The Story 2012

Its taken me a lot longer than normal to write a thank you blogpost after The Story 2012. Partly this is because Storythings is about to launch a new project for Faber & Faber, but also because its taken me a while to gather my thoughts. It was quite a day, so thank you to everyone who came along for the event, or who helped out on the day. In particular, thanks to:

The speakers – you were all fantastic, interesting, compelling and funny.
Meg Pickard – for being such a brilliant host
Richard Ayers, Sophie Walker, Rebecca Denton, Jo Roach and Holly Swain for their fantastic help on the  day with registration, speaker wrangling and technical issues
Live Union for providing the PA and recording the talks
Paul A Young for making the incredible edible-running-order chocolate bars
Nicole Yershon and Ogilvy Labs for sponsoring the teas and coffees
Alex Parrott for design work on The Story logo and the chocolate packaging

There really was an incredible atmosphere on the day, and this was down to everyone mentioned above, and everyone who came along. Thanks so much – its fantastically rewarding to run something that people respond to with such enthusiasm.

One of the things I love about running The Story is reading the blog posts afterwards. The event seems to create different ideas, thoughts and connections in different people. There never is a theme, really, but on the day all sorts of subtle connections emerge between the different talks, and I love reading about other people’s interpretations of the day. Below is a list of the ones I’ve noticed so far – do let me know if you’ve shared thoughts or photos, and I’ll put a link to them here.

Finally, I will be putting up recordings of some of the talks, as soon as I’ve been able to edit them down and check the content with the speakers. Unfortunately, we had a computer crash in the morning session, so I don’t have a record of all those speakers, but we have the afternoon sessions, and I’ll get them up as soon as I can. In the meantime, here’s your blog posts and photos:

Liz Henry

Rishi Dastidar’s Storify of tweets from the day

Adam Gee

Mary Hamilton’s Storify of tweets from the day

Mary Hamilton’s write up of the day

Ellen De Vries

Jane Dallaway

Saul Cozens

Kat Sommers

Dean Vipond

Matt Edgar

Matthew Sheret

Tim Wright

Russell Stearman

Drawnalism’s brilliant sketches of the speakers

Photos tagged with ‘story2012′ on Flickr

Many people have asked if there is a mailing list to hear about The Story next year, so I’ve created one. The list is for Storythings, the company I’ve created to run The Story and other projects, so you’ll get emails about our projects as well. But it will be very low traffic indeed, so don’t worry. So if you want to stay in touch, sign up here. Tinyletter emails can get caught in spam filters, so if you don’t get a response, check it isn’t in there.

10.00 Welcome – Meg Pickard
10.05 Ministry of Stories
10.20 Matt Sheret/Simon Thornton
10.40 Jeremy Deller

11.00 Coffee

11.20 Liz Henry
11.40 Anthony Owen
12.00 Matthew Herbert

12.20 Lunch

13.20 Tom Watson & Emily Bell
13.40 Scott Burnham
14.00 Fiona Raby

14.20 Coffee

14.40 Ellie Harrison
15.00 Phil Stuart & Tom Chatfield
15.20 Karen/Jeremy Leslie
15.40 Danny O’Brien
16.00 Finish

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.

What is the hashtag for the event?
If you’re tweeting, blogging or uploading photos of the day, please use #story2012 as a hashtag. The wifi in The Conway Hall isn’t up to much, though, so feel free to put the phones, ipads and other devices in your bag for the day, and let your mind have some fun on its own for a bit.

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 booked a ticket for a group/someone else, but the PDF only has my name on it
This is a bit of a limitation of using Eventbrite – it doesn’t seem to handle group bookings/alternate names very well. There are two ways round this – just give the person/group you bought the tickets for a copy of the PDF each, and we’ll cross them off when they turn up, making sure the right number of people come for your group (so if you print more PDFs than tickets, you won’t get extra places!). Or, if you can email me the list of people in the group, we’ll make a note of their names and tick them off as they turn up. Either way is fine by us.

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 send a tweet to @thestory2012, and I’ll retweet it around to see if anyone else wants to buy the ticket from you. If you’re not on Twitter, email me and I’ll tweet it myself.

