Common Craft - Common Craft - Our Product is Explanation

New Video: Copyright and Creative Commons

leelefever — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:04:57 +0000

Today we’re announcing a new video: Copyright and Creative Commons - Explained by Common Craft.

One of the exciting things about having Common Craft members is working with them on ideas for future video titles. We provide them tools for suggesting and voting on future titles and this idea came directly from the members. Yaay!

About the video:

This video tells the story of a photographer who learns the basics of copyright law and creative commons licensing. Her story highlights the role each can play in helping creators protect and share their work. It teaches:

• Why copyright law exists

• How to copyright a creative work

• Creative Commons licensing basics

• How both copyright and Creative Commons licensing can help creators

• Rules of thumb for using licensed work

A few photos from behind the scenes:

Sachi Cutting

Materials ready to shoot

Everything on deck

Watch the video or Learn about membership

Categories:

creative commons

creative

legal

This Week in Love: PEMCO Commercials

leelefever — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:07:42 +0000

This Week in Love is a series of blog posts where Sachi and I share what we love. Browse the archives and follow @weekinlove on Twitter.

This Week in Love: PEMCO Commercials

It's not often that we're prepared to come out and say that we love a series of insurance commercials, but these are near and dear to our hearts. They're commercials for Seattle-based PEMCO Insurance (with DNA Seattle) and part of a campaign called "We're A Little Different. A Lot Like You."

Why we love them:

Wherever you're from, you know the things that make that region unique. You know how people think and what they do. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is no different. Most people have notions of Seattle that involve rain, coffee, computers, grunge music, etc. But there's a second level of culture that only the locals see.

This series of commercials has done an amazing job of plucking those little bits of culture out of the NW and portraying them proudly in commercial form. They're a little embarassing, but that's what it all about. We think you'll find them to be funny and endearing snapshots of what makes the NW the NW.

Here are a few 30 second samples:

As always, This Week in Love is not a paid advertisement. We have no connection with PEMCO aside from loving the commercials.

Don't miss the next Week in Love. Follow us on Twitter @weekinlove.

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This Week in Love: Radiolab Podcast

leelefever — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:09:10 +0000

This Week in Love is a series of blog posts where Sachi and I share what we love. Browse the archives and follow @weekinlove on Twitter.

This Week in Love: The Radiolab Podcast

Over the last couple of years, podcasts have become a big part of our lives. We work from home and end up sharing our listening habits, for better or for worse. We've discovered a number of podcasts that we love. We play them while working (especially doing creative work), cooking dinner, working out, etc. They've become among our most frequently used types of media and we listen through iTunes and Stitcher Smart Radio. We explain podcasting here.

While there are podcasts on nearly every subject imaginable, we prefer informative ones. We want to be enlightened, to learn something new. That's why we fell in love with a podcast called Radiolab by Jab Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. It is, by far, our favorite. At heart it's about science, but more than that, it's about exploration and discovery. Produced in hour-long shows and twenty minute "shorts", the hosts pick a single topic and dive into the details, usually from several different perspectives, in a way you'd never expect.

Photo: Radiolab/WNYC

But Radiolab is not just great content - it's great production. Jad Abumrad (who recently won the MacArthur Genius Grant) runs the sound design and integrates music and sounds in a way we've never heard before. For example, a guest describing an experience is not a flat audio feed. Their commentary usually includes background sounds, the hosts' voices, and layers of sound, all artfully composed into a unique experience. Further, while their discussion is mostly scripted, it comes off with authenticity and friendly humor.

Here are a few of our favorite episodes:

Parasites

What's gotten into you? In this hour, Radiolab uncovers a world full of parasites. Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life? We explore nature's moochers, with tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). And we examine claims that some parasites may actually be good for you.

Talking to Machines

What can machines tell us about being human? This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert meet humans and robots who are trying to connect, and blur the line.

Limits

On this hour of Radiolab: a journey to the edge of human limits. How much can you jam into a human brain? How far can you push yourself past feelings of exhaustion? We test physical endurance with a bike race that makes the Tour de France look like child’s play, and mental capacity with a mind-stretching memory competition. And we ask if robots--for better or worse--may be forging beyond the limits of human understanding.

