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For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #11 | Time, Chess And Carbon Dioxide

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

Illustrating the 13.8 billion year time scale of our existence on a dry lakebed in the Mojave desert attenuated by wonderful graphics. Abstract notions like time need to be made real through metaphor and this video does a wonderful job at telling our cosmic story through the ages (and how little humanity has contributed to it).

What a fun video where someone is explaining chess whilst unaware that the person they are teaching is already a grandmaster. An imagination and enthusiastic verbal journey which shows how colliding people of differing literacies forces the teacher to create new narratives for understanding. So much fun.

From the clever folks at NASA Scientific Visualization Studio comes this year long illustration of carbon moving in the atmosphere during 2021. What an arresting way to show the acrid flow and provoke a reaction to the toxic human-made filth we are polluting our planet with. Full explanation and other examples here.


Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.
Published

HATCH Europe 2023 | The Analogue Trust Factory

Colliding creative spirits to hatch a better world.

HATCH Europe was a three and half days of connections and conversations, performances and talks, breakout labs / workshops through to participatory and invitational expressions of creativity.

“Humanity moves at the speed of trust!”

Jurgis Didžiulis

HATCH appears in your life when you need it, pulls you up and into its swirling vortex of human kinship, then gently places you back into the world, changed, turned around, emboldened, enriched, enthusiastic.

This was my fourth time attending the twenty year initiative and the experience keeps getting better with age (see 2013, 2014, 2016 write-ups).

The curation of attendees is impressive⁠—wide ranging, audacious and folks simply doing stunning things in the world⁠—and this event had 140 attending (77 of which I have on a list to contact to follow up personally).

They and myself are now part of a larger network of over 3,000 HATCHers globally. A community of doers spanning the globe and forming a living chain of magnificent souls.

It was the first time the experience had been held in Europe and just as a brief aside, what a venue: the Caux Palace is one of the most intriguing places I’ve ever been to (from the funicular ride up from Montreux train station which weaves in and out of tunnels to deliver you neatly outside this vast property, to the vistas and superb aura / history of the place)⁠—I think HATCH has found a new (Europe-side) home!

It’s hard to summarise the time although it did include (in no particular order):

Art. Participation. Hope. Dancing. Puppets. Performance. Forgiveness. Transformation. Activism. Unity. Tears. Evolution. Discomfort. New friends. Old friends. Conversation. Integration. Confusion. Laughter. Hugs, lots of hugs.

Thank you HATCH, the organisers and volunteers, the Palace staff, the attendees, the sunrise and sunsets, those deep conversations, the silliness and delicious connections made.

I am (again) HATCHed!


A few days out was asked to get involved as the speaker coach / liaison (briefly MC). As an event professional I’m always happy to assist when attending other experiences as know how hard it is to pull off these things with so many moving parts needing attention:

Read other HATCH posts.
Published

#53 June 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

(via Safely Endangered)

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

READ

This piece with a marvelous headline: Eye-tracking glasses show viewers of Bosch triptych are drawn to hell.

About how the EU is moving closer to AI laws (including banning use of facial recognition tech by police & emotional recognition at work places & in schools.).

Meet the people still living on SecondLife: I still remember intro’ing folks to this in my presentations / workshops back in 2006-11, the concept of avatars, virtual currency / concerts / lectures etc.

Damn scary research on how COVID causes brain cells to fuse.

Crypto ads will need to carry risk warnings under new UK rules plus other new rules come into force imposed by the UK financial watchdog (which will probably be replicated in other nations).

WATCH

EXPLORE

This lovely website of a curated free typeface collections and there’s also this London TFL Dot Matrix typeface as well.

emojikitchen.dev has over 30,000 unique emoji mashup combinations for you to play with and use.

shapecatcher.com to draw in the box and it will help you to find the most similar unicode characters (urrently, there are 11817 character glyphs in the database).

200 plus, free Illustrations for your projects , just download and use, no attribution required.

