Welcome to Storymakers Roundtable, Creating a Breakout Story. My name is Becky Wiegand and I'm the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup. I've been with the organization for about 6 years. And prior to that, I spent 10 years in Washington D.C. working for three small nonprofits where I was regularly the accidental techie. The real presenters of today's event that I'm so excited to have join us are two really prominent experts and leaders in the field of nonprofit storytelling. The first is Michael Hoffman who's the founder and CEO of C3 Communications. They're a leading authority in online video for nonprofits, and they help consult nonprofit leaders on online fundraising, advocacy, and community engagement. They also run the Do-Gooder Nonprofit Video Awards and partner with YouTube to present that annual award program. So he's seen the wide variety of content that nonprofits are creating with their digital stories. Also joining us is Joe Lambert who is celebrating his 31st year as the executive director or as a nonprofit executive director in 2014. And he is the executive director of the Center for Digital Storytelling based in Berkeley, California. And so he has literally written the book on digital storytelling, writing the Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Digital Storytelling, Capturing Lives, Creating Community, and his newest book, Seven Stages, Story and the Human Experience. So we're so glad to have both of them joining us. We'll also have my colleague, Ali Bestikian on the back end. You'll see her chatting out to you and helping answer questions and tweeting. So definitely talk to her if you have questions about the Storymakers competition. And she'll be joining us on the line to share a little bit about the Storymakers competition this year and what TechSoup Storymakers 2014 is all about. Quick look at our agenda. We'll do an introduction of TechSoup. We'll take a couple of polls to help understand where you're at with storytelling because we really want to understand where our audience's needs are and experience levels are. And then we'll talk briefly about Storymakers and then the biggest meat of today's presentation will be in these last couple of bullets, why stories matter to nonprofits, why they are important, and the ingredients, the real recipe for bringing out these breakout stories to your organization. So quickly who is TechSoup? We're a nonprofit 501c3 and we are working towards a day when every nonprofit library, foundation, social benefit organization on the planet has access to the knowledge and resources that they need to operate at their full mission. And so we do that in a variety of ways having been around since 1987 serving more than 200,000 charitable organizations with 11 million software and hardware donations in more than 60 countries. So if you're not familiar with our programs you can find all of these types of things, new software donations, consulting services at TechSoup.org. Now on to learning about you. Take a second and feel free to click on any of these that apply. It's perfectly acceptable to click on more than one if more than one of these options apply to you. But how do you think of yourself as a storyteller? We're asking you to define and self-identify here. Do you not call yourself a storyteller?  Have you never created a digital story but maybe you use stories but not digital stories? And when we say digital story we mean video stories, photo stories, stories using maybe mobile media, different types of digital media that are out there. Go ahead and tell us where you're at in the spectrum here. And I'm going to wait a few more seconds so that everybody has a chance to participate. We have a big crowd on the line today. We've already got 300 people joining and I'm sure that number will take up in the next few minutes. So we're really excited to have you all with us. And hopefully you sharing this information with us can help inform a little bit about what our presenters and how they shape their conversation back out to you. So just a couple more seconds and I'm going to close this down. So it looks like around 40% of you have created a few digital stories which is super exciting. We're glad to hear that. And then we've got people who use stories regularly but not digital ones necessarily around 23%. And around a third either say they don't, actually more than that, around half of our audience says that they're either a total beginner, they don't call themselves a storyteller, or they've never created a digital story. So that's really helpful for us. And then we've got a little chunk of prose down at the bottom of that spectrum saying that they've created many digital stories and that they have a deep org culture of storytelling. So that's super exciting. We'd love to hear that. And one other quick poll for you asking, how do you work? How have you worked to collect the stories of the people you serve? So how do you work in your community or in your organization? It could be with your patrons, if you're a library, it could be with your parishioners if you're joining us from a church. Go ahead and let us know. So how are you working to help amplify their stories and collect their stories?  So again, I'm just going to give a few more seconds for everybody to participate in the poll. And again, you can select any of these options on the screen. And we have some people writing in that they do other, that their staff lets them know and their stories available. Some people say that they collect stories through events, blogging, Instagram, tweeting, social media campaigns to solicit stories. Tricia writes that their group uses songwriting for storytelling which is great. It's one of the first ways we've told stories as humans is through music, right? Harvey comments on both a storyteller and a teacher using technology. Rachel comments that they collect stories through storytelling organizing trainings. And they do public narratives. Sarah comments that she works for Public Access TV station. So they encourage people to submit video on whatever they like. It's not often story-based, but they are great. They're a great way to collect stories. Lucy comments that they collect assignments for class. Some people say they work at a university with instructors who assign digital storytelling projects, social media at events, so lots of different ways. This is terrific. I can't read them all off, and I'm sorry you can't see each other's comments, but we can chat the ones that we think are most useful for you back out to the community to share. But just a look at the results. So around 56, 57% interview their clients or we use that as a generic word, your constituents, your patrons, your parishioners, what have you. And around 50% invite their clients to share their own stories. So that's really interesting. So the reason that we're doing this and that we find that stories are so important and that we're running this storytellers' story-makers' campaign to help encourage storytelling is because we do recognize how important it is for organizations that are mission or cause-based to amplify the stories of the communities they serve, not only to help them gain more traction and more support, but to gain more awareness of what's happening in those communities and what their issues are, what their strengths are. And so I want to invite my colleague, Ali Bestikian, who is the Interactive Events and Video Producer here at TechSoup, to tell us a little bit about Storymakers 2014 before we get to Michael and Joe's presentations so that we can help you leverage the stories that you're creating and collecting right now. Welcome to the program, Ali. Thanks, Becky. I'm really glad to be here. This is one of the most exciting parts of our annual programming, and I'm really excited to talk to you a little bit about it. Now going on its fifth year and a campaign that I love to be a part of, so Storymakers is really about education and community. At TechSoup, we believe that nonprofits can really change the world through storytelling, but these stories really must stand out and be noticed in order for that to happen. The Storytellers campaign empowers nonprofits, libraries, charities, and social good organizations out there with the tools to tell their stories, get noticed, and ultimately to make an impact. It's a month challenge where we share the experts, say like Michael and Joe, their unique tips and learnings, the latest tools and techniques so that nonprofits can go out there and produce their own digital story, and then ultimately can use that as content regardless if they win in the campaign. So this year, the campaign is from August 26 through September 26 where we will be hosting a series of webinars like this one and interactive events, live tweet chats, all really meant to highlight content and tools to help nonprofits produce a two-minute YouTube video, a short Vine or Instagram video, or a five-photo Flickr slide show for some really great cash prizes. Speaking of cash prizes, this year we have five categories, two grand prize winners in Best Overall and STEM and Youth Stories as well as Super Short Video, Newbie, and Audience Choice Awards which will open up for a period of voting from you, the community, and community storytellers to vote on their favorite stories that come in starting October 1. So come around for that and you don't have to submit a video to vote on your favorite castor vote. And just wanted to give you a snapshot of some of our upcoming events. Submissions open as I mentioned August 26 and will run through September 26. We have a few upcoming webinars. The next one is on August 27 and we will discuss Super Short Videos on Vine and Instagram and more to come. Becky, back to you. Thank you so much for that Allie. That's really great. And we hope you will join us for some of these other upcoming events. In addition to the webinars and tweet