Learn more about and subscribe to Radiolab for free at Radiolab.org or follow the show on Twitter @radiolab. We think you'll love it too.

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5 Trends Behind the Growing Shift to Video Explanations

leelefever — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:24:37 +0000

It’s easy to look back at Internet history and spot the points of major change. A famous example is the Web 2.0 era which spawned products like Twitter, Facebook and other lasting features of the Web. Some would say we're in the cloud era now, with nearly everything we do on computers being moved to off-site servers.

Within these big, tectonic shifts are smaller shifts that also make a difference. YouTube was a big shift that kicked off online video in 2005 and in the years since, we’ve seen the growth of viral videos and myriad artistic expressions in video form. How did we survive without the Honey Badger?

But there is one shift, near and dear to my heart, that we’re just starting to see. The age of the video explanation is here. Let me explain.

Online video, in many ways, has reflected mainstream television. These productions are usually advertising supported and generally classified by documentary, narrative, drama, comedy, advertising, art, etc. All valuable and productive, but reflecting mainstream history.

With YouTube came the potential for video to be more democratized, more experimental. Suddenly there became room for new uses of video, new audiences, new genres. In 2006, anyone with a video camera and an Internet connection could make videos and share them on a worldwide scale for free. Sachi and I fit that model and Common Craft started to experiment.

In 2007 we saw an opportunity to make videos that explained technology. These videos were not instructional or tactical how-to videos. They answered a different kind of question. It was not “how do I do this?” but “why should I care?” We called them explanations and Common Craft’s tagline became “Our Product is Explanation”.

To my knowledge this was the first time a set of online videos had been described as explanations, with RSS in Plain English (below) being the original article.

This video was a viral hit and helped make Common Craft famous on the Web. It worked for a simple reason - it made people care about and see value in RSS. Since then we’ve made videos that have done the same for products like Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs and now have a whole library of video explanations for use in classrooms and on the Web. In all, our video explanations have been viewed well over 35 million times.

As these videos gained traction, an increasing number of video producers have joined the fray and started describing what they do as "video explanations" or "explainer videos", which are usually computer animations. At the same time, demand for our services grew and we created the Common Craft Explainer Network in 2008 to help these producers flourish. Since 2010, we’ve seen more and more producers describe their work as video explanations and adopt the idea that explanation represents a specific skill and type of video, a new genre that’s useful.

Now, our success and a handful of producers don’t make a shift. But a few trends are at work that set this up to be a big deal in the future.

1. Growing complexity, growing anxiety. The world is moving faster than ever and people are feeling anxious because they can’t keep up. They need quick, effective ways to feel confident about ideas and products that matter to them. Video explanations fulfill this need and there is no shortage of subjects that need better explanations.

2. Growing Use of Video. Yesterday Reuters reported that YouTube is now serving "4 billion online videos every day, a twenty five percent increase in the past eight months"

3. Growing Demand. eMarketer recently released a report suggesting spending on online video will rise 43% in 2012. That’s one year. Spending begets supply. I see part of the money in video moving from whiz-bang marketing videos to videos that focus on utility and education, what we call explanations.

4. Growing Supply. As stated above, more and more video producers around the world are starting to specialize in explanation. These producers are seeing growth potential because organizations are tired of the same old marketing formula and demanding videos that are simpler and focused on explaining more than selling.

5. Growing Mindshare. Until recently, people have not heard the term "video explanation:. But that is changing quickly. We talk to organizations every day that want a video that explains their product. Indeed, I imagine a world where an increasing number of compaines see video explanations as a standard way for a brand to communicate.

Video explanations are not going to be the next Web 2.0. However, a number of factors are coming together that will make video explanations a trend to watch in 2012 and beyond. We expect to see more video producers developing video explanation skills for custom/promotional projects as well as video explanations designed to educate and inform.

We could be at the beginning of a wave that will change how we think about the role of video in helping people feel more confident and informed in the face of a rapidly changing landscape. Perhaps soon we’ll see that the genres of video have a new and productive member. Drama, comedy, documentary, advertising and explanation.

For a complete list of Common Craft Video Explanations, check out our video library.

