Lifelong Learning 2.0

This month, CommonCraft is celebrating 2 years since their first video. Lee LeFever wrote a blogpost about it a few days ago.

“We had no idea what we were doing, or how that video would transform our lives. We had a tripod, camera and a whiteboard, and that was about it. The video was lit with bedroom lamps and I was speaking directly into the microphone on the camera as I moved around the pieces of paper. The video was edited with Windows Movie Maker.”

Did you know that CommonCraft is just a two-person company? Lee and Sachi LeFever are a husband and wife team, working out of their home in Seattle. A day after posting the first video, Lee says they saw “15,000+ page views, 800 Diggs, 350 Delicious bookmarks and 50 comments.” Amazing!

Now, you may be tired of those CommonCraft videos, as they seem to show up in so many presentations and blogposts. If I have to sit through a presentation watching the wiki video about planning a camping trip one more time, I may have to walk out for a coffee refill. But you have to admit they’ve done a fantastic job of explaining applications and tools in such a simple manner, that viewers become ready to take risks with trying it out.

New changes are coming for the website, including simplified video organization and videos in 5 languages. Voice-overs for several videos will be available in English, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish. The other feature that stood out for me was the organization of CommonCraft’s video library. They are choosing to focus on 4 categories. If you’re interested in the other changes, read about them here.

Photo Attribution: Common Craft Logo, CommonCraft Vidoes