Blog Posts About: paperwork

The Verdict: Exceeded Expectations

You're going to have to forgive me, I'm about to spew all sorts of facts and figures while at the same time stroking my ego. I fear that it will sound like bragging , but we were completely blown away by the success of the RSS in Plain English Video and I want to share.

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!

We have been working on making The Common Craft Show page more usable and of course, creating a new video which is just a couple of days from release. More info soon. Here is the banner for the new page.

I'm really trying to lower my expectations for the sophomore effort, but I can't help myself. I enjoy making and sharing these videos so much that it scares me.

Wow. That was fun. It appears that the RSS in Plain English Video is still making it's way around the Web, but the major buzz has subsided and we're ready to move on here at Common Craft. Before we do, I wanted to address some of the things that came up recently.

First, credit where credit is due. Sachi, my lovely wife and partner, came up with the idea for the paperwork format. She also did the video editing and figured out how to make it shorter. The credits in the video don't mention this fact, and she would never ask for credit - so big-ups to Sachi!

Observation: Murphy's Law is real. Right in the middle of the most attention that this site has ever received, individual blog pages were down for hours at a time. This is now fixed.

How long did the video take to produce? Years. :) I first wrote about "RSS in Plain English" back in 2004. Since then, I've been planning to redo it on video. We started with me standing in front of the whiteboard. Three rounds later, we decided it wasn't what we wanted. Once Sachi mentioned the paperwork idea, we know the concept could work. The most time consuming part is storyboarding and gathering the printouts and materials. Once that is done, shooting and editing the video only took a couple of hours.

Is this going to be a series? Yes. The RSS video was a proof of concept and it appears that we struck a chord. We're going to start work on the second one soon as part of the Common Craft Show. We'd love to hear your ideas...

Is there a transcript for the video? Yes. It is here. Robin Good has a nice transcript too.

Can I reuse the video? Yes! Anyone is free to reuse the video - it is licensed under Creative Commons, which means there are a couple of requirements for reuse, with attribution being the key ingredient. You can view the license here.

Can I translate the video? Yes, please do. The folks at Turi2.de have created a German version and an Italian version is on the way. The German version is called "RSS-Feeds Für Dummies". Funny.

Can you do a video for my organization? We'd like to talk to you about your ideas for a video. Contact us.

Lastly, we want to thank everyone again for the kind words and actions - it's been an exciting and enlightening time here at Common Craft.