Categories:

history

media

youtube

Guest Post: What Communicators Can Learn from a Highsticking Penalty

leelefever — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:45:55 +0000

This is a guest post by friend of Common Craft, Darren Barefoot. He's a writer, marketer, Canadian and a big hockey fan.

During a hockey game in March, 2010, Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara drove Montreal Canadians forward Max Pacioretty into the stanchion that separates the player's benches. Nearly a year later, it still looks like a brutal hit as Pacioretty 's head bounced off the corner of the boards. Chara received a five-minute penalty and ejected from the game. Pacioretty was sent to the hospital.

The next day, Mike Murphy, the NHL's vice-president of hockey operations released a statement about the incident. To the confusion of many fans, he chose not to further punish Chara for the hit. Murphy used a common generalization for the incident, explaining that it was "a hockey play". There was no further comment from league officials on the polarizing incident, but the sports media was host to an orgy of outrage and consternation.

The NHL's pronouncement from on-high was typical of how professional sports leagues addressed questions of the "supplementary discipline of players". They hold discplinary meetings in private, and emphasize expediancy over transparency. Traditionally, the less discussion there is of such incidents, the better.

Last summer, the NHL hired a new chief discplinarian, former player Brendan Shanahan. Fans knew Shanahan's predecessor as sometimes controversial and secretive, and so the new sherriff in town promised "a clean slate" and "fresh eyes".

The tale of the disciplinary tape

Among the changes that Shanahan has implemented, one stands out as a radical departure from the professional sports league status quo. Every time the NHL hands down a suspension--there have been 32 suspensions thus far--Shanahan records a short, explanatory video that the NHL shares with players, team staff and fans.

The videos are not only extraordinary for the way Shanahan openly discusses the NHL's rationale for a particular decision, but they're also terrific examples of coherent, precise explanation. Here's a recent example:

Shanahan introduces each video (he has some experience as a pitchman), and then offers a play-by-play of the infraction. He uses the typical tools of the sports broadcaster to break down an incident. He shows the play in slow-motion from a variety of angles, and highlights details of players involved.

Shanahan takes care to balance the hockey lingo with straightforward language. In the above video clip, he describes how:

Carcillo chips the puck behind Gilbert at the Edmonton blue line, creating a race toward the end boards. This is a 50-50 puck that either player can win, and in such cases a reasonable amount of physical contact is permissable as the players jostle for position.

The new or casual hockey fan may not know phrases like "chips the puck" or "50-50 puck", but the careful language makes it easy even for the non-fan to understand what happened. Shanahan is also careful to contextualize the incident, describing the game situation, previous antagonism between players, injuries sustained and other contributing factors.

Finally, he wraps up each three or four-minute video with a bullet point summary, as if he's just presented a set of PowerPoint slides on a new HR program at Dunder Mifflin.

The NHL has also begun to make more instructional videos public. Here's one called "Clean Hard Hits and Good Decision Plays" that aspires to show players and fans how to avoid appearing in the more punitive videos.

Heretics in the church of sport

If you're not somebody with a season tickets or a jersey section in your closet, these may simply seem like well-made if ordinary illustrative videos. They are that, but they're also a kind of heresy in professional sports. No other professional sports league has publicly produced videos like this to explain league rules and how they're broken. The NBA officials seem to be paying attention, though. They recently released a video rather defensively titled "Wade Winner Legal" to address criticisms that Dwayne Wade traveled on a game-winning shot.

They've proved to be an antidote to a lot of the plague of speculation and hyper-analysis that occurs in the sports media. Bruce Ciskie, writing for SB Nation, discusses the impact the 'Shanaban videos' (as they've come to be called) have had on fans and players:

I thought a two-game ban on Minnesota's Pierre-Marc Bouchard was patently ridiculou...But even in a situation where I disagreed with Shanahan, it's hard to say that his video didn't lay out a pretty strong case for the move he decided to make.

The videos are also working because the players are paying attention. I'll say it again. In a preseason that lasted less than two weeks, Shanahan's department was forced to do ten videos, nine of which involved decisions to suspend players for incidents.

In nearly two months of the regular season, the same group has issued eight suspensions.

