Interactive stories

- You guys, this is lesson five. This is it, believe it or not you have a story now. You've wrote-tested it, you've gathered all the information, you've structured it, you have all of the techniques, so congratulations. Awesome, great job. Here are some more things to think about. I just read this incredible book called, Cause for Change, which is about how do we appeal to the younger generation? Millennials, what does traditional storytelling work for them? And the answer is yes, and what folks want now as opposed to in previous generations, because we have the internet and we have YouTube, and we have all this potential for two-way communications instead of just one-way communication, there's two things really. One, we've already talked about. One is this idea of transparency. The more honest and transparent and vulnerable you can be with people, the more they're going to trust you and that makes them much more likely to get involved with your cause and respond to your call to action. So if you haven't already infused your story with this sense of transparency and vulnerability, go back, do a double-check. What other opportunities are there? The other is this idea of co-creation. Folks in their 20s and 30s love being a part of something. So way back a few lessons ago I talked about the example where we asked folks to just do a quick video on their iPhone or Android phone, expressing support for homeless youth. So they were co-creating the story. What opportunities are there for you to allow folks to get involved in your story in that way. Not just as donors, not just as supporters, but as actual integral parts of the story itself. When we're telling stories online, or for mobile, there's a ton of other tools that we have at our disposal when we're just talking one-on-one, it's words. It's body language, it's our facial expressions. When we're online, we have video, we have music, we have pictures. Is there a way? Some of the most compelling stories out there right now have like, five words, and it's just photo journalistic pictures. Are there ways that you can engage folks just using a minimum of words and more pictures? It's all stories. The structure's always going to be the same, but you have all these tools at your disposal. So here's what I want to encourage you to do. Look at your story, try to apply some of these tools, have fun, play around, and then go back, start from the beginning, and tell another story, and another one, because what we're after when we're building community is creating a storytelling culture where all of our work, all of our community is driven by story. It's supported by information, it's supported by data, it's supported by all of the outcomes, the number of things we generate, the number of lives we touch, but what we want is this sense of the story is unfolding. So this story that we've created exists in a long continuum of stories that you're going to continue creating with the community that you build, and this is what makes storytelling so exciting is it's not static, it never ends. There's always more to do, there's always another call to action. This has been a ton of fun for me. I hope you've gotten something out of it. Enjoy your stories, go forth and prosper. Thank you.