chats, there are local events that are happening in cities all around the country and around the world. So when you get this slide deck later on, definitely check out that link to the in-person Net2 locals, NetSquared local events worldwide to see if there are meetups or actual trainings happening in your area as well. So moving us forward now is the time I want to invite our first speaker to the line. And we are doing this as a round table meaning that we will be inviting them to answer a couple of questions back and forth. So we are going to have both Michael and Joe address this question briefly before we get started with some of the meat of their ingredients for this recipe to break out digital stories. So Michael, welcome to the program. We are so glad to have you. What is all this storytelling stuff? And why does it matter? Why does it matter specifically for the social good or social benefit organizations? Great. Well, thank you for having me. And I'm really excited to be here. So storytelling, we are hearing about it all the time, right? There's webinars, but there's conferences, there's sessions, there's books, there's stuff, right? Storytelling everywhere all the time. And I think it's totally warranted and that's because storytelling has power to it. And so when we think about stories like Rapunzel or a little Red Riding Hood that have been able to last in the culture for so long, or even think about something like the Bible. If it was just a list of commandments, it may not have had the staying power as something that has stories. And we're introduced to these stories at a very young age. Stories become part of our lives at a very early time. And it's not just for fun. And so there's more and more research. There's this guy, Michael Gazaniga, which I probably butchered his name, who is a neuroscientist who did some really interesting work. If you have a little bit of extra time, you should just Google him. There's some great synopsis of his research. But he had the opportunity to study people whose brains were, the hemispheres of their brains were severed and didn't communicate with each other. And he was able to do certain kinds of experiments with those people in terms of their understanding of things. And it turns out that stories, he calls it the interpreter, the part of the brain that basically makes sense of the two separate hemispheres of the brain. And the way it makes sense of it is through stories. And that basically our brain requires stories to understand things. And so where this research and where this thinking goes is to the idea that everything we believe to be true, everything that moves us to action in the world is because there's a story in our mind that illustrates that, that represents that for us. And probably not just one story, right? But stories collected together to interpret the world for us. And so when we talk about the storytelling thing, it is central to human behavior and to human life. And it's certainly central to getting people engaged with and active on the things that we care about and that we want people to work on, the issues and the organizations that we work for.  He was the communications director for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and took what he learned about getting people active into academia around storytelling. But he talks about it as public narrative and that as a leadership practice. And this is my favorite definition of leadership is really this idea of accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. But he talks about how narrative is the way that we access moral resources in response to these uncertain world challenges. And so that's where story becomes fundamental to who we are, not only as people and how our brains work, but how we think about our organizations and leadership. And so with that, I'm going to turn it back over for Joe. That's great. Thank you so much for that, Michael. So Joe, I would love for you to answer the same question from your vantage point. What is all this storytelling stuff? And why does it matter? Why does it matter for the social good? I'm getting my mute to work. There you go. For me, that was a great setup, Michael, in a way I think pulling back the perspective on this, the use of storytelling as a kind of core enabling process is really the best place to start. But when we're thinking about how different the world that we're in now is maybe the world of mid-century industrial America or mid-century industrial capitalism around the world, a lot of the idea of understanding was the sharing of data and information. The idea was if you're going to get it right, you're going to break it into little parts and control the little parts by a clear dissection of the information needed to get to somebody else. Story telling, on the other hand, is a kind of bringing back together process, a making whole process. So when we think about story, we're thinking about the things that it does for us in addition to helping, as Marshall Ganz has suggested, in kind of giving us the power to communicate purpose, it also helps with us just working through processes of self-understanding. You know, Roger Schenke, who's a guy working in cognitive sciences, argues we don't tell stories because we need to be understood by others. We tell stories to understand if we're crazy or not, meaning to make sense of the world through explaining our experience to other people. And so a lot of story work starts with how do I understand what happened to me in experience? And how does that changing understanding, that changing level of insight, allow me to communicate something new, something insightful about the way the world works, and particularly useful to the moment I'm in with a group of people I'm with? And related to that obviously is when you hear those kind of stories, it opens up your heart, it opens up your sense of connection to others, and it allows you to persevere through experience. And inevitably doing that builds community. All of us have been at a dinner table where at one moment we're listening to other people talk about very superficial things, and somebody says, like I'll say now, today's the 40th anniversary of the death of my father. And his legacy as an union organizer resides in my body. And thinking about what that means, and my just bringing that piece of intimacy, that piece of information suddenly changes the nature of the connections with all of us in a new way. And then finally it does what we all want to do with our nonprofit. It does provide information. It can say what you do and why you do it. Digital storytelling obviously is a very specific idea. And those of us who come out of theater like myself or traditional storytelling, we don't privilege the digital or other kinds of storytelling mechanisms like the text, et cetera, et cetera. But we know we live in a screen culture. And I'm at the home of an artist named Guillermo Gómez Pena. And he said in the 90s that existential question of the 21st century is TV or not TV, which is the idea that if you don't exist in the screen culture, you sort of don't exist. So we've worked, and obviously Michael has too, helping people try to be part of a screen culture where a lot of information is visual and audio visual. And we need to be effective writers in that. And the process of this obviously is that it gives you these wonderful mechanisms to share. And these short videos that TechSoup is working on as part of the Global Challenge is exactly the way a lot of us are consuming information. On Facebook, on Twitter, we love connecting to the little YouTube video that sort of gives us a really quick overview in both an audio and a visual sense. And these can be used in countless different ways. And with that, I went fast because I want to leave some room at the end. Let's move on. That's terrific. Thank you so much for that, Joe. And so while we have the context set up, we have 350 people on the line with us right now. So we want to make sure everybody's on the same page moving forward as we talk about now the ingredients, the real pieces that make a compelling good story that can help it stand out from all the rest. So I want to mention quickly that we've done this webinar for, or not webinar, we've done this Storymakers' Campaign, Digital Storytelling Campaign for now five years, I think something like that. And so we've done so many events like this that have all of the how-to's and the nuts and bolts, and the logistical things of framing, and lighting, and all of those types of articles and content. And so today what we really wanted to help people do in this first webinar and in the Storymakers' Campaign this year is really to figure out what it is that makes one story sparkle over another because there is so much content out there now. We're bombarded day in and day out with stories and news clips and video clips, and cats on YouTube, and cats on Facebook, and cats everywhere ruling the Internet. So we really want to make sure that you come away from today's event having some key things that you can think about when you're creating your stories that will make it stand out. And so that's where I want to bring Michael back on the line to talk about how you can use Story as the center of your bigger strategy to help your organization, help your cause, help your story stand out. What are those ingredients that can help inspire a breakout story? Great. Thanks. I think obviously there's a lot of different things that can do that, and we don't have, I'm going to spend the next 10 minutes talking about it. So I'm going to just pick a few that I think could really be helpful to cause-oriented storytellers. And so for me the first one is really figuring out who's the hero of your story. And what I would suggest is that if a story's intent is to motivate and empower people to action, whether it's donating or volunteering or clicking or whatever it is or getting up or thinking differently or changing the world, whatever it is you want someone to do, I would say modeling that behavior in the story, having the story about someone like that viewer being empowered is a way to do that. So often the hero of our organizational stories is the organization. The organization did this and the organization did that. And generally that makes for a boring story. And it also often doesn't leave room for empowerment because if the organization is the hero and doing everything and changing the world, then what's my role? What's my role from the outside? And so I want to show you, and so when you start to think that way, you start to think, well how do we make the activist, the volunteer, the donor part of the story? It really starts to open up some new things. So I want to show you an example of that.  