoped for.

3) Describe how you propose to make that happen.

Simple, right? So why do so many presentation go down the rabbit hole of too much detail and no end in sight? Good stories are about action. Create energy with action…what are the actions that will make your outcome happen?

Visual tips: cut down the bullet points and write action words. Use a picture instead of a word if you can find one.

And, perhaps my favorite suggestion, when you’re giving a talk or presenting with slides:

Take a breath and pause after you’ve hit a key point. Give it time to sink in. Create suspense by not rushing from slide to slide, from point to point, spewing out facts or running down a list.

Control the pace of your story, and you’ll create a lot of interest not only in the story you’re telling but in you, the storyteller.

A poster found on a newsstand wall in NYC

Here is a visual perfect storm: the convergence of strong graphic design, a message that evoked an emotional reaction and a simple interface (mounting the poster on the side of a wall at common eye level and within easy physical reach) which created an irresistible call to action. It’s not my design or my concept, but it inspires me to ask myself: Is my design about me or about my message? Have I created emotional impact, the kind that stirs a response, triggers and/or plants a memory, satisfies the need to be touched somehow? Do I provide a place for feedback or a call to action? These questions are based on old principles, but when it works, it really works.

Ultimately, inviting participation or dialog is where Web 2.0-Web 3.0 (the read/write web, or collaborative, social media-focussed web), will make the old advertising model feel distant or quaint.

More images: http://gumelection.wordpress.com/