- First off, how many of you played hooky,
that you've told a story,
to stay home from work or school, and succeeded?
Come on.
(audience chuckling)
Come on.
Kay, how many of you have a smart phone connected
to the internet that can put photos and videos up?
Kay, let's change the world.
You're already a storyteller,
you set out to get a desired outcome, you got it,
and never before have we been able, to change the world,
as we have today because we're connected to each other.
So, a couple really quick stories, first of how,
I met this wonderful woman.
And I told her I was gonna give all my secrets today,
so in the next couple minutes, we'll do our best.
My first trigger strategy, because I was unemployed,
had no income, and I just wanted to meet people and learn,
was I would invite them to coffee.
So when you see somebody online,
and you start engaging in that conversation,
take it offline, because even this,
this is media, this is, you know,
when you talk about trans-media, it's everything.
Everything matters.
We live in world today where everything matters.
So this is just as important
as the film you're gonna produce, or the blog post,
or whatever that you're gonna create,
this is just as important.
So let me talk about Natasha for a second.
I just landed, charity's brought me over to the UK,
you know, jet lag's slamming me,
but I carry a camera in my pocket all the time.
I never ever, do not have a camera.
I didn't plan on recording stories that night.
I didn't.
And all the sudden I see this girl in the rain,
panhandling with crutches.
And I asked her and start talking, and there's this story.
So, the other side of that was immediately,
Reddit pushed it to about 169,000 views overnight.
And it started a conversation about welfare
and welfare reform in the UK.
That was absolutely gorgeous.
I mean there was some funky conversation,
but online communities will pretty much police themselves.
And if there's a good organic conversation going,
it'll increase.
So what I do is kinda unique but I want to,
one of the things I think we do is we overthink stuff.
And we gotta say, oh ya gotta have that camera,
or I've gotta have that budget,
or I've gotta have that laptop,
or I've gotta have that connection.
Well, I started all this with 45 dollars
and a laptop and an iPhone.
And literally, YouTube's given me their homepage,
I'm the first cause to speak at Twitter,
and I can blah blah blah you forever,
but family's been reunited,
housing programs have been created,
and you know, kids that didn't have shoes, have shoes.
That's the important stuff.
And I almost didn't do it because I looked and I said,
"oh my gosh, I don't have the tools I need",
"I don't have what I need."
And then I just went and did it.
And I did two things, if you're gonna look,
I really like how you were talking about
how you have to figure out what you do,
and I'm always doing that.
I think we're always ever changing.
And, some people call it life-casting,
I call it reality Twittering.
So I do it, I do it, and really,
I've really been trying to think about this since
I was invited to this panel,
and if you're going to put it into a science or a strategy,
I do realtime, and as close to realtime as I possibly can.
So authenticity, has replaced production value.
So it used to be, a non-profit video,
it's about $1000 a minute.
So you could get a five minute video for about $5000,
that you would pay a production company.
Now with today's tools we have these phones,
and the general public, now kind of is like, cool,
you even have major news, like CNN doing,
you know, like FaceTime stuff,
and Skype and everything else.
You know, it's not so much production value anymore,
as in authenticity and if you can tell a good story.
So what I use, and thank you for whoever invents
the technology that it all syncs together.
You know what I mean?
Like for instance, while I was sitting there,
I put up a photo of me Nedra and I put it to Tumbler,
which happens to sync to Twitter,
which happens to sync to Facebook,
and goes someplace else I think.
But you know, I'm a one-man band
and I'm running into 10 cities and under bridges
and everything else, I got a camera,
a bag of socks, and I got an iPhone,
so I gotta figure out ways of simplifying it.
And so, I try to bring you vicariously with me.
'Cuz you're not gonna go to Skid Row I get that.
You're not gonna go into these hotels with me,
I get that.
Well maybe I'm the only crazy one,
but I get that too, you know what I mean?
So what I do is I try to bring you guys with me by telling,
a sequential story in little nuggets,
Twitter's very good at that.
And then, because you already met Natasha,
as I'm talking about, I'm walking down the Strand in London,
and I just met this young girl, and you know her story,
and you know her photo, because I put a photo up,
and then I talk about my own personal feelings
about meeting her, and then later in that evening,
close to realtime, I put up the more produced stuff.
So you know, I get self-conscious, we were talking earlier,
because, my background was in television
and television production, so I want to win an Emmy someday.
I do.
And you know, I gotta tell ya,
you know, I get embarrassed because
a lot of these videos are just horrible.
They're out of focus, or shaky camera,
or a dog comes and kicks my monopod,
nobody's ever complained.
Nobody's ever said wow, you're out of focus.
Nobody ever, ever, ever commented,
but they've said, oh my gosh, we've gotta do something
about poverty in America, to that, you know what I mean.
And the other thing, and I get this a lot,
and you know, how many of you are familiar with,
what is it, Disney Imagineers?
So Disney Imagineers remove can't from their vocabulary.
They started, they replaced it with yes if.
So even yesterday, or no yesterday I was flying,
the day before, I was with some marketers,
and they were going, you know, some execution got dropped,
and they were going, we can't, we can't, we couldn't.
And I'm thinking in my head, I coulda' ran to Best Buy
bought a TV, plugged it in, got a laptop,
put up the thing, 400 bucks, it's done.
You know what I mean?
But by saying I can't, they automatically shut it down.
I can if.
Well, it might take a little more money,
it might take a little more work,
it might take a little more blood, sweat, and tears,
but you can do anything and it doesn't really take a lot of,
$45, a laptop, and lives have been changed,
because I keep moving forward.
So you know, I also get this when I teach Social Media,
it's people who really want to think about it.
And I consider it, what I'm doing,
is you're here, and I'm just walking down the street
talking with you, and it's that simple.
You know, what do I say?
It's that simple.
You know, you're talking in you're head all the time,
you know, and granted, you don't want to put everything out,
you know, the CIA doesn't want to Tweet
everything it's doing, you know.
So you know, you use some common sense,
and you should have a strategy,
Social Media without a trick, I mean without a strategy
as a trick is a tool,
so you have some end results that you want.
But you know, have fun, you know, go out
and just try and you'll learn
really quick what works and what doesn't,
because you do that in your own interpersonal relationships.
You learn really quick, oh my gosh I made a friend,
or wow did I make that person mad,
I better not do that again, right?
And it's the same, social media is just online.
It's still a human experience.
You know, so, like I started, in the beginning,
you all know how to tell a story,
and you all have the tools needed,
so let's go change the world.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)