And it's a video from Doctors Without Borders. And what's interesting is of course Doctors Without Borders is the most heroic organization I can think of. People who are now fighting the Ebola crisis on the ground doing things that many of us would say, I'm not doing that. That's too dangerous and they're there. And yet they have an awareness of empowerment and figuring out who the real hero is. So let's watch and take a look. This was a video that showed the heroic doctors doing heroic things, but in the end of the day the lights were going off and it took the donor to turn the lights back on. And that was obviously not an advertisement that was made originally for a U.S. audience because they're doing at the post offices or bank draft, which is very common outside of the United States. But as soon as that donor made that donation, the lights went back on. And so we took a situation where it would be very easy to look at that and say, what do I have to do with that? Those guys are just amazing, but I'm over here. I don't have a role to play in that story. And they really made the outcome of the story hinge upon the action of the viewer or who's represented by the viewer in that story. And I think that's really just a tremendously powerful video and a way to think. So thinking about, where are we telling the stories of the people who got together? And really one way to tap into that is the idea of a founding story because every organization was really founded by individuals who empowered themselves because they saw something wrong in the world. So just moving on, I want to come back to Marshall Ganz for a second. So talking about public narrative, I don't want to, you can read this yourself but the first part of this I just want to state is the idea of using public narrative or story to interpret values to others and inspire others to act on those values. And so Marshall Ganz set up a structure of stories that I think is really useful and will be helpful for you in thinking about stories to tell.  And so the way the structure works is that the first story is that personal story. And I think Joe said that really nicely talking about saying about my father and those values and here I am today. So the story of self is really about me or about whoever is telling the story. And the importance of the story of self is to say, why am I here? What have I done? What have I seen? What has happened to me that brings me here talking about this thing? The story of us is a story about community, about people who have come together to do something about that challenge in the world. And the story of now is about why now. And that's often left out I think of stories, but it's important because if you're working on anything, whether it's poverty or international issues or whatever, why is today different than yesterday or a year ago or five years in the future? Why do I as the person hearing your story need to act today? And I need you to tell me that and share that with me because otherwise I won't be spurred to action. And that's often thought of as urgency. So having some urgency in a story that moves people to action. So again, self is about who am I and why am I in front of you telling the story? And that is whoever the story is about. The story of us, how we came together to change the world as a community. People want to be part of community. So that's a powerful thing in the story. And then now, why does today, what's the opportunity or the challenge or the risk or the thing happening in the world that makes us need to act now? So if you recall, this is an old example, but I think still an important one. This is the most viewed social issue nonprofit story in the history of digital stories, I think. It's a video, and if you haven't watched it, you certainly should, called Kony 2012, and it's by a group called Invisible Children. And it came out in 2012, which was two years ago. And it has something like 200 million views and it's 29 minutes long. I mean think about that. We're told over and over again how people only watch short things, but hundreds of millions of people watched this 29 minute video. And what I would suggest to you is that when you watch it, or watch it again, it's a brilliant piece of storytelling. And there's lots of issues with this campaign in terms of their theory of change and other things. But when we're looking at this as the story, the story is incredibly powerful and brilliantly told.  So this was a story of a guy, a white guy from America going to Uganda and seeing something wrong. And then saying to this boy in Uganda, I want to make a promise to you that I'm going to do something about this. So that was two things that I've talked about. One is who's the hero? So the hero here was not the person that they're serving. It was the person taking action, modeling that approach. And then it started with his story of self. This is who I am. This is how I discovered this problem.  How did invisible children come to be? How did other people take on this promise I made to this boy? And how did we create this whole movement for change? And it's very well told because they use some devices like showing a Facebook timeline changing over time as a way to tell that story of us. And then the story of now is completely baked in to the concept of this video, Kony 2012. So there's something we needed to do in 2012 that said you needed to watch this video, you needed to download this kit, you needed to do things, you needed to advocate for this issue today in 2012. And so it's a really powerful example of how you can structure a story like this for impact. So if I had more time, we could talk about some other structures and tell you some other ways. One thing I want to point out is on the, first of all, if you have thoughts about this or about other things, you can communicate with me directly, email or Twitter. But also we did something where we looked at nonprofit organizations and how they're using video in particular. And we put that into a report called Intifocus. And that's a useful resource I think in sort of looking at the benchmarks in the state of the art there. And I think maybe we can include that in the email that we'll send out to you, but it's at c3.com slash Intifocus. And so I think you have to focus your storytelling again on your goals and what are you trying to achieve. And then think of those models of stories and look at those examples that will help you get there. So I'm going to pass it over and we can now hear from Joe. That's really great, Michael. Thank you for all of that. And just to recap, some of those ingredients that you identified, I think your point at the end here about identifying your goals first is really, really important. And that's something that people think, oh well, what's our goal? Well, let's just tell a story. But that's not actually a goal. So I think really identifying that goal is super important. I love your tip about identifying the hero of your story. Is it somebody in your community? Is it someone you're serving? Is it somebody who's doing the work? Identifying that hero I think is terrific.  I think those are great tips for people to go back and even just write down on a piece of paper. So who is the hero in the story that we want to create that's going to help us achieve X goal? Where is the story of ourselves in that? Where is the story of all of us together in that? Where is the story of now? I think those are really great ingredients to look to to create a story that really stands out.  So before we move on to Joe, one person asked, I thought that the Kony story was proven to be false. And I agree that it was a brilliant piece of storytelling, but research into the issue behind Kony himself was questionable. Is that correct or is there more to that story? And do you know the background of that one? I remember the controversy at the time, but I'm certainly not up to speed on it. Yes, the issue there was not that the story was false. The story of Kony and what Kony was doing was absolutely true. The controversy was, one was really around the theory of change of the organization. So just because you tell everyone their theory of change was if more people know about this bad guy then the world will do something about that. And so there was some real criticism I think legitimate criticism of, well, okay, now we all know about this guy but he's still around. And then there was a little bit of a personal scandal. The person in the video had some, you know, had some kind of breakdown and some issues and it became a kind of public thing. So it tainted that a bit. But the story itself is true. There is an organization. They did these things. He did make this promise and this Kony guy was a terrible guy. And the world got to know about it because they told a great story. And so I think we need to separate, you know, again, their sort of overall strategy from the real impact that the story did have. It's very true. And, you know, social good organizations do not corner the market on good storytelling either. Some of the best storytellers are not good