Well, that was a lot of fun.

The Story happened at Conway Hall last Friday, and 400 or so people turned up on a clear, bright (and fortunately not rainy) day to hear an eclectic range of speakers tell stories, or talk about storytelling.

Russell Davies was a most genial host, getting the audience warmed up and even supplying them with chocolate after the lunch break. The speakers were magnificent, provoking emotions from laughter to apprehension, shock and awe. The Newspaper Club and Alex Parrott helped create a fantastic Newspaper for the day, and Live Union made sure the whole thing ran without a hitch (and recorded audio of all the speakers that I will put up here as soon as I can track down a minidisc player). And last but not least, I had a small but perfect bunch of helpers on the day – Rebecca Denton, Sarah Pridham, Holly Locke, Gemma Brady and Richard Ayers – who made sure everyone and thing was where they should be.

As I said at the very end of the day, The Story was a very selfish event, organised because I wanted to go to an event like this, and there didn’t seem to be anything like it already. In reading some of the responses from attendees, its been really enlightening, and useful, to find out what people thought of the day.

It seems the format was a surprise for some who expected a more traditional conference, and didn’t expect to get a mixture of people talking about their practise and others just telling stories. I’m pleased it was a surprise – I wanted a day that would inspire you and remind you of the visceral emotions that good storytelling can create in you. Hopefully, through reflecting on these emotions and thinking about how the speakers create them in their stories, it would inform our own practises, whatever platform, format or context we tell stories in. I believe passionately that its how we make people feel that defines our success, and yet we don’t seem to talk about this as much as we do about the technicalities,  business models and rote descriptions of the way we do things.

There have been some great blog posts by some of the attendees – Charles from Mudlark, James Bridle, Susi O’Neill, Adam Gee, Jane Young, Rebecca Denton, Vicky Matthews, Jez Paxman, Meg Pickard and Suw Charman. Suw also filmed Sydney Padua’s talk and put it up on her site, as well as a video of Neil Gaiman reading the story that Cory Doctorow told on the day.

Thanks to everyone who has written up their thoughts – they’re all really insightful and useful, and they’ll make The Story 2011 an even better event (yes, I am going to do it again, but I won’t start thinking about it until autumn). If you’ve written up your day, or posted photographs, please do let me know by leaving a note in the comments here. I’ve recorded the talks, so will put them up here as soon as I can, and will also put up the medium format pictures when they’re back from the lab.

Finally – thank you to everyone who turned up. Its a pretty nerve-wracking thing to decide to organise an event like this, especially if you’ve got a day job and a (very understanding) family as well. It was all worth it to hear the response from everyone there, whether it was laughter and applause at the event, tweets through the day, or cogitative reflections in the days afterwards. You’ve made it all worthwhile, and a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks!

[UPDATE: more blog reports from DigitLondon; James Hogwood; Matt Jukes; Mun Keat Looi; Gill Wildman. Thanks everyone!]

It’s only a few days now till The Story, and its all getting very exciting. I’ve spent most of the last few days working with the Newspaper Club team and the brilliant designer Alex Parrott on The Story newspaper. It’s looking absolutely gorgeous – Alex is a genius designer, and I highly recommend him. He’s taken the idea of ‘embellishments’ in the definition of the word ‘storytelling’ as an inspiration, and has come up with a design that is clean, yet illustrative. Here’s the logotype he’s created to give you an idea:

And here’s Alex’s notes on his design:

Right then – a few people have asked about missing tickets, lunch plans, etc, so here’s a quick FAQ if you’re coming to The Story next week. Please add any other questions in the comments and I’ll get back to you asap

How do I get to Conway Hall?
The Conway Hall is at 25, Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL. The nearest tube is Holborn, and there is information about bus routes on the Conway Hall’s website.

Is the venue accessible?
There is a street level entrance to Conway Hall on Red Lion Square. The main hall is at the same level, and there is a disabled toilet available. The balcony seating area is not accessible, but we’ll make sure there’s room for everyone with access needs in the main hall. There is also an induction loop in the hall for those with hearing impairments.

What are the best places for tea/coffee/lunch?
We’ll be providing tea and coffee at the breaks in the lobby of the Conway Hall. We won’t be providing lunch, but there are loads of lovely sandwich shops and cafes on Theobalds Rd and Lambs Conduit Way, which are a few steps from The Conway Hall. There’s also a lovely cafe in Red Lion Square itself, and plenty of room to sit and eat in the Square gardens.