In discussing why they introduced the videos, Shanahan cites the role of video in player instruction generally:

This generation of players, you can tell them a message, but what they really want to do is see it. This is how they’re coached. They get called in, and they don’t get a lecture, they get shown a video. It’s how they are trained and taught. It’s not enough for them to read a memo anymore.

Shanahan's comments apply to this generation of fans, as well, who are as literate with video as their parents were with words. The NHL videos are great examples of explanation in action. They combine the best of sports media with the best aspects of explanation--context, audience analysis, reptition and summation. They're great inspiration for today's communicators.

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sports

hockey

video

New Video: Social Networking (Facebook)

leelefever — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:14:59 +0000

Today we've published a new video: Social Networking (Facebook).

This video is a much-requested sequel to our video on Social Networking. As you likely know, a lot has changed in the world of Social Networking as Facebook has emerged to be one of the standards - and this video is aimed at why. It covers the basic ideas through the story of a woman who becomes a member and discovers how the social network and status updates help her feel more informed and engaged with her interests.

Audience: This video is helpful for trainers and teachers who teach technology. It provides a good foundation for a discussion or lesson about the features and ideas that make social networking work. Good for all ages and abilities.

Watch the video now, or learn about Common Craft membership.

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How a Coin is Solving One of the World's Great Explanation Problems

leelefever — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:07:52 +0000

I grew up playing soccer and over the past few years, Sachi and I have become bigger fans than ever, especially for our hometown Seattle Sounders. The rules of soccer came pretty easily to Sachi who didn't play as a youngster - with one huge exception: the offsides rule. I tried to point it out at matches, explain the idea, etc. Eventually, visuals did the trick and now she's the one throwing her arms in the air.

Indeed, the offsides rule has a serious, worldwide explanation problem. It's adoption is limited by how the idea is being explained. And looking forward to The 2012 Olympics in London, this is an explanation problem that's ripe for a solution.

Enter Neil Wolfson, who won a competition to design a coin which was sport related for a series to celebrate the Olympics. According to Wolfson:

"I'm a football fan, I followed the Premier League since its inception and if I had 50p for every time someone had asked me to explain the offside rule I'd be a very rich man."

"When the coin is in circulation I hope people like it and I hope people are able to use it to explain the offside rule."

So, the coin is a visual aid meant to be used in concert with a verbal explanation. Sounds familiar. The real magic of this explanation though, is that it also buys beer.

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coin

olympics

explanationproblems

Speaking at the Training Magazine Conference

leelefever — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:27:14 +0000

I'm excited to be one of the keynote speakers at the Training Magazine Conference and Expo. The event is in Atlanta, Georgia on February 13-14th. The event is set up to have multiple, short keynotes over the course of the conference and my talk will focus on the "Art of Explanation". Here's the description:

While technology increases connectivity, connectivity increases complexity. The time between decisions is shrinking and the scale of information around each decision is exploding. How do we craft explanations when faced with this dual challenge? How do we make sense of complex issues in the shortest time possible? Learn a breakthrough approach for crafting explanations that people get, and act upon the first time out. See how an explanation can move someone from disinterest to motivation and even excitement. Lee LeFever, renowned for building short, creative video explanations, will share what he’s learned about the key elements of great explanations.

I hope to see you there!

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conference

event

Louis C.K. and the Direct-to-Fans Model

leelefever — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:50:04 +0000

Recently comedian Louis C.K. has made a lot of news by offering his most recent comedy special for $5 via his website. That doesn’t sound amazingly disruptive in itself, but if you dive a little deeper, you’ll see that it's an experiment that shines a light on the future of media.

Let’s look at the normal process. A creative person creates something amazing; it could be a video, a album, artwork, whatever. They often work, under contract, with media companies to sell it. This gives them access to PR, marketing, distribution and management - all helpful for a new artist. The revenue from selling the creative work pays for the people doing the PR, marketing, distribution and management. At the end of the day, the artist often gives up some rights to their work, get a lot of people with needs and (small) fraction of every dollar earned. It’s a heavy, cumbersome model that has been the standard for many years.

Louis C.K. has taken a first step in disrupting this model and is in a unique position for doing so. He is a very talented individual with a lot of fans. He’s known for his standup comedy, but he also has a successful TV show called Louie. But he’s more than the star of the show. He writes, directs, edits, produces and stars in the show. More than any show on TV, “Louie” is a product of one person.

