William

Well, here I am again after a bit of a hiatus. One item that comes to mind since my last entry is that I have become a serious Mac OS X convert. Guess that means my creative side has won out but it has also made the business much easier to access manage and grow. As they say (and as we advocate) "The tool should not get in the way of the task."

(Nice to listen to smooth jazz on iTunes shared from my iMac as I write this on my MacBook! And Parallels workstation for my XP needs has been awesome!)

Computing is finally getting to the point where it can be a more seamless extension of the whole of consciousness, rather than just an awkward tool primarily for the analytic thought processes. And we've only just begun...

I'm mobile via Verizon Wireless in the back seat of an SUV on the way back from a company IBM Lotus visit to the Boston area.

Over the past few weeks our opportunities to tell the CyberAccess story have increased and accelerated. And it's a real joy to do so because it rings true for us, our partners and our customers.

The current campaign also requires us to tell the story in a way that guides our customers to paradigm shifts of awareness around the new workspace model we are presenting. Most importantly, like any good storytelling, it also requires listening and awareness to adapt the story in realtime to the feedback and responses from the audience.

As semiotics makes us keenly aware, words themselves convey no inherent meaning. The are only tools, within the context of life, which trigger meaning already present in the hearer's mind or trigger the creation of new meaning by conceptual blending between new information obtained and some existing meaning.

Therefore when presenting new concepts, creating and developing an effective story to communicate them is, at the beginning, as much a learning experience for the presenter as for the listener. While appearing to be primarily one way, it is most effective when viewed as a dialogue involving all the intercommunication modes at our disposal. When I do that well. it is very effective, I accomplish my mission, and our audience is clear about the value we bring.

Story is often the way we make sense (actually meaning) of the signs of life. So how do I make meaning of my absence from this blog for three weeks?

At one level I am living a wonderful story as the vision for my small business comes very much to life again, due in large part to the wonderful team of individuals who each bless me with their presence and talent in this adventure together. Living this rich story has been a joyful preoccupation.

At another level the clarity that has permeated my whole life experience over the past eight months as the business has dramatically accelerated has culminated in a focused simplicity that perhaps encourages me to avoid introspection. This might be because the stories around what I want or miss in the empty moments might take away some of the energy I chose to focus on mission.

One of the many blessings of the concept of the story is that it gifts us with a context in which to shake the covers and ask ourselves what's up. A part of my story that I feel really good about is that there are now people I can trust in my life who also know and care about what's up for me. What I may be wary of facing is the responsibility I have as the co-author of my life story to listen for the inspiration to take decisive action around including in the next chapter a return to a full and rich life outside of work.

I have just returned from a wonderful computer industry conference, Lotusphere 2006, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort hotels. Lot's of things come up for me in that environment - more than I will be able to cover tonight.

Being aware of the cultural context of stories through my work in The Mankind Project, I was struck by the degree to which Disney has assumed the mantle of the default storyteller for children in our culture. I am aware of the challenge of doing this in a commercial context where the acceptable multi-cultural values are ever evolving and where making wrong long-term choices means that created story properties (characters, movies, etc.) may not have long-term economic value. I am also aware that such commercial imperatives can bias choices towards broad low-risk shallowness at the expense of higher-risk depth. I judge this has been, at least sometimes, an inevitable result of Disney success.

It is also interesting to consider the Pixar story-telling story and the recent history of them besting Disney at their own game in the marketplace. Now Pixar, along with some who left Disney to find a different creative environment, has become part of the Disney family and may significantly transform it from the inside.

As I observed "Illuminations" at EPCOT over several nights I felt both the beautiful promise and the shortfall of such a commercial "world commons". Uniquely, it theatrically and beautifully stages an experience night after night that emotionally evokes the potential of our world wide community. Yet, it is a passively experiential event, like much of today's culture, rather than a transformative one. I am both sad that the commercial market for those willing to risk truly transformative experiences remains small and encouraged that, by all accounts, it continues to grow.

True growth happens when we take the risk to let the story we experience and resonate with on the outside engage and transform the story we are creating and living on the inside. I've been there alone and with another. I seek to be open to it and to share it, whenever possible. I seek connection with others who seem, for now, to be the odd balls in society. I choose to embrace this powerful aspect of story as both shared experience and awakening transformation. In the words of the 60's vocal group the Association, when you reflect on your story will it be "the bridges burned that bother you" or "the ones that you never crossed?"

Testing a blog from my Pocket PC cell phone

This is a test of being able to use spare moments to blog on the spot.

So here I am at Lotusphere in Orlando, Florida in a breakout session on blogging - and at the same time blogging myself. Just finished an excellent luncheon with our Lotus/IBM key contacts telling the CyberAccess story - past,present and future. It feels like the story was well understood and well received because it was both an authentic story about us and it taps into a major thrust of the stories our current and targeted customers are telling themselves.

