Someone asked the question What events in your industry do you look forward to?, and I was a bit stumped. I realized I didn’t know what industry I was in!

Ok, that’s not entirely true, because technically I’m in new media development, whatever THAT is. However, as I want to integrate more story and narrative into my general business approach, that isn’t good enough.

So I have just decided that I’m defining my own new industry that sits somewhere between consulting, writing, and graphics. There may even be an actual name for it, but danged if I know what it’s called. I imagine the role as being sort of like being a director in a film, except that the film is actually what you’re living! I want to be a fantastic director.

To answer the question, here’s what I look forward to:

• Finding peoples’ stories. I like to know where people have been, what they are doing now, why they’re doing it, and what their dreams are. This is a lot more interesting than getting a dry technical spec that has somehow missed the point that people to relate to something.
• Relating things. People to other people, ideas to ideas, people to ideas, solutions to people, etc. How do things relate to each other, how is that relevant to the task at hand, and will it all work. I love doing that.
• Communicating what we’ve learned. Writing a clear and concise document. Drawing a great diagram. Teaching one-on-one. I like putting it out there so people can use what we’ve learned, and I am a bit obsessive about doing this right.
• Distilling the essence of a thing. I love being buried by detail and finding the big themes that are so big they’re hard to see. I love finding the small details that are linchpins of an enterprise, knowing just how to apply them so everything holds together. That’s how I learn, and how I harness my intuition and insight.
• Empowerment through Altered Perspective. I like it when I can show someone a new way of looking at things, both from the macro and micro perspective, and watch as they make that new connection for the first time. Yes…we CAN do it. Yes…I DO understand! That to me is the absolute best!

Those are my main objectives. My skills in New Media development, programming, art, whatever…those are all secondary offerings. Finding other people with the same objectives and complementary skill sets is what I need to do to really follow through on delivery; it’s been kind of dull around here working by myself.