Narrative Summit 3: “Stories That Change” – Digital Narrative Alliance Conference June 20, San Francisco

Leading digital storytelling experts to present narrative strategies for business, media and social change.

San Francisco, CA, May 24, 2017 –(PR.com)– The Digital Narrative Alliance(tm) today announced its 2017 Narrative Summit conference “Stories That Change,” to be held on June 20 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. The event agenda brings together storytelling experts from filmmaking, academia, non-p
rofit organizations and global corporate brands.
“We are thrilled to host Aaron Loeb, an accomplished playwright and game designer, Louie Psihoyos, an Academy-award winning documentary filmmaker, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Architect, Writer, Educator, and WorldNarrative Summit 3: Builder, and other inspiring industry experts – all on the same stage,” said Dave Toole, Founder and Chairman of DNA. “These practitioners are leaders in their respective fields of storytelling and their combined expertise will provide a unique learning opportunity.” Joining Loeb, Psihoyos and Pendleton-Jullian are “Silicon Valley’s Favorite Adman” Tom Bedecarre, Producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” Scott Burns, Adjunct Professor and veteran business executive Richard Okumoto, Producer of “Stories of the Uninvited” Barry Johnson, renowned dream researcher Dr. Kate Niederhoffer. Event attendees will partake in an interactive improv workshop led by Ricci Victorio, and expert discussions on the experiential aspect of storytelling.The Summit is the 3rd such event produced by the Digital Narrative Alliance and prior events have been referred to as the most selective collection of digital storytelling experts in the Bay Area. Attendees from major leading tech, media and educational organizations are expected to join the discussion on narrative strategy, digital storytelling and methods for implementing change through evolving channels for distracted audiences. As individuals and as organization, we are the story we tell and those who listen recognize the authenticity of our story and how it fits our actions. Past speakers at DNA events include John Hagel, co-chairman for the Deloitte Center for the Edge Innovation, Bill Pruitt, Producer of “The Amazing Race,” “The Apprentice” and “Deadliest Catch” and Jonah Sachs, author of “Winning the Story Wars,” amongst others.”This conference is particularly important as storytelling is the glue that binds society, communities, movements, brands and markets,” said Sourabh Kothari, Director of Narrative Development at DNA. “New narrative models and digital channels challenge storytelling as we know it, and we need experts to help us evolve and cross-pollinate different communication strategies. Our goal is to collect and share such expertise to generate increased interest from business, venture capital and social activists seeking to drive real-world changes through storytelling.”Registration includes admission to all sessions. Breakfast, Lunch, and refreshments during breaks will be provided. Corporate packages are available for a limited number of sponsors.For registration and additional information go to http://narrativealliance.com/stories-that-change/
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About the Digital Narrative Alliance
The Digital Narrative Alliance is a collaboration of master storytellers and organizational leaders. DNA members share experience and insights through online and physical gatherings, as well as participating in collaborative and for-profit projects. We create events, research programs and executive experiences that explore narrative’s power to inspire companies, non-profits, and government, as well as individuals who want to change their world. We help leaders understand and use media purposefully.
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Media Contact
Mitch Ratcliffe,
Managing Partner, DNA
mitch@narrativealliance.com
+1 (253) 229-1948
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Florian Brody

Managing Partner, DNA
brody@narrrativealliance.com
+1 (408) 728-8681

A Rural Lens on a Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure » CCC Blog

Difficult technical and social decisions are often perceived from the perspective of different narratives — the assumptions, expectations, and values that color our interpretation of facts. The Urban/Rural, which carries elements of future- vs. past-oriented perspectives is one of the most difficult narrative gaps to cross. Great to see infrastructure discussions acknowledge and address that gap.

Recently, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) in collaboration with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) released eight white papers describing a collective research agenda for intelligent infrastructure. We will be blogging about each paper over the next few weeks.Today, we highlight A Rural Lens on a Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure paper.