With his new standup special, he’s using these production talents. He paid for the production from his own pocket at a cost of over $170,000. He edited the special himself. He owns the entire process and now he’s selling his production on his website for $5 dollars. He’s making a bet, with his own cash, that he can do it better than media companies.

Here’s a quote from a recent post from him:

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today [the 13th], we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you).

Why is this disruptive? Because he completely cut out the typical media companies and their controls. Using his own talents and his website, he can make something awesome, sell it directly to fans and earn a good living. No marketers, no agents, no distribution deals, no censors, No DRM, and many fewer hassles. Just one talented guy and a website.

This is just one more example of what’s possible. If it works for him, couldn’t it work for many, many others?

As I said before, he is uniquely positioned to do it. The biggest barrier to making the direct-to-fans model work, for most of us, is brand. Earning a living from it requires having enough fans who are willing to participate - and that’s the hard part. He's spent years of hard work getting to this point.

We’ve seen the potential at Common Craft in licensing our videos directly to educators. While third party tools help to make it happen, we are a two person company and like Louis C.K., we own the entire process. Every video we make is written, produced, edited and distributed by the two of us via commoncraft.com. We’ve made a conscious effort to stay as independent as possible and it has made all the difference. We can use our time to make videos for our members, stay in control and finance our future work.

In that spirit, a final quote from Louis (emphasis mine):

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff.

And that pretty much sums up the why this is news. He now has evidence that people will buy stuff and if that's true for others, it means people are starting to think differently about how they support the work they love - and that's a good thing.

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The Story of Building the New Common Craft

leelefever — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:24:10 +0000

A few months ago, we released a completely new and different Common Craft. This is the story of the big ideas that drove the change and getting the website designed and built.

App or Not?

In 2010, we wanted a Common Craft app that would put our video library in your pocket, any time you need it. We had a version built, but something didn’t feel right. We dropped it. Soon after, I talked to a few people I respect in the mobile world, like Brian Fling at Pinch/Zoom and Brian Leroux at Nitobi who both said the same thing: consider the potential to build a service that ensures that your videos can play on any platform and multiple devices. They suggested using the Web and commoncraft.com to make it happen vs. a dedicated app that would have limits.

It took a while to sink in, but they were right and we started to think about the potential of Common Craft as a video service that’s designed for using the videos anytime, anywhere.

Business Case

Over the past year, we heard a common comment from licensing customers - they wanted a way to access all the videos and not just pick-and-choose, iTunes style. This planted a seed - how can we give them everything? What’s the business model? Is mobile part of it?

We needed a completely new service that offers our complete library of videos, all playable on mobile devices, websites, internal networks, etc. It was clear that we needed a membership service. Members would access all the videos in library form and have options for putting the videos to work in multiple contexts (in person, on website and mobile). We wanted the membership service to be available via subscription and offer a “power tool” for using videos in education.

The basic idea had formed.

Platform

Common Craft has been on the Drupal platform since 2005. Since one of the core features of Drupal is member management, we saw the potential to build onto our current Drupal site, which also provides a platform for e-commerce.

At the same time, we needed a video host. We’d learned over time that making videos work is a specialty and not something we should try to do ourselves. We needed a video partner that could ensure the videos play reliably on the Web and on mobile devices.

We’ve been friends and business partners with Wistia for a couple of years and started discussing it with them and eyeing their API as a resource for hosting and sharing the videos. Aside from technology, we’ve had consistently excellent experiences with Wistia and thought - this could work!

By now we had an idea and potential platforms. We needed Web pros to help us figure out the best path forward. Sachi and I are not developers.

People

Having a Drupal site for years, we knew that Seattle has an active Drupal community and I set out to find the right locals for the job. I knew Gregory Heller was well connected in the Seattle Drupal community and contacted him directly. He wrote back with two names: Josh Kopel and Jared Stoneberg. I contacted them both and found that they have complementary skills and were in the process of becoming a team. They are now operating as Number 10 Web Company.

In what would become one of the most fortuitous turns in the project, these two were both available and very well equipped to complete the project. Through a few meetings at Cafe Presse in Seattle, we had a dev team in place. This was February of 2011.