people in the world. So we can learn from them as well even if we don't want to emulate their outcomes by any means. So taking us forward to Joe's recipe, let's hear about your ingredients. So what do we use story? How do we use story as a center of our strategy? What are those ingredients that inspire Breakout Story from your vantage point, Joe? You know, what I'm going to do is invert the questions and sort of talk about the model first because, you know, we started the session that this was kind of, how do you make a good story? And the irony is, the piece we just saw by Miniflom Fronter is actually illustrates this little model that in our workshop environments, when we're teaching people who are often very new to just the idea of storytelling or they have the problem that Mark Twain described that I would have written you a short letter but I didn't have the time, right? It is actually hard to do something really tight into a story. So just looking at Medicine Fronter, think about what they did. They brought us into a moment in which an emergency is happening. We don't know the resolution of the emergency. They're not telling us a bunch of context obviously visually in the sense that we knew this was coming from Medicine Fronter. We can build our own context but we don't really know what's going to happen. This is a moment where we're in the story in immediate sense. To me, storytelling is about going to a place in time and feeling what the storyteller feels inside the story. That's why we like film or fiction and other writing that brings us into a scene completely. If we just jump into the scene with our stories leaving what the climax is, meaning the unresolved issue, waiting, and just give us enough context to situate the event, then we'll go into a very long story with this critical scene. Meaning obviously the Medicine Fronter story could be a very long video about the work that's been going on for years in this particular clinic and who's been engaged in the community and who's not engaged in it. But they take us to a decisive moment where the lights go out and they have the lights come back in in the model of the idea of your contribution makes that sort of different. But they told the story as an extended moment and it was precisely the effect of that that made it a powerful story. In many of your stories you can take the kind of context of your work and think about them as where is the moment of change? Where does something go from what it was before to something new? And you can explore that moment and use it to demonstrate the values, the context, the importance of the work that you're doing. And with a lot of stories you really want to get out. You don't really want to have a story that says, and what that meant in the Medicine Fronter, and what that means is send us a check. It's pretty clear. It means send us a check. To me if you've done your story right it only leads to one clear conclusion. I'm going to share a piece in part because the work around adoption rights has been an important part of my story this year. I reconnected after 41 years with a birth daughter of mine. And it's been an extraordinary story. Of course she's a storyteller, filmmaker down in LA who grew up in Mexico, so figure. And we've become really connected in sharing stories. And a lot of nonprofits are working in the space of what's called the adoption triad, the adopting parents, obviously the adoptee, the child, and the birth parents and the possibilities of reunion. And one of our workshops in Denver which we call Snapshot Stories where a single image informs the story. We had someone tell their adoption reunion story. I want to share that now as an example of the foresees in a very easy to make but powerful story that involves one single image, really two, because I will stop it before that. But it's a great way to make an audio visual piece without that much work. So here we go with the video. I'm sitting here staring at these two empty seats in front of me. There's a box of tissues on the coffee table separating my chair from the other two. The landline telephone resting on the desk in the corner looks dated and out of place. Next to the desk I can see a framed map of the United States on the linoleum floor propped up against the wall. I'm staring at these oddly spaced objects who are staring back at me and I begin to feel like I'm one of them. I check my cell phone for the time. It's been forever. It's actually been two minutes. At any moment these seats in front of me will be filled by two people, two faces that I have never seen before. And no matter how hard I have tried, I have not been able to picture in my mind what they might look like. I wonder if I will see me in them. My hair, my eyes, my freckles, my nose that will finally be matched. But my ears won't be able to understand their voices and my broken Korean won't be able to communicate to them all I want to say. It's hard enough to summarize 24 years of life in English. It's been almost a year since I left New York to move to Korea and each day since I've wondered if any of these people I see on the street, in the market, on the bus, are my relatives. I hope they recognize me as their daughter when they walk through the door. The first voice I hear as they enter the room is my mother's. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, she tells me. And although I've only learned a small amount of Korean, I know enough to understand what she's saying. Later on that day we left the adoption agency together to go to a restaurant nearby. My mother and I sit next to each other in the back seat of their car. We smile at each other nervously and I breathe in the silence. She takes my hands and hers and turns me over to trace the lines in my palms with her finger. I'm going to stop the video there. I mean, it basically goes on the credit that this was the payoff photo coming out of her presentation. And again, it's a little more than two minutes, but you can imagine it being piped up to a two-minute format and it would be very useful. So I'm briefly, you know, everybody has been asking in the chat section about links, so we're going to send you a bunch of links. When CDS talks about our work, we talked about it in this kind of spectrum of usefulness from personal growth to education to movement, ability to policy work and research and evaluation. Obviously this is true of storytelling, not just digital storytelling. For those who know the kind of growth of our work over the last decade, a lot of it's grown out of the work of Amy Hill and the program that we have that grew out of domestic violence prevention called Silent Speaks. And really all I want to say about the train of projects, again, Michael and I had more time, we could talk for hours each about the different kinds of projects. But one of the things about digital storytelling processes or community building processes that are participatory stories is that as an old theater producer, I used to think I could produce every show to be successful but I knew that it was about one in ten that was going to actually hit the moment and be a hit. It is still true. When you're trying to get the story just right and you have only one story to use to do that, you're taking some risks and you're going to have to work it very hard to get it right. But if you're collecting lots of stories, and particularly if you can do lots of digital stories as this program that we did with an organization working in public health in Central America, one of those stories will be the one that really changes the story, if you will. And so you're increasing the odds with each of these kinds of projects of having a story that sits just right in the issues as Michael presented of kind of telling from the I story to the we story to the just now, why now story, that you will find that story. These different projects we've done in public health context around big issues of information around HIV-AIDS in the case of our work with the Asian Pacific Island Wellness Center here in San Francisco but on the national and international level, our work with exhale pro-voice around reproductive rights issues and the discussion across the border of perspective on reproductive rights. These claims of projects work because there's multiple voices. And through those kinds of multiple voice projects, you can address sensitive or complicated issues in interesting and effective ways. We also really like the format of calbird.com. I don't know if people are familiar with this particular publication environment on the web for single stories with audio. Sometimes it's more than one picture but often just with a single picture. But for example, we did a national civil rights campaign or in the middle of it right now using this very specific method and it's traveling all over the country now continuing to collect these stories. So these are just a few of the models that we've used and I'll turn it back over to Becky to bring us the questions that are coming up. Terrific. Thank you for that, Joe. I think your story that you shared, the video that you shared I think is really interesting because it has really very simple, very inexpensive production costs. So that's something where the focus of the video was really just one image zooming out from that. So it was really to hear her voice and to hear her story and to hear the powerful experience that she's talking about. And I think that that's something that was made in a workshop so that was a really low end when it comes to the cost investment and production investment that has to be made to create something like that. And imagine if you're doing that with Instagram or Vine and you're using a cell phone and you're really only creating a 10 or 15 second video that it's something that at all levels, whether you're a med-cell and cell frontier where you've got a bigger budget to be able to afford a big company to help