Blog Posts About: paperworks

Today we published a new video called Cloud Computing in Plain English:

This title has been one of our most requested and for good reason.  Cloud Computing is a subject that has an explanation problem - people have a hard time understanding it because it's difficult to explain quickly.  Like Social Media, it's a subject that is very broad and lacks broad consensus in terms of clear explanations. Our hope with this video is to lay bit of groundwork so people can see the big ideas.

We asked a number of people for input on the video and I want to thank: Tony Wright, Chris Savage, Uri Budnick, Jeff Dickey and lots of others who I bugged over the last year.

Lastly, this video is available for embedding with a monthly subscription fee.  If you're interested, learn more or contact us.

Today we've published a new video "Saving for Retirement in Plain English".

Since we first considered making the series of videos on Money, we've had our eyes on retirement savings. Not just our retirement, but yours. Too many people start saving too late and/or don't know the basics of why retirement accounts like 401ks and IRAs make sense. This video is aimed at helping people see the long term benefits of retirement accounts.

Who is it for?  Along with use in schools, we see this video being a tool for companies who offer retirement programs. This video can be licensed for use by HR (or financial organizations) that have the goal of increasing awareness and adoption of the programs.

This video will join the other Money videos in a forthcoming "Financial Basics Pack" of 6 videos:

The release of this video also marks a break for our recent focus on money and a return to technology. More coming soon!

Today we published a new video called "Preparing an Emergency Kit in Plain English."

This video represents a new kind of relationship for Common Craft. A while back, we were contacted by Public Safety Canada (PSC) about this subject and we saw a couple of opportunities.  First, we could work on a video that has the potential to have a positive impact.  Second, we saw an opportunity for a win-win in terms of the video's ownership - something we call a hybrid relationship.

Emergency kits are a widely accepted part of emergency preparedness and most agree on what a kit should contain.  The opportunity we saw was to work with PSC to create an emergency kit video that would fit their needs and give us an opportunity to offer a similar video for licensing on commoncraft.com. So, PSC received a video built for their Canadian audience and we have a video with versions appropriate for our American audience. We see this as a win-win and enjoyed working with PSC to make it happen. 

This video offers governments and organizations focusing on emergency preparedness a quick and effective way to help citizens get started on building their kits. It can be licensed and branded for use in training and education, or on public facing websites.

Watch the video here.

Common Craft was hired by Microsoft to help explain the new Windows Live.com.  We were so excited to work with a local organization on a project that highlights a new direction for the company.

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We were hired by Ford Motor Company and Social Media Group to produce this video about Sync - a Microsoft technology that uses voice activation to control cell phones and mp3 players. In learning about the technology, we became fans of Sync, especially now that you can get a ticket in Washington State for holding a phone while driving.