Introducing the New CommonCraft.com

A few months back, we made re-thinking our web site a top priority. We needed a better way to organize, display and sell our videos. At the same time, we saw an opportunity for our website to feel like a Common Craft video. Today is the official launch of the new CommonCraft.com and we can barely contain ourselves.

A few things:

1. We need your help. As with anything new, bugs, typos, and issues of all sorts are expected. Please contact us, or leave a comment here if you see anything out of place, or have feedback of any sort.

2. We're using a video player that may require you to upgrade to Flash 10 (the technology that makes sure the videos load fast, etc.). Please let us know your experience with watching the videos.

3. Ten of our videos can now be viewed and purchased with audio in 5 languages, including English. If you're bi-lingual, we would love it if you could watch the videos and let us know what feedback you have.

4. We now offer a newsletter service called "Common Craft Video Updates." If you sign up, we'll send you a short email each time we publish a new video. We don't expect to send more then two per month. You can always sign up at the bottom of every page.

Overall, I hope you'll take a look at the site. It's truly a new way for us to present our work and business - something of which we're very proud (but not too proud to hear feedback!)

We'll talk more about them later, but we worked with two small companies to make it happen. Jay and Anastasia at Juxtaprose helped us re-imagine the site's design and structure while Lyal, Alexa and Vince at Outcome3 turned that design into a incredibly manageable, SEO friendly and purpose-built Drupal site. I can't say enough about the hard work and integrity of these folks - both companies are class-acts.

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Request for Testimonials or Quotes

We're getting close to rolling out a new and improved version of
CommonCraft.com and I have a favor to ask. We're planning to include testimonials in the new design. These are short quotes that will display the names (and organization names, if desired) of the people providing the quotes. 

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Our Twitter Video Used in Mainstream Media - Thoughts?

For the first time in Common Craft's evolution, one of our videos "Twitter in Plain English" is being used in the mainstream media. For the most part, we're excited to have our work in front of millions. However, it brings up some questions and we're curious what you think.  A few facts:

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Experiments With The New @CommonCraft Twitter Account

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What is an Explanation?

Sachi and I been talking about this and we're curious what you think.  What is an explanation? What are the skills required to be a good explainer?  What makes a good explanation?

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What To Do About Copy-Cats?

For quite a while now, we’ve been flattered to see others create videos that appear very similar to ours. In many cases, these are positive videos that are used as classroom exercises.  We encourage others in the education world to create Common Craft-inspired videos. Of course, some producers have taken the idea in new directions and mediums, which we also encourage. Further, some producers choose to publicly attribute Common Craft for inspiring their work - and we deeply appreciate this kind of recognition.

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Wow, Thanks So Much for the Feedback

We are blown away with the response to the recent post "What Videos Should We Make?"  Not just the quantity (over 50 comments and lots of email), but the quality.  It's exciting to see suggestions that have opened up new ideas and ones that fit with a couple of the themes that have been top-of-mind. 

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What Videos Should We Make?

Our big transition is almost complete and we need your help.  The new Store is up, we're finishing up the last custom projects and now is the time to plan what videos we'll offer in the Store over the next year.  We have lots of ideas, but we really want to know what you think.

We want to make videos that:

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3 Questions from a Reader

In a recent blog post, we asked for questions from readers.  Thanks to Joan from High Contagious Marketing for asking these thought-provoking questions:

1. If your fairy godmother told you she would grant you three wishes for your business, what three wishes would you request.

Wish #1:  An easy one.  Stop ALL spam, effective immediately. This includes online spam, junk mail, front door solicitors, political calls, etc. 

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BarCamp Vancouver Session - Feedback?

BarCamp Vancouver is about to lift off and I'm so excited. Vancouver is easily one of my most favorite cities in the world and happens to have a load of great people - many of which are planners of the event.

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