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Common Craft

What to Expect From Common Craft in 2009January 4

In a word: Education.

Our goal in 2009 is to make explanatory videos that have a positive impact.  To get there, we plan to focus of video subjects that are educational in nature and help address some of the big problems we face.

We plan to introduce new series of videos that diverge from our Web roots and cover subjects that we believe need to be covered.  You'll see the first of these starting very soon and continuing into February.  We're starting with the basics - big ideas that will be built upon over time.

We're convinced, more than ever, that Common Craft is an *educational* explanation company. While our library of videos is currently technology-oriented (and zombies ), our challenge in 2009 and beyond is to establish Common Craft as a company whose explanations are focused on education in multiple fields and potentially impact very broad audiences in positive ways.

You have been a huge help to us so far. It's your blog posts, your Twitter updates and comments that help our videos become visible. We'll make a deal with you: We'll keep pumping out the videos if you'll help us spread the word.  Together, we can do great things in 2009. :)

18 Lessons Learned in 2008January 2

It's time for our 2nd annual Year-End Lessons Learned post. 2008 was a great year for Common Craft.  While we published a number of videos that we're very proud of, 2008 was all about building a foundation for the future of our business.  Going into 2009, we're feeling confident that we have a solid foundation in place - and now is our time to put more videos into the world.

Here are a few things we learned: 

Overall Business:

Build Foundations. Think hard about long term opportunities and what could stand in your way.  Ask: What needs to be done now so that road blacks don't occur in the future?  For us, it was legal documents, our new studio and our Store.  These work together to allow our video licensing model to scale for years to come.

Care About Contracts. If you strip everything else away, the skeleton of the business is supported by the promises you make to people.  Contracts and agreements should be well-written, specific to your business and reflect the exact promises you're making.

Always Test Business Models.  Companies who are dedicated to being small still need ways to grow.  We started three new business experiments in 2008: Our video store,

Edublog Awards: Common Craft Needs Your VoteDecember 19 2008

This is coming a bit late, but The Common Craft Show has been nominated for an Eddie - An Edublog Award in the category of Best Educational Use of Video/Visual.  The polls close tomorrow - we're hoping for a late-breaking victory. Thanks!

Introducing: Common Craft Kindle BooksDecember 16 2008

We're big fans of Amazon's Kindle.  It makes reading easier and we're convinced it could become an iPod-like device in the future in terms of ubiquity.  We've been working to make our videos into Kindle books so people have another way to learn, in Plain English. 

I previously wrote about the Kindle here and here. 

The basic idea with the Kindle is that

Experiments With The New @CommonCraft Twitter AccountDecember 14 2008

I've been a Twitter user for just over 2 years now and I'm still trying to figure out how to use it well. A couple of weeks ago, We created an @commoncraft account that's focused on our business and looks behind-the-scenes. Now that I have an established account (@leelefever) and one that's just getting started, I've been thinking a lot about what's possible with Twitter.  Some thoughts:

(If you're new to Twitter, watch our video Twitter in Plain English )

To Follow or Not to Follow

I take a decidedly lightweight approach to social media. If I haven't met you or don't know you personally, I'm not likely to add you as a friend or follow you. I currently follow about 200 people on Twitter and it's still too much.  When I follow someone with the @leelefever account, I try keep up with most of their updates. This is how I've always used Twitter.

Now that I have a new, business-oriented account, I'm thinking about it a bit differently.  Wi