#JasonAshlock

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via Twitter

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We love these quick pics and note Scott sent over the weekend after catching Jason’s talk at South by Southwest:

“The very fickle SxSW audience kept moving further to the front during Jason’s talk so they could photograph his material—and him of course. No shortage of groupies at the end. It's been a long time since I've seen Jason speak. He was terrific. He even had the audience greeting each other in Swahili at one point.”

Until next year, Austin.

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From Jason Ashlock’s master class on how to reach an audience, at the Frankfurt Book Fair today.

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Announcing, Frontier Press. A digital publishing engine that combines narrative intelligence with leading-edge technology to deliver innovative ideas in storytelling packages.

Applicable to every organization that has a story to tell, either internally or externally.

Contact the founding partner of Frontier Press, Jason Ashlock.

- BC

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Civic Tech + Storytelling

Once a year CIOs from all 50 states and a couple of territories--and the innovative vendors that serve them--gather in a state capital to talk shop. Top of mind: security, risk management, citizen engagement, infrastructure expansion, platform development, data management.

And now: storytelling.

Jason delivered a custom keynote to the annual NASCIO conference yesterday and it turned out to be a rapid-fire, no-holds-barred, one-hour sprint through the most compelling and portable models for harnessing storytelling to influence, persuade, attract, and lead -- inside public agencies and private enterprise. The nearly 700 attendees received a set of tools they could immediately deploy to infuse their work with narrative power, and thus get better work done for their teams and the citizens they serve.

Based on the hours of conversation during the pre-conference reception and the post-keynote confabs, storytelling’s a highly sought-after skill among CIOs and their partners. And with good reason. As Jason puts it in his keynote:

We humans known the power of story for literally ages. Recently we’ve learned what that power does to our bodies and brains — through neuroscience and social psychology and pedagogy and behavioral economics, we’ve come to understand more intimately how story affects us, informs us, transforms us.

But we don’t need the science to tell us that our mirror neurons are kickstarted by a good story. We don’t need the research to tell us we’re more likely to remember information when it’s attached to a narrative. We don’t need the research labs and the social experiments to prove to us that story makes us feel and makes us act, that it persuades more powerfully and evangelizes more effectively than data and imperatives. 

Because the evidence is all around us. Those who have good stories are more influential. They’re more persuasive. Their ventures grow faster. Their initiatives are more effective. They’re brands are more liked. Their ambitions find more support. From Greek poets to Hollywood stars, from the New York Times bestseller list to the Fortune 500, from Steve Jobs on stage to you in a sales meeting...

...The ones with the best stories win. 

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The Book is Coming.

Stay tuned.

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SXSW x JAA

We'll have a scouting team in the melee of Austin. If you're there and looking to be inspired, seek out Jason's session on creative destruction.

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Tracking South Korea's Digital Marketplace

The digital book marketplace in South Korea has grown 200% in four years -- and it’s just getting started. And judging by the size of the bookshops and matching size of the crowds filling them, the print business hasn’t suffered a shock like the one we’ve witnessed in the U.S. over the past decade. Yet. And it might not.

What’s worth watching:

What might happen to a digital book marketplace when its given a chance to ride on ubiquitous broadband, delivered with remarkable speed, supported by an infrastructure that’s enviably consistent? The US certainly doesn’t know.

How might that digital marketplace create a mutuality with the physical marketplace when it’s given a chance to grow in an environment surfeit with QR codes that are wildly popular, in which NFC technology is native to all devices, and book marketers are already digital? Again, the US wasn’t given a chance to find out.

What might we witness when a pop-culture movement as strongly branded as K-Pop creates, markets and exports its own intellectual property globally on the back of a homegrown market that’s more digitally savvy than ours?

It will be fun to witness the answers materialize. Amazon’s already lept from observer to participant. During our visit to the Samsung hub in Gangnam to talk display technology, the team we met with was abuzz with the news: the day before Amazon had just leased a prime space around the corner.

-Jason

Photo: one of the overflowing book stalls near Dongdaemun market

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We could listen to Jason Ashlock talk all day. As the founder of Frontier Press, the next-generation publishing unit of The Frontier Project, and a former NYC publisher, we’re lucky to call Jason a colleague. 

