Why we are called ULU (pronounced oo-loo)

It's 2021.

COMMUNICATION is broken.

In the best of times,

communication is complicated.

But COVID-19 has worsened it by requiring: working from home, social distancing, and masks. Add present political battles raging through this country, pitting coworker against coworker. Civil discourse, previously barely civil, has become uncivil.

Conflict is skyrocketing.

Empathy has left the room.

Conflict drives up

employee turnover

disengagement

& conflict.

The costs are enormous.

ULUstory is an app to help
users tell stories to reduce
conflict and foster community.
This helps all of our stakeholders!
Employers, employees, schools,
students, community groups.

The ULUstory web-based app gives users a simple, powerful, skill-building tool to craft and tell their stories. Not just any stories, but stories with a dramatic arc. We call them "U-stories" and they have special powers: most importantly they create empathy. They are the single best communication tool in the last 65,000 years.

They are also fun, engaging, and actually work.

WHAT ARE U-STORIES?

It's not rocket science. It's neuroscience.

How?

By causing both storyteller and listener

to release cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin, and engage in neural coupling.

Simply put, together, these processes create a sense of trust, empathy, and belonging.

And help both storytellers and listeners to develop a sense of community.

03 / CREATIVE

02 / EASY

HOW THE APP WORKS

01 / FAST

Through the enterprise app, the employer provides user access to employees - from any device. It only takes minutes to sign in, a few more to orient, and only a few more minutes to start writing your first story. We have designed the app to enchant, engage, and spark curiosity for users.

For each story the user chooses to tell, they follow a set of easy prompts to generate their story told with a dramatic arc. In their voice. Their words. Their perspective. Users can share their stories, save them, re-edit, and re-purpose in various forms for different contexts.

We provide suggestions for topics and themes you can use for inspiration in choosing your stories. These range from Smoke and Mirrors, to Standing Up, to Crossing Bridges, Guts, Written in Stone, Trials and Tribulations, Rescue and Redemption, and many more. We also provide tools to make your stories even more vivid, engaging, and memorable.

ABOUT ULUSTORY

OUR STORY

OUR VISION

OUR TECHNOLOGY

The ULU enterprise app is the brainchild of Deb V. Pagnotta, top rated employment lawyer, award-winning communications faculty, innovative workplace conduct trainer, VP/HR, mediator, factfinder, and storyteller. Her overarching goal in each of these roles has been to help people communicate more effectively. In teaching clients and students how to tell stories with a dramatic arc - that's the secret sauce! - she heard too many times to count, "I don't have any stories" and "I don't know how to tell an interesting story." In 2010, Deb said "it's easy as 1-2-3," and created an intuitive, prompt-driven format to help people find, craft and tell their stories. It works! And now, in 2021, she wants to give everybody that tool, in its most scalable form: an app.

Storytelling serves important functions. We use stories to inform, persuade, inspire, teach, attract, create community, and connect more swiftly than any other type of communication. In this age of COVID and deep national strife, we need more than ever to engage and connect with each other as humans, not "others".

Philosopher Martin Buber said: “Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other…. Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another." Stories create that YES, over and over, in most surprising times and ways..

The ULU app, now in development of working prototype, is designed to provide every user the ability to access and use a set of prompts and resources to generate their own set of stories. The app will be available first in enterprise form, designed to support inclusion initiatives and employee presentation skills. Employees may use these stories in a variety of contexts; onboarding, teamwork, crafting identity, ally groups, mentor relationships, and in info, sales and persuasive speeches. We expect to enter into beta projects in early summer. We anticipate our soft launch will be in October 2021. We would love your input, and to include you in our soft launch.