I booked a ticket but haven’t got my ticket yet!
Eventbrite should have emailed you a PDF of the ticket as soon as your payment went through. If Paypal still has an old email address for you then it could have been sent there instead. If you still can’t find it, email me with the booking name or email address used and I’ll resend the ticket. We’ll have printed lists of all the bookings on the day, so if you can’t find it at all, just turn up with proof of your identity (this will need to be the name you’ve booked the ticket under) and that’ll be fine.

I bought a ticket but something has come up and I can’t now come
Ach – that’s a pity. The best thing to do would be to leave a comment on this post offering your ticket to someone else – I know a few people have transferred tickets already, and that’s fine – just let me know you won’t be there, and the name of the person who will be coming in your place

Someone booked my ticket for me, and their name is on the ticket
Don’t worry – either email with the name of the person who booked the ticket and the name you want to change, or just turn up on the day with their ticket and explain it to us on the door. We’ll cross people off by the name we have, so as long as only one person claims each ticket, its fine with us.

Fancy a pint afterwards?
You betcha. I think I’ll need it. The event finishes at 4.30, and its a Friday, so I make that beer o’clock. I haven’t booked anywhere to drink afterwards, but The Square Pig on the opposite corner of Red Lion Square looks big enough to hold a fair few people, so I’d recommend we try and convene there. If I get time, I might try to reserve their basement, but if not, we’ll all spill out onto the street.

I can’t make it – are you recording the talks?
Yes – I’m taking an audio feed out from the sound desk, so will try and release the talks as podcasts as soon as I can after the event. It might take me a while, though, so don’t hold your breath…

Right – I think that’s most of the things people have asked me. I’m getting unbelievably excited, mainly because I went to the venue with the tech team on Tuesday, and there’s something magical about standing in an empty hall, imagining how its going to be when its full of people. And then there’s the Newspaper, which is looking fantastic….

See you next Friday!

Hi all,

The Story will kick off next Friday at 10am, with a packed house – there’s only 3 tickets left, and I expect them to go by next Friday. Here’s the running order for the day. Russell Davies will be hosting, so I expect him to keep everyone to time so we can all go for a cheeky friday night pint at the end.

09.30 Doors Open
10.00 Cory Doctorow
10.20 Aleks Krotoski
10.40 Jon Spooner
11.00 Tim Etchells
11.20 Coffee
11.40 Sydney Padua
12.00 Tony White
12.10 Annette Mees & Tassos Stevens
12.30 Lunch
13.30 Kevin Slavin
13.50 Alexis Kennedy & Paul Arendt
14.10 Tim Wright
14.30 Kat Akingbade
14.50 Coffee
15.10 Livity
15.30 Stuart Nolan
15.50 David Hepworth
16.20 Thanks and goodbye

Its only a few weeks till The Story on Feb 19th, so its time to give you more details and the final speaker list. If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now, as there’s only a few left!

First of all, a note about timings. The full speaker running order will be announced on the day, but the event itself will run from 10am till 4.30pm. So you get to have a lie-in (if you live in London) and can get away for an cheeky drink in the evening. Somehow, in between those time, we’ll fit in all our brilliant speakers, with time for coffee and lunch. I’ll make sure the speakers are running to time, so don’t be late! And here’s the last two to add to the list:

Stuart Nolan has been a professional performer, on and off, since the age of 18, and after 15 years being distracted by proper work, first as a cell biologist and then by digital media, he took the opportunity afforded by a NESTA Fellowship to focus on the design and performance of mystery. Since 2002 he has been running Designing Mystery workshops with performers, technologists, writers, media producers, and artists. He has also researched how teenagers respond to the mysterious and the magical in new technologies. He’s promising to going to talk about choice, risk, and reward by performing an effect that uses those themes. (possibly followed by a second effect if there is time). Believe me, you do *not* want to miss this…

Tony White is the author of many novels, including Foxy-T described by Toby Litt as ‘one of the best London novels you’ll ever get to read’. I agree, go read it – its fantastic. Tony was writer in residence at the Science Museum, London, and published a special free edition of his short fiction Albertopolis Disparu. He has published numerous works of fiction in collaboration with visual artists, edited and co-edited short story collections including Croatian Nights (Serpent’s Tail, 2005), and founded the samizdat imprint Piece of Paper Press in 1994. In 2009 Tony was Leverhulme Trust writer in residence at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Three new short stories from Tony White are available in EPUB format supported by the Leverhulme Trust for free download here.