you shoot a professional polished film, or if you've got no budget and your cell phone in your pocket and you're trying to create a compelling story that some of these ingredients that have been identified by Michael and Joe today they can be employed in both of those contexts. So it's really just figuring out, so it's identifying, it's using the Four Seas model or it's finding your hero or it's using the story of us, the story of now. So these are just some tools, some methodologies to help you identify really what the heart of your story is and to get to the heart of your story that's going to be compelling for your audience. So I really appreciate you both sharing those different perspectives and ways of getting to that breakout story. And we will share links to these examples and these different organizations that have been highlighted in Joe's deck as well. We'll share links to those in the follow-up email. But I want to go ahead and move us into Q&A since we're not too far from wrapping up today. So Cindy asks, she uses words and pictures to teach. So she's finding it difficult though to share her personal story in the same way to help her organization raise awareness for their cause. So she uses stories to teach, but translating that into something that really helps their organization has been difficult for her. Do either of you want to jump in with some tips on maybe how she can translate her personal story into something that can be compelling for her organization? I mean I'll jump in Michael, you don't mind. One of the ways that we talk to organizations about the relationship between the iStory and the weStory is that the iStory can be a frame. We have a lot of people tell organizational stories where they introduce, it's what Michael suggested about the founder story, they introduce a frame around once upon a time there was this character or once upon a time there was this client that I worked with, that I know, that I'm the author of this experience, and you're building that sense of authentic trust by saying, no, this is my version of this story. And then they switched to telling the story about the client, but it's the framing part that I think allows you then to tell how you helped the way the student was changed or the student's story. I feel very strongly that people appreciate when an author admits where they are in the story. And Michael, you may want to respond as well. No, I think that's terrific advice. And I think the starting point for me would be why do I do this work? What is it about this work that compels me? And just to do a kind of mind map or just write down the emotions that you have in doing that work, the choices you made that got you there to do the work that you do, and through a process of thinking about it that way, I think some will be revealed. And as Joe said, you don't have to necessarily go deep into your own story. You just have to set the frame of who am I to be telling this to you. That's helpful. And to add on to that, we've had a couple of people asking about how do you tell stories for specific causes or for specific actions? So if you're looking for policy change, and maybe you want people to lobby their Congress member to pass AB 26, which is a bill I just made up. If it's something where it's maybe not the hottest sexiest topic out there, or another person asked about how to convey a story about research and accomplishments in evaluation and using these stories as part of a research tool. So maybe they sound kind of dry on the surface. How do you use these tactics and tools and methodologies to make a story that feels meaningful? Well, I think that two things come to mind for me there. One is that the law or the research is really just something that sits on top of human issues and stories, right? So we want to pass a law because people are starving or because something's happening in the world. So we need to get behind that to the human drama that's really impacted by that. So that's one thing I think that's important. And another, I think, again, is back to this idea of empowerment. If you're asking me to help pass a law, show me that that's actually worked at some point before, right? I think that's something I think is not done enough in organizations, which is if the action doesn't really match the impact or the story that you're telling me, then that action won't seem authentic. If you're telling me that there's millions of people with a disease and you ask me to give $10, that's not necessarily empowering. That could make me run away because I think there's no way that the action you're telling me could actually address the issue as you framed it. So thinking about framing the issue in a way that the action feels proportional and appropriate is an important way to think about it. Yeah, I would just add that just quickly to say that the culture of data and of outcome and of show me the statistics is a culture that's an invented story as well as some way. I mean, we all know that statistics can lie and tell stories in the same way that stories can lie and tell stories. So in some ways, we're also learning to have faith in those listening processes that we have in our lives to judge, make judgment about these things. And by having multiplicity in stories, you create more of a balanced perspective. It's one of the things I like about social media is a lot of, I'll let all the stories come out. That's really true. I think that's a good point to make. We also have some questions. We're almost at the top of the hour, so we probably can't get through all of these. But Sandy asks, from you two who are experts in story making and digital story making, what is the best length for a video to be both meaningful and impactful? And I'm sure that answer really depends. But I would love for you guys to give your best opinion on that today. Joe, let's start. I'll just say two minutes has been proven to be our cognitive ability to focus when you read a book, when you watch something. This idea that we always had long attention span, and now we have short, it's actually not right, that actually the two-minute block, I'll listen to you. And if you don't give me a chance to talk, I'm going to begin to think about what I'm thinking about. The fact of the matter is two minutes works in a song. It works in a movie. And it's what TechSoup is trying to do. So I'm going to say two minutes. I'm going to be a little less definitive on that. I think like the Coney video is 29 minutes. We watch three-hour movies now. I think that the way that I think you should think about this is that the relationship between length is the relationship between level of interest coming in. So if somebody has never heard of you, or has no interest in what you're telling, and you're trying to get their interest, shorter is going to be better. And not only that, within the shorter, the first 10 seconds become very important. So we see that a lot on YouTube where if you're not capturing my interest, if you're doing intros or some thing that's not jumping right in your story in the first 10 seconds, you're going to lose me. And at the same time, you know that if you are doing a volunteer training and you say you can't actually do this volunteer work unless you watch this one-hour piece, people will watch the one-hour piece if they want to participate. So depending on their relationship to the subject matter and where they are in that engagement cycle has a lot to do with what works with length. Well that is a great segue. I want to invite anybody who has additional questions to join us in our community forums here at TechSoup.org. We are at the top of the hour so I want to also just make sure that you're aware of upcoming events that we have going on not just around Storymakers but all of our webinar programming. So if you are with a Boys and Girls Club of America, we have an event on Tuesday next week. We have an event on leveraging social media for nonprofits. And then for those of you most interested in tools for digital storytelling, we will have a webinar on the 27th on Storymakers using super short video formats like Vine and Instagram. And so if you want to know about those tools that are already in your pocket on your cell phone or can be very easily or free, join us for that one.  So the different platforms and tools that are available out there to help get your video out there once you've created it. And then if you're with the library, we'll be talking specifically to you about how to tell your stories. And then we'll have some time talking about how to get grants if you're in rural America. So those are the upcoming events. We want to make sure again that if you are submitting a video or digital story, it can be either a Flickr 5 frame Flickr or 5 photo Flickr submission or it can be a 2-minute video on YouTube or it can be Instagram or Vine super short videos. So definitely check out those resources. We also will be sending you in the follow-up email later today resources to some of our how-to webinars from past years and articles and resources that have the logistical step-by-step process for production and pre-production and editing of videos. I'll leave you with these resources just pointing you to C3 Communications, Center for Digital Storytelling, and our Storymakers campaign. And that last link to Storymakers resources takes you to all of those webinars and resources I just mentioned. And lastly, I'd like to thank our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk for providing the use of their platform for today's webinar. We do run these using ReadyTalk 500 which is available in our catalog for organizations to request as well. Please take a moment when you leave this window to complete the post-event survey to help us to continue to improve our webinar programming. We hope you'll join us again and visit us at TechSoup.org slash Storymakers. Thank you all and have a terrific day. Bye-bye.


