Digital Storytelling Speech

Today, I’m giving a talk at UCF CREATE as part of the Florida Alliance for Arts in Education’s Digital Media Festival. The theme is “digital storytelling” but I figured that MOST of the emphasis would be on the “digital” part so I’m leaning heavily in the other direction. My talk is called “The Village Fire” and it takes its cue from the traditional and earliest way we organized ourselves into communities- around central fire. That fire is what kept us safe from animals and killing cold and its where news was announced, births and deaths and rites of passage were celebrated, life and death decisions were made and the stories of The People were told.

Today, the stories are every bit as powerful and many are the same as they were then. Language has changed and “the fire” is now a swarm of story delivery systems all overlapping and reinforcing each other from water-cooler gossip to texting to the next generation of 4K/3D imaging at eight to ten times today’s HD. The digital tools we have are powerful, cost effective and make it more and more possible to to make, use and share stories. But, just like the technology of the Village Fire, we have to use them responsibly with good intention to build our communities and we have to nourish the next generation of storytellers so they can take over the tale.