OtherThanThat

I’m pretty lucky. I love to travel. My favorite part, though, always is coming home to San Francisco and tucking into my favorite chair (view from which is above) to write up thoughts and experiences from my time away … or catch up on my always backlogged Tivo “now playing”. In this case, the writing is all the more sweet, because this homecoming is marked by the glow from the wonderful (and wonderfully received) launch of StoryNavigation last week in New York.

For those who may have missed my announcement, here’s the item I wrote last week to detail the news.

Now I’m back home, plowing through the follow-up with the myriad amazing people with whom I had the pleasure of speaking, and of course ramping up plans for StoryNavigation sessions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC and New York. {NOTE: If your city isn’t on that list and you’re interested, just toss me a salvo by email or Twitter and we can rectify that!} Before diving too deeply into the next phases of StoryNavigation’s evolution, however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t proffer a brief recap of the week’s highlights along with some important notes of gratitude.

With that, the bullet points:

The talk: I spoke at the 140 Conference on 4/20. Whether it was the notable date or the fact that it was a super long day without more than a single 20 minute break, the crowd had thinned a bit by the time I stepped onto the stage at the 92nd Street Y. That said, this definitely fits the quality over quantity category as the response from the folks in the room and online was amazing. Of course, I already have critiqued the talk and am polishing it for a fresh go-round, and would welcome your comments. If you missed it live, here’s the video of my talk

The Feedback: I generally gauge response to a talk by what phrases or statements resonate most and whether that is consistent. Across the board, everyone dialed in immediately to my premise of “connecting ‘who’ with ‘what’.” The emphasis on the “why” of someone’s work rather than that “what” also resonated.

The Workshop: The StoryNavigation session in Gotham went swimmingly. I tested it out with slightly different format and found it worked very well. It also resulted in a very clear delineation between the StoryNavigation for individuals versus StoryNavigation customized for more corporate work – both versions being something about which I hope you’ll want to know more!

The Celebration: Words describing the event included: elegant, classy, interesting, engaging and fun. I purposely kept the gathering intimate and was thrilled to see that the amazing folks who came not only showed up but that most everyone stayed from start to finish – and in the end we had to nudge folks out the door! Thanks to Leora Israel there are some great pix of the evening I posted to Flickr.

The support: There are many people whose help contributed to last week’s success, several of whom require a specific shout-out for particularly Herculean load lifting.

• Adam Helweh and the team at Secret Sushi Creative for ensuring that the site(s) were up, operational and looking fabulous
• The Roger Smith Hotel posse especially Brian Simpson, Adam Wallace and Martha Rodriguez Gomez for helping make the party a success
• As noted above – Leora Israel for the photography
• Christine Ngo and Jenna Boller at Ogilvy for helping orchestrate and for introducing me to their New York colleague Sophia Aladenoye – who stepped up to provide on site support for the party.
• And last but certainly not least – my dear friend and long time colleague, Ken Kaplan and the team Intel for graciously sponsoring this launch as part of my role with their Intel Insiders program.

What does this all mean? Where does it go next? Good questions.

As noted above, there will be a schedule of StoryNavigation sessions coming soon so keep an eye for opportunities to participate in your latitude/longitude. This spot also will finally be a more consistent flow of conversation related to story telling and the imperative of integrating your personal perspective in every business story you tell … so stay tuned!