Live from San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering DataWorks Submit 2017, brought to you by Hortonworks. Hi everybody, this is George Gilbert, big data and analytics analyst with Wikibon. We are wrapping up our show on theCUBE today at DataWorks 2017 in San Jose. It has been a very interesting day and we have a special guest to help us do a survey of the wrap up. George Chow from Simba. We used to call him chief technology officer. Now he's technology fellow, but when he was explaining the difference in titles to me, I thought he said technology felon, but he's since corrected me. Yes, you're very much so. So George and I have been, we've been looking at both Spark Summit last week and DataWorks this week. What are some of the big advances that really caught your attention? What's caught my attention actually is how much manufacturing has really, I think caught into the streaming data. I think last week, I think it was very notable that both Volkswagen and Audi actually had case studies for how they're actually using streaming data. And I think just before the break now, there was also a similar session from Ford showcasing what they're doing around streaming data. And are they using the streaming analytics capabilities for the autonomous driving or is it other telemetry that they're analyzing? I think the Volkswagen study was with production because I still have to review the notes, but the one for Audi actually was quite interesting because it was for managing paint defect. For paint? Paint defect. Oh. What they were doing were essentially recording the environmental condition that they were painting the cars in, basically the entire pipeline. To predict when there would be imperfections because paint is an extremely high value sort of step in the assembly process. Yes, what they're trying to do is to essentially make a connection between downstream defects, like future defects, and trying to pinpoint the causes upstream. So the idea is that if they record all the environmental conditions early on, they could turn around and hopefully figure it out later on. This is, okay, this sounds really, really concrete. So what are some of the surprising environmental variables that they're tracking? And then what's the technology that they're using you know, to sort of to build model and then to anticipate if there's a problem? The, I think the surprising finding, they said they were actually, I think it was, I think it was a humidity or fan speed, by recall, at the time when the paint was being applied because essentially paint has to be, paint is very sensitive to the condition that is being applied to the body. So I mean, my recollection was that one of the finding was that there was a narrow window during which the paint were like ideal, like in terms of having the least amount of defect. And so had they built a digital twin style model where it's like a digital replica of some aspects of the car or was it just more of a predictive model that had telemetry coming at it and when it's outside a certain bound, they know that they're going to have defects downstream. I think they're still working on the predictive model or actually that the model is still being built because they are essentially trying to essentially build that model to figure out how they should be tuning the production pipeline. Got it, so this is, it's sort of in, it's still in the development phase. Yeah, yeah. And can you tell us, did they talk about the technologies that they're using? I remember the, it's a little hazy now because after a couple of weeks of conference, so I don't remember the specifics because I was counting on the recordings to come out in a couple of weeks time, so I definitely will share that, I think, but it's a case study to keep an eye on. Were there, so tell us, were there other ones where this use of real-time or near real-time data had some applications that we couldn't do before because we now, we can do things with very low latency? I think that's the one that I was looking forward to with Ford, that was the session just earlier, I think about an hour ago. The session actually consisted of a demo that was being done live, it was being streamed to us where they were showcasing the data, that was coming off of a car that's been rigged up. And so what data were they tracking and what were they trying to anticipate here? They didn't get enough detail, but it was basically data coming off the can bust of the car, so if anybody's familiar with the car.  So, but yeah, they were looking at streaming the performance data of the car as well as location data. Okay, and oh, so this was, it sounds more like a test case, like can we get telemetry data that might be good for insurance or for? They've built out the system enough using the Lambda architecture with Kafka, and so they were actually consuming the data in real time and the demo was actually exactly seeing the data being ingested and being acted on. So, in the case they were doing a simplistic visualization of just placing the car on the Google Maps so you can basically follow the car around. Okay, so what was the technical components in the car and then sort of how much data were they sending to some, or where was the data being sent to? Or how much of the data? The data was actually sent to stream all the way into Ford's own data centers. So they were using NIFI with all the right products. NIFI being from Hortonworks, the Hortonworks data flow. Yeah, with all the appropriate proxies and firewalls to bring it all the way into a secure environment. So it was quite impressive on the point of view of it was live data coming off of the 4G modem, or actually being uploaded through the 4G modem in a car. Okay, did they say how much compute and storage they needed in the device, in this case, the car? I think they were using a very lightweight platform. They were streaming apparently from the Raspberry Pi. Oh, interesting. But they were very guarded about what was inside the data center because no for competitive reasons. They couldn't share much about how big and how large a scale they could operate at. So Simba has been doing ODBC and JDBC drivers to standard APIs to databases for a long time. That was an era where either it was interactive or batch.  Well, the one way to think about streaming is that if you look at many of these APIs, let's say, or many of these systems, I think Spark is a good example where they're trying to harmonize streaming and batch or rather to take away the need to deal with it as a streaming system as opposed to a batch system. Because it's obviously much easier to think about and reason about your system when it is traditional, like in the traditional batch model. So the way that I see it also happening is that streaming systems will, you can say, will adapt or actually become easier to build and everyone is trying to make it easier to build so that you don't have to think about and reason about it as a streaming system. Okay, so this is really important, but they have to make a trade-off if they do it that way. So there's the desire for leveraging skill sets which were all batch-oriented and sort of presumably SQL which is sort of a data manipulation everyone's comfortable with. But then if you're doing it batch-oriented, you have like a portion of time where you're not sure you have the final answer. And I assume if you were in a streaming-first solution, you would explicitly know whether you have all the data or don't as opposed to late-arriving stuff. That might come later. What I'm referring to is actually the programming model. All I'm saying is that more and more people will want streaming applications, but more and more people need to develop it quickly without having to build it in a very specialized fashion. So when you look at, let's say, the example of Spark when they focus on structure streaming, the whole idea is to make it possible for you to develop the app without having to write it from scratch. And the comment about SQL is actually exactly on point because the idea is that you want to work with the data. You can say, not mindful, actually, not with a lot of work to account for the fact that it is actually streaming data that could arrive out of order even. And so the whole idea is that if you can build applications in a more consistent way, irrespective of whether it's batch or streaming, you're better off. So last week, even though we didn't have a major release of Spark, we had like a point release or discussion about the 2.2 release. And that's, of course, very relevant for our big data ecosystem since Spark has become the compute engine for it. Explain the significance where the reaction time or the latency for Spark went down from several hundred milliseconds to one millisecond or below. What are the implications for the programming model and for the applications you can build with it? Actually, hitting that new threshold of the millisecond is actually a very important milestone because when you look at a typical scenario, let's say with AppTek where you're serving ads, you really only have maybe on the order about 100 or maybe 200 millisecond max to actually turn around. And that max includes a bunch of things, not just the calculation. And that, let's say 100 millisecond includes network transfer time. So, which means that in your real budget, you only have allowances maybe under 10 to 20 millisecond to actually compute and do any work. So, being able to actually have a system that delivers millisecond level performance actually gives you ability to use Spark right now in that scenario. Okay, so in other words, now they can claim, even if it's not per event processing, they can claim that they can react so fast that it's as good as per event processing. Is that fair to say? Yes, that's very fair. That's significant. So, what type, how would you see applications changing? And we've only got like another minute or two, but how do you see applications changing now that Spark has been designed for people who have traditional batch oriented skills, but who can now learn how to do streaming real-time applications without learning anything really new? What sort of, how will that change what we see next year? Well, I think we should be careful just to not pigeonhole Spark as something built for batch because I think the idea is that the originator of Spark know that it's all about the ease of development and it's the ease of reasoning about your system. It's not the fact that the technology is built for batch. So, the fact that you could use your knowledge and experience and an API that actually is familiar to leverage it for something that you can build for streaming. I mean, that's the power and you can say that's the strength of what the Spark project has kind of taken on. Okay, we're going to have to end it on that note. There's so much more to go through. George, you will be back as a favorite guest on the show. There'll be many more interviews to come. Thank you. With that, this is George Gilbert. We are at DataWorks 2017 in San Jose. We had a great day today. We learned a lot from Rob Bearden and Rob Thomas up front about the IBM deal. We had Scott Now, CTO of Hortonworks on several times and we've come away with an appreciation for a partnership now between IBM and Hortonworks that can take the two of them into a set of use cases that neither one on its own could really handle before. So, today was a significant day. Tune in tomorrow. We have another great set of guests. Keynotes start at nine and our guests will be on starting at 11. So, with that, this is George Gilbert signing out. Have a good night.


