ASIAN DIGITAL STORYTELLING CONGRESS

Digital Storytelling – A Global Movement… Its Future and Possibilities

BARRIE STEPHENSON
In the complex world of technology, social networking and mass media, effective communication is still best served by a simple story. Its power, to bring others into our experience and to transport us into theirs, drives us on to discover new ways of telling them. So as digital storytelling leaves infancy and those of us who nurtured it look to the future, what’s its potential and where will it take us?  After a decade of practical workshops, Barrie Stephenson looks ahead to see how we might develop our craft and whose stories we may be shaping. As newer technology and emerging networks come within our grasp what will they tell and how will they tell it?

So that’s what I said I would deliver. It’s a tough assignment and I’ve been agonising over how best to fulfil my brief. There’s plenty to say but limited time in which to say it. So the presentation is still under construction. That’s typical of the way I work. I love the adrenaline of a deadline – something cultured during my years on a radio bulletin desk in the BBC. I am also involved in two plenaries later in the day. The second with Helen Simondson from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.  I’ve not seen Helen since we were at an event in Northern California four years ago with Joe Lambert.

Guidelines to creating an imaginative script quickly
BARRIE STEPHENSON
What makes good writing? Learn techniques to writing a useable script within a limited timescale; tips and tricks that Barrie has proved through the numerous digital story storytelling workshops he has conducted in the U.K.

Collecting and Distribution Digital Stories – using online effectively
BARRIE STEPHENSON AND HELEN SIMONDSON
Digital Storytelling is one of the user generated media forms that is being widely adopted in a range of contexts and by a variety of organisations and individual practitioners with the aim to promote participatory culture more broadly. This plenary will explore some of the approaches organisations and individuals are taking to distribute and collect these stories and will raise some of the issues currently facing practitioners at a time where pockets of activity are happening with little sense of coherence or connectivity and similarly there is very little available research to date other than case-study or domain-specific research.

It will be my first time in South East Asia – so if you see a Brit wandering around Singapore looking jet lagged and bewildered towards the end of the week – it may be me!