Finally, I’m very pleased to announce that Russell Davies – the post-digital guru behind the Interesting event that inspired The Story, and co-founder of  Really Interesting Group – has agreed to host the event. I needed someone to be a genial host to glue the event together, and Russell was the first person that came to mind. It also means I can forget about that bit and focus on making sure that people, technology, newspapers and tea-urns are all in the right place at the right time.

So – just over two weeks to go then. Hotels are booked. Newspaper content is coming in think and fast. Tickets are nearly sold out. I’ve spoken to nearly all the speakers and been blown away by what they’re planning to do. This looks like it might just work after all…

Hi,

Paypal have now restored the account, so tickets are back on sale via the Eventbrite page.

Apologies again for the slight hiccup…

matt

Hello,

I’ve been having ongoing problems with Paypal, as they seem to believe that receiving lots of small payments, despite the fact that I pre-warned them I was expecting them as I was running a conference, marks me out as a money launderer. They’ve put a limitation on my account meaning that I can’t take payments for tickets at the moment. Don’t worry – I think its sorted now, but it might take a few hours to process. I’ll let you know once the tickets are available for sale again.

[UPDATE - tickets are now on sale again! apologies for the slight hiccup]

matt

Happy New Year to you all!

Its less than six weeks till The Story, so I’m cracking on with the real world organisation of people, hotels, newspapers and tea urns that I’ll need to do before the day itself. The speakers list is almost complete now, so here’s a few more to tantalise you into buying a ticket (if you haven’t already):

Tim Wright is one of the true pioneers of online storytelling. Working as part of the shadowy XPT corporation, he created Online Caroline, an early precursor of web dramas like LonelyGirl15, way back in 2001. He’s continued to experiment with storytelling, interactivity and the web, working on things like Telectrascope and the brilliant Kidmapper – a quixotic attempt to retrace the journey in Robert Louis Stephenson’s classic novel Kidnapped. Tim will talk about SWYWTH, a new project for Radio 4 about sectrets, relationships and whether writers ever really know what they’re doing.

Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt are the co-founders of FailBetter Games, and are currently occupying most of the people I know with their brilliant Twitter game Echo Bazaar. Unlike the simplistic storyworld of many social media games, Echo Bazaar is set in Fallen London, a brilliantly evocative and detailed alter-ego for the real city. I’m really pleased to have Alexis and Paul along for The Story, as they’ve created something of real substance and depth, and are getting a brilliant response from their players. I’m really keen to find out more about how they made it, how they run it, and what they’re doing next…

Livity are behind a number of really innovative projects, working with young people to produce magazines, blogs and interactive projects like Dubplate Drama. More recently, they established and run the Spinebreakers community for Penguin, engaging teenagers in reading, writing and talking about storytelling. I love the way that Livity sees their role as creating spaces and platforms for other’s stories, so I’ve asked them to think about how they can do that at The Story itself. I’m hoping they’ll bring along some of the readers and writers from their projects and will create something as inspiring and illuminating as their online and printed projects.

Right – that’s nearly everyone. There are a few more I’ll reveal later, but the speakers’ list is about 90% there now. So if you haven’t got a ticket yet – get them here whilst you still can!

Hello!

The speakers list is shaping up very nicely indeed, with a very eclectic bunch of very talented people lined up to talk. I’m waiting on a couple of long-range punts before I finalise the list, but I’m really, really excited about the people who have confirmed so far. Here’s two more for this list:

Kevin Slavin is the co-founder of Area/Code, a brilliant digital agency in New York who specialise in making strange and wonderous games for just about every platform you can think of. In particular, they make BIG GAMES that take over urban spaces and introduce playful storytelling into everyone’s lives. I’ve seen Kevin talk at a few events, and he is a visionary speakers on how technology and stories can transform our cities and re-engage us with our community. He’s spent quite a lot of time in Detroit recently, which is almost an failed state in itself, and has been thinking about how storytelling and play can change the very fabric of the city and lay the groundwork for further regeneration. I’ve asked him to tell us some stories about Detroit as it is, was, and might be in the future.

