Experiments With The New @CommonCraft Twitter Account

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Good Explanations Are Not About You

Explainist (yay! they're back) has a new post about Explanatory Filenames and how to think about the person on the other end. Quote:

But think about the guy on the other end who receives proposals from 10
different candidates on the deadline day, all with the same filename.
The first thing he has to do is rename each of them. If you’re thinking
about your audience, you’d save the proposal with your company’s name
in the filename — e.g. TomCo-Annihilatrix_Proposal.pdf.

What A New Dentist Taught Me About Explanation

Over my life as a dental patient, dentists have told me to pay close attention to brushing the back of my bottom front teeth. Unfortunately, this piece of professional advice had a hard time getting into my daily routine.  That changed recently - I'm now much more likely to brush these teeth - and it's because a new dentist took an extra 30 seconds to explain something important - why.

Lessons in Starting Over

The last few weeks have been both frustrating and enlightening here at Common Craft headquarters. We're in the middle of an ambitious production schedule that has us working on two new series of videos that will appear on the Common Craft Show and Store.  There are a lot of balls in the air - multiple scripts, storyboards and productions.  It's a lot to manage.

Being Lightweight: Business Design

This is the third in a series of posts about Being Lightweight.  The first two were about Working with Clients and Tools We Use.

We are lucky to have a product that people like. Our challenge is to experiment and find the best ways to build a business around this product. To be successful we need the business to be profitable, but also work within the life we want to live.

Being Lightweight: Tools We Use

This is the second in a series of posts about being lightweight.  Our first was focused on working with clients and this installment is all about tools we use.

Tools, or the the wrong tools, become a risk when they create unnecessary drag in every day work. Often, we've found ourselves wondering if we're using a sledgehammer to drive a nail.  If so, we look for alternatives.  

Being Lightweight: Working with Clients

It's a question we ask each other all the time - what is the most lightweight way we can do this?

We are a small company who is trying to do big things. In order to be
successful, we need to reduce drag - to remove the processes,
bureaucracies and commitments that slow us down and don't pay off. 

Today we're kicking off a series of posts called "Being Lightweight" that will relate what lightweight means to us and hopefully help you think differently about how you focus your attention.

I Switched to a Mac - Here Are The Notes

I switched.  It happened about 2 weeks ago, I made a Macbook my primary computer for the first time.  We've had a Mac around the house for a while, but I've been loyal to my little Sony Vaio, which has been mostly flawless for about 2.5 years. It was a good one.

But alas, I wanted a Mac, and it has come to pass.

Along the way, I've been taking some stream-of-consciousness notes on my perceptions before doing any research. I'm using Leopard, btw. Here goes:

I'm still learning, but today was probably the first that I didn't reach for the crtl button to copy/paste something. 

Two Quotes on Simplicity

The first is by Antione de Saint Exupéry, author of The Little Prince and a pioneer in aviation:

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. 

The second is by William of Occam (1288-1347)  You might know the name from Occam's Razor.

It is vain to do more with what can be done with less.

Own It

What is the point where many projects get off track? We think it's when decision making becomes a burden.  Indecision, lack of ownership and unclear reasoning often means stasis and frustration.  Over the past year, and likely through traveling together, Sachi and I have evolved a system that helps us be productive without wasting time.  It's a system of ownership - of being personally accountable for the small decisions that contribute to the overall goal.