So back to the stories the bloggers on the panel are now telling...

At a memorial service last evening I saw the kind of honest, powerful, authentic storytelling that I judge our planet needs to hear in order to begin to accelerate its processes of blessing and healing. My brother in The Mankind Project and dear friend Brian, a loving and powerful man, led the major part of the service in memory to his brother. He modeled for me the authentic, loving, straight from the heart communication that both speaks with a clear voice of honest conviction and allows space for each listener to reflect and take from the conversation what they will. He placed the gifts of his brother's life in clear context. He shared those gifts in ways that allowed each listener to be touched and therefore welcome the gift they most connected with into their own life. It was a true honor to be invited to share in this beautiful remebrance and celebration.

My very good friend Tony recently sent me a document describing a work in progress - a powerful new approach to lifelong learning. With great skill, he began the document not with analytical descriptions and supporting data but with a simple story. The story allowed me to envision the end point of the work - in Stephen Covey's words to "begin with the end in mind." Tony then followed with supporting material which was then much clearer as I read it in context of the story which preceded it.

I, and I judge many of us, men in particular, are often so quick to jump to the logic, the data, the rarional justification. When I stop and consider the most effectively presented ideas that I have welcomed into conciousness they often had the same characteristic as Tony's - my mental ground was first cultivated and made ready for seeds to be planted through the magic of a story.

I learned a new lesson from telling myself my own stories this week.

I needed a picture for web use and didn't have a single recent picture that worked well. So I considered the situation for a few moments and then retrieved my digital Nikon from the car, activated the shutter timer and set it on a speaker on my desk. Twice I sat in my chair, carefully posed - and didn't at all like the result. Then it occurred to me that perhaps if I recalled a powerful memory, a story that felt really good, just before the shutter clicked, it might yield the picture I needed. And it did...

So I learned, firsthand, that recalling the feeling and memories in powerful stories can instantly affect even my appearance in very visible ways that conscious intention can't match.

What story are we in the middle of - right now? And do we tell ourselves, as part of that story, that our role is one of an impotent observer or one able to choose to be a powerful voice for concious empowered choice and demanding accountability for our own actions and from those in power.

Levy writes in Becoming Virtual - Reality in the Digital Age:

At a time when a new culture is being formed, it is important that we take advantage of this rare opportunity to deliberately orient the ongoing evolution. By arguing in terms of impact, we condemn ourselves to passivity. The alternatives are straightforward. Either cyberspace will reproduce the media, the spectacle, the consumption of commodity information, and social exclusion we are presently experiencing on a scale far greater than any we have known (to a large extent this is the natural trend seen in the current development of the "information highway" and interactive television), or we will accept the most positive aspects of the ongoing evolution and work toward a civilizing project centered on intelligent communities. This will involve a re-creation of the social bond through the exchange of knowledge, mutual recognition, the awareness and enhancement of singularity, more direct, more participatory forms of democracy, the enrichment of individual lives, the creation of new forms of open cooperation to resolve the terrible problems that humanity must confront, and the improvement of the software and cultural infrastructures associated with collective intellifence.

I went to a storytelling event this evening at Look About Lodge in the Cleveland Metroparks. I bought Raising Voices - Creating Youth Storytelling Groups and Troupes by Judy Sima and Kevin Cordi. Kevin was the featured storyteller and is nationally known. He developed the first high school storytelling curriculum in the US.

It made me sad to realize how much we have lost as a society by our switch to as much of a manufactured diet of stories as we have a manufactured diet in foods. Like in foods, its not that manufactured is wrong or bad. Rather, like in food, convenience for the user and profit motive for the seller have conspired to almost eliminate the beautiful natural forms. They may not always appear so perfect and satiating but do have many unique and tasty characteristics rarely found in mass market products.

I'll enjoy seeing where I go with this.

In considering why the Casablanca story has such enduring strength, what strikes me this morning is that it speaks to powerful archetypical dillemas that viewers are drawn to connect with. Women see Ilsa as embodying the realities that most women find themselves torn between in a still male-oriented world - practical choices to protect their livelihood and vulnerability and the authentic realities of their true selves and their heart. Men see Rick as embodying the reality that, while most men may appear cool and even cynical on the exterior, it often hides an inner recognition that the experience of such a deep complete connection with the right woman provides a fulfillment and a motivation for which no sacrifice is too great.

Books and movies are the two great technologies of storytelling in our time. Tonight I watched for the very first time what I had only seen brief snippets of throughout my life, my newly purchased Special Edition DVD of Casablanca. The extra materials repeatedly stressed that the films classic "edge" came in large part from the fact that the screenplay was written and modified throughout the production. The actors didn't have a clue which way things might turn out until the ending was finally scripted and filmed at the very end of production. Somehow I understand that...