It's Diddy Canem back today with another video. Two shots you for tuning in. If you're not subscribed, go away to some other subscribers. Give me a thumbs up and do not skip those ads. I'm a home teller, right? I'm thinking like, what are we gonna do today? Guess what, pop up, boo-goop! Another, another one. Another ditch bench order. We about to get it in order. This one is 46.1 miles. And we're gonna receive $72.53 enough money to pay the rent. And we are not picking up the pallet. We are only picking up some extra materials like some boxes or something. So I'm here, look, the house right here, baby. We pulling up right now. It just says some miscellaneous stuff, like some boxes or something like that. So we drove smoke to see what we're gonna have to do. And if it's small, guess what we gonna do? We gonna get it snow white and get right. Let's go. As you can see, they out here getting busy. What's going on, boss? What's going on with you, Clev? Just let me get past you. What you got, the handles? Okay. No, I have to pick up like some miscellaneous, some boxes or something. I don't know exactly what it is, but that's what it says on here. Like multiple boxes with miscellaneous materials. Like for hardware for this address? Yeah, for hardware for me, y'all, some run. I don't know who we target or anything, so. I don't think the air forming is here yet, but yell up to the guy right there with the hood on on the roof. He's gonna be able to help you out. Okay, so you need to get through, right? I'm gonna pull up, all right. Pretty new to the dispatch. And I thought the schedule return button meant like a repeat of the order. So the addresses are switched. The desplanes location is the first, yeah, first place to pick up the material. Then the Xeon is the project location. So I just wanna catch you before you drive all the way up to Xeon. Are you already caught? I literally just got here. As you guys can see, we had to switch up to Snow White so we can get right, baby. And as you guys heard, they messed up the order. Instead of going from a house to the warehouse, it's supposed to go from the warehouse to the house. So we are on our way to the warehouse right now so we can get busy. I'm glad you guys are with me. Let's go. What's up, bro? What's going on, boss? Here's the stuff we need to get, baby. It's a little heavy.  Snow White gonna be, oh. My God, that's my God. That's what my God can. He trying to let me get it in. That's what it's all about. I told you guys before, build a relationship, build a relationship. Let's load it up, baby.  You know we about to glow it up, baby. You know my flow go nuts, baby. That little boy be rhyming. That little boy be rhyming. These joints got a little weight to it, too. I got a little dolly. I don't know how much you can carry to do that joint be kind of janky sometimes. So we're gonna put all the small boxes in the trunk.  Y'all know I'm an athlete. Hold it. Ball like an athlete, good guy. Don't jump. Cause it didn't make sense for me to drive that big old thing if I need to. I'll just drive the car and stay gas. Yes, sir. How y'all want me to put it in? Is any, they had done, huh? With all you got to get on the app or something. You said what? Yeah. Appreciate you, boss. What's your name? I was cooking. Oh, is that a juice? Okay. Wait a minute, we ain't have our. What is that? I thought they told you. No, bro. I thought they told you. Can you sign this for me real quick, brother? All right. Appreciate you, boss. Have a good day. All right, you too. Order number two, guess what we about to do? Mickey D's, baby. 2.9 miles for 714. We're here to get this green. Let's go. D's, baby. Trying to get a bit, you see? I hope they with me, I hope they with me so we can get busy right quick. Stuck in there. Yeah. 317. 317. 317. Okay. All right. Thank you. 2000 years, lady. Thank you. I also have another one. The last three are F63. F63. Thank you very much. You guys have a good one. Guess what, baby? As I was in there, I got another add on. We about to get it on. It is zero miles for 561. Of course we got to get that done. Let's go. Number uno, we're here to get our pockets fed like sumo, baby. They said even at the front though. Knock on the door off. Step back. These stairs kind of weird. Then with that photo, smack. Let's go.  Flu, I thought y'all knew. So I'm like, all right, ready to go real? Step back on that photo, smack. Let's go. Order number three. Oh, drill, y'all. We pulled up to Wall-Miggy to get busy. Walmart, 9.4 miles for 17.07. 17.07, 3-Hub, 17.07. 17.07, 3-Hub. Yeah. And what would you like? Yeah, I'm putting in the trunk. This for Janissia, right? Yes, sir. I'm gonna put this, let me put this in the car right quick, put it off and get in. Oh, let me put it in here. I'm gonna put it in here, I'm gonna put it in here. I got like two bags so I can make it easy on me. I can get in there and get busy. Y'all been super busy today? That's good for you. We ain't gotta come out here. This is a little nippy outside. I think it was gonna be that cold at first. Yeah, got a little nippy going on out here. Jump this order and get it ordered. We got the wing wagon we put off in the wagon. Get so much money in our pants bag right there. Then we're gonna put this pop right here. Just gonna put all this stuff in here right quick in here. We gotta grab that bag and we're gonna get to this bag. They be hating at me, man. We getting this money and they sad. This right here, it says leave it at the front door and don't win the door, Bill. Do not win the door, Bill. Leave it at the front door, take the photo and get on. You know my nickname running on my microphone. Start off with this stuff. Drop it like it's hot. Drop it like it's hot. That 40 bopper. These chips right here so they won't get smushed by anything else. They got big drinks, they about to drink up. They ain't playing no game. They about to be big hot drinks. Throw it out the way.   Let's go. And just like that, it is the end of the video. I hope you guys enjoyed this content. Guess how much we weighed today, baby? We made 136.46, we went out there and got in the mix. Let me tell you guys this. Let me tell you guys the backstory, right? Let's remember that order had to get canceled. Now, when it first came in, it was $72.53. They had to cancel it and they had to send us another order, which was actually for $73.45. And because they did cancel that order, we received an extra $33.19 for the cancellation for those who hate it, baby. So, when we're not saying got busy, for that first order, we received $106.64 instead of $73.45. It's a great time to be alive. Y'all sounds get busy. I'm glad you guys are with me. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Again, if you are not subscribed, go ahead and subscribe button. Give me a thumbs up and do not skip those ads. And lock in tomorrow, cause we'll get back to this bag while we get back to this bag. The 2023 is big bag season. We hope you won't give them a reason. I'll see you guys on the next one. We grew up, we grew up, we flew on you. We already know the ZDK and I'm on my way.


