Interviewer: Would you tell me a little bit more about your history and how you got into digital storytelling? From prehistoric times forward.

Ken Harper: In the great pre-history prior to Intel, I have worked as a Professor of Communications at the University of Wisconsin [Parkside] and setup a computer lab for the humanities there. At the same time I was doing a lot of magazine writing and have a background in the humanities and also on the software side of computing. I left the university and went to work for a large advertising agency which had a PR arm. I came to Intel 10 years ago. I did a lot of PR work, what you would call, "Strategic Marketing."

In the last couple of years I've been looking at new applications for the PC that consumers would be interested in. It became clear to me after looking at the rise of the Internet that the thing that computers and the Internet are good for is connecting people in matters of mutual interest.

I began doing a lot of work in Hollywood to see how or if the entertainment community could be tapped as a source of innovation and creativity to come up with new applications that could be used for PCs. What I saw down there was entertainment that could draw eyeballs, but I didn't think it was the kind of entertainment that would really engage people. I thought that the spirit of the Internet was a sense of discovery, and meeting one another.

Through meeting you and [Nina] and [Dana] and working with the [Media Links Habitat] up in Toronto I began to see that digital storytelling is a very broad area that was a natural to use on PCs. The real trick was to take this and capitalize on the capability that the Internet has to connect anyone anywhere on subjects that really mattered to them.

I met the fellow who heads up the largest Web agency in Australia, [Chris O'Hanlin] who was telling me about a project he was doing with a large automotive company where essentially it was [a developer] finding people with experiences in the outback and relating those experiences not just to other customers but to prospects. In order to build, if you will, communities of customers. People have had the idea of doing this before, but it's never been quite as easy and as expansive as it has been with the spread of the Web.

When I looked at this whole notion of community building and digital storytelling, it came back again to one of the tenets that I think Dana has held, and I think you and virtually anybody who gets into this space, and that is, we all have stories to tell. Stories are just a natural -- just a natural. [For example,] I sit down at lunch and I tell someone a story. That story triggers another story. That's the way it goes around, you know, around the table. I think that's the way that people communicate. That's a way that we have of exchanging, knowledge, information experience, and feelings. I became more excited about applying this both in the consumer space as well as in the commercial space.

Interviewer: Right. Where that leads you is the discussions of branding and kind of increased understandings that seem to develop in the marketing field about the relationship between the individual's sense of values and priorities, and the way brand works. Can you talk about what you think the relationship is between these ideas and branding?

Ken Harper: Sure. Let me jump ahead and say what the big "ah-ha" was. I had been working with a group that was looking at broadband applications and deployment, with an eye at Hollywood. I met [John Taplin] who heads up a company called Entertainer. Entertainer is a broadband aggregator. They work with DSL technologies and cable modems. John was telling me about the fact that he had licensed a lot of what I would call old material or old media, but he really didn't have any new two-way stuff. I thought, "Bingo!" If ever there was an opportunity for digital storytelling this is it.

Then I began thinking. Having spent some time in advertising, in a couple of years when there is a significant amount of broadband deployed if I were the head of advertising at a lifestyle company, by that I mean a Nike, or a Land's End or Doc Martens, etc. The thing I would be looking at is what is the media that I can use to connect people with my brand, and have them if you will, be extensions of my brand. Again, digital storytelling just jumped out at me.

I could easily see a move away from these sort of broad image based ads which is what you have in television and to a large degree in print advertising, to an experience that builds the brand but also engages a customer or prospect in something that could lead to e-commerce. We've all heard a lot about one-to-one and one-on-one marketing. I think digital storytelling will lead to that.

Interviewer: So for example, you can imagine a lifestyle company hosting a storytelling exchange between people about their favorite travel experiences, or hiking challenges, or whatever. That their hosting of that is part of building the brand identification.

Ken Harper: Yeah. Absolutely. In fact this thing is just horizontal. I think what happens is companies who are willing to let their customers and their prospects discuss problems that they have with other customers and other prospects, and in the course of that exchange there is a path, an implicit path to the sponsor, which is a brand extension. I've talked about this with a couple of people. The only question that comes up is how or if you will segregate the storytelling that goes on from the kind of bitch sessions that can go on in chat rooms.

Interviewer: Or the myriad of Web sites that are essentially bitch sessions about the product.

Ken Harper: Right. I think this is inevitable. I'll give you a concrete example of an alternative approach. My mother recently underwent a rather serious operation for an unusual form of cancer. One for which information on the various complications was difficult to find. I could, and did find some information on the Web for her. However I could also imagine a chat session or a story gathering group that's built around various illnesses that people want to find out how to deal with. They are not necessarily interested in getting it all from a single source. They want to hear from other people who've gone through the experience. You can take that and apply it to situations involving financial services, home remodeling, etc. Tick off all the areas we have where we really would like to get some counsel but we'd like to have more voices, not fewer. We would like people who have been through the experience and can share it.

I remember my Dad telling me once, that you can't tell anyone anything important. I think part of that has to do with the fact that when you get into a situation where you do need to be told things that are important, there are relatively few people you can go and get that information from.