HRH Media

Zen and the art of the slide-free keynote

Here are the two questions I ask myself anytime I seek to share something I’ve created: why am I sharing this? And so what? Is it meaningful in any way to me or to my friends, colleagues, students, family, followers?

I stopped giving keynotes on storytelling a couple of years ago because I couldn’t credibly answer those questions.

So I was determined to do things differently when I actually agreed to return as a solo act to the stage.

A time gone by: storytelling fit for royals

Last night I watched the new HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. It evoked vivid memories for me as I was in London to cover the biggest story on the planet at the time for NBC News twenty years ago.

Within a few short years, I would learn how to shoot and edit my own television news stories and become one of the first “backpack journalists.” It would be a far cry from the investment the network made during those halcyon days of Diana coverage. And it was just the beginning for a true storyteller uprising as new digital technologies took hold, along with new economic realities.

My fortnight of solitude: the power of retreat

My spouse had given me the gift of solitary retreat. I eschewed transcontinental travel, metal detectors, even four-wheeled vehicles — along with social media, e-mail, news and sustained human contact. Ultimately, I enjoyed the temporary freedom of deriving any sense of self from my reflection in the eyes of others.

The importance of Make. Do.

Today is my daughter’s 9th birthday. Rose has been passionate about the ocean, its inhabitants and its health for almost as long as she has been walking. She also sometimes has a hard time falling asleep, her mind is still so active with the weight of the world by day’s end. …

Storytelling needs a social infrastructure

I published a letter to my community at the same time another leader did the same to his exponentially larger one yesterday. Coincidentally, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and I both explicitly referenced “social infrastructure” as counterbalance to the tech solutionism many of us early adopters championed over a decade ago. In …

Don’t forget to write

Why it’s important to capture meaningful moments and share them with others as stories. You just never know…

What happened? The role of traditional and social media in the 2016 election

These are my opening remarks from a public conversation I moderated on November 28th on media and the 2016 U.S. election.

Vital Signs: the enduring imperative of “let’s do lunch” (despite the internets)

These are the “Vital Signs” of the work I do: always listening, always connecting, always…emerging. And more often than not its inspiration originates from the power of the most classic form of “human interface and interchange:” lunch.

“Saltwater cures everything:” My opening narrative at the Ocean Symposium

This is how I framed the two-day oceansymposium.com in Tokyo, as emcee: “Good morning. And a special welcome to our distinguished guests and leaders from around the world” My name is Hanson Hosein. I will be your emcee over the next two days for this International Symposium on Capacity Building for …

My story solution to fend off a poorer, meaner, hotter world

Against our better judgment, we seem to be making our world poorer, meaner and hotter. I intend the opposite for my children and for my students.

And I will use the two strategies in which I have most invested my entire professional life — content and connectivity — to do something about it.

Write Your (own) Headline

As I now support my students in finding their own direction, I always exhort them to title their resumes and their online profiles appropriately. How we write our headlines, and what they say, matter enormously to others. More essentially, how we own them serve as a real-time mission statement to ourselves as we continue to advance and contribute professionally.

Story: Capital, Story: Currency

I’ve endeavored to put ourselves at the locus of Seattle’s highly collaborative energy, with this grandiose concept to establish our place in the world as the “story capital.” It’s founded in the notion that even as we create and engage differently here, it’s an approach that can be shared with others as we fearlessly tackle the epic challenges we all face today.

More Obi-Wan than Luke? My methodology for guiding the next generation

I realize that my once-emerging role as mentor is now a full-time endeavor. I can see what kind of impact I might have on those who seek transformation in their own lives. So I’ve taken care in developing a methodology to guiding those who ask me for advice. I always ask them the same two questions.

My high tech/fashion checklist for high stakes performances

I’ve spent so much of this year on-stage. As it’s all about a high-wire, high energy performance, what I take up there to support me, I take seriously. I’ve chosen my gear very carefully. Now as the year closes, my latest recent keynote session has confirmed my configuration, which is worth sharing for those who like to perform on-the-fly.

Geek Heresy! Our 2015/16 Common Book, my new show and why I got an e-bike

In keeping with a growing tradition of energizing our incoming master’s students’ neurons, we’ve chosen “Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology” as our Common Book for the 2015/16 academic year. Upon closer examination, choosing Kentaro Toyama’s remarkable manifesto makes complete sense: at its heart, our unique graduate program seeks to inspire action and influence change through organizational and community storytelling — technology is merely an infrastructure to serve this highly human endeavor.

“Tell the story you want to tell”: my 2-minute graduation speech

I’m going to begin and end my very brief remarks at today’s graduation with two quotes: First from a technology blog earlier this year: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no …

My greatest storytelling challenge yet: overcoming the tragedy of the commons

Ten years ago I set out with my wife Heather to produce “Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop” — a film about local economies and self-sufficiency.
And now it’s time for this content-creator and educator to apply everything I’ve learned about community-building and technology to what my greatest communications challenge yet: can we resolve the tragedy of the commons before the last days of planet Earth?

