Digital storytelling allows for new forms of nonlinear, contextual narratives across multiple media platforms. Stories can take fractal paths as audiences participate in cocreating and sharing content. While some online stories are fleeting, context and communities help form coherent narratives. Effective digital storytelling considers the audience experience, engages fan participation, and integrates personal stories across platforms to bring people together.

1. Digital Storytelling

2. What is Storytelling? “Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds... Stories or narratives are shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values.”-Wikipedia

6. We need stories and myths to give us rules to live by; ideas to believe in; goals to strive for“People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. —Studs Terkel

7. What is the Connection Between Brands and Storytelling? "The emergence of brands as myths has been triggered by the decline of standard myths in western culture. Western modernity is “the child of logos” [the opposite of mythos in the Hellenistic tradition, it represents science and facts]. Science became the dominant paradigm for understanding the world. But logos alone is unable to give us a sense of significance – it was myth that gave life meaning and context. Thus society unconsciously cried out for and ultimately created its own myths around the newly dominant force of consumerism. Logos led us to logos.” – FarisYakob

8. Brands Need Myths -Brand Asset Valuator 2008, among 2500 brands studied over 14 years

9. Brands and Storytelling Tag cloud of one-word responses to “Corona” on BrandTags.net

10. Storytelling in the Digital World “Every art form arises out of a technology. Novels exist because the printing press made books cheap enough to use for fun. TV was supposed to be news and education. The artform that came from the computer is video games. What I do is write for an art form arising from the internet.” - Maureen McHugh (founder of the Alternate Reality Game company No Mimes Media)

11. Web 1.0 Storytelling Multilinear Evanescent Hypertext Multimedia - Adapted from Bryan Alexander, University of Michigan

13. Evanescent & Eternal

14. Hypercontextual

16. Fractals

17. Evanescent & Eternal Bits of online stories are still fleeting and innumerable. But we’re exploring ways to track them, capture them, and form them into coherent stories.

18. Evanescent & Eternal

19. Hypercontextual Eg: Context is playing an increasingly large role in how we interpret and create stories. We can understand and create narratives with respect to the many dimensions that define it - like time, place, mood, and space.

20. Hypercontextual Soundwalk – Paris iPhone App

21. Hypercontextual The Whale Hunt by Jonathan Harris

22. Transmedia Transmedia Storytelling is the weaving of narratives across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer/user/player's understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, it attempts to create "entrypoints" through which consumers can become immersed in a story world.(Henry Jenkins, 2006, Convergence Culture) Factors driving the growth of transmedia storytelling: Growth of new media forms like video games, the internet, and mobile platforms and the demand for content in each, and economic incentive to share assets.

25. So what should we think about when we’re telling stories digitally?

26. To Consider For Digital Storytelling We (audience, communities, brands)are creating stories together. Endings are open, narratives are infinite and stories can not be contained. "We are now in the business ofstarting stories, not attempting to nail them down from beginning to end. Letting stories take on a life of their own, to be played with, passed around, modified and enriched by the audiences they’re developed for." - Mel Exon, BBH

27. To Consider For Digital Storytelling - Texture and context. We have the tools and technology to make the storytelling experience more immersive, personally relevant, and shareable than ever. We should offer multiple lenses through which to read and interpret our stories - and we should use the most effective media possible to tell specific parts of our stories. The experience should transport, not just illustrate.

28. To Consider For Digital Storytelling - The Power of Fan culture. Fans are ‘hunter gatherers’ of content. They want to participate and piece together their stories. They come with their communities, norms, implicit codes of behavior and language, and so on. If a story/brand wants to reach its fans, it must consider the community, not just the tools and platforms.

29. To Consider For Digital Storytelling Personal Brands/ Personal Storytelling. How does your story integrate into the personal narratives of your audience members? How can they use it in their own story they’re telling about themselves online and off?

30. Telling Stories Now: The Takeaway Aim to create a consistent, unified experience across all platforms. Think about the best platforms for your story, and the best communities to tell them in. Each digital piece shouldbe able to stand on its own while adding something to the larger experience. Make a campfire. Bring people together. Give them something to participate in and enjoy. (*thanks to Ivan Askwith for the inspiration)

31. Resources MIT Convergence Culture Consortium http://www.convergenceculture.org/ Grant McCracken http://www.cultureby.com FarisYakob http://www.farisyakob.com Big Spaceship Blog http://www.bigspaceship.com/blog/think/ Starlight Runner http://www.starlightrunner.com/ Campfire Media http://www.campfiremedia.com/ Brand Tags http://www.brandtags.net Star Wars Uncut http://www.starwarsuncut.com Levis Go Forth Campaign http://goforth.levi.com Coca-Cola Happiness Factory http://hf3.coca-cola.com/ Burger King Subservient Chicken http://www.subservientchicken.com The Whale Hunt http://www.thewhalehunt.org Penguin’s We Tell Stories http://wetellstories.co.uk/ Soundwalk http://www.soundwalk.com Virgin Twitter Campaign http://www.4320LA.com