Fancy a pint afterwards?
You betcha. I think I’ll need it. The event finishes at 4.00, and its a Friday, so I make that beer o’clock. Last year most of us retired to The Square Pig on the opposite corner of Red Lion Square. So that sounds like a plan again this year.

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. A few of the talks from 2011 are up on the Storythings website. Not all the talks really work as podcasts – particularly ones from artists that involve lots of copyrighted material – but I’ll put up the ones that I think work well.

Will there be anything to buy/read/do at The Story this year?
Yes! so bring some spare cash. As we did in 2011, the Hoxton St Monster Supply shop (aka the Ministry of Stories) will set up a temporary store in the foyer, as I want to raise as much money as possible for them. Some of the speakers will have magazines and other things for sale as well, so bring some money along if you love buying beautiful story-related things. I’ve also planned a bit of a treat for everyone attending this year, but I’m keeping that under wraps (literally!) until the day itself…

Will it be cold?
This is about the time that I start looking at the medium-range weather forecasts with a nervous look on my face. Running an event in February means there’s always the chance of a cold snap, and we’re in the middle of a particularly snowy one at the moment. Its looking like it will be a bright, sunny, but cold day, and The Conway Hall takes a while to warm up, so make sure you wrap up well.

I think that’s it. If there’s anything else you need to know, please leave a comment below. See you on Friday 17th!

January is always a little scary, as the turn of the new year means that The Story goes from ‘something that’s happening next year’ to ‘OMG its in a few weeks!’ So I’ve spent the last few days booking hotels, getting details out to speakers, and generally tidying things up so we’re all ready to go on Feb 17th.

The good news is that The Story is almost sold out! There’s currently only 6 tickets left on our Eventbrite site, so if you haven’t got one yet, get one NOW! Thanks to all of you who have bought tickets – you’ve helped raise £2000 for The Ministry of Stories, which is a fantastic project. The Ministry will be at The Story this year, giving us an update on their brilliant first year, and selling their unique monster supplies in the foyer.

I’m also very pleased to announce our host this year – Meg Pickard – and the final speaker – Scott Burnham.

Meg Pickard is the Head of Digital Engagement for Guardian News & Media, responsible for developing and supporting social web strategies and participatory experiences. At the time of The Story, however, she will have just started her maternity leave, so will be focusing on delivering a different sort of experience for a while. Meg’s particular areas of interest are social engagement and the emergence of new forms of collaborative and participatory media, which are inspired by an enduring curiosity about the cultural/social/psychological aspects of digital life plus ongoing personal passion for publishing, participating and performing online. She has been blogging since it started with a W and lives in London and online.

Scott Burnham is a social entrepreneur, creative strategist, creative director and writer dedicated to reprogramming our relationships with design and the city, working with a number of cities, institutions and publications worldwide. He created and directed Urban Play for Droog Design and the city of Amsterdam to launch a new generation of objects and areas for the city. Working with Stefan Sagmeister, Marti Guixe, NL Architects and others a series of objects and areas were created as public catalysts for further design interventions. Recently he created the Bairro Criativo project for Porto, Portugal to open idea generation, grass-roots innovation and creative processes to wider audiences in the city and create direct design responses to the city’s needs. Scott spoke at the excellent Narrative In Practise event last year, which I couldn’t attend, but so many people who did attend raved about Scott’s talk, so I had to invite him to The Story!

So that’s it – all the speakers are booked, travel and accommodation sorted, and tickets nearly sold out. The only thing left is a rather exciting little present which I’m hoping to be able to give to everyone coming to the event. More details nearer the time…

Tom Watson and Emily Bell will be at The Story talking about the Hackgate scandal, giving us an insiders’ perspective on how the story unfolded, what it feels like to be part of a breaking news story, and what the scandal means for journalists and newsgathering. Tom Watson is the MP for West Bromwich East, and in 2011 was made Deputy Chair of the Labour Party. He has led many campaigns within parliament, including opposition to the Digital Economy Act in 2010. Emily Bell is Professor of Journalism and Director of the Tow Center at Columbia University. Before that, Emily was Director of Digital Content at The Guardian, where she pioneered many of their digital initiatives, positioning The Guardian as one of the world’s leading online newspapers.

