TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge Global Tweet Chat Recap

On Monday, April 16, TechSoup took its Digital Storytelling global with a full-day tweet chat spanning 10 time zones. Each tweet chat covered a different facet of digital storytelling and featured storytelling experts and nonprofit and library participants.

A lot of helpful and insightful digital storytelling advice was shared; below are some of the highlights:

• India: NASSCOM Foundation, TechSoup Global partner, led the way with How to Create High Impact Stories. Participants advised understanding your audience and sharing the stories behind your program stats to make an impact. Making an impact also requires giving your audience a story in a format they can consume. Although video is popular issues like bandwidth speed, which affect many communities, photo may be the best storytelling option.

• Romania: TechSoup Romania took over to discuss how to tell your story in six words with Georgiana Ilie, journalist and storytelling trainer. The most famous example of the 6-word exercise is Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" – a tale of loss. As a nonprofit example, Ilie offered the 6-word story of an organization that helps the visually impaired: "Blind graduate works for National Bank." Conceptualizing your organization's story in six words is a great way to distill what you do into powerful digital stories.

• Paris, France & Manchester, United Kingdom: Camilla Burg of Wiser.org, an online platform to connect those working on sustainability issues, and Steven Flower of Manchester NetSquared led the bilingual tweet chat. The discussion focused on creating greater visibility for organizations across digital channels. The chat highlighted digital stories of nonprofits that have achieved wide distribution. What the videos had in common was their use of emotion to drive the narrative. Emotions, like hope or humor, work because they draw viewers into the story and make them feel invested in the outcome and your organization.
• Beirut, Lebanon: NetSquared Beirut organizers then took over for a chat with Marc Malhoun of Completure, an iPhone journalism app. Malhoun talked about using digital storytelling tools to empower citizen journalism. Tools, like Completure, make it possible for individuals to create and share stories that need to be told much like media organizations can.

• Cambridge: United Kingdom: Cambridge NetSquared was next to pick up the tweet chat baton on the topic of digital storytelling tools. For low-cost recording, participants suggested simply using your smartphone if you have one. Low-cost movie editing is also possible with built-in computter software (iMovie on Macs and Windows Movie Maker on PCs) or YouTube's own editing tools.
• San Francisco, United States: TechSoup and San Francisco NetSquared welcomed Jay Golden, co-founder of Waking Star, for "Telling Your Origin Story." Origin stories are one of the three types of stories – the others being impact and vision. Origin stories describe the journey of how an organization came to be. Knowing and sharing your origin story is important because it not only describes what you do but why you do it. The “why” part of your story is what creates the emotional connection that attracts prospective supporters.

• Toronto, Canada: TechSoup Canada was joined by North York Community for their portion of the tweet chat. North York Community uses digital storytelling to help their constituents find healing from immigration experiences. North York Community creates powerful digital stories by geting their constituents involved with hands-on training that brings them into the creation process.
• Peterborough, Canada: TechSoup Canada continued the chat with GreenIT to look at the challenges of digital storytelling for small organizations, particularly those far from resource-laden metro areas. The answer for smaller organizations is to look for open source software as suggested in the Cambridge portion of the tweet chat.
• Honolulu, United States: Applications for Good rounded out the chat with a look at digital storytelling with communities who are not or less digitally engaged. The chat stressed the importance of communicating about privacy and copyright for those concerned about participating in digital storytelling.