An Online Safety Sign Generator.

clipdrop.co/uncrop “uncrops” your images and broadens them out (just like Photoshop Generative Fill Firefly but without text prompt) for free. Here’s an example from my AI creations:

And finally, Midjourney just released their ‘zoom out’ feature (you can either 1.5x or 2x) which is like automatic generative fill / out-painting. Here are my first attempts:

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#52 May 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Via Julian Frost

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

READ

This Twitter thread detailing how Cuba has had almost zero Covid deaths in an entire year.

Here’s a wonderful newsletter collating the most salient of all crypto related news & things (BONUS LINK: a fantastic deconstruction of the hype machine still churning by the failing investment portfolios of folks who bet on lame horses).

An article making a case that the Metaverse is dead although more like end of the Zucks massively failed gamble, it will continue in much smaller iterations.

We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint, it’s not all jazz-hands & high-fives this stuff.

WATCH

EXPLORE

The Gigabrain scans billions of discussions on Reddit & other online communities to find the most useful posts + comments for you.

This AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žiže.

A QArt Coder which makes QR codes with pixellated images which you upload.

Over 4100 pixel-perfect icons for web design via Tabler Icons, free and open source icons designed to make your website or app attractive, visually consistent and simply beautiful.

The Not By AI badge is created to encourage more humans to produce original content and help users identify human-generated content (although no information about the humans behind it).

Make It Big, an app to have full screen text message on your (iPhone) (I use it at events I’m facilitating to tell folks speaking what time they have left).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

High Fidelity Imagineering With AI | A Beginners Journey

After about 20mins of reading and prompt writing, these are the first images I created on the AI-assisted-image-creation-platform Midjourney.

The fidelity of these creations are incredible. Check out these closeups:

As a further experiment and using one of the already created Celtic warriors as the basis for the design, I went on to develop some potential covers for a fiction book I’m writing:

First set of images from prompt.

The reason for exploring this new platform is to understand the potential for creating images for my own creative projects and also is this something to build into the public speaking masterclasses I deliver for clients.

In a part of these masterclasses I talk about and show how to craft kick-ass presentation decks. In doing so I utilise a vast array of open sourced and creative common licensed content available on the web via a sweet bevvy of amassed resources over the years, which means that within twenty minutes or so I can find some wonderful items to embellish any story being told and build out a pretty wicked looking deck.

However, after just an hour or so playing on Midjourney, I see it becoming a powerful part of a storytellers toolkit as the business case will be: why trawl through different sites if you can very quickly state your needs and get a high-fidelity version of a specific image which serves the need.

Examples

Whether you’re an architectural student talking about the parametric abilities of your discipline:

A team leader wanting to represent a metaphoric path relating to a bold business strategy needing to be pursued:

A human resources lead presenting to the board and needing a stock-style image of people laughing in a corporate setting around a computer to demonstrate the aim for a conducive work culture:

Or just having fun turning one of your favourite cartoon characters from childhood into a photo-realistic portrait:

First set of images from prompt.
Second iteration with version 4 (bottom right) being my fav, see below:
Boom, Count Duckula in the proverbial flesh!

The only restriction is your own imagination (which I why like the term Augmented Imagination for AI)!

Limitations

It’s not a perfect platform.

Here’s what I got when I asked for a simple yellow post-it note with the word ‘help’ written on it:

There’s also a barrier to entry from both a digital interface perspective and also an image literacy angle.

Access to Midjourney (which is still positioned as being in beta) is via the Discord platform. This means the creation and indeed craft of producing these images is done out in the open in the semi-public hosted forums. I say semi-public because without first a Discord account plus accepting a few T&C’s to access, you can’t play.

Then there’s the literacy step. Knowing about cameras, lenses, exposures, angles plus lighting will give your images the edge above others. You have to be open to the messy process of nudging the system in the right way and nuances of language along with scene setting or even world building is needed.

Whether it be creating cute little monsters:

An atmospheric and rainy backstreet in an Asian city:

To a toy figure of Michael Jordan:

…you have to guide the output heavily.

The Trick

It can all sound too good to be true, or for some I’ve spoken to before I started playing, a little too confusing as well.

