A Gorgeous Butte!

Monday, September 22, 1997 by Dave Winer.

I'm back from the Digital Storytelling Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado.

When I first heard Digital Storytelling I heard Internet Storytelling. That's what I do. The festival turns out to be something else -- many of the people who go are doing multi-year projects to bring movie-like storytelling to computer screens using tools like Adobe Premiere and Macromedia Director.

In contrast, my digital storytelling is quick. Wham bam! Yeah. Ooooh.

It's over.

A metaphor for DaveNet 

One presenter at the show, a woman, said that much storytelling has the cadence of a male orgasm.

I like it. State the problem. Excitement! Find another problem. Roll around a bit. Resolution! The end.

A short time later, we do it again.

A song 

I'm a man yes I am.

Nothin wrong with that.

Women's websites are different.

Vive la difference!

(And thank heaven for little girls...)

Oooooh Crested Butte! 

Crested Butte. A big valley at the end of a road. An inspiring location. Big big mountains, but you can see the tops from the valley floor.

Hey we took a trip to the top of the mountain, but we stayed in the auditorium. Movies! Yeah. We went to ancient San Francisco and to photo vaults in the midwest. We we went deep into the imaginations of some incredible artists. They invoke our imaginations. That's art.

We struggled with the always-present money issue (how am I going to get paid for my art?) We went on anyway.

The biggest point: in the arts, as in software, the good thing is working and playing together and appreciating each other's creativity. Just like the web.

Two pieces 

Now I see what I do as different. I write screenplays! I don't do bitmaps and after-effects, but I love the idea of working with people who do.

Two DaveNet pieces come to mind as story-lines for five minute video stories. One is an indoor story -- Jury Duty, 3/1/96; and one an outdoor story Thirty Miles of Air, 6/20/97.

I'd love to show them at the 1998 Crested Butte festival. Maybe sooooner?

Microserfs 

I read Douglas Coupland's Microserfs in the evenings and early mornings in Crested Butte. What a great book! The best part -- a new application for Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who's now an embalmed corpse lying in state in Moscow. I laughed out loud when I read that part.

Microserfs is a beautiful book of friendship and love and confusion set in Redmond, Palo Alto and Las Vegas and in the board rooms of Sand Hill Road. Everyone in the software industry should read this book. Oh man. I wish I had written it. It has already added color to my life. Lots! I feel like I'm living in Microserfs. I bet you will too.

More on Digital Storytelling 

I liked the Crested Butte festival, a lot.

The conference provides a gorgeous and friendly venue for interactivity. As Coupland would say it's totally one-point-oh. Crested Butte is an inspirational place. Well worth the extra trouble it takes to get there.

I volunteered to post recollections of the conference on www.scripting.com and to help get their web presence flowing more frequently. I'll post pointers on my home page as they come on-line.

Apple's presence 

Apple is a major sponsor of this show. Thanks Apple!

Many people think they won't be back as next year's sponsor.

I hope that's not true.

We had so much fun with our Macs.

Dave Winer

PS: An interesting 1-minute screenplay: I Do, 9/17/97.

PPS: Another screenplay: The Baseball God, 4/24/95.

PPPS: The most Microserfs-like DaveNet: Bee Season 8/28/96.