First Things First: A Short Journey From Excitement to Humility

I was incredibly inspired during last week’s fall conference after leaving the remarkable session “Once Upon a Time: Reaching Beyond Your Windows Through Storytelling,” which shared the amazing success story of the Pittsburgh Foundation’s outreach through community video storytelling. I had several initial thoughts: “How do I start a video storytelling program in Fremont?” “Who could be a partner?” “What are the stories we might want to cover?” “Could we implement a contest approach to activate community participation?” And then a humbling thought stopped me in my tracks. Are you ready for a true admission of guilt? My husband and I have not yet videotaped our 10-month-old son crawling. As a mommy, the very thought that I would launch a video program for our community foundation before taping this monumental moment in my child’s life was very disturbing to me.

I want to make a couple of points with this illustration. No. 1: It is easy to get caught up in the moment of an exceptional session, and it is great to come away inspired to get started right away. That means that the contributors did their jobs. No. 2: If you love your job as much as I do, thoughts of how to improve, move forward, and innovate start to take over. Sometimes this is good-and sometimes it’s too consuming. No. 3: One of the things I will take away from this conference is that while momentum and excitement are good, I have to keep my eye on the big picture.

While my example also refers to my life’s big picture, that third point also holds true in our work. One of the messages that the presenters shared in the storytelling session was that “you just need to try things.” And while I do agree with this philosophy-especially considering the rapid change and impact of social media-it is important to step back and review new concepts, innovation, and ideas in light of strategic direction.

Before I break out the camera and start doing on-the-street interviews, I need to consider how this aligns with our foundation’s direction for awareness and engagement. I need to really think through appropriate partners and consider how much time this could take from my other responsibilities and from those of my staff. This is true of many other topics that I learned about during the conference. I’m ready to get started, but to get started successfully means doing the ground work of reviewing where new concepts fit with the organization and taking the time to set up new initiatives for success.

And before I start rallying the community and my board around all of these great ideas (which I will do, believe me), I need to hug my baby Jett and break out the video camera to help tell his story.

Jessica Janssen is executive director of the Fremont Area Community Foundation in Fremont, Neb.