1986. Life On The Water Theater opens in San Francisco, California, with the West Coast premiere of Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia. Local video producer Dana Atchley is in the audience and introduces himself to Joe Lambert, Co-founder and Executive Director of the new organization.

1988-1990. Dana Atchley and Joe Lambert collaborate on the development of Dana Atchley's Next Exit, an autobiographical theatrical performance that debuts as part of the first national "Solo Mio" festival at Life on the Water.

1990-1992. Next Exit is performed at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, Nevada; Harry Marks and Nick DiMartino of the American Film Institute are in the audience.

1993. Joe assists Dana in teaching three "digital storytelling workshops" for documentary filmmakers, at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California.

1993 – Life On The Water relocates to a new location in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing an adjacent loft with Dana. Dana and Joe launch the "Digital Diner" new media salons, which become a central point for dialogue among Bay Area new media producers.

1994-1998. Life on the Water creates the "Home Movies" digital storytelling workshops, leading Dana, Joe, and Joe's wife Nina Mullen to found the San Francisco Digital Media Center (SFDMC). Over the next four years, SFDMC:

1994-1998. The SFDMC begins training a number of San Francisco Bay Area organizations on digital storytelling facilitation, including the Digital Clubhouse Network (Joe is program director from 1996-99, establishing South Bay and New York offices). The Clubhouse leads to the establishment of programs like stories-of-service.org with veterans, Digital Griot with African Americans, and Digitally Abled Producers with disabled and able-bodied youth.

The SFDMC undertakes collaborations with numerous organizations in England, Germany, and Denmark and is featured in stories about digital storytelling on CNN and MSNBC, as well as in countless print and online articles.

1995. Joe and Nina join with Dana and his soon to be wife Denise Aungst, to co-organize the first of eight annual Digital Storytelling Festivals (five in Crested Butte, Colorado; two in Sedona, Arizona; one in San Francisco), bringing together a worldwide grouping of new media designers and experts. Joe and Nina teach a "Digital Storytelling Boot Camp" each year, beginning in 1996.

1996. With support from Apple Computer, the SFDMC publishes the first version of the Digital Storytelling Cookbook, outlining the "Seven Steps" of digital storytelling and offering hands-on production tutorials.

1998. The SFDMC relocates to the University of California at Berkeley's School of Education, becoming the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS).

1998. CDS begins work with the writing program at the School of Education, which leads to an ongoing program with University-Community Links (UC Links) and a collaboration with the National Writers' Project. Through this exchange, digital storytelling methods are integrated into curricular materials produced by Pearson Learning, a major educational publisher.

1998. CDS begins training educational organizations throughout the United States, introducing digital storytelling methods to ongoing dialogues about technology in the K-12 education context. Colleagues like Bernajean Porter, Alan November, Mark Stanley, and Jason Ohler develop various curricular materials and author numerous publications about digital storytelling as a pedagogical strategy.

1998. CDS assists several San Francisco Bay Area community technology centers in setting up ongoing digital storytelling programs, including Urban Voice/Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth (DUSTY) and the Eastmount Computing Center in Oakland, Plugged In in Palo Alto, and the Balboa Academy in San Francisco.

1998. CDS collaborates with Apple Computer and Adobe Systems to develop digital storytelling curricula. In partnership with the Institute for the Future, Joe is funded to write a white paper on digital storytelling for Fortune 50 leaders in knowledge management. These efforts lead to several workshops with large corporations, including Hewlett Packard, Ford, and Proctor and Gamble (U.S.) and Tryg Baltica (Copenhagen).

1998. CDS is asked by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to lead workshops for 24 recipients of Kellogg grants in the "Managing Information in Rural America" program, the first large-scale nonprofit community development digital storytelling initiative in the United States. This work leads to digital storytelling projects at the Llano Grande Center in Texas and at Appalshop in Kentucky, as well as to the hiring of Thenmozhi Soundararajan as CDS Community Programs Director and Caleb Paull as CDS Education Director. 

1999. CDS offers the first of what will become an annual presentation at the New Media Consortium (NMC) Conference, which leads to innumerable workshops at colleges and universities in the United States, including Williams College, Pasadena Community College, Ohio State University, California State University at Monterey, University of Maryland, Maricopa County College, University of Arizona, Tulane University, Southern Illinois University, University of Wisconsin, and Middlebury College, among others. This work firmly establishes digital storytelling in the world of higher education.

