Blog Posts About: future

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...

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:

I started Common Craft in 2003 to do consulting.  It was just me and I provided consulting services.  Once we started making videos, we were hired to make custom videos.  Again, we were a services business.  In the summer of 2007, we realized that our videos could be products - products that could create a business that scales more easily through licensing. Ultimately, we felt confident in our ability to pick a subject and explain it simply and effectively.  The question became - what do we do with this kind of product?

There was a specific point in our business when we decided exactly what to do.  It was just a few months ago, during the financial meltdown.  We were getting lots of suggestions to explain the mortgage crisis.  We did a lot of research and had every intention of publishing an explanation of it all in 3-4 minutes.  But it didn't feel right.  Something made us feel out of our element.

Despite spending a lot of time on it, we chose to throw out our mortgage crisis work and refocus.  Why?  Because it didn't match with the business we wanted to be in. The more we looked at a mortgage crisis video, the more it seemed like news.  We could see that explaining news events was fertile ground, but not necessarily the best thing for Common Craft.  Here's why:

• Shelf Life: While news has enduring value, that value often peaks the day it's released. Videos can easily become yesterday's news.
• Production Time:  Our videos take a long time to produce and it would always be a fire-drill to try to get on the next big story.
• Ad Revenue: From a product perspective, news is mostly paid-for by advertising.  This model isn't our focus these days. 
• Positive Impact:  News surely plays a positive role in our world, but we saw other opportunities to educate people about fundamental topics.

So, we refocused.  We stopped considering news stories or any time-sensitive events.  We looked for ways that we could have a lasting, positive impact.  We looked for problems that were relevant and timely, but had a potential shelf-life of years.  We looked for ways to create a product that made sense for our business.

Through these discussions, we realized that we are an education company.  We make videos that explain the basics.  We give people a foundation for understanding important subjects that impact their lives. We want our products, over the long term, to help people become more informed and knowledgeable so they can become more responsible citizens.  If we can accomplish these goals, our business will be successful for years to come.

Right now we're in the process of publishing a series called "Financial Basics" that is our response to the mortgage crisis.  This series is our way of combating the troubling lack of understanding people have regarding personal finance. This is one of multiple broad topics plan to cover in 2009.

By creating educational explanatory videos, we can build products that scale, support us through licensing and hopefully have an enduring, positive impact. It may take a while to get there, but like we say in Financial Basics, it's all about thinking long-term.

In 2009 you'll see that our business is built around licensing videos to individuals, schools and organizations of all types.

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.

Explainer Network Members - Video producers listed on the Common Craft Explainer Network page.

Claytorials - Claytorials is a new-ish project from the folks at Invoke Media. Their videos use colorful clay and stop motion animation to explain all kinds of products and services.  Recent projects include videos for Tagga.com and More2Girls.com. See Claytorials.com for more.

Say It Visually - Say It Visually is a collaboration between Matt Dunn and Jordan Schaffel.  One of the first videos I saw of theirs was the ambitious "US Financial Crisis for Kids".  Since then, they've done custom videos for clients like VOIS and Survey Sampling International.  See their portfolio for more. 

Switch Web Video - Switch Web Video dove head first into the explanatory video world and it's great to see them grow. Andrew Angus runs the show at Switch and has big plans for his business.  Check out their latest work for Neurogizers and Car Heaven on their Our Work page.

Video Producers:

Joshua Gunn - Josh runs Nutintuit Studios and creates explanatory videos "In a Nutshell".  He used to live in Seattle and we met over a year ago when he was just getting started. Since then, he's moved to Boston been hired by clients like Brooks Running Shoes and Netgear.  Josh also did a great explanation of the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken. "

Michael Pick - I first met Michael through his explanatory video "DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix." He runs Smashcut.tv and is currently employed by Automattic, making sense of Wordpress in video form.  We had the pleasure of spending an evening with Michael and his wife Takako in Sapporo, Japan about a year ago.

Xplane - Xplane has been in the explanation business for over 15 years.  Dave Gray founded the company and has really made explanation a skill and science over the years.  While the company has traditionally worked in the print world, they are making moves in the video world too.

Blogs and Podcasts:

Planet Money - One of the best explanations of 2008 was "The Giant Pool of Money" on This American Life. It taught millions (including us) about the source of the housing crisis. Now many of the same producers are hosting a podcast called Planet Money which has become a favorite of ours.

Explainist - Explainist is a blog that I discovered recently.  It focuses on explanations of all type, written by Dave Coustan and Tom Harris, formerly of HowStuffWorks.com.  Since they've been back in action, I've been a consistent reader.

Cliff Mass Weather Blog - As a burgeoning weather geek I was so happy to find Cliff Mass' blog.  He's a weather expert and author based in here in Seattle.  Some of the content is pretty technical, but he also takes the time to explain some of the basics of weather in an understandable way.  Recently he posted an entry called Inversion 101.

Do you know companies, websites or individuals who are good explainers? Tell us about them.  

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. :)

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 Store is the home for "licensed versions" of our videos.  Licensed versions contain the same messaging and content as the free versions, but are improved for the workplace.

Some features:

• Download video files immediately after purchase (credit card, paypal)


• Higher resolution (640 X 480 - better for projection screens)


• Less promotion (no Common Craft Show branding)


• Provided in Quicktime (.mov) for Mac, and Windows Media (.wmv) formats


• No DRM


• Two Licenses:

                Individual - Unlimited use by an individual
                Site - Unlimited use for a single location of an organization

• We have also re-edited and re-recorded the voiceovers for the RSS and Wiki videos.
  

The Store is a direct response to emails we receive nearly every day asking for permission to use our videos in the workplace.  By licensing our videos, we are removing any worries about permission and appropriate use.  Influencers and educators now have a resource for downloading and using the videos in presentations, meetings, Intranets, trainings, etc.

What about the free versions?

All of our videos will now be provided in two forms, Free and Licensed.  This may help:

We are committed to maintaining the free and open nature of our videos on the public Web.  The free versions will be provided under a Creative Commons 3.0 (non-commercial) license. These videos will continue to appear on the Common Craft Show, on video hosts like You Tube and will remain open for use by individuals, schools, non-profits, etc.

By opening the Store, we are creating a channel for professionals who need videos that are easier to access and more appropriate for use in professional/commercial situations.

Our hope is that the Store will allow us to focus more energy on producing videos for the Common Craft Show - videos that will be open to bloggers and the Web, but also for licensed use in the workplace.

If you have questions or concerns, have a look at the FAQ, the Licensing Agreement and the Privacy Policy.

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:

Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

I think this is going to be interesting to watch. To be successful, I believe these folks are going to have to be real -- real with their thoughts, ideas and feelings on a regular basis. For actors and celebrities, that could be a challenge, and one that many may not be prepared to tackle.

I mentioned this to someone over the weekend and they said “hah, I bet many of them will have their publicist do it�?. I bet so and that will be part of the fun – seeing who gets it and turns it into a success and who is not prepared and earns ridicule.

Perhaps for the first time, fans may have a direct link into the mind of their favorite celebrity. The question for the celebrity is… will that be an asset or a liability? Funny how that question is the same for businesses too.