"recombobulation"

Only in Milwaukee:

http://www.google.com/search?q=recombobulation+area

"the defining feature of humans"

In today's New York Times, James Gorman quotes from "How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like", a new book from Yale's Prof. Paul Bloom:

"Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans – language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce."

"bar soap", "conventional oven", "film camera", and now, "task-fMRI"

"A 'retronym' is a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version."

Examples include "acoustic guitar" & "analog watch".

At the recent resting-state conference in Milwaukee, a new acronym was proposed: "T-fMRI", for task-fMRI, as distinguished from R-fMRI, for resting fMRI.

Synaptic Sandbags

The hardest part to sharing an engaging story is to find the proper balance of details. If you share too many details, your listener gets distracted, and perhaps loses an understanding of your plot. If you get sidetracked and share an abundance of inconsequential details, you may find yourself confused, and lose sense of both the path and the message of your story.

Think of the details of your story as synaptic sandbags. If you are sharing your story strategically, that is, as a tool for helping your listener better understand and engage with specific information, then you want your story to trigger select experiences and memories for your listener. The details you choose to share are the sandbags that help create a path of discovery in your listener’s brain: too few sandbags, and you risk tributaries, or your story being washed away. Too many sandbags, and you dam up your information, restricting the path that your listener needs to take through connections in their own mind, in order to join you at the close of your story.

Ethical Storysharing

Story is not a commodity, to be taken from someone and given to someone else. Often, I help people find and share their stories, so that they can better share their stories or the story of their organization. I call this “listening in the service of telling” – as opposed to listening to better understand and craft solutions to organizational problems, for example. This kind of listening presents unique ethical challenges. I’m hoping to explore these challenges in greater depth at an upcoming panel, Ethical Storysharing for Social Change, at the South By Southwest conference. In preparation, I’ve been thinking about the following:

• Sometimes, the opportunity that you, as the story facilitator, are presenting to the storysharer may be his or her only chance to be heard.
• You are the sharer’s microphone.
• You may have more knowledge of the possible repercussions of a story being shared than the sharer does. You have an ethical obligation to protect the sharer.
• You must be clear as to whether there are any differences between your goals and the goals of the storysharer.

Story is a Structure

When everything is a story, then nothing is a story. A message is not a story. A rhetorical frame is not a story.

A story is a structure for delivering information. A story has a beginning, middle, and end. Usually, something happens to someone and something changes as a result.

Recently, a professional media relations specialist was bemoaning the fact that a newspaper journalist “did not get the story” that the specialist was attempting to relay. When I pressed the professional communicator, it became clear that he was delivering a message to the journalist. He had not offered the journalist a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, let alone characters, action, challenge, and resolution. He had not thought about how to make his message concrete or his complex data meaningful, or to provide a context for the message, all of which could be delivered through a structured and strategic story.

The journalist may not have reported the precise and desired message. But he did not fail in reporting the story, as he was not offered a story on which to report.

The Narrative Organization

Within an organization, story can be a useful tool for:

• Leadership
• Knowledge Sharing
• Advocacy
• Fundraising
• Sales
• Change Initiatives
• Branding
• Project Evaluation
• Product Introduction
• Values Transmission
• Conquering Complexity
• Communicating Vision
• Understanding History

This list is by no means exhaustive.

And the answer is...?

At the recent excellent resting-state conference in Milwaukee, a question arose over dinner: Is the brain a machine for turning the past into the future, or a machine for turning the future into the past?

Identifying Narratives & Finding Stories

Sometimes, you first need to identify the underlying narrative, and then go about finding the small stories that support it.

Sometimes, you need to examine lots of small stories in order to find the underlying narrative.

All of 'em!

I read recently that the number of automobiles in operation on this planet is estimated to be 825 million.

Of course, each one is driven by someone who thinks of him-or-herself as an above-average driver.