VR/AR Will Be All About Storytelling: Join Us at Narrative Summit 3 (SF)

VRARA Members, contact us for discount code to attend.

One common thread in several technologies -- especially VR -- is transforming how stories are told. This is the evolution of narratives, and the subject of the Digital Narrative Alliance (DNA) Narrative Summit 3: Stories that Change.

Taking place June 20 in San Francisco it will feature a full day of sessions and networking on the evolution of storytelling. The VR/AR Association is an event partner and will join the discussion about how this evolution of storytelling is impacted by immersive technologies.

VRARA Members, contact us for a discount code to attend 


More from the event organizers:

If you are a journalist, marketer, executive, policymaker, filmmaker, academic, or a citizen with a cause, you know the path to awareness and relevance has been transformed radically by digital media. Perhaps you’d like to understand how to invest in this white water world. The Digital Narrative Alliance team is working hard to create an event that will help you understand the new challenge of storytelling in accelerated times.

At the second Narrative Summit, we explored the distinction between narrative, which encompasses the values, assumptions, and aspirations the audience brings to their experience, and story, the account of events we typically think of when referring to stories and narratives. Understanding that distinction provides storytellers, leaders, marketers, and filmmakers to contrast the expected and unexpected to develop entertaining and surprising stories. 

Narrative Summit 3: Stories That Change takes the next step in our exploration and lays the foundation for dynamic cross-media storytelling that can established shared expectations, develop feedback loops and audience participation in shaping a narrative, as well as open the door to public modeling of future products, services, policy, and decision-making. Here’s the key: the Gutenberg-era concept of a definitive version of a document or story has passed its expiry date and opened the way to non-linear stories with many different outcomes. We have experienced this as a decline in confidence in authority and institutions traditionally associated with authority, and it has stressed the media environment to its breaking point. With a new understanding of narrative, story, and feedback or remixing, creative leaders can redefine the relationship with the audience to co-design the future. It’s the essence of next-generation engagement within organizations, with customers, stakeholders, and citizens.

On the one hand, that new post-authoritative world has torn down the one-off presentation of a story, the organizational missions, and public debate, as we now widely acknowledge the presence of “spin” or inconsistent information has changed the nature of media. But on the other, stories can now be seen as steps on a path the author and audience take together, building a relationship through the interactions now possible between the creator and user of each tale. Seeing in terms of narrative, we can then understand how different interpretations of facts are modulated by life experience, previous communications – in the form of conversation, brand promises, political commitments, and so forth – and the context of the rapidly accelerating economy.

It’s time to start using stories to change our future. At Narrative Summit 3: Stories That Change, we’ll discuss how game design is similar to modern theater, the evolution of storytelling as a tool for social trust-building, cross-cultural storytelling, as well as the value of improvisational skills in management and society. Join acclaimed director Louie Psihoyos, whose films The Cove and Racing Extinction are environmental landmarks, as well as An Inconvenient Truth producer and Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who will talk with former Obama economic development advisor and producer Barry Johnson about telling the stories of all peoples, especially minorities and other marginalized groups, in two upcoming films. Architect and author Ann Pendleton-Jullian will discuss Pragmatic Imagination, her new collaboration with Silicon Valley pioneer John Seely Brown. AKQA founder and Stanford DCI Fellow Tom Bedecarre will close the day with a speaker roundtable that is sure to rock your mind.

Seating is limited – register today to participate in this important day of speakers, discussion, and networking.


Learn more about the VR/AR Association, San Francisco Chapter here