Destinations are rich landscapes for stories. In today’s world, visitor’s stories travel across multiple-platforms, from IRL (in real life) to their smartphone’s (in real time) and back to their hotel rooms on Facebook then uploaded to Pinterest, downloaded from Instagram, and shared with their communities. This new seamless landscape between digital activity and real life is changing the way travel stories are experienced and how they are shared and curated in media.

Transmedia is a new way of telling stories using both emergent and traditional forms of media across multiple channels to create storyworlds that you can enter and be immersed in. It offers a rich, unique experience that often utilizes a highly participatory component whereby the ‘audience’ is able to enter into the authorship of the story and sometimes change its outcome. Think of Star Wars, one of the first forays into Transmedia, with its rich cinematic narrative that was ported across books, cards, merchandise, lego, video games, and much, much more (to George Lucas’ great delight I am sure). Employing Transmedia storytelling in destination marketing allows the visitor to immerse themselves more deeply into the experience of the destination and engage and interact both on and offline in ways never experienced in the tourism industry until now. Story has power. Telling the stories that live within a destination are the truest way to differentiate the location and connect with visitors who are, in today’s media landscape, looking for story that they can enter via photographs, film, writing, audio and feel that the spine of the story isn’t lost as they experience the narrative across these various mediums. The best way to unite all this media with seeming endless ‘new’ and better platforms, is quite simply to tell a good story. Hotels are hotbeds of stories just waiting to be told; they are a living theatre with daily dramas, exciting plot twists, and unexpected characters that bring the story alive.

The speed at which mobile is growing in the context of travel will further support  tourists’ utilizing digital platforms and tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Foursquare, YouTube, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Instagram,  and many more, in order to share their experiences in real time, creating a highly individualistic Transmedia narrative as they navigate from their front door to your destination and back home again. How are tourism and hospitality organizations responding to the new visitor story told in this way? Could their marketing incorporate their guest narratives within the grand narrative of the destination in order to create a more meaningful storyworld for tourists to visit? How are destinations interacting with the visitor story throughout the entire life cycle of this new kind of travel narrative?

The visitor story is no longer shared at the end of the trip with the family sitting down over a photo album together. Today’s visitor is part of the destination story as they report every experience across multiple-platforms and actively participate in the destination’s recorded media history which results in a Transmedia narrative long after they have packed their suitcases and headed home.

Shared story, between visitor and destination, will be an exciting, and evolving one in which media will play the leading role.

Well over a decade ago I designed custom robes for the Sooke Harbour House. That was with my first business, Lux Spa. I loved designing and coming up with textiles that would suit a destination and I was so thrilled to go and visit the Sooke Harbour House again in my new incarnation as a digital story architect. I had the pleasure of staying the night (which I highly recommend, because trust me, you will not want to go anywhere after dinner but to your gorgeous suite) and capturing story from some of the top wedding professionals on the West Coast. I facilitated round tables the following day, discussing the place of social media and emerging technology, traditional story, and memory within the context of wedding planning and event management. It was a privilege to meet so many talented designers, planners, photographers and of course the always incredible Frederique and Sinclair, the hoteliers behind the world-renown Sooke Harbour House.
It was a night I won’t forget and I hope to get out there again to capture more stories!

Here is a little iPhone story I put together from my stay:

I thought to post a little something on what I’ve been up to. It’s been quite a month. I’ve been in the last leg of a campaign design which has been really fun but more demanding than I imagined, which, I hear, is pretty typical of cross-platform work. I was lucky to get some  incredibly talented help with my campaign including videographer Jonathan Bartlett, who sponsored two videos for the campaign. I’ve been working on this project since November and it has just gone live at www.transithero.ca! Here we are filming Professor David Black, one of the smartest communication experts and educators I know. He also happens to be a truly devoted transit user so he was a great subject for a video story.

I wanted to uncover stories wherever possible in whatever media that worked for the participant so the site can take audio, visual, and written stories and this platform is extended across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest for further sharing and storytelling. It isn’t easy working with a crown agency, a moving fan base, and technology that doesn’t always support the way stories evolve. I’ll be discovering some stories IRL this week on buses all over the place so we’ll really start seeing content in real-time. By the way,  you can submit a transit story for some serious rewards, just saying at www.transithero.ca!

