Stories & Knowledge Integration
Your Stories + Our Interactive Storytelling Applications = A Force Multiplier
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
-Ursula K. LeGuin
We’re made from songs and stories. Even our basic element of Western communication is a concise story: Subject + Predicate [+ Object]. Something affects itself or another something.
GroundWork Design creates applications (programs, systems) that tell all-manner of stories. Ideally, many stories at the same time and connected together.
It Takes All Kinds
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.”
-Walter Cronkite
“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story."
-Native American saying
We know that your story (personal, professional, organizational) unfolds by itself as you live your life, connect with others, and produce good works. How you remember that story and how that memory affects your next part of the story is what interests us. That’s the “stuff” that you share when you are trying to tell people how you got to where you are now; it’s the information fuel that makes you an expert; and it’s the launch-pad for your future efforts.
The story of life is often hard, and people realize that when they are listening to stories. When a story sounds too good to be true, they might disbelieve it a little. If it seems too tragic, they’ll wonder where the good was. People expect a balance; they expect there to be more than one side. When they hear a good story, they want to be part of it. That’s how we get affinity groups and allegiances.
GroundWork creates its storytelling applications to help involve the hearer of the tale. The same applications allow the told stories to grow over time, as a greater story of interaction unfolds. This expansion is enhanced by the intention of sharing stories over web. And finally that broad sharing and involvement creates a force multiplier effect for any story you start to tell.
Everything Becomes Your Story
“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
-Plato
“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself … You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
-Angela Carter
Whether you experience a story told by a person, one preserved for antiquity, or one presented as visual entertainment, you consume it with the lens of our own story. If you can, you ask questions or discuss it with your friends or cohorts. You meld your understanding with more about the original story.
And so it is for applications GroundWork creates. They are built on the premise that when a user/listener/viewer can engage and take ownership of the information being shared with them, they walk away with better understanding and more purpose.
We build these applications so that more stories can be told by and for more people. And that’s what we can do for you.