During my last year at Loyola Marymount University, the film program created an introductory level class called “storytelling” or something like that. It was a class designed to teach first-year students how to tell stories. I never took it, but I remember the uproar around its introduction.

Teeth gnashed. That will be a great one to skip. How could a class with a title fit for a preschool curriculum be offered at a 4-year univeristy? The optics and blowback killed it before it began.

Fast-forward a few years and I find myself in San Francisco, another Californian city centered around a technical and creative industry. We make similar mistakes: we produce technically great products without a story behind them. What is software without a story? What is cinematography without a script?

Storytelling might be the only class that mattered.