Common Craft: Explanations in Plain English

I’m very fond of the Common Craft videos.  They take complex ideas on a variety of Web2.0 concepts and applications (RSS, Wikis, Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, Blogs, Online Photo Sharing, Twitter, Podcasting) and make them easy for anyone to understand.

As we gain expertise in a particular area of knowledge, it becomes difficult to provide a basic explanation of these technologies, especially to newbies.  These videos are just a few minutes long (usually between two and five minutes) and have a distinctive style that is quite entertaining.

Lee and Sachi LeFever are Common Craft, a husband-and-wife company.  Lee LeFever was interviewed by Jon Udell (Interviews with Innovators as part of the IT Converstaions Network). The 26 minute interview is almost longer than the dozen Common Craft videos that have been produced so far, but there are many insights that make this interview worth a listen.

As Albert Einstein stated: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”  The efforts in paring these videos down to just what is needed really shows, however, LeFever says that with the success of the videos, he has been overwhelmed with requests for videos for various topics and applications.  Many assume these short videos only take a short time to produce, but LeFever notes that several of the videos took forty and sometimes even more than eighty hours to complete.

Going by the statistics on these Common Craft videos that have been uploaded to YouTube, they are proving to be quite successful.  Whether a newbie to these Web2.0 or an expert teaching newbies, the Common Craft site is a terrific resources for all – Twitter it, Blog it, and Social Bookmark it now!