OtherThanThat

So many thoughts … so little time.

SXSW is, if nothing else, a maelstrom of merriment with a heavy overlay of brain stuffing content and parties, parties, parties. This year, in addition to producing six VIP events (in 7 days) and executing on three speaking gigs, I was thrilled when the folks at Flipboard asked if I would be willing to hop onto their trademark red couch to do an interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring just prior to his appearance at a private lunch for Nokia.

With a voice sounding something shy of Debra Winger, I sat down with Tim just before he regaled a group of about 25 specially invited guests with tales of the thinking behind the creation of Heroes and how that has evolved into the latest projects on which he’s working. In this brief interview, Tim lays the groundwork for transmedia storytelling, or as he prefers to call it, “cross platform” story telling. Frankly I think all the monikers are silly. Storytelling as an art has evolved since the dawn of time. In reality stories have never been linear, but the methods for telling them have … until now. Just think about the way people share stories – they start talking about one aspect of the story then head on one tangent, then another, then another, winding their way and (hopefully) coming back to the main theme and arc of the tale. Today we have a remarkably rich tapestry of ways to tell stories, and by integrating them one gets, as Tim describes it, a truly 360 degree view of a narrative.

And in a truly classy move, the folks from Flipboard sent me flowers to my hotel room to thank me for doing this!

Nice.

Now to the content …

And since the Internet is all about sharing, here’s an archive of the live stream of Tim’s talk at Moonshine that day: