Ira Glass’s Half-Hour “Master Class in Storytelling”

I’ve never attended the annual Gel Conference in New York City, but I always know it’s being held. Afterwards, I always look forward to learning about the year’s events. (Actually, I look forward to that before the conference, too. But I tamp down that particular form of expectation because it makes me wish I were going!)

What is the Gel Conference? It’s one project of a company called Good Experience, which itself is an offshoot of a larger enterprise, Creative Good (founded by one Mark Hurst): “the world’s first user experience consulting firm.” For years, I’ve subscribed to Hurst’s weekly e-newsletter, also called Good Experience; nominally for computer- and other tech-type people, about how to improve a user’s experience of one’s software, Web site,  product labeling, and so on, Good Experience actually is a general pack rat’s dream. A given issue generally begins with a mini-essay by Hurst such as the one from 2004 which began:

I walked into a Williams-Sonoma store here in New York a few days ago to return a gift that someone had sent me via the Williams-Sonoma website. When I got to the counter, I explained that I wanted to return the item – I already own something similar and just wanted cash back.

The clerk behind the counter said, “Sorry, sir, but we don’t sell this item in the store. This is going to have to go back.”

“What do you mean, ‘go back’?” I asked.

“It has to go back to the catalog. We don’t sell that item in the store.”

I showed the clerk the purchase receipt. “This *is* Williams-Sonoma, right?”

“Right. But as I told you, there are some items that the catalog sells and we don’t sell. This has to go back to the catalog.”

(Read the whole thing here.)

As for the Gel Conference, its site sums up the annual mission:

Short for “Good Experience Live”, Gel is a conference, and community, exploring good experience in all its forms — in business, technology, art, society, and life.

Instead of focusing on just one thing (design, technology, user experience, business, etc.) like many conferences, Gel touches on many things. This challenges attendees to find, and learn from, the patterns that underlie good experience, even in disciplines vastly different from their own.

Quite a grab bag, in short.

In 2007 one of the Gel speakers was Ira Glass, host of the NPR (and later PBS) program called This American Life. Just a couple days ago, they posted a video of his talk, “one of the most popular Gel talks ever.” In it, he discusses — with many examples from the show — the elements of a good story. On the surface, he’s discussing good broadcast stories, but I believe he’s really talking about story in general.

Here’s the video; it’s over a half-hour long, so give yourself a good block of time to listen. (Just pretend you’ve got NPR turned on in the background — there’s no particular reason to watch this).

“At this point, nobody turns off the radio.” Quite a metaphorical target for any storyteller to shoot for, hmm?

___________________________

Note: Gel videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.