A Love for Story Telling

On Thursday, I was at a party and having a conversation with a friend of mine which ended up helping me articulate a realization about myself.  I love story telling.

All too often, it seems like I run into folks who are doing amazing things but don’t know how to tell the world about what they’re doing.  I love working with them so that I can tell their story and get others excited about their achievements.

A desire to tell their story is what got me in the door at Clearspring as their Community Manager.   Last year, I was at the Library of Congress developing a strategy that ran me again and again into a problem that Clearspring’s widget platform solved.  I kept on asking myself, “Why do people not know about this?”  Ever since I joined the team, I’ve been traveling to the far corners of the country and the Internet telling it’s story.

Speaking of the Library of Congress, during my tenure there, I was running into the same feeling.  “Why do people not know about this?”  There are so many amazing people that people need to meet.  There was so much amazing content and history that people need to experience.  I wanted to tell it’s story. I still do.

I think the Library’s Flickr project helped people get to know and experience the breadth of history in the content at the Library, which is REALLY cool.

For me, this love of story telling isn’t a recent development.  When I was much younger, I always loved imagining stories and acting in children’s theater.  In middle school, I was even in a story telling competition.  We had to memorize a children’s story and recite it to an audience.

Often, it feels like the difference between a great idea and a sensation which everyone is taking about is the ability of someone to tell their story.

So… when’s the last time that you talked to someone about what they’re doing and got excited to the point where you wanted to go out and tell their story?