Source: A Rural Lens on a Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure » CCC Blog

This Band Wants Fans to Color and In Share Its Latest Music Video – Interactive (video) – Creativity Online

Lovely.

As you watch the video of “Stained Glass” at the project website, you can click on different colors from a palette and then color in, not only the band members and their instruments, but the background of geometrical shapes, which changes like a kaleidoscope. (You can also watch the band’s own color creation here.)

Source: This Band Wants Fans to Color and In Share Its Latest Music Video – Interactive (video) – Creativity Online

Destiny 2 Will Replace Grimoire Cards With Actual Storytelling | USgamer

Curious to see the Destiny drop the collectible “cards” in the game for storytelling through building additional explorable virtual space where players can experience lore for themselves instead of reading about it. The “lore” in a game is backstory that defines the possibilities of the game — what we have identified as “narrative” at the DNA. It’s the expectations, values, and assumptions that underlie the experience of a story. For instance, lore could eliminate the possibility that a certain troll could appear, because that troll is part of the game-story’s history and not a contemporary figure. Of course, if the game universe is magical, Trolls might reanimate, too.

In an interview with Forbes Steve Cotton, Destiny 2’s World Lead, was asked whether or not Grimoire Cards—in-game items that could be redeemed on the Destiny website or smartphone app for texts of story and lore—would be making a comeback in the sequel.

Source: Destiny 2 Will Replace Grimoire Cards With Actual Storytelling | USgamer

Facebook documents reveal how social network moderates content

Moderating content is a daunting task, and it isn’t going to be solved with hundreds of manuals. For instance, the fact that Facebook users can live stream “attempts to self harm” is simply too hands-off to make sense as a principle for getting the person attempting suicide help. Perhaps, Facebook will evolve its own rules and mores, social habits, and user assistance ideas.

But this doesn’t sound like the appropriate start — a comprehensive engagement with users to get their assistance in identifying and responding to controversial and life-threatening acts by users would allow a natural ethos of behavior to evolve. Of course, that takes time and patience, but Facebook is reacting to a “crisis” that will never abate without users’ involvement.

The training manuals, which were published by the Guardian on Monday, reveal how the social media group’s 4,500 global moderators judge when to remove or allow offensive content.

Source: Facebook documents reveal how social network moderates content

Twitter has hired a former Bloomberg executive to run its live video business – Recode

Storytelling Exec Change: Todd Swidler joins Twitter

Twitter recently inked a bunch of live video deals with more than a dozen publishers, including Bloomberg, and has plans to stream live video content around the clock. It will be Swidler’s job to make that happen, as he’ll take over the day-to-day running of the live video team, including all partnerships.

Source: Twitter has hired a former Bloomberg executive to run its live video business – Recode

Narrative Summit 3: Stories That Change

Narrative Summit 3: Stories That Change, on June 20, 2017, is a fast-moving full day of professional insight offered in short talks combined with workshops about a new strategy for telling stories using narrative as a tool for building social trust, moving your audience from their present state, increasing the odds towards action, and information sharing in support of economic and societal goals. You will leave with a new vision of the narrative of your company and life.

Join us to learn:

  • How to use stories to align mission and goals;
  • Techniques to engage your audience towards a future state;
  • To use stories to engage internally and externally;
  • How to handle stories that can conflict with mission and goals;
  • To use stories and narratives to develop co-designed products, services, and futures, based on proven film and marketing strategies represented by our speakers.

Leading the agenda is a stunning group of filmmakers, architects, researchers and authors with workshop sessions where small teams will collaborate to build new digital narratives that encompass the services, products and brands of the organizations and institutions they represent.

Register today, seating is limited!


This one-day event will be held  in San Francisco on June 20, 2017.

 

 

 

 


Conference Program

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM: Breakfast
Meet your fellow attendees over a fresh breakfast.

