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I've been working with O'Reilly Media for going on seven years now, and on of the things I most admire about Tim and his company is their promotion of abundance as a frame of mind. I had forget that Web 2.0 Expo was taking place this week until something came through Twitter.

So not only does stream all of the keynote speeches at their conferences, but they tirelessly work to make those recordings immediately available for viewing. So even if you did miss the live streaming you can catch up on the speeches almost immediately.

One speech that caught my eye was "Creating Infectious Action" by Jennifer Lynn Aaker (Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business). Here's the video of her speech yesterday:



In her speech she points out four key principles for creating infectious action that would help anyone in transmedia to consider when building a storyworld:

1. Develop a clear goal.
   Focus on a single goal. There is power in simplicity.
   
   
2. Reverse the rules. 
   How might other address the challenge? Do the opposite.
   
3. Tell a good (truthful) story.
   Tell stories that connect on an emotional level.
   
4. Design for collaboration.
   Enable others to contribute and choose their own weapon.

I don't know if you've seen this video, but it shows what appears to be an in-depth conversation between twin baby boys. If not, take a few minutes and try not to laugh...



So besides enjoying a great laugh with my kids, the first thing that popped into my head, is this is what I must sound like when I try to explain transmedia to my family, friends, and associates.

By the way, this was how I always felt when talking with senior management (or anyone in marketing) about critical IT strategy. Also a classic Larsen comic about what dogs hear when we talk to them, but I digress.

I mean, seriously, trying to find common ground on transmedia with anyone outside of the film industry is truly challenging. We're talking a massive paradigm shift. They must be able to immediately imagine a narrative that is divided to become multi-dimensional. They must also relinquish control to the reader as to where they enter the story and in what sequence. Remember, most people only know of a sequential, mainly uninterrupted storyline.

Part of my mission is to build a bridge between creators and transmedia. There must be simpler ways to explain these concepts, and I will continue to search for them. I give mad props to pioneers in transmedia like Jeff Gomez, Lance Weiler, Christy Dena, and Robert Patten, to name a few, who had the courage to start talking about this before anyone else. The thousands of hours you've all spent in blazing a trail is inspiring. Best of all, you've been kind enough to share what you've learned as you've went along. Thanks for everything.

In this great piece at Power to the Pixel from Michel Reilhac, Executive Director of ARTE France Cinéma, shares his ten commandments for a transmedia state of mind:

1. Thou will collaborate:
2. On the story, thou shall focus:
3. Thou shall embrace game culture:
4. Thou shall earn the trust you rightfully deserve:
5. The problem is not the story, it is the interface:
6. Thou shall focus on the flux not on the object:
7. Thou shall blend flux and events:
8. Thou shall spend great time and energy:
9. Thou shall be fair and honest when blending the real and the virtual:
10. Thou shall play the game of changing the world:

He also offers this killer quote:

"Independent cinema and TV, as we know them, are reaching the end of a cycle as dominant forms of storytelling on the market."

Michel offers some great thoughts for inspiration on what we should be thinking about when it comes to transmedia. Bottom line, the only way to learn what transmedia is, is to produce a transmedia project. Transmedia is no different than any other paradigm shift. Reading and thinking about it will only get you so far. You've got to do it yourself, before you truly understand what it is.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons:  c@rljones

I had an interesting conversation with Patricia Arancibia. She is one of the major influences behind the Barnes & Noble, Nook Books en español, and we were talking about some of my theories. One of the things we agreed on is that there are multiple futures of publishing. There just isn't one business model viable enough to support the current publishing industry plus the immense demand coming from the exploding Internet market for e-books. There will be many solutions, each hopefully, right for each publisher.

I got to thinking after our conversation about the notion of multiple solutions and I reconvinced myself that my vision of the future of publishing is one of those possibilities. In fact, the more I investigate, the more certain I become that I've really figured something out before most people. However, that only reinforces something that's been on my mind lately. I need to stop researching and start sharing. I've been doing a lot of research and it's time to dig into some of the more complex concepts.

For instance, one of my theories is that you need to create as many different ways possible for potential fans to find your stories. Whether an author wants to think about it, or not. If you want people to find your stories, you (or someone that you designate) has to be thinking in terms of a maximum strategy. How many different ways can you provide, for someone to enter your story? I'll be sharing some more about max strategies soon. So stay tuned for that update.