Another project I am working on is the story of the ugly-duckling story as told through a film narrative of the renovation of a heritage room inside an iconic hotel. I had the idea when I first saw the design drawings for the new space and thought, wow, if those walls could talk, what would they say? As the layers of paint and floor get peeled back, my collaborator on this project,  Bill Weaver, filmmaker and creative communicator behind Media That Matters, and I are both discovering just how compelling this narrative is. It is an interesting project for me, to transcribe a room’s narrative in the context of memory, and envision what it will be to the future guests that come to stay at the Fairmont Empress.

I am also working on an innovative campaign for tourism that will really utilize visitor created content in a new, and I hope, highly participatory way. Stay tuned for that one, should by launched early summer just in time for high-season. Until then, I’ll be reminding myself of master storyteller Robert McKee’s words:

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. –Robert McKee

I realized in my last post I was swooning so I found this useful infographic that encouraged me to share so, see below for some solid examples of how to implement Pinterest into your business strategy. Be aware of their privacy and copyright policies as this platform will continue to see challenges around IP. Still worth investing in I believe.

Pinterest Infographic, an Infographic by Linchpin SEO

My Pinterest addiction is out of control. It’s 11 pm and I’m just starting. The thing about Pinterest is it’s just so damn beautiful. And the shareability is so easy and simple to navigate. I can understand why it is growing at the rate it is. I dare you to check it out. You’ll see what I’m saying. You’ll stay up late too. Trust me.

If you have any Pinterest thoughts, I’d love to hear them. My favourite part of this new community is the instant ‘finding of your tribe’ that happens. With sharing through Twitter, Facebook, embedding for blogs, email, camera roll, and more, paired with endless, gorgeous, visual content, organized nicely by interest, Pinterest is my new social crush.

Recently, I was sent a link to a Tedx session called ‘Be Suspicious of Stories’ by Tyler Cowen (http://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_stories.html) and I thought I’d respond with Storify. Suspending your disbelief is a risk, but we must in order to enter our humanity more fully.

I’ve neglected story for a while. Sure, I’ve talked about it. I’ve listened to TEDxTransmedia lectures. I’ve tweeted about it. I’ve retweeted storytellers, and thanked a lot of PaperLi’s who featured content I had put out there on–you guessed it–storytelling.

But where has my own story gone? Buried in to-do’s. Administration of life. 

Eventually, however, if you are creative, you must go down the rabbit hole; you must get back to the story.

In an effort to drill down into story, specifically transmedia storytelling, I had the immense pleasure of attending the Storyworld 2011 Conference in San Francisco. I was so inspired every moment I was there, and surrounded by some huge talents in the Transmedia world–people I truly think are doing world-changing work like Lance Weiler, Christy Dena, Jeff Gomez, Brian Clark, and Henry Jenkins. Jenkins wasn’t actually at Storyworld but he may have well as been–he was in everyone’s keynotes and panels discussions and was referred to across multiple bars and ballrooms for 3.5 days.

But what I really loved about Storyworld was that I felt part of a tribe; I was completely at ease because story was the constant subject that threaded us together as a community in a less-than-friendly wi-fi environment, as we went down the proverbial rabbit-hole of transmedia, delving into the IP issues, the indie versus franchise questions, and above all, the burning desire to tell and share highly-crafted, compelling stories.

On the last day, Brian Clark (chief experience design dude at his company GMD studios) facilitated a totally cool exercise called #OccupyTransmedia which had us filming, tweeting, postering, photographing, and storifying content around Transmedia. It was an electric feeling because of the level of media, storytelling skill, and talented characters in that small room. I had the chance to catch a great conversation and due to the adamant change orders that were being yelled by Brian (standing from a chair) we had to rotate to new media every few minutes and I didn’t get the chance to ask the names of these articulate humans in this video. If you are one of these fabulous folks, just message me so I can give you credit! This conversation really captured the spirit of Storyworld for me as it delves into some of the larger ideas or ‘grand narratives’ if you will, around story and technology. Forgive my use of the Star Wars theme at the beginning, I know it’s hoky, but Star Wars was a sort of meta-narrative running through the conference too. You just can’t get away from the force I guess when it comes to storytellers, particularly in a room filled with entertainment media geniuses.