Once you get your head around the interface (as it’s quite jaggedy in it’s forum style, think ‘Slack channel peppered with a cacophony of people you don’t know saying wild and wonderful things with images blooming to life in between your prompts’, as it scrolls without you and finding your creations becomes sometimes hard work), I found the trick in creating impressive images is to balance simplicity and complexity.

Laying down the basics along with the intricate details of how to construct the output you want to see yields high-end results. For example, to build the image above I stipulated the scene, the person, the emotion displayed, the specific laptop being used, then the angle, the camera, the lens, the exposure, the lighting and the general ‘feel’—there’s a lot steering the production of what you see but it’s worth the time.

Built in to the Midjourney service are lots of ‘commands‘ to get your head around, and an interesting one is the “/describe” command which writes four example prompts based on an image you upload. So if you’re already using an image that you own or created you can upload and use the manufactured text prompt to get a sense of how you can create another one like it.

This and many other commands is a paid for service (as part of Midjourney subscription plans) and as I’m still using the free service I point it out as a great way to get started along with finding inspiration in prompt writing approaches.

Ownership

The current T&C’s of Midjourney says you keep what you create:

“…You own all Assets You create with the Services, to the extent possible under current law.”

…although it also states they own it all as well (including the prompts and any reference material you upload) along with some other funky stuff in there, like anyone else in the community can use them and remix them also.

It’s a bit confusing.

Just be aware of the classic adage: if it’s free or cheap you’re probably the product at this stage.

Again, if you want to create in the dark (without being in the public forum) you have to pay for that privilege.

Ethics

Like most though I’m worried deeply about the ethical nature of these creative engines due to questions on where they sourced their data (the large language models, LLMs, used to ‘train’ the AI on—I recommend reading A Completely Non-Technical Explanation of AI and Deep Learning if all this is gobble-dee-gook). Plus, if any output is being influenced by specific artists or other creatives, where is the attribution and citations for them? Surely that should be there as standard and would be easy to code in if you’ve come this far…?

There’s also a question of fabricating ‘alternative’ realities (like the recent Pope in a Prada coat). But what about making different historical narratives?

Like in the latter years of his life, Steve Jobs spent most of his time in his small home office working on old school computers:

He didn’t, I made this scene and story up.

Or photos of Elvis when he was a baby already playing a guitar:

Again, not true, all made up by me!

Then there’s other questions including environmental, as there’s valid questions around the growing carbon footprint of these platforms plus as mentioned, unethical concerns regarding image scrapers who took 30 billion images from Facebook and other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a ‘perpetual police line-up.

Conclusion

I’m dazzled by this!

It’s captivating to be generating such quality with little effort. And there lies in the danger. To not respect the background nature of the inventive act of creativity is what I fear people will miss here. I’m lucky enough to be able to navigate through my understanding and respect for what informs these constructions (I mean the influences from photographers and my basic knowledge of cameras plus image form as well as the technological interface), and yet it’s so liberating at the ease by which impressiveness can be gained.

With all technologies, I always experience it through the lens of augmentation. Does this aid what I do and offer into the world, with kindness and deep consideration on the impact?

Midjourney and the larger AI suite of tools (currently) do nothing without us. They are value-neutral. However, it’s simple to see how much negative impact they will have in the future. Have us all questioning what we see whilst bad actors look to exploit this to their advantage. And I mean much more than cheeky photographers winning prizes using AI.

So for now I invite you to take some time and look at the public Midjourney showcase to see the possibilities of what people are producing, it’s very hard not to raise your eyebrows in awe.

What about you, what potential do you see in platforms like this? Where will you use it? Why won’t you?

Because you never know when you need to create a shocked looking blue faced pink sheep in a meadow:

All images produced in this blog post was done by Midjourney and the prompts I came up with.
Published

#51 April 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Nope.

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

READ

Here’s a completely non-technical explanation of AI and deep learning which really does help you get how they do what they do (and through the metaphor used discover it has nothing to do with intelligence).

Another article on how awful Bitcoin (& crypto mining) is for the environment and another for good measure.