1999. Through its open workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area, CDS meets Daniel Weinshenker, Amy Hill, and Leslie Rule, all of whom subsequently become contract teachers and/or staff, for the organization.

1999. CDS leads a digital storytelling workshop at Cambridge Community Television in Massachusetts (a Kellogg grantee) and meets Ceasar MacDowell from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Center for Reflective Community Practice (CRCP), and Tasha Freidus (who later forms Creative Narrations and trains community and university groups across New England – including MassIMPACT --, in Arizona, and in Barcelona, Spain).

1999. Conversations between CDS and the CRCP lead to a CRCP fellowship for Thenmozhi, who develops the concept for StoryLink, a new media portal involving MIT and Tasha as lead trainers. Thenmozhi later forms Third World Majority, a young women of color led community digital storytelling and media organizing group.

1999. Thenmozhi assists Amy Hill in founding Silence Speaks, a CDS-sponsored international digital storytelling initiative that supports the telling of typically silenced stories and promotes the use of these stories for educational, awareness-raising, community mobilization, and policy advocacy purposes.

1999. CDS consults on several more international projects, including:

1999. After teaching workshops for several years at the Canadian Film Centre's Media Lab in Toronto, CDS collaborates as consulting authority on the "Great Canadian Storytelling Engine," a national oral history touring program that visits 28 Canadian cities and features radio broadcasts of stories courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (similar to today's U.S.-based StoryCorps project). CDS' continued consulting on story-based media design for the Media Lab partially inspires the evolution of the Murmur project.

2000. CDS moves off the UC Berkeley Campus to its larger, present-day main office facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, California.

2000. Silence Speaks trains staff at the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women (now Peace Over Violence), who initiate an ongoing, in-house digital storytelling program focused on youth violence prevention.

2000. CDS collaborates with the Centers for Disease Control's "Safe Motherhood" program to lead a workshop with women who share stories of pregnancy and birth – the first of innumerable projects focused on public/community health.

2000. CDS begins an ongoing, annual collaboration with Brenda Laurel and the Art Center of Pasadena (and later with the California College of the Arts in Berkeley), providing introductory workshops for graduate students in design. This work subsequently leads to several academic research projects focused on design, digital storytelling, and international development.

2000. Dana Atchley succumbs to complications of a bone marrow transplant.

2001. CDS travels to Wellington, New Zealand to train staff at Evision (which leads to a countrywide program); to Melbourne, Australia to train staff at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (who launch a large-scale initiative to create, exhibit, and archive stories); and to Wales to train the staff of BBC Wales (which leads to the creation of the Capture Wales digital storytelling project and, later, to the establishment of a number of ongoing digital storytelling programs in the UK, Northern Europe, and Northern Australia).

2001. CDS holds the first Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project workshop with current and former foster youth in California, leading to annual sessions as well as the development of foster youth digital storytelling spin-offs in New York, New Haven, and several other states nationwide.

2001. CDS travels to Stone County, Kentucky to initiate a digital storytelling program in K-12 schools that becomes the model for national K-12 implementation.

2002. CDS co-leads a community project funded by the Waite Family Foundation in San Diego, California and meets Carroll Parrott Blue, who becomes a regular collaborator. Funding from Waite underwrites StoryLink and several community based digital storytelling efforts that later form the backbone of the "Stories for Change" project.

2002. CDS trains Proseed, a curriculum development organization  in Japan that subsequently holds trainings across Japan and translate the Digital Storytelling Cookbook into Japanese.

2002. CDS publishes the first edition of Joe Lambert's Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, a text book on the practice of Digital Storytelling that has to date sold well over 5,000 copies.

2002. CDS presents a proposal developed along with colleagues Abbe Don and Mitchell Yawitz to KQED's education team, outlining a plan for creating a local digital storytelling program within this San Francisco affiliate of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

2002. Following presentations by CDS staff to the Community Technology Foundation's California Fellows, the newly formed ZeroDivide Initiative joins with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) to establish a digital storytelling program for community technology centers across California.

2002. Nina Mullen steps down as CDS Co-Director for maternity leave. Emily Paulos is hired and in 2004 becomes Co-Director.

