I have been researching and writing quite actively about storytelling in the past months. What has started with my moderating the Play Video Conference last year and continued with a masterclass given at the European Communication Summit, anesthetist
 has prompted by my collaboration with Dr Camelia Crisan from the Progress Foundation on the CSR Corporate Volunteering Storytelling project.

It is with these preliminary results and with the hope of recruiting more participants to the study that I have joined again the Video for PR and Communications conference this year on the 22nd of April in Berlin.

While many have covered storytelling at the conference, anabolics
my definition was different: more focused on a first-person narrative rendered in a digital form and its transformational impact for the person, its viewers and organisations rather than on the technology and the aesthetic protocols to render it. Digital in this case I argued (and that included video communication) was a pretext for the in-depth reflection of the meaning, relevance, learning value and transformational impact of an experience an individual has taken part in. and the organisation enabling that experience remained only a facilitator rather than the protagonist.This is very much in line with what Camelia and I have been arguing both in our “Stories, Heroes and Commercials” as well as our “And then a hero comes along...” piece in Communication Director.

This narrative digital storytelling approach I added had the potential to be used as a team building exercise, company history building and archival mechanism and could also provide extremely valuable insights aimed to evaluate organisational programs and activities. As a team building exercise, the focus can be either on the technical training (digital literacy and awareness) or on storytelling (the creative process in relation to a future project). As a company history building and archival mechanism, it is these stories that can help capture corporate culture and identity.

The prezi below (used to support my talk at the conference) summarises the main points of my talk (if you know of any organisation running volunteering programs or have yourself been part of one, please get in touch!)

 

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