Karen Lubbock is the creator of Karen Magazine, a ‘magazine made out of the ordinary’. An antidote to celebrity lifestyle journalism, Karen Magazine is a fascinating and often moving journal of ordinary lives, things and people. Jeremy Leslie runs MagCulture, a blog celebrating editorial design in magazines and print culture. He has over 20 years’ experience in the magazine and print industry, and has published two books on the subject – Issues and MagCulture. Jeremy first introduced me to Karen Magazine after The Story last year, and I was immediately hooked. I’m really glad that Karen is coming to talk about the magazine in Feb, and am really looking forward to listening to her and Jeremy in conversation.

So that’s pretty much the line up for next year – tickets are on sale now, so get them whilst you can!

Anthony Owen is widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s most prolific and influential magical creators, writers and producers. His original magical effects, routines and ideas have been featured by performers around the world and he has acted as a consultant for numerous performers and theatre, film and television productions. He is the author of over twenty books on magic, including Some Tricks, Some More Tricks and The Sticky Blue Book. He is also the BAFTA and Rose D’or award winning producer of over one hundred hours of television magic shows including all of Derren Brown‘s series and specials, and The Real Hustle for BBC3. I’m a huge fan of magic, and how magicians use various techniques in their storytelling, so I’m really looking for ward to hearing from Anthony.

Tom Chatfield and Phil Stuart will be talking about The End, a game produced for Channel 4 Education about philosophy, belief and death. Phil is the Creative Director of Preloaded, one of the UK’s most innovative game design companies, who have produced award-winning games for clients including the BBC, Channel 4 and The Wellcome Trust. Tom  is a freelance writer and the author of three books about digital culture. He has a doctorate from St John’s College, Oxford, and is an associate editor at Prospect magazine, a guest fellow at the Said Business School, Oxford, and a faculty member at the School of Life in London. He writes, speaks and broadcasts internationally on media, arts and technology, appearing at forums including TED Global, the Cannes Lions and authors@Google.

Danny O’Brien is one of the most influential writers, journalists and activists of the last 20yrs. He spent the 90s documenting the fledgling UK new media scene, working on the first iteration of Wired UK, and later starting the very influential Need To Know webzine with Dave Green. In 2005 he left the UK to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, and in 2010 moved to take on the role of Internet Advocacy Co-ordinator for the Committee To Protect Journalism. Danny was also one of the founders of the Open Rights Group, an activist group working to protect users’ rights on the internet in the UK. Danny is a fantastic writer and storyteller, and is working on some of the most pressing political and ethical issues we face as we become ever more dependent on digital networks and the stories they tell about us. I’m really looking forward to hearing about his work next February.

So – that’s another three speakers announced, and the line-up is starting to take shape. Just a few more to go – we’ll announce these as further batches of tickets go on sale. Get yours now from our Eventbrite page!

It might seem strange, or frustrating, to sell tickets this way, but there’s a good reason – selling early bird tickets helps our cashflow, as the vast amount of the cost of running conferences has to be paid up front. By September, the time the first batch went on sale, we’d already had to spend nearly £5,000 on venue hire, flights, and other costs for the event, so getting early bird ticket sales really helps our cashflow.

However, this year, it does seem that the balance between getting money up front and demand for tickets is a bit out of whack. We’re learning every year about how to sell tickets, so it might be worth sharing some data from previous The Story events to show the patterns of sales.

For the first The Story event in 2010, tickets were sold in three batches – ‘early bird’, ‘later bird’ and ‘proper tickets’. It was the first year for the event, and tickets sold pretty steadily until just the week before the event. We announced speakers in batches in the run up to the event, so that we could spread the word and drive ticket sales, and daily ticket sales fluctuated as these tweets and blog posts attracted people to buy tickets. The last few tickets sold the day before the event, and the chart looked like this:

For The Story 2011, we released tickets in just two batches – ‘early bird’ and ‘later bird’, and again released speaker information in batches. We had faster sales around ticket releases, but outside of that, sales were pretty slow until a final burst in late Jan, meaning we sold out before February, a few weeks before the event. Here’s the chart for The Story 2011:

So, this seemed to show that releasing more batches is a better way of getting early ticket sales, so for The Story 2012 we’re trying four batches, partly as a way to help cashflow, but also a way to keep down the tickets price for early bird tickets. Demand has been *way* higher than we expected, with both batches selling out in minutes. The next batch has 200 tickets, so should sell much more slowly, so apologies to anyone who has been frustrated about getting a ticket – you should be able to next Monday!