In the early months of the global recession, when the publishing industry was anxious and contracting, Jason launched a literary firm from standing start. In a few years, it had become a known industry force. He packaged books for Hall of Fame athletes and Oscar-winning actors, for Pulitzer nominees and Grammy winners, for indie film stars and fledgling novelists. In the process, he honed his skills in narrative design and product development, and then pivoted to a new mission: break the book out of its ghetto. FrontierPress is how he’s chipping away at the wall.

Frequently speaking at industry conferences, Jason is an open book on stage. Frankly, the way he speaks is intoxicating. In this interview clip, find out what Jason is inspired by at the moment, what’s on his playlist, and what he thinks YOU should be paying attention to in 2014.

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Upcycling Brands

The upcycling trend isn't reserved only for Etsy phenoms, design students and frugal domestics. It works for brands too -- many of whom are busily rummaging through old intellectual property trunks to find the kind of dated iconography that's ripe for reuse. Above, Alife lifts Budweiser from midwestern kitsch to New York City cool. And Penguin stamps a hipster classic on a modern roller bag. - JAA

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HOW TO REACH AN AUDIENCE

From Jason Ashlock’s master class on how to reach an audience, at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

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Design Is ________.

A piece from the stimulating collection at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza. Thoughts on design from designers. - JAA

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SXSW V2V CONFERENCE

SXSW moves to Vegas in July, with the V2V conference, an extension of the annual must-attend Interactive event in Austin. Focused on what startups need to ensure entrepreneurial innovation and success, the conference gathers innovators from across industries to share skills, make  connections, and find inspiration to take their ideas to the next level.

One of the great things about SXSW events is that most of their programming is chosen by the public (as opposed to a small committee selecting the speakers or taking on speakers through sponsorship). This year, Frontier Live has four speakers on the roster, and we'd love your votes! From storytelling to swordfighting, negotiation to endurance, Aaron Anderson, Scott Wayne, Jason Allen Ashlock, and Zoe Romano are bringing Frontier thinking to V2V. If you've heard any of them speak before, you know the insight and impact they deliver.

Click here to read more about each event and vote for the speakers you'd want to hear most.

Interested in learning more about our speakers? A sneak peak into their lives, interests, and skills: AA , SW, JAA, and ZR.

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Like a Smile. Or a Punch to the Gut.

Story, as a thing, does not really exist. The word is merely a euphemism, shorthand for a certain manner of ordering information, arranging it into a package that transfers meaning with penetrating efficiency. It so happens that these rehearsed mannerisms by which we gather fragments of information and place them into coherent relationship--are something we understand so naturally, something that we grasp so intuitively that they constitute a kind of universal gesture. As discernible as a smile. Or a punch to the gut. Across hemispheres and epochs. Across cultures and worldviews. Narrative logic remains the most unifying invention humanity has ever shared.

- From JAA's storytelling keynote, which he'll be delivering a version of at SXSW in March.

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You Are What You Read

Here's a question we've been pondering with clients and colleagues:

What's the point of business books?

We always begin a new book with a sense of hope: that we'll glean some insight that will get us a promotion, make us a better manager, or allow us to, at the very least, to drop a book title or one-liner in an important client meeting.

Often the books fail to live up to our expectations. They can be, well, less than stimulating. The content can be dry, or repetitive, or all-too-obvious. By the end, sometimes it seems the only benefit is simply the gratification we feel for completing a book. At each moment we're asking ourselves what are we learning, how the content ties back to us, and how we can deploy these new skills quickly -- and often we feel the books don't quite deliver on their promise to make us our better professional selves. So we’re left disappointed that we weren’t profoundly changed during the six hours we devoted to the text.

But perhaps it’s less that the content was ineffective and more that we were never taught how to engage with it. Reading is a learned skill and critical reading takes practice. Just because we're all able to do it doesn't mean we’re all good at it. Like with any other skill, we get better at reading when we do it thoughtfully and regularly. No doubt we all need to read more. But even more important: we need to read more purposefully.

So here are a handful of our reading strategies. Try them out. We think they'll help you make the most of your time spent reading.

Chunk: Break the book into small segments, and stop at the end of each to reflect.

Scribble: Highlight as you read, take external notes of key points you’d like to reinforce, and stop at the end of each of your chunks to free-write reflections.

Toggle: Occasionally switch from reading sentences in your mind to reading them out loud.

Talk: As you read, share stories and insights via social media and/or in person.

Happy learning.

- Us

P.S. Want book recommendations for yourself or your team? Hit up JAA, our resident book man.