This article about Long Covid is scary stuff, which is echoed in some conversations with those in my networks who are suffering the same fate.

A great exploration of the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT work with bonus link of how this site is listed even though probably without them carrying on the terms when referenced.

A cheeky monkey who entered an AI created image and won a photography competition.

A different taken AI (that’s “Augmented Imagination”) to spark some thoughts.

How one company scraped 30 billion images from bookFace & other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a ‘perpetual police line-up’, douches!

A clean energy milestone the world is set to pass in 2023 which is news we all need more of.

Where I live in Wellington there is a danger of every street lamp falling out (which weighs that of a full grown turkey) plus the nation is becoming less attractive for rich foreigners based on visa numbers.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Draw a character, upload and animate. So much fun for the little & large humans!

Just live air traffic control with lofi hip hop.

Iceberger: draw an iceberg and see how it will float.

Humaaans, which is a mix-&-match illustrations of people, CC0 free for commercial or personal use.

Mockdrop is a free device mockups site.

Ukiyo-e Search, is a collection of a wide variety of Japanese woodblock prints.

This podcast with to Rex Weyler (one of the founders of Greenpeace) on Team Human, good for the ears and brain.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #10 | AI, MJ On Fire & Tiny Stories

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

Much like ‘The Scared Is Scared’ featured in last FTWWTTBS post, creating a visual from a recorded audio is a simple model. This time the above is crafted with the help of AI to generate the images which is often bizarre but never boring.

What a delight: the personality behind the art only on top of crafting plus the topic itself. The intricate details of the making is only matched by the exquisite tonal approach to the narration and story, right through to the song-and-dance outro. A half-an-hour which will delight, make you laugh out loud, chuckle and frown.

LOVING this 365 days creative project from Twitter account @smllwrlds, minimilistic science-fiction offerings to spark the imagination. Showing us how much can said in with little space and few words. The above are just a selection from this intriguing project.


All offered up to inspire, teach and make you smile / think.

Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.
Published

Back In The Northern Hemisphere | BOOK ME BABY

I’ve got June & July dates across a couple of continents now available for those who want to invest in presenting / public speaker professional development (for them or their leadership teams).

Here are the locations / dates of where I’ll be:

  • First three weeks of June in the UK
  • Late June to start of July mainland Europe: 26-30th Switzerland (attending HATCH Europe) then 30th June-12th July in Germany
  • Mid July North America: 12-15th Toronto, Canada then Pacific Northwest USA en route back to Aotearoa New Zealand)

So if you’re looking for a half or full day “Purposeful Storytelling Masterclass” professional development opportunity to accelerate you and / or your leaders in their public speaking skill set get in touch via the contact form. Here are some testimonials regarding the impact from some recent satisfied customers (more via front page of this site):

“DK delivered a brilliant session for my team, giving us all accessible, understandable and effective advice on how to present engagingly. The training worked for those with extensive presenting experience as well as those with little exposure to public speaking. It was also very practical and encouraged us to embed our learning by doing. Highly recommended!”

Emma McLean, Engagement Lead, Human Sciences Studio at Accenture The Dock, Dublin

“I cannot recommend DK highly enough – we just had our second very well attended event with him “Presenting Engagingly Online”, which has received fantastic feedback from all the participants. After the first event on “presenting with purpose” with DK last year, our whole team gained a new level of confidence and know how, and it was so popular we just had to offer another session with DK. From the perspective of events organisation, the whole thing couldn’t have been easier – Having all the content and information provided in advance, easy set up made our jobs so much easier.”

Julia Hahn, Wellington Branch Manager | German New Zealand Chamber of Commerce

“I have had the great pleasure of inviting DK to work with our team for 2 enjoyable and valuable sessions so far: an in-person (those were the days!) public speaking and storytelling workshop; and a virtual Presenting Engagingly Online session. These were both very highly rated by our team and we’re looking forward to having DK come and share more magic with us to help us continue to hone our skills and confidence. On top of that, DK is one of the kindest, most compassionate and generous people I know. He builds an environment of trust, confidence and care, role modelling respectful feedback and gently supporting people to build confidence and strength with public speaking, storytelling and presenting. I cannot recommend DK highly enough.”

