The nice people at Verge Pipe Media asked me to visit with them today to talk about storytelling and multimedia tools. I had a nice time. I hope they did.
I’d built an entire slideshow presentation, complete with silly and memorable clip art. Didn’t use it. Did talk about finding the real story in the story and the value of knowing which tool to use to tell the story. We talked about writing and, for the interns, the skill set that the job market is looking for today.
I was asked about the need for quality, which was a great topic in the slideshow that we didn’t get to. I used this example:
No video so far of tonight’s 8:30p CT bright fireball/meteor that streaked over the southern sky. Hundreds of reports from 5 states
— James Spann (@spann) September 10, 2013
Those two words “so far” are an important illustration of where we are. We have gone from “Oh wow, there’s video!?” to “Of course there’s video” in just a few years.
I used my wild west metaphor. I used the industry standards example. I was able to quote author Rick Atkinson’s great analytical line about “a great sorting out.” (Only he was discussing World War II in North Africa.) That let me suggest that we are in, or are approaching, the end of the beginning. And to stand out, the quality now matters because the expectation is that it will exist. Most everything is documented in some way these days. “Good enough” is close to becoming outmoded. How we tell stories now makes all the difference.
The owner gave me some very nice compliments.
Great day @VergePipe_Media started with @kennysmith speaking to the team. Made me miss Lewis Grizzard. That's the best compliment I have.
— Don Crow (@DonCrow) September 13, 2013
Compliments which I clearly don’t deserve.
Physical therapy after that. The therapist got almost all of the problems out of the right shoulder, which were really about my neck. We did the suddenly familiar exercises for the left side to deal with the actual and persistent problem.
You know how the Internet has given us the movie re-cut art form? We can close the genre:
More on Twitter.
