Coming Soon: More Videos on Financial Responsibility
By leelefever on July 20, 2009 - 8:54am
Here's a question for you: Were you taught about financial responsibility when you were young? 
When I ask this question, the vast majority of people respond with a quick "nope." I sure wasn't. In my high school I learned to recite a poem from BeoWulf in Olde English, but never learned about 401ks or compound interest. In light of the current financial crisis, we want to do our part to make sure people understand the important elements of personal finance and being financially responsible.
The First Three
This is why we've focused the first part of this year on videos about financial basics. We started with very basic videos, meant to be prerequisites for more complex topics. We've covered Saving Money (including Compound Interest), Borrowing Money and Investing Money. With these in place, we're ready to release our next three in the series. I won't divulge the titles just yet, but they're all meant to help people understand how to be more financially responsible.
Finance is Boring - But Doesn't Have to Be.
We see two big problems in learning about managing money. First, our financial system is filled with complex terms. It's difficult to care about financial information when you don't recognize the words. Second, most materials about finance are deadly boring. For these next Money videos, we've put a lot of effort into making the videos easy to understand, but also entertaining and fun. You won't find finance videos like these anywhere else.
For Whom?
We often have specific people in mind when working on videos like these. There are usually two audiences:
1. Learners - These are the people who need to learn about financial responsibility. They are students in classrooms and seminars, they are website visitors and employees.
2. Educators - These are the people who need better ways to educate others. Our goal is to provide these good people with accurate, useful and engaging videos that will help learners grasp and even care about financial responsibility. This is the audience we expect to license the videos.
Expect the first of the videos within a week from now. We'll look forward to your feedback and ideas...
View With CommentsHow Education Became Our Focus
By leelefever on January 26, 2009 - 12:17pm
I'm a big believer that every business needs to understand exactly what business they are in - and for us, this has been a journey. I'm confident, through months of discussion and testing, that we've defined this direction for Common Craft. Here is what we learned:
View With CommentsExplainers to Watch in 2009
By leelefever on January 13, 2009 - 3:59pm
If there is one prediction I have for 2009, it will be that our world will become more complex. We will all be confronted with new products, services, ideas and concepts that will confuse the majority of us. And this adds to what confused us in 2008 and years before.
We're convinced that the rise of all this complexity is creating new demand for new kinds of services. Individuals and organizations will find business models in helping people deal with the complexity. The biggest opportunity we see is for people who are good at explaining - at taking an idea and packaging it so a maximum number of people can understand and act on it. Below are some companies and individuals who we think will be making a real contribution in 2009.
What to Expect From Common Craft in 2009
By leelefever on January 04, 2009 - 4:36pm
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.
View With CommentsOur New Adventure: The Common Craft Store
By leelefever on April 02, 2008 - 10:48am
As I wrote recently, we've been thinking a lot about Common Craft's future. In the coming year, Sachi and I want to make even more videos for you - videos that are useful, both on the Web and in the workplace. We've recently created a new resource that will hopefully help us get there.
Today we're announcing the roll out of an early version of The Common Craft Store. It looks like this:
The Coming Wave of Starblogs
By leelefever on May 02, 2005 - 6:46pm
I think we’re entering a new phase in blogging where big stars enter the picture in large numbers. We’ve seen folks like Zach Braff and Rosie O'Donnell do it successfully. Ariana Huffington is sure to get a lot of attention for her upcoming HuffingtonPost.com (not up until May 9). Here’s the group she has lined up, according to the New York Times article:
View With Comments10 Trends to Watch
By leelefever on March 25, 2005 - 4:30pm
Neville Hobson pointed me to a list of 10 trends to watch in 2005, by Mitchell Levy who has been doing the lists since 1998. The source article is here, but I like Neville's notes.
Building on my last post...
#8. Blogging and Social Networking Become Accepted Business Tools
View With CommentsSomething Big is Afoot
By leelefever on March 25, 2005 - 11:54am
I’ve noticed interesting words coming out of my mouth lately. Mostly the words are something like:
“I think the world of business communication is changing right nowâ€
“I can feel a big wave comingâ€
“Something is happening right now that is really going to change the business landscapeâ€
Often, this type of talk is prompted by “What do you do Lee?†or “What’s up with all the blog stuff I’m hearing?â€
View With Comments