My story is that time flies and that I choose many more things to commit myself to than I have time to accomplish. At the present time, I am pulling together a number of resources I have accumulated over the past few years around stories. While rereading them feels like too much of a stretch right now, I can review the passages I highlighted.

Like so many of the changes I've made in the past decade, I'm really glad I overcame my aversion to highlighting. I find it incredibly valuable in reconnecting with the essence of what I have read.

My most recent review is of Making Stories - Law, Literature, Life by Jerome Pruner. Bruner observes:

...we come to conceive of a "real world" in a manner that fits the stories we tell about it, but it is our good philosophical fortune that we are forever tempted to tell different stories about the presumably same events in the presumably real world.

Presumably you may agree!

I love it when a story comes together! Our 2006 market focus at CyberAccess has come together around a story of co-creating with our community of customers. We are at work to make every interaction with every aspect of our company a reflection of that story.

Our story will also include new ways our tools can enable clarity and significance to empower action. It makes me feel good to finally arrive at a corporate vision and mission that fully embraces, without compromise or force-fit, our past, our present and our future and which also aligns with my personal mission statement.

And that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I believe in products, messages and conduct which align with the message In Seth Godin's most recent book in which he says:

Stories are shortcuts we use because we're too overwhelmed by data to discover all the details. The stories we tell ourselves are lies that make it far easier to live in a very complicated world.

We tell ourselves stories that can't possibly be true, but believing these stories allows us to function. We know we're not we're not telling ourselves the whole truth, but it works, so we embrace it.

From All Marketers Are Liars - The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin

Godin picks up on the distinction that the Bible text in Exodus makes and which those looking for a knee-jerk guideline often don't want to see in the Word. When it says (King James) "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Ex 20:16 the emphasis here (clear from definitional work in Strong's concordance) is as much on the overall authenticity of the objective and subjective message conveyed as it is on the literal factual truth of the data recounted. An awareness of the inadequacy of pure literalism very akin to the message in Jesus' comments to the Pharisees. The message for marketers and individuals alike is "Does the story told have the ring of truth such that we will continue to have as much or even more trust in its core message as more and more facts and data come to our attention?"

I recommend for its thought provoking and simple insight the new book Storycatcher. One quote which speaks to me about the fundamental natury of story is:

There are many tools we humans have developed for molding and influencing our journey on the earth, many technologies and social experiments: story is the oldest and the most consistent survivor of all these tools. Story is the mother of us all, for we become who we say we are.

Individually, we first put our lives into language, and then we act upon what we have said and how we have defined ourselves.

We need to be able to trust the story, because it's the lens through which we see reality. We will go to great lengths in the attempt to make a story that explains an action and supports or restores consistency. If we cannot make story and action fit, we either have to make a new story or change the action.

We have a huge ability to continue believing stories we are told are true in order to stay comfortable with actions we don't want to change, or don't feel capable of changing. Individually and collectively we maintain areas of prescribed silence, a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" complacency so that we don't have to live with the tension of inconsistency.

From Storycatcher by Christina Baldwin

One emerging frontier will be the creation of tools for crafting and presenting our personal and organizational stories that highlight inconsistencies and guide us along the path of choices which integrate story and action or assist in the creation of a new story.

I clarify my authentic voice through quotes from others and through my own personal poetry and prose. The following quote moved me from relaxed armchair reading on New Years evening to posting this first entry. It speaks volumes to me both about the world we share on this planet and the ideas that drive the works I am committed to co-creating.

...in an effort to cope with the incomprehensibility of infinite reality, we ever-curious, ever-pondering, compulsively controlling Homo sapiens create theoretical models. These models are ingenious beams of speculation that we use to penetrate and define the dark mysteries of boundless existence. Sometimes elegantly structured, usually self-confirming, our models are like the headlights of a car, designed to light our way. Whatever is illuminated becomes our truth, and we organize our lives around it. But this light we create can also blind us. Too often we are blinded into believing that our models are the whole reality, forgetting that they are simply useful fact/fantasy coping devices.

The more fully we believe a model is reality, the more rigid the model becomes. And the more rigid it becomes, the more it confines us. There is a sense of security in this, the sense of security that comes from being contained by the "known" and thus shielded from the threat of the unknown. So the mixed blessing of models is that while they can generate a sense of coherence through a groundedness (in "knowledge"), they can also, if used without mindfulness, become addicting anesthetics to the pain of an inscrutable universe and further insulate us from full reality, which is the realm of infinite possibilities.

From Orbiting the Giant Hairball - A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
by Gordon MacKensize - retired Creative Paradox - Hallmark Cards

Through this blog it is my intention to explore acting on my mission "to co-create community through stories that clarify the signs of life". The medium of blogging will be one way of both exploring and acting on that mission as I choose to express it in my personal, organizational and societal activity.