June’s Net Tuesday will be about Digital Storytelling –the practice of collecting the stories of your community (whether geographical community or a community of supporters), and promoting those stories through video to support your work for social change.
Digital storytelling has been effectively used to amplify the voices of community members in order to engage new members, promote fundraising, and give a concrete foundation to advocacy campaigns. Instead of relying on a polished spokesperson or an executive director, digital storytelling looks to the wisdom of your supporters, speaking from their passion.
Our plan for the evening has two sections:
First, we’ll be welcoming a panel of speakers, including Michael Feagans of PhilaStories and Ryan Draving of Philly Marketing Labs, to discuss aspects of effective digital storytelling:
- Finding the stories in your community: Where should you look? How can you maximize the value of the story collection process — to not only surface raw material for videos, but engage your supporters and find out what they’re really passionate about?
- Facilitating the telling of good stories: What questions should you ask? Where should you conduct the interviews? Should the speakers “rehearse” what they say, or should it all be “in the moment”? What kind of digital technology do you need to capture good quality video and audio?
- Creating compelling videos and promoting them through social media: How long should the video be? What parts of the storytelling should be a part of the video? Should you use subtitles or music? How should you title and tag the video on social media to maximize the possibility of it “going viral”?
Second, we’ll invite volunteers who are interested in creating their own digital storytelling video right then! We’ll select one or two volunteers who want to tell a story on something they’re passionate about. Our experts will facilitate and record the volunteers’ story, and then we’ll quickly edit the story into a video and post it to a social media site. The rest of the audience will be able to see the process from start to finish. (Have a story you want to tell as one of our volunteers? Start thinking about it now!)
Lite fare will be served. RSVP’s are appreciated (via Facebook or Meetup) for planning purposes, but not required.
Can’t make it downtown? Watch the live Internet stream at http://phillynetsquared.org/live! And you can participate in the conversation on Twitter, with a hashtag of #phlnet2.
