November 20, 2019 |

Lisa Evans – The Power of Your Story

Stories have the power to heal, inspire, educate and connect. Humans are hard-wired to share stories, and when we share a story we can create an incredible moment between teller and listener, and when we do something magical takes place.

This session will see:

  • How to mine, refine and polish your story gems.
  • Discover how to share your story to connect, inspire, and captivate.
  • How to create a personal story based on 5 C’s of Compelling Storytelling. A simple formula to storytelling success.

About Lisa Evans:

Lisa Evans is known as The Story Midwife. Lisa is an international keynote speaker, author of three books, a Certified World Class Speaking and Storytelling Coach, a TEDx speaker coach, Media Trainer with Media Stable, and an improvisation actor with Perth Playback Theatre.

Lisa helps her clients mine, refine and deliver captivating stories for their business or brand. Whether it is the boardroom, ballroom, platform or podium she helps them craft powerful presentations with compelling stories that are hard to forget.

Before her transformational journey, Lisa worked for over 20 years as a midwife. Her purpose these days is to help bring life into the world in the form of stories and to empower others to speak with confidence.

November 3, 2019 |

Whose Lines Are They Anyway? Co-constructing useful stories as a leader and coach

As a leader or as a coach, you need to ensure that you are shaping stories that move things in the right direction. Dive into this pragmatic 90-minute sweet spot of Solutions Focus, Applied Improvisation and Storytelling to generate powerful ways of communicating with audiences, colleagues and clients.

This workshop takes you step by step through activities that will have you telling stories as never before. Drawing on lessons from journalism, PR, theatre, film-making, psychology and your own rich experiences, you will:

  • Gain a fresh appreciation of the importance of the stories you are telling
  • Improve your skills at making stories compelling and memorable
  • Learn how to co-create life-enhancing stories with your different audiences

Once upon a time, any story would do. No longer. Audiences have zero tolerance for boredom. And what we are working on is too important to get wrong. You can no longer afford to repel the audiences you need to attract.

Let’s tell better stories.

About your Workshop Leaders

Paul Z Jackson is a consultant, facilitator and coach, previously a journalist, theatre director and BBC comedy producer. Author or co-author of several books about improvisation, coaching and organisations, he’s on the accreditation team of the UK Association of Solution Focused Practice and President Emeritus of the Applied Improvisation Network.

Janine Waldman MSc FCIPD is an executive coach, organisational development consultant and facilitator specialising in positive approaches to change. Attracting a wide range of clients from DP World and Zain Telecommunications to Metropolitan Police, Imperial College, local authorities and charities, she is co-author of  ‘Positively Speaking: The Art of Constructive Conversations with a Solutions Focus’ and ‘The Resilience Pocketbook’.

September 12, 2019 |

Did you miss the Online Summit? Here are some resources

Great to host the Online Summit, and a big thank you to our Story Conference pre-conference workshop presenters of: Yamini Naidu, Lisa Evans, Samantha Hardy, David Newman and Cathryn Lloyd for being part our Online Summit held yesterday!

It was a great event exploring various perspectives of using story and narrative techniques, and in case you were unable to attend here are a few resources from the event for you:

There is also a special discount code available within the main slide-deck – which provides you access to register for the story conference at the special Early-Bird rate. Interested? Simply click the link below to register!

August 26, 2019 |

10 Reasons to attend this years Story Conference

This year the Story Conference running from November 27-29th 2019 celebrates its 10 year anniversary and here’s 10 great reasons to attend and join with this great community of practice.

  1. Great location! – Returning to the venue of the first Story Conference – the conference this year themed on work-health-and-wellbeing will be at tranquil Abbotsford Convent
  2. Great food! Yes – we know the secret to a fantastic conference is the food and you’ll enjoy delicious lunches from the Abbotsford Convent Bakery
  3. A delicious conference dinner will provide a great way to relax and soak up the atmosphere of a Melbourne institution
  4. Four key streams of the conference focussed on: Storytelling tools and techniques, Personal development and transformation, Stories in Communities and Organisations, The role of Stories in Well-being
  5. Pre-conference workshops to choose from to get you warmed up to ways of working with story and narratives
  6. 32 great workshops to choose from with workshop leaders from all around Australia…. and the world!
  7. Melbourne Playback Theatre is performing…twice!
  8. The great learnings and insights …  With workshops ranging from Narrative Competence in Healthcare to How to lead with Humour, and Rewriting your fitness story to The Future of Belonging, there is literally a smorgasboard of learnings awaiting…
  9. We’ve had a history of superb feedback on how engaging, interactive, community building and simply fun this conference is! (Read here more about the last conference here)
  10. The people!  Over the years what we’ve noticed is that it’s the people that really make this conference. Come along and join in with this great community of practice exploring the many and various ways that stories and narratives can emerge and impact on our work, health and well-being.

Wondering how to register?  Simply click here.

August 21, 2019 |

Sandy McDonald – Changing the Narrative

A voice is only empowered if it’s heard. First we must manage attention, an increasingly scarce human resource in a world of overwhelming information and hyper connectivity.