8:45 AM – 9:00 AM: Story Performance and introduction to the day.
Hosts: Mitch Ratcliffe, Managing Partner, The Digital Narrative Alliance (DNA), and Sourabh Kothari, Director of Narrative, DNA

Aaron Loeb, Playwright and President of Studios & Live Services, Kabam!

9:00 AM – 9:50 AM: Keynote: Courage Across Every Story –  Aaron Loeb, President FoxNext Games. An accomplished playwright and librettist recognized by numerous awards, Aaron Loeb also pioneered mobile gaming with Electronic Arts and Kabam! which partners with Marvel Studios. On June 6, Fox acquired Loeb’s Aftershock studio and appointed him president of the division. “Constant interaction with the audience has absolutely prepared me for the world of live-service free-to-play games,” he told DICE Europe. “There’s also a huge difference in the tools you use. Videogame writing is often very technical. They take on different meaning based on when and how you see them.” Aaron will address telling a story without a static conclusion.

Richard Okumoto, Adjunct Professor, SJSU and UC Longbeach

10:00 AM – 10:40 AM: Cognition & Storytelling –  Richard Okumoto, Adjunct Professor at San Jose State University & Cal State University Long Beach – As he completes his Ph.D. in narrative research at Queensland University of Technology, veteran financial and business executive Rich Okumoto, is exploring how society uses stories to exchange knowledge and establish trust. The evolution of mission expressed through stories provides important feedback about the shape of a society or organization, more now than ever.

Ricci Victorio, President, Victorio Consulting

11:00 AM – 11:15 AM: Improv & Group LeadershipRicci Victorio, President, Victorio Consulting. Executive coach and storyteller Ricci Victorio introduces the concept of practiced improvisation in organizational settings. Blending theater and management theory, Victorio’s firm has worked with organizations around the world to refine their use of stories in establishing shared mission and trust. Attendees can participate in improv training during the breakout sessions in the morning and afternoon.

11:20 AM – 12:15 PM: Improv Experience & Video Storytelling Workshop Sessions
The Victorio Consulting team will lead two sessions of improv-for-managers training.

If you’d prefer to dig into a focused topic of discussion, join advertising expert Neal Burns and DNA director of narrative Sourabh Kothari to explore how to show negative behaviors in video without reinforcing their use in real life.

Kate Niederhoffer, Founder, Circadia Labs

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM: Lunch Speaker: Dream sharing and narrative development — The stuff and style that dreams are made of – Dr. Kate Niederhoffer, Founder, Circadia Labs. The recent development of a social network dedicated to dreams offers unprecedented access to the language of dreams. The style in which we remember and share our dreams can give important clues to how we make sense of our dreams, and in turn, ourselves. This talk will share research on the language of 120,000 dreams and consider “the dream” as a medium on the path to self insight and social connection.

Louie Psihoyos, Director, The Cove & Racing Extinction

1:15 PM – 1:50 PM: Translating Narratives Into MovementsLouie Psihoyos, Director, The Cove and Racing Extinction. Photographer and Academy Award-winning director Louie Psihoyos broke one of the biggest stories of ocean preservation with his film, The Cove, which documented the slaughter of dolphins each year by Japanese fishing fleets, and has painted faces of Manhattan landmarks with projected images of endangered sea life in support of his 2015 film, Racing Extinction. Psihoyos will discuss the use of storytelling to create cause-based movements, hopefully in time to save the planet.

Scott Burns, Producer, An Inconvenient Truth, Writer, The Bourne Ultimatum & The Informant!

1:50 PM – 2:30 PM: Edge Cases – Bringing Attention Where It Is NeededScott Z. Burns in conversation with Barry Johnson. Scott Burns is prepping the follow-up to his Academy Award-winning collaboration with former Vice President Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth. An accomplished screenwriter, Scott talks with former Obama economic development advisor and producer of the upcoming film, Stories of the Uninvited, Barry Johnson, who will address the relationship between media and the human relations made during his travels to over 50 countries as a business executive and  White House appointee.  Scott and Barry will also discuss the importance of championing untold stories and uninvited storytellers, as well as his current development of two narrative films that break cycles and smash stereotypes.

