Good Advice for Solving Problems

Lee Lefever posted a nice piece last night on their experience at Common Craft Show regarding producing their many fabulous videos on RSS, Social Bookmarking, and etc.

Some great advice that really struck for me when considering our upcoming LMS implementation was:

"If you're about to start something new, don't spend weeks trying to make the first attempt perfect. Get started as quickly as possible and learn as you go. Tinker, experiment and look for the big things you can tackle as you go. Solve problems when they need to be solved and you won't feel as overwhelmed by all the things that could be fixed."

I think I've been a little wound up thinking about getting the Cadillac version out there for our staff to really get excited about it, but at this point I need to realize that a Vespa will do. We have nothing right now so anything that gives staff easier access to course registration and material is going to be better.

Social Networks in Plain English - CommonCraft Creates another great Show

Here's another wonderful production from Lee Lefever and The Common Craft Show team. This one is a small production on Social Networks in Plain English and is yet again anothe simple and straight forward presentation that everyone can easily understand.

I also really liked Lee's recent post on Why Paperworks: All About Constraints. In it he explains why he and his team have chosen to use paper, whiteboards, and just hands to create these simple yet very imformative pieces.

Lee's answer to why just these tools?

"By narrowing the scope of possibilities down to only a few ways to present
ideas, we can eliminate needless decision making and complexity."

Materials: ...Our materials, while limited, keep us lightweight and simple.
Time: By limiting the video's possible lengthto 4 minutes, we limit ourselves to major points. We don't sweat the small stuff.
Hands: By using only our hands, we don't have to think about clothes, hair, make-up or even facial expressions.
Music: By not using external music, we don't have to pick the right song or worry about being sued.
The Lesson: ...By eliminating the decisions about technology, presentation, music, etc. we have time to focus on the core of what makes Paperworks work: the ideas.

Briliant and one of those "why didn't I think of it" concepts. I've found the entire site is full of wonderful tidbits and lessons that are great for us "users" to forward on to "newbies" to help them understand more easily many of the tools we just seem to look at and immediately know how to use.

Another Plain English Video, Just in Time

"Wiki in Plain English" Yeah!!!
Just in time for a presentation I'm making this Friday to an OD Network about all these tools we already know about, Lee Lefever does it again. Just released is a simple and straight forward explanation of a wiki. His unique presentations are broadcasts over the web but use a format similar to early episodes of Southpark. No fancy animation here (fancy $million animation bad, Boo), that would clutter everything up and take away from the "make it simple for everyone" approach. Lee uses paper cutouts and moves them around as you watch to explain wikis and rss.

Keep up the great work and keep the videos coming. They are fabulous.

The Power and Expanse of Internet Video

I remember seeing this RSS in Plain English Video in a posting a while ago and thinking how great. I definitely need to share this with my colleagues who just don't quite get why I'm reading so much on the Internet lately.

Now the reason I can't remember which posting it was on has become quite evident as Lee Lefever explained yesterday on his blog The Common Craft Show.

The video was posted on April 23rd, 2007. Today is May 28th and in just over a month the video has been...

Viewed over 80,000 times across three hosts (Blip.tv, YouTube and DotSub)
Translated into 9 languages (subtitles)
Commented on 160 times (across sites)
Dugg 975 times
Added to Del.icio.us 795 times
Linked-to over 680 times (says Technorati)

Of course, all this has been quite good for the Common Craft web site. In the same month, the site has...

Gained over 400 new RSS subscribers
Reached Technorati Authority of 980, Rank of 2146
The blog entry containing the video has been viewed 46,000+ times and has over 100 comments
Gained more visitors by maybe 20%

And this all culminates in one big objective for us: Let's try to do THAT again!

Way to go. That is impressive. It's amazing how one little video that really hits home for people can explode into something so big and wonderful. Congratulations Lee and keep up the great work.

Another person that this happened to was inspirational/motivational speaker Judson Laipply with his Evolution of Dance. If you haven't seen it yet I'd be really amazed. I don't remember the stats exactly how it took off within a week, but since being posted on YouTube in April 2006 it has been viewed over 49 Million times. The story is something along the lines that within a week of being posted hundreds of thousands had viewed it and Jud was being scheduled to appear all over the world on talk shows. Wow, one week.

Makes me wish I had some great video to post on the net too.
Oh wait there is my improv troop. One day we'll be famous. We'll be stars.