Digital

Is Adobe Voice really a storytelling app?

When the interwebs went a little crazy for the announcement of Adobe Voice, the new iPad-based ‘storytelling’ app, my first reaction was skepticism. After all, ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ are terms that get bandied around a LOT. Rather than be critical initially, I deleted a snarky tweet, went to the app store and gave it a try.

Wow. Let me repeat that. Wow. I created my first Voice in about 15 minutes. I’m not saying it’s going to win a Golden Lion, but as an example of what this can do a tool for pulling together an idea rapidly, you’ll get the idea.

As an occasional gadget geek, I have like shiny objects. But immediately I can see this has some real potential for helping people structure messages, think through what they want to say and get ideas across in a simple way. There are a variety of basic story structures to select from; promote an idea, explain a concept, share a personal experience, and even the classic hero’s journey. There are a selection of visual themes, the ability to draw from a broad range of icons, or the options to draw in files from the cloud, from Facebook or take a fresh pic on the spot. It is a very intuitive interface.

I’m excited by the potential something like this has for capturing ideas and helping people share their stories within organisations. In fact, I predict a Prezi like rush on people putting this to use. I’ll keep experimenting and save a longer post when I get some feedback from other #comms and #internalcomms folk.

In the meantime, give it a try and let me know how you would use this in your communication toolkit.

Note: I have no affiliation with Adobe and this is review is an independent perspective. 

AWC announces Best Australian Blogs 2014 Winners

The Australian Writers’ Centre have announced the winners of the Best Australian Blogs for 2014 and features, and there are a couple of great ones for communication folk to check out.

The winning business blog, Socially Sorted has some great tips on social media marketing, with a healthy balance of resources, tips, tools. In terms of content marketing, it fulfils its own brief very well and has lots of shareable advice I will be striving to apply.

The best writing blog is TwentySix by writer and sometime social media blogger Andrew Hutchinson. He has some great perspectives on storytelling, and is very frank about the process of writing.

The overall winner, The Hungry Australian is a mouth watering food blog from South Australian, Christina Soong.

The full list is here at the Australian Writers’ Centre Best Australian Blogs: Winners 2014 – Australian Writers’ Centre. Congratulations!

IABC World Presentation : Transmedia storytelling for internal communication

In the era of the remix and mashup culture, I am really excited to be presenting a session on two topics that need to meet: transmedia storytelling and organisational communication. The IABC World Conference in June has me presenting the following session:

The end of the story: Corporate narrative in a transmedia universe

 Traditional approaches to corporate narrative are being disrupted by the multiple forces of technology, social change, trust and a shift in the role of the corporation. In this environment the role of the communicator is shaping, telling and retelling the story of the company is shifting. Employees are co-creators, subject matter experts are curators and traditional business models become opportunities for collaboration. This session will explore:

  • The death of the corporate story
  • Sense making through social media
  • Co-creation as a model for true engagement
  • Empowering employees to own the narrative
  • How IC is the original transmedia communication strategy

As the conference approaches, I will add some pre reading here on the blog.

http://wc.iabc.com/sessions/the-end-of-the-story-corporate-narrative-in-a-transmedia-universe/

What do we mean by story?

As trends become fads and specialist practices become hot new things, definitions become increasingly important. I’ve written before on how the term ‘engagement’ has been stretched across the fields of human resources, marketing, digital, and employee communication to the point of near-meaninglessness.

‘Story’ is another of those terms. As I look at my various social feeds, RSS alerts, newsletters and journals, ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ are everywhere.  But the idea of what a story is varies according to the context. This post, Story: A Definition, from the blog of Eager Eyes is a good example, describing the how data storytelling isn’t always telling the story of the data.

“The strength of visualization is not just to give you a story, but also give you a world. If you don’t agree with the story, or if you want to explore further, you can. Take the visualization and the data and explore for yourself.” Robert Kosara.