A Recipe for Good Crowdsourced Storytelling

A long time ago, in the summer of ’01, in the wake of the dot-com bust, I created a series of underground interactive travel story show called “Journeys.” The motivation was to capture the stories of the people that had come to San Francisco from all corners of the globe…before they went home. The show was made up of a combination of professional performers and raw audience stories, all backed up by a great three-person music ensemble.

So why, you ask, am I bringing this up now? I most recently completed a consulting project helping a company create a strategy for crowd-sourcing video stories from their biggest fans. I drew a lot of the ideas from my experiences in putting on the Journeys shows. While the notes below were about creating a powerful audience-storytelling environment in the theater, I find them relevant to the user-generated content world.

Provide a clear framework for each show (or genre). Our story recall is like a searching a hard drive: the more specific the search the better. A clear invitation (theme: Lost in Translation: Language Mishaps) is both easier for the storyteller and clears the path for a more interesting experience overall. Reflect the power of the stories we bring, and that everyone has a story.

Have a clear, strong story invitation. Make sure potential storytellers know how we define ‘telling story’. Story in this case is ‘something was told at dinner that resulted in a powerful audience reaction.’ Set clear time parameters (suggested 3 minutes) for each story.

Give the story some music: Whether you’re a songwriter, dancer, or spoken word artist, music will deepen the story experience. Not required but a nice add on.

Seed the show with strong but not too-seasoned storytellers: Set the bar of what a well-told story looks like and feels like. Performers may range from professional to passionate amateur, but the average quality of featured stories should maintain a level of quality that leaves the audience inspired, not daunted.

Connect the audience to one another: Provide the audience members with a way of seeing each other and honoring their own histories through simple fun introd uctions that allows them to see one another. Invite audience members to share stories at home in the same way. For example: Now, take 3 minutes to turn to a person next to you to share a story about something you got in trouble for as a kid. (Note: nowadays this is can also relate to creation of a user profile).

Provide a featured audience story: Open the stage to feature the well-told audience member story. Also, make sure throughout the show and in the marketing outreach the audience members are clearly invited to reflect on their own stories. This is a constant reassurance that keeps the attention from being too strongly set on the best or most highly-rated storytellers, and entice greater participation.