Of course, development isn’t everything. We needed a designer and someone to help with information architecture (IA). Findng an IA person was easy, as we’ve had a long relationship with the folks at Juxtaprose and knew Jay Fienberg could help us nail down the structure and organization of the site. The developers recommended a designer named Dan Shafer to do the design. In addition, we talked to folks like Tony Wright, who could be an advisor, especially during the early stages.

So the idea, basic platform and team were now in place. Now what?

Project Definition

Sachi and I had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted, but how to get there was the challenge. Some of the biggest questions were policy related and included:

Will Common Craft videos still be available for free on the website?
What features will only be available to members?
Do different levels of membership come with different features?
What are the required features for the project?
How will pricing work?

Over a couple of months we had multiple face-to-face meetings and I personally created billions of lists of things that could be features or considerations. Thankfully Jay was able to take it all in and create the IA doc that became the foundation of the service. It allowed us to think about what was on every page and why.

Integrations

The new Common Craft is a tightly integrated set of platforms. Selecting the platforms and making sure they work was a big challenge and one that was accepted by Josh Kopel. Through a lot of discussion and testing, we defined the major pieces and how they’d work together.

Website Front End: Drupal 7
Website Back End: PHP/MySQL
Video API/Host: Wistia
ECommerce Front End: Recurly
Merchant services: Authorize.net
Email services: Mail Chimp
SSL Security: Digicert

Things were coming together. The major design decisions were made, the platforms were lined up and development was underway.

Design

Common Craft has a clear visual identity that’s based on our videos. Our new site needed reflect these elements: White background, limited color, hand drawn images, etc. Dan was able to take these and create designs that work well.

Mobile, Revisited

From the earliest discussions, we made mobile a priority. The website and videos should look and play well on small screens. Jared Stoneberg led the way in recommending responsive design as a way to handle small screens. The website is designed to rearrange itself based on the size of the screen, creating different, more appropriate experiences based on the screen size. This meant we didn’t need an app or a dedicated mobile site. It all made sense and became our mobile direction.

Content

In relaunching Common Craft, Sachi and I thought about all the ways we could extend the value of our content. We’re big believers in the global potential of our videos, which work well with translated voice-overs. The videos travel well. So, we set out to make the new Common Craft more international, with over 30 videos with voice-overs in 8 languages. This included professionally translated transcripts, titles, descriptions, etc. Soon, our library went from 40 videos to hundreds. It was a major project just to get all the content completed and uploaded to the site.

Bringing It Together

We saw the first versions of the site in July of 2011. Josh and Jared got everything humming along and Dan made everything look and work well. The biggest challenge was the home page, which took a lot of iteration. Two things we felt were important, aside from the sales funnel, were the use of white space and "bigness" in the design.

As with any project, there were roadblocks, but we were impressed at how Josh and Jared were able to overcome them. Josh always had some way to make things work.

Launch

We launched the new Common Craft on August 8th, 2011, about 6 months after our first discussions with Josh and Jared. After a few initial adjustments, things have gone smoothly and the service is working, both technically and a business. We’re excited to have a growing membership from around the world.

Sachi and I have gone through a number of big projects and found, whether it’s renovating a house or building a new website, the people matter most. If we can create a good, honest working relationship, we can overcome almost anything. We came out of this project with great relationships with our partners - something we cherish.

The Future

The service is up, and it’s working. Now begins the long and constant search for improvement. We’re set up for testing and measuring, and so begins our challenge: to use data to encourage membership and make both potential and current members’ lives easier.

Epilogue:

What our partners are up to and how to contact them:

Josh Kopel and Jared Stoneberg now run a company that specializes in Drupal development. It’s called Number 10 Web Company, based in Seattle.
Jay Fienberg and Anastasia Fuller run Juxtaprose, which designs and develops websites.
Wistia is going strong and becoming a standard for business video sharing.
Dan Shafer is a freelance designer and instructor at the Cornish Design School in Seattle.
Tony Wright recently started Tomo Labs and launched TouchBase, a calendar app for iOS.

For more,

The guys at Number 10 have written about the project from their perspective
Wistia has also shared their thoughts on the project and our model.

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