After the event next February, we’ll share the ticket sales data again- if you’re organising a conference, this is a really hard thing to get right. I’d love to see what other people are learning from organising their events.

Ellie Harrison makes work which moves constantly between the roles of ‘artist’, ‘activist’ and ‘administrator’. She uses skills drawn from each of these perspectives to create playful and engaging work, in-and-out of art world contexts, which expose and challenge the systems which control and rule over our lives, be they political, ethical, social or economic. Her work takes a variety of forms including performance spectacles, interactive installations, collaborative projects, political campaigns, media interventions, lectures, websites and coach trips. In 2009 she founded the Bring Back British Rail campaign and in February 2010 she became the first individual artist to openly publicise an Environmental Policy on her website. She lives and works in Glasgow where she is secretary of the Artists’ Lottery Syndicate and member of the Scottish Artists Union.

So that’s another of the three speakers for next year’s The Story. We’ll post up more as the other tickets go on sale. We look forward to seeing you there!

All the details about when tickets will go on sale for this and future batches are on our How Can I Get A Ticket? page.

Matthew Sheret  and Simon Thornton are coming along to talk about music, the lost art of telling a story through sequencing album tracks, and the new patterns of attention around online music. Matthew is Last.fm’s Data Griot (which basically means storyteller). As a writer and editor Matthew has worked for Newspaper Club, 4iP, Thomson Reuters and Dentsu London, and has contributed to Plan B, Solipsistic Pop and Electric Sheep among others. In 2008 Matthew co-founded We Are Words + Pictures, a team who work to promote the work of comics book writers and illustrators in the UK. He also edits and publishes the comics anthology Paper Science. Simon started  working in recording studios in the late 80s where he met a young Norman Cook and has had strong working relationship with him ever since; through chart-topping projects such as Beats International, Freak Power, and the multi-platinum album selling Fatboy Slim. An obsessive about the process of recording and its technology, he continues to work with Cook as well as many varied side projects, including music for Award winning computer games. I’ve wanted to run a session about storytelling and music at the last two Story conferences, so I’m really pleased we’ve got Matthew and Simon talking this year.

Jeremy Deller is one of the UK’s most fascinating and provocative artists. His work explores issues of collaboration, folk culture and politics through installations, video pieces and performances. In Acid Brass, he connected the brass band tradition of northern collieries to contemporary Acid House music, linking them through their shared background in working class culture. In 2009 he created Procession for the Manchester International Festival, a celebration of folk culture and urban tribes, and has worked with Alan Kane to create the Folk Archive project. Jeremy will be talking about The Battle Of Orgreave, a remarkable reconstruction of the battle between miners and police in Sheffield in 1984. Considered a turning point in Margaret Thatcher’s attempts to undermine union power in the 1980s, The Battle of Orgreave was renacted in 2001 with the collaboration of local communities affected by the miners’ strike, local policeman, and battle re-enactment societies who usually spend their weekends performing civil war battles. The Battle of Orgreave is one of my favourite works of art from the last few decades, and I’m really glad that Jeremy will be coming to The Story to talk about the work and the visceral emotions it generated.

Liz Henry is a writer, blogger, poet and polymath who is a developer at BlogHer and one of the most respected speakers and writers about technology and culture. In 2011, Liz (along with Andy Carvin from NPR and others) started questioning the identity of a prominent Lesbian blogger in Syria called Amina Abdallan Arraf al Omari. Liz’s forensic search for clues about the truth of Amina’s blogging uncovered a remarkable story that led to the revelation that Amina was actually Thomas McMasters, an American student living in Edinburgh. Liz will be at The Story this year to tell the remarkable story of the Amina affair, and what it can teach us about truth, social networks, and how literary fictions can affect real world politics.

So – that’s the first three speakers, and I hope you’re as excited as I am about the stories they’ll be sharing next February. I’ll be putting up more next week when the second batch of tickets go on sale.