Intro-
This post is written in hopes of wrapping up the “360 Storytelling @ Strawdog Theatre: A Multi-media Storytelling Event,” an event that occurred at Strawdog Theatre Company on May 14, 2010. (and to publicize the next one on Sunday, August 1st, 2010.)
The Creative Side (Dreaming It Up)
I had been intrigued by the idea of doing one of these 360 Storytelling events as soon as David J. Loehr had first brought it up on twitter. But the way our late nights at Strawdog have been working for the past few years, I knew we needed more structure than an open ended evening of inviting people to talk would give us. This was later confirmed but we’ll get to that in a moment.
The Plan (Figuring It Out)
I had no marketing budget and thus was planning on using social media to get the word out. And I thought it might be fun to use social media to talk about social media and thus, a theme (and to some extent a structure) was born: Social Media.
So I asked for help. Using social media.
A few ‘plants,’ if you will, to make sure we had something to present on the night of the event.
Being the video guy that I am, I did some video interviews locally asking people about social media. I then asked some of my twitter friends to answer the same questions and submit their own story via video. Staying true to the 360 form, I made three 360 second clips, which would be my beginning, middle and end of the evening.*
But the big leap was that I wanted to take it to the community that had created it.
So I set up a Ustream account to broadcast it.
Online.
To the World.
The Tech Side (Getting It Done)
I ran into some problems burning the guest videos to DVD. The solution was to play them straight from my MacBook to the projector. So now my old laptop became the “broadcast” computer. I did a test run the day before. No problem.
The night of the event, however, the laptop (for reasons unknown) would not connect to the Internet at Strawdog.
Our bartender, Tim, had a small netbook that would connect but it didn’t have a camera and would not accept my Logitech web-cam. Don’t you love troubleshooting?
Then out of the darkness (literally) comes Michael, our stage manager for the mainstage show, who had recently got a new MacBook that he was very proud of. He let me use it and seemed happy to see his new computer being put to such good use.
So, I logged into Ustream via a borrowed computer with the onboard iSight camera pointed towards the microphone and started broadcasting.
“This whole thing is weird.” (Getting It Going)
Once most of the logistics got worked out, it was 20 minutes past ‘go’ time and I finally started. Being frazzled by all the tech problems, I forgot to introduce myself.
Or the event.
Or all the people that had helped get us this far.**
So it was a bumpy start and not too many people shared stories. One of the first folks to the microphone, Brian, started with, “This whole thing is weird.”
Which actually helped to break the ice.
A little.
Remember, at the beginning of this post, I said I knew we needed more structure? Well, we needed more structure, at least at the beginning. People were ready to watch. They were not ready to share. After a few videos and some stories, I decided to take a break and a majority of the room left.
The Happy Ending (Wrapping It Up)
The few that came back after the break were…“in it to win it.” People began to share stories and it was great. Being a few beers in at that point, also helped to loosen people up. Chelsea shared that she had found out via facebook that Anne Bogart, an idol of hers, had discussed Chelsea’s facebook status update. Monica told a story from Iowa via Skype. I’ll have to do a separate post on that later. But the best part in my mind was that someone who had never been to our theatre, Pearl, told a story about the joys of getting birthday wishes from distant friends. Two nights later, she came back and saw our mainstage production and asked how to get more involved at Strawdog.
Coming Soon (Doing It Again)
So the theme I’m going with for this one is Black&White because I’ve lately been on a tear about trying to get people to find the middle ground and stop seeing the world in black and white. But also I really like black and white photography. And my first car was white with black interior. This could go a lot of different ways.
I’m setting up my own dedicated wireless connection using the Clear service. I’ll be using my Sony Mini-DV camcorder running into my MacBook with a analog (RCA) to digital (firewire) converter to broadcast. If you’d like to upload a video story for me to show, you can send me the link and I’ll show them. Also, I’ve got a few stories lined up to get the ball rolling.
To tell a story:
Come to Strawdog (3829 N. Broadway) at 6pm this Sunday, August 1st.
or send me a link to your video.
To watch online:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/somestorytelling
To be a part of an experiment:
Tweet anything with the words ‘black’ or ‘white’ and the hashtag #360exp.
*the three videos I created along with some other 360 Videos can be seen here.
**Special Thanks to: David J. Loehr – Davidjloehr.com, Dave Charest – DaveCharest.com, Rebecca Coleman – Artofthebiz.com, Travis Bedard – Cambiareproductions.com, Chris Ashworth – Figure53.com, Scotty Iseri – Scottygotanofficejob.com