Barry Johnson, Producer and Global Business Development Advisor

2:45 PM – 3:40 PM: Improv Experience & World Café
The Victorio Consulting team will lead two sessions of improv-for-managers training. If you’d prefer to dig into a focused topic of discussion, join the World Café in the main room. Would you like to lead a focused discussion about a topic? Please email sourabh.kothari@narrativealliance.com.

Ann Pendelton-Jullian, Architect, Author, Educator, World Builder

3:50 PM –4:10 PM: Pragmatic Imagination, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Architect, Writer, Educator, and World Builder. Ann’s five-volume collaboration with Silicon Valley pioneer John Seely Brown, Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, will be released this Fall. In this short talk, she introduces the basic idea of pragmatic imagination, that action and engagement with the world is the natural approach to design and the creation of human spaces.

4:15 – 5:10 PM: Speaker RoundtableTom Bedecarre, Chairman & Cofounder, AKQA, and Stanford DCI Fellow, leads a roundtable discussion with speakers about the

Tom Bedecarre, Cofounder & Chairman, AKQA, and Stanford DCI Fellow

future of story as advocacy and narrative engagement with audiences and communities that are emerging from digital networks. Silicon Valley advertising pioneer Tom Bedecarre will put a bow on the day, tying together threads from the talks and experiences presented in a conversation with speakers and the audience.

3:45 PM – 5:00 PM: Review, Wrap-up & Next Steps – Before the cocktails flow, the Digital Narrative Alliance team provides a recap of the Narrative Summit and the DNA’s mission, upcoming events, and new projects for 2017. Learn what’s next, so you can be part of it.

5:15 PM – 7:00 PM: Cocktail & Conversation
Wine, beer, hors d’oeuvres, and new connections. End the day in conversation with the growing DNA community.

Register now to attend the Narrative Summit: Stories That Change on June 20, 2017. The event will take place at the University of California San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center.

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Embodied AI Characters for Emergent Narrative

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How AI and augmented reality will issue forth a new genre of interactive character design

by Jeffrey Ventrella, DNA Contributor

Imagine yourself five years from now. Apple has come out with a new version of its augmented reality glasses. You have just purchased a pair. Stepping into a café, you order an espresso and sit down to open the shiny new box. After trying on the glasses – and with a bit of fumbling – you manage to get through the mile-long Apple terms and conditions without touching your computer. Instead, you scroll down to the bottom of the form by gesturing in the air with your index finger, making sure not to poke the eye of the person sitting across from you. You tap the air to indicate “Yes – I have read the terms and conditions”…which of course is a lie. Finally, just for kicks, you start running a cool-sounding app:  something about “an ongoing narrative with virtual characters”. Now you are ready go for a walk. You finish your espresso and head out into the street, wearing your new glasses.

Once on the street, you immediately notice a couple of animated characters – emitting an eerie glow and slightly out of place – just outside of the café. They are deep in conversation. They are speaking in a strange accent. You stop and listen, and one of them glances over at you with a glare, annoyed that you are eavesdropping. This makes you a bit nervous and embarrassed.

And that is strange, because you know that these are not real people: They are virtual characters in an ongoing story that is taking place among the streets of your town.

These characters, and several others, have been talking for several months now. They are debating the changes to society that have disrupted their lifestyles. Some of the characters are able to peer into the future and engage with us living here and now in the year 2017 – those of us who happen to have the augmented reality app.

As we join in these virtual conversations, we become incorporated into the unfolding fiction that is playing out. It is an open-ended narrative, acted out by artificially-intelligent characters that are experienced only in augmented reality. Increasingly, we humans here in meatspace become intertwined in the narrative. The boundary between fiction and reality dissolves into a fractal curve. Our lives fuse with the narrative – the narrative fuses with our lives. And that takes some getting used to: the nature of narratives change as we become participants in them.

