A link from there led to the stories4good YouTube channel. Curious about the video makers, I followed a link to Storytellers for Good. Their slogan rolls easily off the tongue: “Promoting goodness…inspiring greatness”.

In the best spirit of “show, don’t tell”, they promote their work—which is helping organizations tell their stories—by highlighting the stories they have created for clients. Links to their videos are the first thing that appears when you click on their home page.

Those wanting to dig behind the videos, to understand the company and how they approach clients’ stories can click on the News/Blog link.

This is a site that will inspire anyone wanting to tell a better story of a project or initiative, but it’s also a full-meal deal for anyone with an open heart and a love of a good story.

The summit seems particularly timely to me since two major streams of reinvention stories have been kicked off in the last twenty-four hours. How these stories are crafted and played out will have significant impact in the coming months.

Before I went to bed on November 2nd, the U.S. Democrats and President Obama were already starting to create a new story. Having retained control of the Senate but lost the House, they were beginning to shape a story that could move beyond the heady optimism of the 2008 election without losing sight of the promised changes that swept them into office.

The Tea Party was already spinning stories that made their relatively poor showing sound like a major coup. And, of course, the Republicans were crowing about their takeover of the House and conveniently ignoring the Tea Party dissidents as they carved out a story about how they were going to put the brakes on every forward-thinking program that has managed to get past their heel-dragging in the past two years.

In Canada November 3rd started with another reinvention story in the making. The Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, suddenly announced he was resigning. He’s now in his third term, with an approval rating that has sunk to 9%. He dropped hints in his speech about how he’s going to edit the story of his years in the top spot in our province.

What was particularly interesting to me was listening to both his supporters and his opposition. The stories from his supporters were predictably laudatory but showed carefully crafted and shared briefing notes. By the third or fourth supporter, I knew almost word for word what they were going to say, thanks to the story editors in the Liberal Party inner sanctum.

Download this storytelling manifesto to learn more about 15 storytelling axioms

On the other hand, some of his opponents, taken by surprise at the Premier’s resignation, were telling stories that were polar opposites of the ones they’d been telling during the years of Campbell’s tight control and the months of anti-HST campaigning. (For those not in BC or Canada, we’ve recently been slapped with a Harmonized Sales Tax of 12%. Depending on which stories you believe, it’s either a heinous attack on our pocketbooks or a smart approach that will bring business to the province.) I was relieved when one opponent refused to gloss over the gutting of the civil service or the privatization of so many things that were delivered into corporate hands.

In both the U.S. and Canada, there’ll be a lot of story rewrites in the coming weeks. So this is a particularly good time to jump into the Reinvention Summit and engage in some vigorous discussion about the role of stories, why they are so powerful, and what it all means for us, as story-making creatures.

Registration starts as low as $11.11. You can tune in during the scheduled times or download the broadcasts for later listening. With so many thoughtful speakers lined up, the summit will have no trouble supporting the statement, “If you want to change the world, change your story.”

I’m not sure what she thought a storyteller would look like. I’m pretty sure she didn’t expect an ordinary, middle-aged woman.

We walked to a café in the town square and ordered lunch. While we adults chatted easily, the little girl sat silent, wrapped in her disillusionment.

It was a cool day. The child was shivering. I offered her some of my hot soup. She took a few spoonsful. Then she looked me in the eye.

I could see something shift. “Do you want to hear a story?” she asked.

For the next thirty minutes she spun one story after another. Her mother was stunned. I was enchanted.

It turned out her babysitter had been reading folktales to her. The child had memorized her favorites and told them flawlessly. She was completely caught up in Rapunzel’s dilemma, Blue Beard’s treachery, and the menace of Baba Yaga. So were we.

The video on this link makes me think of that talented little storyteller. Capucine is French and is a brilliant, natural storyteller. The video her mother made of her at the age of four was so popular she decided to use it to support education for children in Mongolia. You can still contribute to the cause at Capucine’s Library (which also has a video of the little munchkin, pitching for donations so Mongolian children can read and have books).

We see a businessman, carrying a briefcase, walking toward the square. Will he give the man a coin? Walk by? We know the juxtaposition of rich and poor is important to the story, but we don’t know how until the end.

I don’t want to give this one away so will only say that this beautiful little film is a good example of how changing the story can change the outcome.

I particularly like his final thoughts: “And absolutely, finally, have fun, because if you have fun discovering a story, if you make surprising discoveries in the course of telling a story, that’s going to communicate no matter how you’re telling the story, and the fun and the spirit that you’ll bring to that is something that will keep the audience coming back.”

Watching this short video, I’m reminded of a storytelling student who taught me an important lesson. I was teaching an Experimental College class through the University of Washington. This was early in my storytelling career, when I still thought I understood The Rules of Storytelling.

She broke every one of them, with a quiet tale of a deer that came into a clearing where she lay on a blanket. The deer walked over and touched its nose to her. That’s all. No starting hook, no character development, no problem to solve, no build-up, no rising and falling action, not even rich detail. But from her first quiet words, she wrapped us in magic.

So I know there’s more to telling a good story than Scott Simon tells us here, but this short film gives some advice I still find solid.