It's the distant future a group of human scientists are exploring the deep ocean floor on a faraway ice planet Where they have discovered a primitive society of intelligent crustaceans But the expedition is being monitored by yet another group of aliens called the Sholan who are technologically superior to humans and Are very concerned that the humans are going to ruin the environment or otherwise interfere with the so-called Ilmatarans and of course accidents and misunderstandings happen and that's Where the plot of the book comes from this was a very enjoyable read it held my attention all the way through the first chapter I found very surprising, but this is not hard science fiction. This is Star Trek stuff the aliens although they have strange bodies and methods of communication they behave exactly like humans You can support 30 second sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron There is a link in the description below and visit the 30 second sci-fi tumbler That's my headquarters in addition to my videos. I publish links and updates there every day


Big drum roll. I told you guys that my life was really changing and it has because I've gone from a Class B plus to a C and now to a fifth wheel So you guys this is my new house. This is a grand design solitude 310 GK. I know you guys have been waiting for this tour I'm going to get right into it and show you the rig But thank you for all your well wishes on the TED talk and all the positive feedback on the latest book I appreciate it come back on Wednesday This coming Wednesday, and I'll tell you why I switched to this rig and then a week from today Is going to be a new view cue so if you have any questions for me Put them down below in this video in the comments and I'll answer them. Let's have the tour Yep, I love it in here One thing that I love about this design is that they didn't put any cabinets on The patio side so you have these massive windows I would open them for you, but the Sun is glaring in here, but you can imagine how great this is You can see a wonderful view and there's just windows all the way around and Then the cabinets start up here They're huge. They're deep. They're huge and they go all the way around. Oh look you guys There's Barry Garfunkel. He made it here. I like this. It's like a little lodge feeling With the fireplace going so you're just chilling back there in the theater seats You know enjoying the fireplace and let's say that you want to watch some TV You just hit this button and out it comes There are a ton of cabinets Cabinets cabinets cabinets Cabinets huge ceilings and look at this pantry now. I'm still getting organized you guys So it's gonna get a little better than this, but I mean I like to cook There is just a ton of room in here. I Am loving it and seriously look at the size of this fridge It's like a residential-sized fridge and this whole thing is the freezer. I Can now have frozen food as you can see I finally have a good place for the Berkey That is Velcro to the wall right there. Love it The reason I chose the 310 GK which stands for Grand Kitchen is this island It is huge now. This is only a 35 foot Fifth wheel now I say only that is a bigger living space than I've ever had on the road But both of these slides that you see here Go in so this massive space right here Goes down to like an 8 foot wide space that fits on the road I'm gonna show you guys that another day, but this is a slide and That's a slide over there and when they go in they basically go up to the edges of this island The whole thing just collapses like a Harry Potter magic bus But when you're actually camping it expands into this gorgeous living space So now I can prep food. I can do dishes I could rinse and wash if I wanted to because there's two sides to the sink and There's a cover for this one too, but I like to keep it off because then I can just do dishes by hand This did have the option of coming with a dishwasher, but I don't need a dishwasher You know, it's just one or two people here and it's easy to just do the dishes really quick Another thing I found absolutely shocking about Grand Design is how many outlets they have There's like four outlets right here on the counter up above the stove. There's two more here and Two more down there. There's more on both sides of the couch and USB ports And it goes on and on I mean I could spend quite a while showing you where all the plugs are But another great feature that I liked about the Grand Design is they have this drawer down here That's really meant for a dog bowl. It actually came with a dog bowl Set right here, but it's too high for the boy So I actually keep the boys food right here when I'm not shooting a video and like the holy grail of RV life Where do you put your trash can? Not only do they have one trash can in here? They have two. Look at that. It's so great You can see that I made some stuff with lemons Usually I have the recycling back there But right now I'm using that to store some potatoes Seems to work really well until I cook with them and then I'll put my recycling back in there So if you like to cook not only do you have space for all your gadgets? But a microwave convection oven This stovetop that I just love And an oven. I've never had an oven. You guys know that I like to use my solar oven But you know in the winter it's nice to have this and this couch is actually super comfy And so are these theater seats. You can see I have one totally reclined there that um, I mean you can sleep in that thing I have dug has it is really comfortable. They're also heated you guys and they have a massage I feel very spoiled But this couch actually folds out into a queen-size bed. We haven't tried it yet But um, should be great when people want to come visit. It also has this really sunny dinette table It's fixed. It doesn't go up or down or side to side But you can see here that I've got Two of the chairs that it came with it also came with some folding chairs which are in storage But you guys can see that I put a different chair over there Because I spend sometimes 15 hours a day at my desk and I use this as a desk. I mean right now you can see it's a puzzle But I had to put a more comfortable chair there. I think down the road. I'm actually going to move the table on the wall Down to the right So it's more like an L-shaped desk area. So I have more room for my chair It's not like I'm here, you know eating with my husband and two kids These are the steps up and you can see there's a cubby for shoes, which is great when you're coming in the door Note to anybody who gets one of these I will tell you that the staircase outside Lifts up really easy and comes inside the door. But when you do all the dirt Comes right here. So you've got to kind of look out for that. But let's go on up the stairs Oh and for anybody who was wondering where I put my hundred thousand plaque There it is. Thank you youtube. Here's the bedroom. But first I'm going to show you the bathroom It has a big shower that brings in the daylight And these doors that open up. They're just genius And I don't have any leaks at all in this one And it has storage back here and some hooks And just a regular rv toilet. This is a giant mirror medicine cabinet It holds a bunch of stuff and a sink With extra space to put your stuff in And again more storage and more outlets the shower actually opens from either side I just realized this the other day when I needed to get something off the counter while I was in the shower love it But it is a nice big shower with a removable nozzle And it has a seat which you can see I have covered in stuff. I'm still organizing But the thing I think is just genius about this shower. There's actually two things First of all to get more height than the shower you actually step down into the shower So you guys can kind of see how deep that is So for anybody that's tall it gives you like maybe an extra 10 inches I'm guessing the other thing is that the water Goes into these little tracks and then actually comes out into the shower So you're not dripping water out into your bathroom where you have to worry about water damage Genius grand design Oh look, I just triggered the motion sensor now at night if you're walking to the bathroom or something Or you just want to walk down the stairs to get into the living room This light lights up the stairs and I can also see when the cat is coming and going Genius grand design love it Okay, let's take a look at the bedroom I will turn on the light There are windows all around the bed And it lets in a nice breeze and you guys this is a king-size bed Which is so nice when Doug comes to visit. I could spend days in this bed And then of course it's got a nice mirrored closet over here I'm going to show you the closet in a second even though it's a mess because it's just amazing They have another TV in here And a dresser and there's also storage under the bed And I'm going to show you guys that I figured out I could put the cat box under here I had this hole cut the dealership did it for me I'm going to put some kind of a nice trim on it But that's where the boy's litter box is and he loves just laying on this mat because it's next to the heating vent All right, you guys here's the closet It has hanging space But then it also has storage space back here So I keep extra cat food there toilet paper Extra towels things like that If you have anything tall like camera tripods or I guess golf clubs something like that Maybe even skis they would fit in that corner Love it Okay, you guys I almost don't even want to show you what's in that door behind me because I feel really spoiled You guys guessed it Cue the chorus of angels A washer dryer I would probably only use it when I have ready access to water and power But I am having a bunch of solar put on I'll tell you guys about that soon But it's been a real treat to have an actual washer and dryer and not have to go to the laundromat I'm just inside the door and I'm actually going to pan around So that you guys can get an actual feel of the floor plan in here I'm just going to walk literally around that island and through the kitchen and Then Up the stairs Is the bedroom I just love it in here the light in the space is so great and yeah it's another five feet technically longer than my last rig If you count the part that goes over the truck And I have to have a truck and I'm going to tell you guys all about that in an upcoming video So it is going to cut down on some of the spaces I can get into But now I'm going to have a car to get around And my living area is so much bigger. I hope you guys enjoyed the tour Again, if you're curious about why I made the switch and how the money worked out and everything I'm going to tell you all about that Wednesday View queue is coming up on Sunday. Really glad to be back with you guys. I missed you a lot But you can expect videos from me at least every week coming up through this year I hope you're all having a great sunday out there You're on the road or you get out there soon until then Everybody have happy travels and be free