The place where I worked is no longer there.

I started working in this building when I was 14. It was a shell, we put a floor in, walls, shelves for a gift shop named “Chan & Chee” (for Chandler and Conchita). She was born in the same building. Two years later the steel ball struck the building. Now it’s a county owned garage.

How could a twenty minute story be condensed to three minutes? How is someone who doesn’t use a computer going to make their own video? What have I gotten myself into?

These were all questions that flowed through my mind as I sat through the first day of a CDS Workshop. I wasn’t really in the workshop, but instead, got to be an observer. I’m still not sure which seat was the best to be in... Read more.

The first story I intended to write was about my father's achievements with the Alberta Métis Settlements, such as being one of the four signers to bring in the Métis accord (self governance), but as I wrote, I realized there were a lot of details I didn’t know. I wrote "Like Father Like Son" not by conscious choice, but by more of a spiritual intuition. It was something I needed to share to breathe a new light, and to explore more in depth the bond between father and son. So I drifted to something I knew deeply… the story of a boy and his hero, a story about inspiration and coming of age.

Janet, the rancher I worked for in the late 1990s, called me out of the blue last week . . . Recently I was looking at a photograph I took during that one of those calving season. Why I was looking at this photograph had nothing to do with working at the ranch, but rather to do with my work at CDS, about desire paths, about wanting to be acknowledged and feel enabled. I don’t tell Janet this, although she would have listened deeply. Instead I describe the photograph to her and in doing so tell a story. She remembers…

"Why do you volunteer?" The SharedTime project asks volunteers at nonprofits in Toronto to answer this question and to probe deeply, unearthing the real reasons they started – and continue – to give back. Over the past two years, the Center for Digital Storytelling has worked with Volunteer Toronto on the SharedTime project to help capture the spirit of volunteerism in Toronto.

Eric held us spellbound. We knew we were witnessing a moment especially rich in humanity, in dignity, in compassion, in nobility, in tapping into the most important things that make us human. His story was about finding out he was HIV-positive. All the storytellers in the room were also HIV-positive and were telling different versions of this story. About how HIV made them stronger and wiser and better able to support their friends and the people they work with in their communities.

After dinner the other night, a friend who'd recounted the rather impressive incompetence of the powers-that-be at his workplace said that he tried not to think about how messed up things are in the larger world beyond his 9 to 5, because when he got in touch with all that could go wrong, it terrified him.

I see his point, of course. If the course of events on a global scale were actually determined by the blind-spots and shortsightedness of individuals who — like those running my friend's workplace — had been promoted to their level of incompetence, I doubt a single train would run on time.  Luckily for us, saving grace abounds. 

Our stories focused on the centrality of food to our individual and communal identities. Not surprisingly, everyone had powerful stories to tell about their connections to food, and the initial introductions had us hungry for finding out where this journey would take us, but also just plain hungry as we sampled the best of the nearby Cake Cafe.

It was rocky, far rockier than I thought it'd be. I was wanting beach.

And in the end, I did get beach. I got beach with rocks on it and I spent a whole day skipping rocks into the waves.

And it worked.

Not talking about Malta here, though that fits too. Talking about WeVideo.

First, I have to paint the scene. We were in Bangladesh working with storytellers representing various NGOs from South Asia.  Every workshop has interesting twists and challenges- quirky technology keeps you hopping, or stories hold onto you for weeks afterwards, but this workshop was the ultimate opportunity for me to practice presence… in chaos.

Maybe it was the synchronicity. Blue was an unexpected gift from the woman in the bookstore where Marie was passing time, before a doctors appointment at John Hopkins. A chance encounter, a passing statement (“the color of the throat chakra is blue”), the gift of an agate. 

"Look," I said, "let's take him to Chitral! There's a jeep in the baazar. Let's go." But Taleem Khana Nana said she wanted to wait for her husband to come home, surely he would be home soon and then he would come with me to take the baby. I said we should go now. I said I would pay for the jeep and the hospital. She said, "Surely he'll come. Let's wait."

At StoryCenter we have a creation myth. For the first ten years, as often as not I would lead off my initial lecture about our work by showing a single story from the very first Digital Storytelling workshop . . . The story was by Monte Hallis. I can’t say I remember much… A smart, focused woman among a group of seven participants. She was going through a major change taking care of her friend Tanya Shaw, a young mother of two girls who was dying of AIDS at a local hospice center. Dana asked Monte to make it personal. She did. The rest is the story/history of our organization. 

For 20 years (this month!), the Center for Digital Storytelling has been supporting people in sharing meaningful stories from their lived experiences – because stories matter. Last week, Joe Lambert (our Founding Director) and I were in L.A. teaching a workshop at the Museum of Natural History. As we drove past the American Film Institute, he said, “This all started right here 20 years ago this week, at our first digital storytelling workshop hosted by AFI.”