I had lunch yesterday with a friend I hadn’t seen in 13 years. It’s amazing how, with some people, you can just pick up where you left off. I am glad we’ve reconnected and look forward to getting to know her again.

We talked and shared what we’d been up to the past several years. She told me about her new business, and the musical pursuits she’d been working on. I told her about getting married, starting a business, and my own musical pursuits. As I was weaving in and out of various storylines, I suddenly had an amazing realization – that one simple action I’d taken 11 years ago literally changed the course of my life. I’ll explain.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’d come through some struggles in the mid 1990′s with my health. Flash forward to about 1998, and my life had changed dramatically. I’d now graduated from my 2nd run at college, and was working in the high tech industry as a content developer and teacher. I lived in my own apartment now and was exceptionally happy with both my work and my new circle of friends. With my life back on track, I started to seek out new creative pursuits. I knew I wanted to get back into singing, but wasn’t sure how. Quickly enough, life got busy again and I put that dream on the back burner.

Then one day, I was casually perusing our local arts and entertainment newspaper, and I came across a tiny little ad in the classified section. “Womens’ Choir auditions – phone xxx-xxxx to sign up”. Having never done a singing audition in my life, I quickly pushed the thought aside, thinking they were probably looking for more experienced singers. However, over the next few days, the thought of that ad kept nagging at me for some reason. With nothing to lose, I finally sucked it up and picked up the phone. My audition was set for the following Thursday.

Skip forward, I was fortunate to get into the choir, a womens’ choir about 40 strong called “Vox Femina”. I proceeded to spend the next 4 years forging some amazing friendships with some terrific women, performing all over the place, including down in the U.S.

One day, I was approached by one of my choir mates. She was thinking of forming an a capella quartet and they were looking for someone to fill the baritone part. I was flattered to be asked and decided it was a great new challenge for me. I joined that group, called Solera, and we proceeded to have another amazing 4 years, performing all over town and even singing the national anthem at a few baseball games too. The four of us became close friends, and we had a blast.

The quartet disbanded when one of the gals moved away to Toronto and another moved to Newfoundland. A few months later, I was set to head down to Toronto for a weekend visit with my friend, and I came across another ad, this time online, for an event called ‘Podcamp Toronto‘. I asked my friend if she’d like to join me to check it out that weekend, and since it was free, we had nothing to lose.

I walked into that event, was warmly greeted by many amazing people, and had my eyes opened wide to a whole new world. What I learned about new media that weekend and what I’ve been able to learn since has literally changed the direction of my business and the way that opportunities have flowed to it. I owe much of my success to the people in that room that weekend.

So you see, if it wasn’t for having a reason to go to Toronto that particular weekend (to see my friend), I wouldn’t have gone to Podcamp and probably wouldn’t have been inspired to start blogging or engaging on social platforms. If it wasn’t for the quartet, I’d have never become good friends with the person I was visiting that weekend. If it wasn’t for the choir, I’d have never been in the quartet. If it wasn’t for me happening upon that tiny newspaper ad that day, I’d have never known about the choir.

That tiny ad changed my life.

But most importantly – my intention (wanting to get more into music) and my action (picking up the phone, practicing hard for my audition) brought the rest of it into reality.

Kinda neat how that works, eh?

Express your intention. Ask for what you want. Take action. And pay close, close attention to the little, seemingly insignificant events in your life, because often, they are the ones that have the biggest impact.

Do you have a story about one event that changed the course of your life? Please share in the comments!

[photo credit: GiantsFanatic on Flickr]

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I met someone for the first time recently. They asked me “What do you do?”.

The story of what I “do” has changed over the years. I used to just say “I work for [insert company name here].” Then after a while, I started to identify more with the actual work I was doing. “I’m a TV producer.” “I’m a web designer.” “I’m a technical writer.” “I’m a professor.”

When we started the company, my description started to become more complex. “I’m a partner in a production company.” Which always prompted the response, “Oh? What kind of production?”, to which I’d have to go into a long-winded explanation that well, we do tv production, but also web video, corporate video, and oh – yah, we develop web sites too, and do marketing…..

The problem I was having is that I could no longer easily sum up what I actually “do”. I was “doing” too many different things. Then the other day, it hit me. What I do is irrelevant. It’s a task list. It’s what I am that matters.

So what AM I? Simple. I’m a storyteller.

All day, every day, I’m telling stories. I’m telling them here, on my blog. I’m telling them in 140 character increments, on Twitter. I’m telling them when I meet my friends for drinks or coffee or dinner. And I’m helping my clients figure out how to tell their stories too, whether it’s through a new web site, a video, a TV show, a marketing campaign, or all of the above.

It’s all storytelling.

So how does this tie in to the notion that it’s not about the tools? Well, the fact that it’s really all about storytelling rather proves it, I think.