This vignette that I have just described is just one possible future manifestation of a set of technologies that point toward a new genre where the boundary between reality and fiction is increasingly difficult to detect. And the key ingredient is a set of artificially-intelligent characters with real embodiment: They occupy real place and real time, via augmented reality, geolocation, computer vision, and other technologies that situate them in the physical world. This embodiment is critical to how their narratives play out.

Emergent Narratives vs. Branching Stories

“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”
– Jean-Luc Godard

Our lives are awash in a sea of overlapping narratives. “Narrative” can be defined as “a spoken or written account of connected events” (Wikipedia). Although the term “story” is often included in this definition, it must be emphasized that a story is a fixed work of creation, which has a beginning, middle, and end. A story is contained, like a song.

But consider Godard’s quote: the linearity of a story can be deconstructed in many ways. Branching storylines have been developed extensively in digital games in which the player has agency in the story, as well as with altered traditional literary media (i.e., the Choose Your Own Adventure book series). Branching stories are assembled from discrete building blocks. And while the ordering of these building blocks may be open-ended, the blocks themselves are fixed and static. The blocks fit together in various ways, but the story is still essentially set by the content of the various blocks.

Can a building block be broken down into sub-chunks? Certainly. But beware. There is no logical end of this line of reasoning – one falls into a kind of Zeno’s Paradox. The smaller and more numerous the chunks, the harder it becomes to compose the glue that holds these chunks together to create meaning. After all, a story is more than just a sequence of events. So, if you want infinitely small, and infinitely many story “atoms”, you’ll be left with just glue…and a pile of atoms.

Simulation

But don’t despair, simulation can come to the rescue! We have only just begun to tap the vast potential of artificial intelligence and other technologies to design simulations that permit narratives to emerge from the very atoms of virtual reality. But while we are waiting for the technology to become advanced enough to make this viable, I would claim that we have a perfect shortcut: Us!

It may be tempting to claim that a deep simulation using the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), physics, behavioral psychology, and other basic laws of nature can be tuned just right to make spontaneous events happen in a virtual world that are “meaningful.” But that is a tall order, and some may even claim that it can never happen. This is why I am suggesting the inclusion of us – real people with already rich intertwined narratives – in the mix. Think of the simulation matrix as dead soil: Add water, microbes, and seeds, and something will start to grow. True AI doesn’t just work right out of the box – it has to grow, it has to learn – it needs fertile soil.

For this reason, I suggest that we do not need super-intelligent AI systems that emulate high-level human reasoning, emotion, and narrative intelligence. The AI can be just smart enough, and – more importantly – able to react to us and learn from us – to absorb our own meanings into the fabric of the simulation.

The Artificial Life Approach: Starting with a Primordial Soup

I have been developing a technology for several decades that I started while doing research at the MIT Media Lab in the early 90’s. It takes as inspiration the craft of artificial life: Designing virtual petri dishes from which lifelike behaviors emerge. Since that time, the toolset has exploded to include more sophisticated genetic algorithms, physics simulations, neural nets and much more. Concurrently, the rise of machine learning algorithms will help tap vast databases to extract something resembling meaning.

But there is still something missing from this toolset: Virtual body language. In order for AI to be expressive, it needs some form of embodiment. For this reason, I’ve focused on cartoon-style characters – having just the right set of expressive affordances and the ability to learn adaptations to provide an affective dimension. These characters also have a degree of reactive agency, such that narrative-like moments can emerge spontaneously.

With this simplified approach, one can avoid the uncanny valley as well as keep things real and actionable. We will eventually get to human-like intelligence, but I am in no rush. And besides, replicating ourselves accurately may not actually be what the future calls for.

What the future may be calling for is an augmentation of our own narratives with highly-connected artificial agents which have emotional intelligence, expressive body language, access to the internet’s crowd-wisdom, and a strong association with time and place – being truly embodied and situated. Their responsiveness to us complex humans here in meatspace would give the characters endless fodder for generating continuous emergent narrative.