I am going to stop talking about story now and get back to my transmedia novel! If you’re wanting to get in touch, I’m down the rabbit hole.

As media does a sort of double-time jig down communication wires circumnavigating the globe, I think the question of ownership will become more and more relevant (and urgent).  Since the title Transmedia Producer was officially approved (thanks to the work of Jeff Gomez) by the Producers Guild of America as an official credit, it makes me wonder how media will be credited (and owned), distributed, and consumed in the near future.

Transmedia requires a collective of talent to be produced, from many different communities, on multiple-platforms, in a myriad of distribution channels. Ownership is a tricky question.

Some of you may have noticed that ‘story’ is everywhere. When Facebook converted their interface to unfold your world in narrative, I knew we had crossed over.

The world is officially immersed in narrative. 

Yet, how do we make a living creating storyworld’s when ownership is shared across so many platforms and channels? Shared not only by the big business but by the fan community itself?

In a world of micro-narratives, I wonder, are we losing sense of our ethics? What piece of the narrative is ours, how we embed, tag, share it and is it important that the narrative have purpose or a deeper meaning? Does it matter if the narrative belongs to Coca-Cola or to a non-profit or a teen in his bedroom? Does it matter if it sells puppy food or mosquito netting for people in Africa? Does it matter if only a small group of followers read the narrative or does it only have meaning if it is viral, shared globally, communally, digested by a swath of people across all boundaries? Or can it be a single person experiencing one story by employing all of their senses?

Jeff Gomez refers to the Grand Narrative in a presentation he gave for TedXTransmedia and he implores us, at the end of the speech, in a very tender way, to help him ‘stay human’, for us to ‘stay human’. I agree with Jeff that our shared narrative needs to stay human, and not simply be created, and digested for more–more products, more merchandise, more money, more immersion, more ‘stuff‘. Instead, perhaps we can think about narrative as the art and craft that it is and elevate it beyond our common experience to one that is transformative.

If your story is not transformative, whether it be through a fully realized storyworld, or whether it is a micro-story told on Instagram from the palm of your hand, I think the opportunity for transformative telling remains critical. Story may be the new black in the digital space, but we need to remember as we work on cross-platforms, that it needs to begin with a human heart. If it does, then ownership should follow closely and ideation sharing and credit will conversely belong to an ethical set of values with the purpose to serve (and support) the story creator.

Story is the fascia that binds us. It our collective emotional skein that allows us entry into one another’s humanity in a way that dissolves politics, religion, age, status, and borders. It is the passport of our global consciousness that imports and exports shared experiences and ignites emotions, from vitriol to joy, outrage to tender love, futility to hope. Today, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, stories from that day are acutely felt around the world and we all partake on some level, from our own ‘where I was’ memory to a respectful nod at the heroism of rescue workers or the shredded, churning anger some still feel and may always feel for the rest of their lives.

I was an entrepreneur at the time of 9/11, designing and selling luxury private label to hotels and destination spas. My life was changed, not only because of the emotional fascia of shared terror, but also because the last thing anyone wanted was to pay for a custom-designed robe for their hotel when there were no guests. Hospitality was changed forever that day. From travel to service to the way in which we think and experience tourism was inevitably altered. Rooms stayed vacant. People lived in fear. Times were highly uncertain.

Flying home from Toronto yesterday, I thought about how 9/11 both divides and collects us together; how the deep sorrows of that moment when the first plane hit still impact us with ragged, scarring emotions as though it happened yesterday. The billowing clouds of debris, the white faces of people covered in dust, screaming in the streets of a fallen New York, the harrowing silence of those who chose a quick death, and the ones who were left behind, bereft of their loved ones in a single instant–all of these voices and their stories still linger in our connective tissue.

Some may say social media has created a culture of narcissism but I would disagree. Looking out at the stories I see emerging today, on this 10th anniversary, I witness instead, a shared skin, a global connectivity that is awe-inspiring in what it could mean for us as a collective consciousness. Couldn’t we, just maybe, use this to eradicate terror in the future?

I like to think so. For all of those who are suffering today, my heart goes out to you. May your stories not be in vain.