If what we’re all doing out here is telling stories (our own, our clients’, others’ -it doesn’t matter), then really, the tools become irrelevant. Sure, it’s important to know how to use the right tools, and use them the right way to ensure the story is told well. But the tools themselves are secondary. It’s the story that really matters.

When all’s said and done, it’s the story that people will remember – not what you used to tell it. I’m wondering if it’s time to reconsider how much effort we are spending talking about the tools themselves, and if perhaps we should be spending more effort figuring out what our story is and how we’re going to tell it.

Thoughts?

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I have a secret. It’s one of those things I don’t tell people very often. But since we’re all friends here, here goes.

I love databases.

Yup. Databases. I find them wildly interesting. Why? Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit of an information junkie. OK, a LOT of an information junkie. I read voraciously. I love to learn and absorb. I love to take in all sorts of information, process it, think really hard about it, then spit it back out in a way that makes sense to me. Information excites me in a way that not many other things can.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been helping a company fix up their database (yup, I do that too). I’ve been given the challenge of finding ways to increase the integrity of their existing data, and to make the overall snapshot of the data easier to understand and align with the goals of the company. It’s a clean up exercise, a business process exercise and a functionality exercise all in one.

All of this digging around in the bowels of my client’s information and categories and bits and pieces has got me thinking a lot about how people deal with information.

The fundamental problem with a database is that it’s only as useful as the information that is contained within it. In other words, you can have the most sophisticated database in the world, but if the information is outdated, or simply not useful to your organization, then your database will fail.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much for a database to become useless. At times, depending on the data, it can be a matter of days or weeks (or even hours) before the information in it is rendered out of date and therefore useless. What this means is that there needs to be meaningful input to your database at all times. It means that processes have to be put in place to make sure that meaningful input happens.

Now, let’s take this outside of the structure of a database. If I look around at all of the information I have coming at me in a given day – hundreds of emails, thousands of blog posts, what can seem like tens of thousands of tweets – I can easily get lost in that. Data in the world of the Web gets old in a matter of minutes sometimes. How can anyone hope to keep up with this kind of turnover?

What it comes down to is context. It’s the same thing I’m using to solve my client’s database issues. The best way to define context is to ask relevant questions. Once you have answers to these questions you can start to put things in a logical order that makes sense and allows for processes that can be maintained.

In the case of my client’s database, I had to forget about fields and categories for a minute, step back and look at what they are really trying to accomplish with this information. If I can see the big picture, define the actual goals, I can then figure out how to structure the data. I give it context. I get it to tell a story. Once that story is there, people can begin to use the information in a meaningful way. And suddenly, maintaining the integrity of the data is easy, because everyone knows the story that we are trying to tell, and only contributes that information that is relevant to the story.

So…what does this have to do with your information? All of these inputs we have coming at us – blogs, news, tweets, videos, emails – they are just a mish-mash of data until we are able to give it context. Giving it context means we have to figure out the stories that we are trying to tell. Think about the things in your life that are important to you. For me, in a nutshell, and in no particular order, it’s family, business, music, and friends. All of the information I take in corresponds to one of those areas, most of the time. If I just bring in unfiltered information all the time, I have no context, and at the end of the day, I can’t make sense of any of it. Therefore, the information is essentially useless to me. And I’m missing out on the story.

However, if I start to figure out what kind of story I want that information to tell, then the picture starts to become more clear. Suddenly, I can understand and process and actually absorb some of what is coming at me. I can put it into categories, and continuously update my knowledge base. My data suddenly takes on a new level of integrity, and as I filter in the new information, it seamlessly adds to what’s already there. My data is suddenly incredibly valuable and useful.

Data is exciting because inside of this vast online maze of disparate information lies a story waiting to be told.

How do you define the story your information is trying to tell?

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It all started on Thursday night. Hubby was at work, I was hanging around Twitter and some blogs, and suddenly, the first line of my novel entered my head.

I tried to push it aside, as I REALLY wanted to finish reading the post I was on, but it kept pushing its way back into my head. I got up, poured a glass of wine. Sat back down, checked my email. The line was still there. I wandered into the livingroom, sat down, strummed my guitar a bit. Still there. I sighed, walked back into the office, sat down, opened a Word document, and typed the line. Then another line. And another.

I don’t know if I even want to do this, but I feel like I don’t have any choice. I wrote 800 words on Thursday night, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. The story is floating around in my head, and I think my only option is to get it down on paper.

Of course, I’m procrastinating. It’s a big commitment, writing a whole novel. I’m not even sure if I’m going to be any good at it. I write for a living, sure, but that’s proposals, creative treatments, TV shows, web sites. Not NOVELS. I might completely suck at writing a NOVEL. And the subject matter isn’t even something I know much about! But it’s here, in my head, and I don’t have a choice.

Well there, it’s out. Now that I’ve shared this with the blogoverse, I guess I really have to do it. If anyone has any tips or advice I’m wide open for suggestions. Because as I said, I have no freaking idea what I’m doing.

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