Kimberley Gilmour, People & Culture | Health & Wellbeing, Groov Now

And here’s my bio:

As a Creative Producer, DK works with a wide range of clients ‘crafting delicious learning experiences’ either online, in-studio or in person events. He is the 9yr-ex-TEDxWellington / TEDxWellingtonWomen licensee plus founder of the unique video podcast Creative Welly and the annual Creative Leadership NZ conference.

He’s also a Speaker Coach, working with CEO’s and senior executives plus a random ex-All Black and Dame thrown into the mix plus delivers internal masterclasses on the topics of ‘purposeful storytelling’ to small leadership groups.

Previously, DK established Collider, a city-wide programme focused on transforming Wellington into an internationally recognised Smart Capital (with 200 events in 14 months with over 5000 attendees).

He also founded Mediasnackers in 2006 and through it has over a decade of working in the social media space consulting / delivering training & consulting on five continents and to a cross-sector range of clients from UNICEF, Gates Foundation, BBC, Ubisoft, Hasbro plus spent time as a social media manager for a national education company in NZ.

More info and pedigree via my about page and looking forward to collaborating with yous.

Published

Vapid LinkedIn Strategies | When Things Aren’t Really Free

Bored with these obvious and insipid tactics.

“Here’s something for “free” but you have to leave a comment and I might or might not send it to you based on if you’re in a position to do something for me in the future and because I already gave something to you you’re more likely to do something for me now even though I originally said it was “free”.”

Posted originally on Linkedin here.

Published

Speaking With Purpose: A guide to delivering impressive presentations! | Buy The Ebook & Audiobook Bundle

For only $10NZD this bundle deal features an ebook with 37 juicy chapters, nearly 14,000 words across 89 pages plus a 1hour34mins audiobook version (read by me).

Inspired by my recent TEDx talk “The Public Speaking Lesson You Never Had”, the guide details nearly all that I know about public speaking.

It’s loaded with personal reflections, professional experiences and insider insights on how to do that which most people fear. I’ve crammed it full of lessons from my speaker coaching career, resources and examples of best practice (which are tried and tested on me plus stolen from many others), applicable story models and frameworks, along with strategies on tackling the biggest hurdles of nerves and emotional connectivity.

Here are two teaser chapters:

1.2 SITTING

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”— Phillip Pullman

As detailed in my bio, I was the licensee and producer of the TEDxWellington events for nearly ten years.

During that time I developed and delivered to all speakers for the later events a five week coaching experience to aid the development of their talks. One year we had an individual we were failing as we were busy encouraging them (along with the other speakers) to stand in their story, project out and connect with the audience in this single way.

Well this person just wasn’t comfortable with this and as the weeks passed it became apparent it wasn’t going to work. I remember the conversation with them exploring other alternatives and the answer immediately came from a simple comment she made about sitting in her office, across from her clients on two comfy sofas and how that was when she was her most authentic self.

That was it, we sat the speaker in a comfy chair and wow, instant success. The talk became intimate and focussed. Delicate as well as powerful.

This was the best version of them to deliver their story in their way, not in our expected way of standing.

It also aligns with a favourite TED talk of mine which is a deeply moving, gentle and poignant, all delivered whilst sitting in a chair (please check out BJ Miller 2015’s TED talk, What really matters at the end of life). Another case of cultivating closeness through the simple act of sitting.

You’ll learn in a later chapter (DIVA) that understanding and stipulating the best environmental factors for you to deliver a great talk is paramount. I’m hoping the above story and examples give solid reasons to think differently in this area (albeit in rare cases).

One word of caution here for those hosting and ‘sitting’ on panels at events: this is a very different domain to what is described above in terms of a solo speaker in a chair. Unless you use clever lighting it’s very hard to create the same effect as I’ve described in the other cases although much of the other stuff in the book can be applied in this scenario.

3.4 VOICE

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”— Charles Mingus

Not many people like the way they sound. However, I guarantee you sound just fine enough.