This is an example right in the middle of the recent transmedia definition debate, I think that cross media is much more appropriate. There are certain aspects of sharing a story that are merely re-purposing and do not contain any new piece of the overall narrative arc. An example, that I believe will soon be mandatory, is a book trailer. The text contained on a book jacket, or the short description of the book in an e-store will not be enough to engage someone. Of course, I'm referring to an author that doesn't already have a strong and loyal fan base.

One cheap and relatively easy way to create a book trailer is by using Animoto. All you need to do is create a series of images, upload them to a project and pick some music. They offer freemium services, but if you don't have the money. You don't have the money. Period. So here is a trailer for my first e-book "A Bus Trip to Further. Oh and by the way, one of the freeium services is the ability to dowload your Animoto videos. Oh well, maybe I'll be able to upgrade soon.

I just finished watching "Session 1: Producing Transmedia Experiences: Stories in a Cross-Platform World." A point brought out near the end of the discussion is my new motto. No more gatekeepers! No more tollgates! I'll not let anyone else have the privilege to decide what I publish, produce, or make. That decision is now mine; mine and the muse which drives me. You know, I think this might be the last door I was afraid to open. The last obstacle keeping me from pushing forward.

From MIT TechTV:


My ideas are too precious, too rare to give anyone the permission to hold me back. If I lose anyone, then they'll have to catch up. It's like my good buddy Paco always used to say, "Who was there to show me how convergent culture, free culture, and social media combine to demand something called transmedia story telling. I'll do the best I can to share what I understand, but if you can't jump on the bus, then you'll have to find someone to help you on.

I hope that I can do that for everyone, but I know that some brains will not be wired to understand what I see. For those unique souls, they'll have to work extra hard practicing what is preached, or find a guide. There's some really talented people that I've learned from, perhaps they might be able to help.

Hey speaking of "Freedom of Choice," check out this classic video from Devo:

Guy Kawasaki is famous for saying "Ideas are easy! It's execution that's hard!" I think I've come up against a similar aphorism for transmedia storytelling. "Story is easy, it's implementation that's hard!"

It seems the more I continue to fall down the transmedia storytelling rabbit hole, the more I need to understand. As I've mentioned I've been spending a lot of time Lance Weiler's Pandemic. It's a great case-study that offers rich storyworld ripe for examination and extrapolation.

What I didn't expect to encounter was that after I've filled out most of my storycube, I know need to design how to connect the audience with each piece of the story. This eventually led me to Robert Patton's work on transmedia documentation, which has been really instrumental in helping me to organize the stories and platforms, but he leaves out how to design the connects. His documentation approach will capture the connections, but I still have to create the bridges, even if it's the audience which makes them manifest.

It's no coincidence that Robert uses two different alternative reality games (ARG) to document. First, because that helps give me further insight into what Lance must have done to create Pandemic. However, and more importantly I had already reached the conclusion that games and gaming hold the most hope for making my latest research more engaging.

So I'm now sort of back to square one, investigating ARG. I've seen some great presentations on gamification, but it is clear I lave a lot more to learn. I've also been introduced to Jane McGonical, whose work seems really fascinating. here she explains her plan to save to world. And it might sound crazy, crazy enough to work:


Aslo, she has a new book, that I just HAVE to read:

As I continue to explore the new tools and concepts of transmedia storytelling, I continue to run into the same conclusion. The whole concept of publishing is becoming a huge smear, upon which we can now tell stories in unprecedented ways. The trouble comes when I try to explain what I'm doing. I'm just not sure how to classify them.

Take one of my latest test-cases, using Storify to document my first ever experience of seeing Kiss in concert. While I've live tweeted a lot of different things, I'd never done a concert, so it sounded like a fun way to share the experience.

So last Saturday, instead of carrying pen and paper to capture my thoughts, I used Twitter, knowing ahead of time I would then collect the tweets together and produce a new Storify. How about story? Is it a micro-book? Is it the future of content? Anyway, I have a confession to make. I did take pen and paper to the concert, I just didn't use them. :-D

So if you haven't checked out "A long overdue evening with KISS," please check that out and let me know what you think.