2003. Leslie Rule directs the American Film Institute's High School Training project in the San Francisco Bay Area, for CDS, and acts as coordinator of a local educator network on digital storytelling. Leslie later launches KQED's Digital Storytelling Initiative.

2003. CDS Co-Director Joe Lambert and family spend a year abroad in Italy, operating European based workshops with Inteatro.

2003. The BBC holds the first International Digital Storytelling Conference in Cardiff, Wales, where CDS leads a local workshop and assists with a community educator symposium in Bristol. Back in the states, CDS meets future Director of Canadian Programs Rob Kershaw.

2003. Daniel Weinshenker opens the first CDS Regional Office in Denver, Colorado and begins offering both standard and customized workshops.

2003. CDS leads a workshop in London for Photovoice.uk founders and staff, who begin creating ongoing digital storytelling programs in London and throughout their international network.

2003. CDS leads a workshop in Arizona for the Bridges to Understanding program, which subsequently carries out digital storytelling workshops with youth in India, Canada, and Latin America.

2003. CDS initiates a digital storytelling program with Dutch Educational Television, in collaboration with Tealac-NOT and the Waag Society in Amsterdam. This effort leads to the further spread of the method in Northern Europe.

2003. CDS offers a digital storytelling workshop at York University in Toronto, Canada, and participants Chloe Brushwood and Jennifer LaFontaine go on to establish programs in higher education and at the community level, respectively.

2004. CDS joins with the Ukiah Players Theatre, Mendocino, California, in a multi-year collaboration, leading to the development of ongoing "Train-the-Trainers" curricula and services as well as to the Placemeant Project, a theatrical production which integrates stories with geography (and ultimately becomes the inspiration for storymapping.org).

2004. CDS begins an ongoing partnership with Kean University in New Jersey, developing a teacher-educator curriculum in digital storytelling. This work leads eventually to the creation of a formal Digital Storytelling Certificate Program at the University of Colorado, Denver.

2004. CDS consults and trains staff of Streetside Stories in San Francisco, California to develop the TechTales program, which serves as a model for youth writing/digital media projects nationwide.

2005. Amy Hill joins CDS as a full-time staff member, taking the Silence Speaks initiative to South Africa, to work with survivors and witnesses of gender-based violence. Project collaborators subsequently launch digital storytelling efforts through Women'sNet/APC Women's Networking & Support and the University of the Western Cape.

2005. CDS works in New Orleans with Xavier University, Crescent City Peace Alliance, and others to do a series of stories on civil rights with students at Frederick Douglas High School. After Hurricane Katrina, CDS provides material support to the MondoBizarro Theater to assist the i10witness.org project.

2005. CDS trains representatives from the Berkeley-based group Break the Silence, which launches a digital storytelling program with young people living in refugee camps in Palestine.

2005. CDS is hired by the Kodak Corporation to explore the integration of storytelling into Kodak's online photo sharing environment.

2006. CDS helps organize the second International Digital Storytelling Conference, held in Melbourne, Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI). Advanced Practitioner and Silence Speaks workshops are offered in collaboration with ACMI staff.

2006. CDS partners with Creative Narrations and MassIMPACT to plan and host a Gathering for Community Digital Storytellers in Boston, MA, which leads to the formation of the network that develops storiesforchange.net, a hub of resources and stories for practitioners. 

2006. CDS trains staff at the Museum of the Person in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who subsequently launch a large-scale youth digital storytelling initiative.

2006. CDS holds an International Digital Storytelling Facilitator Gathering, in Mendocino County, California, bringing together experienced practitioners to discuss future directions for digital storytelling.

2006. CDS begins an ongoing partnership with the Patient Voices program in the UK, looking at the use of stories as tools for humanizing medicine and training health care providers.

2006. CDS initiates its "Workshop for Educators," to prepare K-12 teachers and technology staff to lead classroom-based digital storytelling efforts with students.

2006. CDS hires Education Director Andrea Spagat (now Bay Area/Pacific Northwest Region Director); Southern California Region Director Gayle Nichols-Ali; and East Coast Region Director Stefani Sesi. Open and custom workshops increase dramatically, offering training to new practitioners throughout the United States and leading the establishment of innumerable local programs in digital storytelling.

Please visit our Case Studies for information about specific projects.