Accents rule. Lean into them with just a side consideration of clarity for those with thick regional ones. Over the years, due to my international work plus living overseas for over a decade, my Welsh accent has softened. I still roll my “r’s” heavily and when I get excited it comes out wonderfully. I just make sure I enunciate correctly and it’s never been an issue.

I’d like you to consider how cadence, the way you modulate your voice and add stresses to what’s being said, are the inflections that can assist the audience to consider the importance of certain aspects of the story. Important for those who have a quiet ‘flat’ tone and what’s needed for this is to consider elevating the stresses with emotion.

Just like the cadence, the rhythm is another aspect for consideration. Varying the speed throughout any talk can be an effective way to add some ‘colour’ to an orators style. Although, don’t have too much of a difference here as it will sound awful plus confusing, just like someone is playing with a speed dial in your brain.

It’s best to play around with just subtle shifts in both cadence and rhythm which match the emotional range of the subject being discussed, like a little faster when it’s an exciting element of the story with a higher register and then slowing down again to enunciate for the poignant aspects which allows for reflection.

By the way if you want to create tension or make the listeners understand the importance of a statement, just take a second and pause.

A pause is like an underline in writing. 

It emphasises what came before.

Now the other way to do this is to repeat something. However this can only be used sparingly, like cumin in cooking.

Repeating something, even twice in a talk, gets noticed and I would suggest using this trick just once. Focus it on your biggest point or statement or piece of information which is truly arresting. Like a statistic which generates a ‘wow’ from when you share it, or a summarising line or two to distiLl a big topic which you’ve been introducing, or a revealing insight from a lived experience or even report. Again, make sure to be careful with this beyond a one time use.

In this bundle deal you not only get the ebook but also the audiobook as well, read by me. Again, here’s the SITTING chapter above in verbal form:

And here’s the ‘Table of Contents’ for the guide as well:

0.0 PROLOGUE
0.1 AIM
0.2 ME
0.3 MISCONCEPTION
0.4 EDUCATION
0.5 ELEMENTS
1.0 GRACE
1.1 FEET
1.2 SITTING
1.3 HANDS
1.4 BODY
1.5 FACE

1.6 SCRIPTS
1.7 SPEECH
1.8 MICS
2.0 CREDIBILITY
2.1 STARTING
2.2 DIVA
2.3 STORIES
2.4 MODELS
2.5 SLIDES
2.6 BREVITY
3.0 RESONANCE
3.1 SUCCESS
3.2 DESIGNING

3.3 LISTENING
3.4 VOICE
3.5 SPECTRUM
3.6 MISTAKES
3.7 BREATHING
3.8 JEDI
4.1 OUTRO
4.2 RESOURCES
4.3 OFFER
4.4 THANKS
4.5 LEGAL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (AGAIN)

If you’re new here, a little about my pedigree:

As a Creative Producer, DK works with a wide range of clients ‘crafting delicious learning experiences’ either online, in-studio or in person events. He is the 9yr-ex-TEDxWellington / TEDxWellingtonWomen licensee plus founder of the unique video podcast Creative Welly and the annual Creative Leadership NZ conference.

He’s also a Speaker Coach, working with CEO’s and senior executives plus a random ex-All Black and Dame thrown into the mix plus delivers internal masterclasses on the topics of ‘purposeful storytelling’ to small leadership groups.

Previously, DK established Collider, a city-wide programme focussed on transforming Wellington into an internationally recognised Smart Capital (with 200 events in 14 months with over 5000 attendees).

He also founded Mediasnackers in 2006 and through it has over a decade of working in the social media space consulting / delivering training & consulting on five continents and to a cross-sector range of clients from UNICEF, Gates Foundation, BBC, Ubisoft, Hasbro plus spent time as a social media manager for a national education company in NZ.

More info on my about page.

And the TEDx talk which inspired this:

This has been 20 years in the making and I do hope it ignites creative action plus aids your future public speaking endeavors:

Speaking With Purpose – A guide to delivering impressive presentations! by Justadandak Ltd. is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Published