Kat Akingbade is the co-star of Channel 4′s recent psuedo-science busting project with Derren Brown - Science of Scams. In her videos, tweets and blogs, Kat has been spending the last few months trawling through the web for stories of weird phenomena, pseudo-science and other tall tales. Kat has serious scientific chops, including doctoral research in Biological Anthropology and Pharmacology, combined with journalistic experience at Nature and Radio 4. Kat will talk about the power of stories, belief and the scientific method, using her favourite scams to illustrate how the relationship between science and society often hinges on a well-told tale.

So – has that whetted your appetite? The final batch of tickets are now on sale at Eventbrite, so get along there NOW if you haven’t yet got one.

Finally, many of you will have come across The Newspaper Club, who are developing a service to create bespoke, short-run newspapers via the web. Channel 4 have funded the project through 4IP, and they’ve provided newspapers for book launches, conferences (like the excellent Playful), festivals, and even the Spurs/Arsenal Premier League derby. As a Spurs fan, that one still hurts a bit.

So – Having spoken to Russell and Ben at The Newspaper Club, I’m pleased to say we’ll be producing a newspaper for The Story. I’d like it to include all manner of stuff about stories and storytelling, reflecting the diversity of the event itself. If you’ve got something you’d like to suggest for the Newspaper, please leave a comment with details on this post and i’ll get back to you asap!

Hi all,

The second tranche of tickets have sold out, so I’m bringing forward the release of the final tranche of 300 tickets. These will cost £30 each, and will be on sale from the Eventbrite site on Monday,December 7th, at noon GMT. I’ll also have some new speakers to announce then, so watch this space!

matt

Hello!

The first batch of 50 ‘early bird’ tickets went on sale last week, and sold out in less than an hour. The second batch of 100 tickets will go on sale for £25 at noon today on Eventbrite. The final batch will go on sale in a fortnight, although i’ll bring this forward if the tickets go as quickly as they did last week.

We also have two new speakers to announce!

David Hepworth is a legend in the magazine industry, with an illustrious career spanning his early work on Smash Hits to running his own publishing company, Development Hell, responsible for the only two music magazines worth reading – Word and Mixmag. As well as this, he’s also a brilliantly witty blogger, broadcaster and podcast-er, and recently started a monthly story-telling evening in an Islington Pub called True Stories Told Live. We had a great drink last week to discuss what David could talk about at The Story, and I’m really eager to hear him on the day – he’s a fantastic raconteur and speaker.

Dr Aleks Krotoski has the great taste to live in my home-town, Hove, but that isn’t the reason I’ve asked her to speak at The Story. Many of you will know Aleks from her regular column on culture and video games for The Guardian, some of you might have seen her excellent talk on games and storytelling at last year’s Dconstruct conference, and you’re all about to see her present the BBC’s new history of the internet TV programme Digital Revolutions. Aleks is one of the most informed and witty writers and broadcasters in the UK on games and internet culture, and I’m really glad she can come along to The Story. She’s also just completed her PHD, so we should really call her Dr Alex from now on…

Excellent! More speakers will be announced next week, along with more tickets for sale and, hopefully, some other exciting news…

Right then – this is starting to shape up nicely. I’ve spent the last few weeks getting loads of great feedback from the blog and friends about possible speakers, and lots of great advice about how to run the conference, payments, etc, especially from Conway Hall veterans Toby ‘Playful‘ Barnes and Russell ‘Interesting‘ Davies. I’m very lucky to be following in their giant footsteps at the Conway, and hope The Story will be at least half as fantastic as their events.

I have for the first time a complete speaker schedule mapped out, with about half confirmed. Here’s a couple more to whet your appetite:

Tim Etchells is, quite frankly, a genius. I’ve loved his work since I was an Art student many years ago, and used to see his pioneering performance group Forced Entertainment at the Third Eye in Glasgow. His writing covers just about every medium you can think of, from theatre to books to installations to digital art work. I’ve worked with him on two projects – one using SMS, and one involving a bus-stop in Bradford, which gives you an idea of the breadth of his practise. But the reason I want him at The Story is not to do with his technical innovation, but because I think his writing captures the taste and texture of modern life in ways that are equally funny, shocking, poignant and heartbreaking. Very few other writers have the emotional impact that Tim does, and his work is filmic in its ability to subtly alter the way you look at the world around you. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does on the day.

