Why interact with stories?

I already posted up a brief summary of my talk at Off the Page last month. If you want to see the whole thing, it's now up on YouTube (above) along with the slides.

One caveat: some of the early slides in the video don't sync too well with the audio, so if you wonder why I'm talking about Breaking Bad all of a sudden, just hang on a few seconds and all will become crystal clear. (Do you see what I did there? 'Cause Jesse and Walt cook... Oh, never mind.)

For those who don't have seven minutes to spare to look at YouTube (among whom I'd probably have to include myself) you can read my summary of the argument here. And I probably ought to reiterate the context of the talk, as several people have wondered about my references to "publishers". That means book publishers, these talks being about how publishing is being transformed by technology. The clue is in the name: Off the Page.

Twenty-twenty talking

I gave a rapid-fire presentation at the Groucho Club last week. It was one of those PechaKucha things, or Sancho Panzas as my mum would call them. You put up twenty slides and try to say something sensible about them in twenty seconds. Each, that is. A whole twenty seconds per slide.

Well, I don't know if anyone there could follow what I was talking about. I enjoyed the other presentations, though, notably by Phil Stuart of Preloaded (who ran through a bunch of really intriguing and original games that showed the medium is starting to flex its creative muscles) and Dean Johnson of Brandwidth (who showed what his company are doing with Mark Staufer's evolution of the novel, The Numinous Place).

The evening was organized by Four Colman Getty as part of their new Off The Page series of events. The idea is to look at how publishing and technology intersect, and the specific focus of this first one was gaming. You see, it all makes perfect sense.

My thesis was how I'd like to see interactive storytelling evolve. Yep, in 400 seconds or less. For those who weren't there - or even who were, and couldn't follow the machine-gun exposition, I've written up the gist of the argument for the Huffington Post and you can read it right here. Though really I need a few hours to do it justice.

Comments welcome, here or on the HuffPo site. Photos for Off The Page here and copyright Roger Blagg.