Stories Across Multiple Platforms (unconference summary)

Defining story telling was itself a task of this session. Is it just the authority putting a story together and presenting it to an audience? Is it the audience participation in a story or even how the museum space becomes part of the story of the audience? How do we capture and share the story, from whichever viewpoint you choose?

It can be interesting how stories from your audience can bring in ethical issues of osbervation. You start by observing text messages between two people who are viewing an exhibit. At one point, one of them has to leave, but the other one remains and sends pictures of the collection to the first one. The conversation is mostly about the collection, but at the end, the absent one texts back to the remaining visitor, "What do I tell my huband?" Oops. You've stumbled into the story of an affair.

There can also be the story you find too sentimental to be real, where one person starts a conversation with another, noting different parts of the exhibit. The conversation seems usual enough, until the one texts to the other, "Will you marry me?" Really? You just asked that? Am I stuck in a Hollywood moment?

What happens when your whole goal is to collect and share the stories of your neighbor citizens, people who may have been total strangers to you before but who all represent the many lives that happen every day in your country? You have to tread carefully through a political minefield, because what you will present represents a promise made by the nation's leaders to capture what it means to be you.

It can be a problem to define all of the touchpoints of your interactions with storytellers and who should own the process as well as product of these efforts. There are the authorities, the web designer, the curator, the archivist, and many more, who all feel they have a stake in the story. Each of these people touch the stories in different ways and at different times. Can you come to a common ground and unified story?

Let's put that aside for a moment and consider how you can deliver the story on an ever growing array of devices that visitors can use. If you are lucky, maybe you can control that by providing the device itself, so you can predict and define the experience. However, if you can't, you need to strive to provide the same experience on each device, whether a visitor uses a mobile phone or a tablet, a visitor comes to the website first and then the museum or directly to the museum without a web visit. In the end, it's too bewildering, and you decide that you can't develop for everything.

You focus on the infrastructure and how to engage people through the art of storytelling. However you design it, you need to set it up, so you can reach the people and they can reach you. You try to research the examples of how people engage? Are there any? Where do people engage?

You take a survey and notice that in some cases people can get very negative. They collect their criticisms and strong opinions against something, and you wonder if this is driving some of the others away from telling their version, which may be more positive or in favor of the original piece or display. You wonder if you should be more active in editing any of the material that collects. Then you worry that if you edit it, you might pull out too much of the rich diversity and trim it back to your own point of view rather than a full collection of perspectives.

One of your bright team members suggests that you change how you engage people. "Let's change the title of the area from 'comments" to 'reflections' or 'annotations'." You think about her suggestion, and hope that such a minor change could set a subtle direction to the storyteller to participate in more constructive ways.

What is the goal for all of this engagement? For some places, like Nike archives, it is to capture all of the inherent knowledge and experience of the veterans to pass along to the rookies as each enters, passes along and exits the employmee path. It can become intergenerational. It can frighten some, because they don't think of themselves as good storytellers. "I don't have anything to offer, really," they reply, with their sheepish smile and reddening cheeks.

You look at ways to get these people more involved. Maybe you help give those people something more specific to tell. "Tell me about the first time you [fill in the blank]." It's a way to get them out of their worry and opening up. For the others, the ones who are ready to gush at a moment's notice, you give them a wider range to roam. "So, tell me about yourself."

Every story has a different end. For the newest of Dutch museums, it is about capturing Dutch identity. For those who have moved away from Balboa Park in San Diego, it's about seeing if that 100 year old tree is still there and being one of the thousand or so commentors on Facebook when you find out it's gone. The one thing every story has in common is that it can build a community.

You can focus on the details, providing a specific device or trying to deliver content about specific pieces of art, but it is larger. It is about the story of the exhibit. It is all of the experiences of all kinds of visitors. There are now 3 generations of people you have to provide an experience for. You have to try to make the experience more personal, so they will engage. You may collect a lot of data about your visitors, but they are still people not just numbers or characteristics.

A story being told in the UK by Blast Theory (IVY4EVR) is that of a fictitious young girl you seeks advice from other teens about how to handle different difficult situations around sex. Teens sign up to participate in the text message drama as part of a sex education program to engage teens in this real issue.

Engaging is where you get responses. A story is a conversation not a submission. You have to guage the right level of intimacy. You don't want to be too cool and aloof in your professional manner, but you don't want to invade anyone's space or cross any boundaries. It seems that larger groups on Facebook start to lose comments after the group reaches a certain number (5,000? 10,000?). They revert to merely "liking" things rather than providing more engaged feedback.

Every story has its own way of engaging. Maybe you have to create a safe space or maybe you just have to make it compelling enough to get people engaged. There are so many stories to be told and it can happen anywhere.

This story brought to you by 20 or so attendees to an unconference session at Museums and the Web (I'm just a mouthpiece).