Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Story Consulting

School assemblies are difficult. They're unpredictable in that you have a number of variables out of your control, from student behavior to forgetful PTA parents to cranky front office staff... but... school assemblies are the bread and butter of most storytellers. It's where the money is...

Unless, of course, you can speak the language of business. There's a whole subset of "knowledge management" called storytelling, although it's got as much in common with getting up and telling stories as butterfly collections have to do with pollination.

Joel Ben Izzy, travelling storyteller, is a storytelling storyteller. He's found a way to move beyond school assemblies without an MBA or a PhD in organizational development. (Thank goodness!)

He's still telling stories, he just happens to find his audiences in corporations: Check out this article from his web site:
http://www.storypage.com/consult.html
Click on the SV Magazine link to get the PDF file.

Saturday, July 10, 2004

NSN keynote - Margaret Read MacDonald

Dr. MacDonald has an impeccable storytelling resume. That doesn't give her the right to use her keynote address to scold the very organization that invited her to speak.

(She was chiding the National Storytelling Network for charging too much money for international memberships.)

Heck, they charge too much for domestic memberships.

It was appropriate in the context of her speech (an overview of international revivalist storytelling, and the challenges and opportunities for collaboration in U.S. storytelling events) to raise the issue, but why not be diplomatic about it?

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Appalachian storytelling blog

Storyteller Stephen Hollen shares his Tall Tales & Mountain Musings-- stories of life in Kentucky, then and now at mountainstories.easyjournal.com