Sydney Padua is an incredibly talented graphic artist who created a huge stir on the web recently with her brilliant series of strips imagining the adventures of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. As well as being a fantastic artist and witty writer, she also works across 2D and 3D for films and television, most recently as one of the animators updating Ray Harryhausen’s epic animation for the forthcoming remake of Clash Of The Titans. Getting someone to talk about storytelling and graphic arts was one of my priorities, so I’m really pleased that Sydney can come along and talk about her work.

And finally – tickets are now on sale! [Sorry - the first batch is sold out already!] They’re going to be released in 3 tranches – 50 Early Bird tickets will go on sale from today for up to a fortnight at a reduced price of £20. The second trance will go on sale in Decemberat noon on Monday, 30th November at £25, with a final tranche on sale after that for the full £30 ticket price. I’m releasing them in these tranches to help cover my costs as they emerge – The Early Bird tickets will cover the core venue/equipment hire; the second tranche will cover speaker fees and travel; with the third tranche providing the budget for additional suprises, treats and delights that I’ll be able to organise as the tickets sell out.

So – get yourself over to the Eventbrite page and get your tickets from midday today!

First of all – thanks to everyone for the suggestions via comments and emails for speakers. I’m working through them and starting to approach people to speak at the event next year, but am still looking for more ideas. I’ve had lots of suggestions for oral storytellers and interactive/performance theatre-type-people, but I’d love some more left-field ideas.

I’d love to find someone who edits movie trailers, as i’m intrigued how you balance telling the story with *not* telling the story. Actually, someone talking in an interesting way about Spoilers generally would be brilliant. Also, Propaganda, or storytelling in politics. Storytelling with/about objects would be interesting, as would story telling with music (but not necessarily song…)

In the meantime, I’m pleased to say that a few people I’ve approached have now said yes, so here’s the first group of speakers:

Cory Doctorow needs no introduction, as he’s a brilliant sci-fi writer, copyfight activist, blogger and all round internet superhero. I’ve seen Cory speak many times, but I’ve never heard him read a story. So this is a really selfish way of rectifying this, and hearing one of the most interesting sci-fi writers of our time actually read a story, and not mention copyright once. I’m hoping he’ll wear a cape.

Jon Spooner is one of the co-founders of Unlimited Theatre, one of the most innovative theatre companies in the UK. I saw Jon perform Ethics Of Progress, an amazing monologue about the quantam entaglement, wonder and the potential for evil in technology. It was an incredible piece of storytelling, so I’ve asked Jon to come along and do something similar. He’s currently working with space scientists and primary school kids, so might bring a work in progress along from this work, which sounds fantastic.

Annette Mees is part of Coney, a group of really exciting writers, performers and artists who tell stories in strange and intrgiuing ways. They have just finished a run of A Small Town Anywhere at Battersea Arts Centre, which used game structures to tell a story about how political ideals threaten the communities of a small town. It sounded like an incredible, emotional experience, in which there was no ‘audience’, and everyone took part in telling the story. I’m looking forward to what Annette will come up with for The Story next year…

I’ve nearly confirmed a few other excellent speakers, so I’ll update the list as soon as I have them confirmed. If there’s someone you’d like to see, please recommend them in the comments!

Unfortunately, this isn’t a speaker announcement, so don’t get too excited (although he would be my fantasty speaker if I could afford his fees and airfare…)

I’m currently reading Michael Chabon‘s Maps and Legends, which is a fantastic collection of his essays and factual work, and last night read ‘Kids’ Stuff’, a short piece (based on his speech at the 2004 Eisner Awards) asking why kids don’t read comics anymore. As someone interested in commissioning for kids, and thinking about the kind of stories they like to immerse themselves in, the whole piece rung true, and gathered up lots of threads of thinking that have cluttered my head over the last 6 months. The whole collection is worth reading, but I’ll post two extended excerpts – the first on how we often use competition for attention as an excuse for being brave in our storytelling; and the second on how we should approach storytelling for children (NB – the quotes are from the transcript of the Eisner lecture, so slightly different from the published essay):

“A lot of publishers will tell you that there’s too much competition for the kid dollar these days, and that comics will inevitably lose out to video games, sfx-laden films, the Internet, etc. I’m sorry, I know there’s some truth to the claim, but I just don’t buy it. I think it’s a cop out. And I think it’s typical of our weird naïveté about how sophisticated we are vis a vis our parents and grandparents, the sense of retrospective superiority we tend to display toward the them and their vanished world, as if there has not always been tons of other cool stuff for a kid to spend his or her time and limited funds on besides comic books. In the early days of comics, in fact, unlike now, there was all kinds of stuff to do that was not only fun and exempt from adult supervision but absolutely free. And there is no competition like free.”

