Storytelling in the 21st century!

On May 7, I've been asked to speak to the Women's Tech Council in Utah about merging rich social media with the art of storytelling....both digital and traditional. And yes, that's exactly what my company does. First, though, I'll define "rich" here..."rich" means that we now have every available means to communicate to help us fully tell the story. We have the use of text, photos, video, narration, music, links to file documents, links to websites...which means we no longer have to tell stories in a linear fashion, but we can tell them in 3D simultaneously! (This JPEG to the left is just a photo of my actual interactive page....which means I haven't activated the links here..but you can see where all the links are that I have pointing to video, music and websites) I have to admit that sometimes, in fact quite often, I love the old-fashioned, linear, book. I start with Chapter One and end when it says "the end". I also love a good old-fashioned movie where I pull up a comfy chair, grab some popcorn, and just watch. But we're now in an age where we can make communication connections so broad and so deep that a) we can really make our story "rich" and b)....well, maybe we have the potential to lose people precisely because it is almost too "rich" and they're getting lost with all the links! The point of storytelling is to create a lasting memory, that's why I love to have my one "master album" on say, my little boy's football season, that is BOTH digital AND printed into a book. No extra work for me...I just click the button on our program that says "photobook" and it turns my digital masterpiece into a hard or softbound book that is mailed to me within about a week. Then I burn a CD-ROM (since I've placed video and music and links on that same project) and stick it in a sleeve inside the book cover. Wa-la...I have everything together in the same place! OK, that's way too much tech-talk for one day :)