Seminars and Workshops

As a senior fellow at Columbia University School of the Arts, Frank heads two distinct initiatives. He is faculty director of the Strategic Storytelling seminar, presented in partnership with Columbia Business School Executive Education, and he is awards director of the School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab, where in 2016 he launched the Breakthroughs in Storytelling awards—the “Digital Dozen.” He also leads private seminars and workshops for corporate and institutional clients and consults on brand identity issues.

Strategic Storytelling at Columbia

Storytelling is how we explain and make sense of the world. But today, with media-savvy audiences tuning out ads while seeking ever-more-immersive entertainment experiences, the way we need to communicate is changing. Cognitive science research suggests that stories are typically more effective at changing people’s minds than rational argument. So we need to view the world in narrative terms, not as a thesis to be argued or a pitch to be made but as a story to be told. Columbia’s Strategic Storytelling seminar builds on these insights to show how story is used by leading brands, entertainment industry professionals, B2B providers, and nonprofits—and what each of these can learn from the other.

Learn more about Strategic Storytelling…

Academic Symposia and Master Classes

Co-organizer and speaker,
Cooper Hewitt-Columbia DSL Storytelling Salon
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
New York, March 28, 2017

Private Workshops and Consulting

In addition to his Columbia seminar, Frank leads private workshops tailored to the needs of select corporate and institutional clients. He also consults with agencies and their clients on brand identity issues: brand purpose, brand promise, brand narrative and brand voice. To see how this might work for you, please contact Frank directly.

Brand positioning and story creation for Siili Solutions, the Helsinki-based technology platform
Nov. 2017-Jan. 2018

“Embracing Analog:
Why Physical Is Hot”
Co-author of a survey and trend report on attitudes about digital v. physical for JWT Intelligence
Mar. 2013

Keynote speaker
Johnson & Johnson Content Strategy Immersion workshop
IPG/Ensemble
Los Angeles, Aug. 1, 2011

Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab

The Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University School of the Arts is a next-generation media lab harnessing the arts, humanities and emergent technologies to tackle some of the world’s impossible problems through collaboration, experimentation, exploration and creativity.

Columbia DSL designs stories for the 21st century, building on a diverse range of creative and research practices while never losing sight of the power of a good story. It is a place of speculation, creativity, and collaboration between students and faculty from across the University. New stories are told here in fresh and unexpected ways. Learn More…

The Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards

The DSL’s annual Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards celebrate the past year’s most innovative approaches to narrative. Launched in 2016 to spur creativity and further the Lab’s educational mission, the awards honor 12 signal achievements—the “Digital Dozen.” Out of these, the Breakthrough Award goes to the project in any field that best exemplifies the spirit of inventiveness at work today, while the Special Jury Prize is given at the discretion of the awards committee. Winners are chosen by an interdisciplinary jury of Lab members and university faculty. The DSL’s goal in citing them is to further digital media’s potential to break free of rigid, industrial-age classifications and evolve in ways that analog media could not.

Learn more about the Digital Dozen…

Past recipients of Columbia DSL’s Breakthrough Award include:

2022: Life After BOB: The Chalice Study

What would happen if a mad scientist implanted his daughter with an AI at birth? Ian Cheng’s game-engine-driven anime combines a computer simulation with scripted storytelling.

2021: Darkfield Radio

In response to the pandemic, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath of London’s Darkfield immersed audiences in strange worlds in their own homes, bringing new meaning to the familiar spaces we inhabit.

2020: Facial Recognition Machine

Using off-the-shelf technology, Sahil Chinoy of The New York Times dramatically highlighted facial recognition’s threat to individual freedom.

Through artificial intelligence and machine learning, artist Refik Anadol and his team programmed the LA Philharmonic’s Walt Disney Concert Hall to recall the past and dream about its future in spectacular fashion.