“So, how do we make great comic books for kids?

I guess I have one concrete suggestion in that regard, which I’ll get to in a minute. First I have a few general principles. I have drawn these principles in part from my memories of the comics I loved when I was young. But I think they hold true as well for the best and most successful works of children’s literature.

1) Let’s not tell stories that we think “kids of today” might like. That is a route to inevitable failure and possibly loss of sanity. We should tell stories that we would have liked as kids. Twist endings, the unexpected usefulness of unlikely knowledge, nobility and bravery where it’s least expected, and the sudden emergence of a thread of goodness in a wicked nature, those were the kind of stories told by the writers and artists of the comic books that I liked. The first two, very generally speaking, you tended to find more often at DC; the second two at Marvel.

2) Let’s tell stories that, over time, build up an intricate, involved, involving mythology that is also accessible, comprehensible, at any point of entry. The intricacy, the accretion of lore over time should be both inventive and familiar, founded in old mythologies and fears but fully reinterpreted, reimagined. It will demand, it will ache, to be mastered by a child’s mythology-mastering imagination. The accessibility will come from our making a commitment to tell a full, complete story, or a complete piece of a story, in every issue. This kind of layering of intricate lore and narrative completeness was a hallmark of the great Superman family books.  I think it’s a trait also shared by the Potter books, the Lemony Snicket books, and many others.

3) Let’s cultivate an unflagging readiness as storytellers to retell the same stories with endless embellishment. Anybody who thinks that kids get bored by hearing the same story over and over again has never spent time telling stories to kids. The key, as in baroque music, is repetition with variation. Again the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman books, written by unflagging storytellers like Edmond Hamilton and the Otto Binder, were exemplary in this regard. The proliferation of theme-and-variation there verges, at times, on sheer, splendid madness.

4) Let’s blow their little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are good things. But a mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.

Okay, now we get to my one concrete suggestion. If it seems a little obvious, or has already been tried, forgive me. But I can’t help noticing that in the world of children’s literature, an overwhelming preponderance of stories are stories about children. The same is true of films for children: the central characters are nearly always a child, a pair, or a group of children. Comic books, however, even those theoretically aimed at children, are almost always about adults, or teenagers. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?  Maybe somebody should try putting out a truly thrilling, honestly observed and remembered, richly imagined, involved and yet narratively straightforward comic book for children, about children.”

That just about sums up the kind of storytelling I want to get behind. Lets blow their little minds…

Hello!

This all started here.

The response to the blog and on twitter was huge and pretty overwhelming. So overwhelming, that I actually did something about it, and now have The Conway Hall in London booked for Friday, February 19th, 2010; and also built this site (not a bad URL, eh?) and the obligatory Twitter feed.

A lot of people had brilliant ideas for events, speakers and other things we could incorporate into the event, but it made me realise the subject area is so huge I need to focus it a bit. It would be a mistake to limit it to a certain genre or way of telling stories, as the whole point of the event is to celebrate storytelling in all its diversity. But at the same time, I don’t really want to talk about the theory or business of storytelling, as there’s plenty of other academic and professional conferences out there that do this very well indeed. Instead, The Story is going to be about the sheer visceral pleasure of telling a story, or being told a story – whether this is live, recorded, acted, performed – whatever.

So – i’d like to ask again for recommendations and contacts for good people who could come along to do a turn. It might be one person, a pair, a group – whatever. There is only one rule:

1 – You have to recommend someone/thing you’ve seen yourself
I want to here about the last time someone amazed you, made your jaw drop, your heart beat faster or your hair stand on end. Tell a little story about how amazing they are, and we’ll try and track them down for the event

So – if you think you know someone who will be good at The Story, please leave a note in the comments or email thestory2010 at gmail dot com.

Remember – this is being done on a shoestring, whilst holding down a dayjob. I’d love to invite people from all over the world, and fly them over, but its unlikely. I’m unlikely to be able to pay anyone either, except local travel costs, so bear that in mind as well. If it goes well this year, then who knows what kind of marvellous things we could do next year…