Brain science shows us why emotionally charged, character-driven story holds the key first to holding attention, then producing in our listeners empathy, trust, a sense of belonging and a willingness to co-operate.

When we understand how stories told in context work to do this, then we can employ them to change a hopeless, or negative narrative into one that fuels clarity, vision and collaboration.

In this workshop, Sandy demonstrates through her own unique experience of storytelling to build a worldwide community, the framework that introduces the context for telling stories and how we can harness the power of story to propagate good in the world.

Through a mix of presentation and practical application participants will learn:

  • why and how story works • how story changes the narrative  •  the context for telling story, • the five big concepts that uncover our authentic stories — clarity, curiosity, truth, trust and insight  • how to structure and craft story

About Sandy McDonald:

Sandy McDonald is an author, a TEDx speaker, and a storytelling trainer, working with business and academia to bring clarity of communication through purpose-led story.

After 22 years running a marketing communication company, she used purposeful storytelling to start a worldwide community of more than 20,000 in 71 countries that helps thousands of orphaned children in Africa today.

Her TEDx talk about this, Tell Your Story. Save a Life, received a standing ovation, and her book, Clans, Supercharge Your Business, details the framework that achieved the success.

Sharing the remarkable science behind why stories impact on our brain to build trust, she demonstrates why the correlation between storytelling and an individual’s purpose boosts recall and a willingness to cooperate.

Sandy is a fierce proponent of sharing the wisdom accumulated in a lifetime through story as a legacy to better humanity, and is known for helping people convert the complexity of their world into memorable stories to enrich, transform, or even save lives.

August 13, 2019 |

Online Story Summit – September 11th

 Online Story Summit – September 11th from 12-1pm Melbourne Time

Imagine. You’ve reached the summit. A place which has intensity, beauty and inspiration. This is exactly the experience which we invite you to join us for on September 11th running from 12-1pm Melbourne time, where you can join a very special selection of intrepid story entrepreneurs as they share about their journeys and key learnings about using story and narrative techniques to influence work, health and well-being.

Are you interested in any of the following:

  • How to use humour and humorous stories safely and professionally at work?
  • How to create compelling stories for any occasion?
  • How people tell stories about conflict and the impact this has?
  • How story listening and story telling activities can build relationships and inspire change?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then this special free online event is for you, and it will see you gaining the opportunity to meet, engage and learn with the following great leaders in the application of Story and Narrative Techniques as they share about their exciting upcoming pre-conference workshops that are part of this years Story Conference:

The online summit event will be hosted using Zoom technology.

Like to register?

It’s simple – click here.

I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

June 22, 2019 |

6 word story contest — And the Winner is

Congratulations to Melissa M … Winner of the 6 word story contest!

Melissa’s winning 6 word story entry had 19 votes and was:

“Working in collaboration to empower change”

June 16, 2019 |

Conference Cocktail Party and Story Cookbook Launch

Fancy a gentle stroll, some good food and an opportunity to debrief and start/continue conversations with others in a beautiful setting after Day 2 of the conference? In keeping with our ten-year anniversary celebrations, we will be hosting this year’s conference cocktail party at the beautiful Studley Park Boathouse on Thursday 28 November. Join us for a three-hour cocktail party starting at 6pm including antipasto, canapes, mini meals, sweet treats and drinks (alcoholic and/or non-alcoholic). With the Story Conference being the home of the recently published Story Cookbook, the editors – Andrew Rixon and Catherine Lloyd, will share about this marvellous resource as a special feature of the night. It’s sure to be a memorable evening – be sure to book yourself in when you register!

May 13, 2019 |

Podcast Interview – The Story behind The Story Conference

Here’s a podcast interview between Andrew Huffer (aka The Huff) and Andrew Rixon, founder of The Story Conference. It’s a fun, light-hearted interview where you’ll hear about the ‘story’ behind the story conference (including what’s it’s like to stay with a guy who has a waterfall in his living room!). You’ll hear about the conference themes, some of the people attending and key reasons why you should be amongst them!

(We’ll be opening the Super-Early-Registrations in June so stay posted)

May 12, 2019 |

Kirk Fisher – Your Original Face: Zen Koans, Experiments with Freedom

A koan is a little living story. It may be a fragment of a conversation, or a poem, or a song, but it is something that is shared between people. All koans are a live encounter.

An assumption of Zen is that when we attend to what is alive in each moment, the response comes on its own. We learn to trust our life. We’ll have a brief dive into this as experience working with koans. Participants will also have a koan they can take away and continue the work from the workshop.

About Kirk Fisher:

Kirk Fisher began practicing Zen at 18, during music school. The Zen continued longer than his musical career. He entered into a formal relationship with his lineage and began koan study in 1997. His teacher, Susan Murphy Roshi, asked him to begin apprentice teaching in 2016. He works with students at the Melbourne Zen Group, the Hobart Zen Group and Zen Open Circle in NSW. He is also a facilitator, coach and educator. He founded two alternative schools and works with organisational leadership both in schools and other organisations.