How to command the stage (and enjoy it): a three-point checklist

Obviously, very few of us actually like to “put ourselves out there.” Despite my years of experience, I still find it most daunting in the hours and minutes leading up to show-time. Even for my most recent performances I was uncertain as to how I was going to “bring it home” when the time came.

Here are three techniques that helped me create a powerful connection to the audience

Here’s the advice I gave to over 1,000 millennials at TEDx Oregon State (update: now with video)

Hanson Hosein’s slides from his TEDx Oregon State University talk given on February 12 2015. He shares five lessons on why we all need to practice a form of professional self-destruction to sustain success in this disruptive age. He’ll also explain when to know it’s time to move on to the next big thing. Hanson regularly advises his own students on this transformative approach, even as he’s pursued his own series of meaningful experiences rather than a traditional career. It’s as much a survival technique as a way to ensure personal growth, in a time when nothing is guaranteed and everything is up for grabs. Video from this talk will be made available once it’s online.

Success through professional self-destruction and why I drop the mic: my TED talk preview

It was there that I announced that this would be my final “Storyteller Uprising” keynote. There’s some of that “professional self-destruction” I referenced in my TEDx talk synopsis. “Drop the mic” is another way of saying “leave them wanting more” before you overstay your welcome. After five years of successfully presenting the Storyteller Uprising concept around the world, I just know that it’s time to say something new, do something new, and most importantly, learn something new. Ultimately, I behave like a professional, but I want to maintain the healthy, beating heart of an amateur.

According to very recent issues of two old-school news magazines (irony much?), there’s nothing unusual about my frenetic entrepreneurialism and self-renewal. It’s just another form of survival for today’s professional.

Wearables, hearables and facing my physical reality through technology

[TLDR version: “I’m getting old and I’m dealing with it!”] As the archetypal “early adopter” I haven’t shied away from getting increasingly intimate with technology, especially as it gets more personalized. I’ve often sported a bluetooth earpiece when I’m driving or biking in an attempt to simulate the “wearable” experience — …

How the New York Times’ dead tree A1 reflects my connected world right now

It’s also a reflection of the evolution and growth of my own graduate program in digital media to a more expansive one in content, creativity and leadership…We are shifting our relational expectations as we grant the world a 24/7 invitation to our lives through this new bodily organ that is our mobile technology. We expect to communicate with strangers, organizations, and brands. We expect to hear back from them. And we expect a well-designed interface in any online-facilitated interaction.

My Tableau Conference slides: No, Really, This is the “Communication Age.”

As presented to the Tableau Conference on September 11, 2014, Seattle. See this recent post for more context on my “vision.” Mobile first. Cloud first. The Digital Age. Disruption. Clichés abound as we all try to make sense of how technology has put us into a 24/7 state of communication. …

“If there’s a crucible in Seattle for new innovations in storytelling, it’s the UW’s Communication Leadership program”

What’s in a brand? Why do we need a brand? Is “brand” even the right word? In the coming months, I’ll be working with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to lead a conversation around my region’s identity on the global stage. Thanks to the hyper-competitive impact of globalization (and sometimes, “no …

Because it’s a “Communication First” world (and why my latest keynote begins with when I chartered a 737 for $70,000)

I realize that I need to truly rise to the occasion for an upcoming season of public appearances. I succeeded Ariana Huffington and Julep’s Jane Park as the August keynote for Zillow’s Speakers Series, with the company’s CMO as my host and its CEO live-tweeting the event. I interviewed Silicon Valley’s “most feared” journalist, Re/Code’s …

The face behind the mask of technology: Kraftwerk comes to Seattle

I surprised myself by buying the last available ticket at the last minute to see an electropop group I had deliberately disregarded during my Guitar God childhood. But recently, I had acquired a few of Kraftwerk’s classic albums (ironically on vinyl). John Cook’s post at GeekWire alerted me to Kraftwerk’s …

Dystopia vs. the Braintrust: Tech’s literal choice

              UPDATE: My teaching colleague Brent Friedman and I decided to choose both books for our class. Brent is a successful Hollywood sci-fi writer, transmedia storyteller (especially for the Halo series), and now mobile network platform startup co-founder. We agreed that science fiction can …

iBeacons in the darkness and why museums mean so much to this storyteller

I don’t know how it happened. In my transition from TV journalist to independent media maker, to now educator and public convener I became a museum guy. After all, aren’t museums those quaint, high maintenance, heavy infrastructure monoliths of centuries gone by? Why look up from our screens when all …

A need to pivot. My four lessons

To pivot: a change in direction, sometimes despite great present-day success. Breathless future-facing magazines laud this move. Indeed, Fast Company’s “The Pivot” series does so as it: …explores those destiny-altering decisions made by companies that have gone on to great success. Read more about their course corrections–and alternate endings. I’ve recently …

So an iPad Mini, a Galaxy Note 3 and a Vivotab Note 8 walk into an event…(now what about Office for iPad?)

The subject line sounds like the setup to a joke, but it’s not. Neither is Microsoft announcing Office for iPad. Finally. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with leaving my laptop behind and leaping into the fray armed only with a handheld smart device. I emceed the annual …