Along these same lines, we also have the further blurring of the publishing landscape when you consider, "What if I sold access to a Storify story that had used someone else's tweets, do I have to pay them?" In a recent Publishing Perspectives discussion, they asked just that: "Should Tweeters Be Compensated for Contributions to Books?"

With each trip down this transmedia storytelling convergent rabbit hole, publishing becomes less relevant and the roles of author and audience and collaborator become less clear. That's eventually my dream, to be able to help make sense of this new convergent world of storytelling. I just hope I don't get lost along the way....

Doing some research on Lancer Weiler's Pandemic, I came across the "The Power to the Pixel" conference and found a super presentation by Mike Monello of CampFire. The speech is entitled: "Babies, buns and buzzers." In the speech he offers his five guidelines to transmedia storytelling:

1. Design for communal experiences
2. Make it tangible
3. Foster discovery
4. Make it personal
5. Build a world larger than your characters

If you want to watch the presentation while browsing the slides, then head over the the Power to the Pixel page.

As I continue to explore the transmedia space, I've repeatedly come across the discussion of the storycube and their importance for thinking transversally. Simply put, any "story" that you have consists of three basic components: the characters, the location, and when the story takes place.

If you think back, you might remember this diagram from an old math class, where you had to plot data on a graph using data points on three axis (x,y,z). That's all a story cube is, a three dimensional graph of the data points in a story.Using each of the three variables as an axis, x = location, y = characters, and z= time. We come up with a simple storycube:

Now, it gets interesting!  Here, we might be introducing a new concept for some authors. Here's where moving tranversally and pivoting become important to understand. So let's say an author has a book. It takes place in a location (or set of locations), using character(s), and takes place over a certain period of time. Using those as points in the graph. We plot them three dimensionally and we end up a collection of data points in the story cube.

It's critical now to understand that this is NOT the complete cube. This is only a plot of the current story points within the cube, because from there we can expand the cube by adding a continuum for each axis. Let's expand this story cube to add the new dimensions of new characters, new locations, and a different time. I've exploded the cube to show the different quadrants that appear, encapsulating eight typical pivot points available to an author:


If we consider the base state of the storycube to be the key narrative arc for your story, then the base state is the current set of characters, locations and time frame; the currently "plotted" data points. Now we can move within this cube along any of the three axes (characters, location, and time).

So from any point in the cube, we can manipulate the story by simply combining changes to any or all of the variables within our story. This gives us eight new ways that we can easily pivot our story. When we move along any axis, we are moving transversally within the cube. The eight possible new pivots to any story come from one of these new states (in our diagram):

Time	Location	Characters	Story Alternatives
New	Current	Current	By only going back in time, an author can pivot into the red block (block 1).
New	Current	Current	By going forward in time, an author can pivot into the magenta block 9.
Changing location
New	New	Current	Here the same characters travel to a new location before the current story, pivoting into the cyan block 2.
New	New	Current	When the travel occurs after the story, pivot into the orange block 10.
Adding new characters and new locations
New	New	New	By traveling back in time, an author can pivot into the green block 3.
New	New	New	If the events happen after the story, an author can pivot into the pink block 11
Adding new characters, again
New	Current	New	By adding the character before the story, an author can pivot into the blue block 4.
New	Current	New	By adding the characters after the story, an author can pivot into the dark green block 12.

Of course, much of these tranversal moves depends on the main narrative arc of the story. It might be possible to even dive down within the same span of time and allow an author to take a piece of the current story and expand it "in place;" it might be possible, but it horribly constrains an author to fill-in a piece of an existing story. However, if desired, that adds three new viable quadrants to explore. All of the main story narrative exist within block 5; it's the main story, so it's already been written. Here are the three remaining picots:

Time	Location	Characters	Story Alternatives
Changing location
Current	New	Current	Here the same characters travel to a new location during the current story, pivoting into block 6.
Adding new characters and new locations
Current	New	New	Introduce new new characters in a new location during the same story, allows a pivot into block 7.
Adding new characters, again
Current	Current	New	By adding new characters to the same location during the same story, an author can pivot into the block 8.

I've been working on a couple of different storycubes, in a follow-on post I'll give some examples from those stories. With this backgrounder, I think it'll make some more sense by giving pivots I'm currently writing.