For the last few months, we've been "foundation building." For us, this means taking the time to focus on the business behind Common Craft and how we communicate our business to you. Our goal is clarity - if we are clear about the exact business that we run, then we're more able to illustrate our value to potential customers. It's hard work and something we're excited to see come to fruition. Now that it's in place, we can really focus on videos.
The elements of the foundation:
Licenses - We've had a great experience reviewing our licenses. For the first time, a legal team worked with us over a matter of weeks and learned our business from top to bottom. They asked questions, they challenged us, they made suggestions. We came out of it with a new license agreement that:
1. Matches exactly with the business we want to run
2. Matches our plain English style (it fits on one page!)
3. Gives us confidence that our licenses are solid.
These are our snazzy license icons that appear at the end of each video:
Education - Coming out of the review process gave us new insight into the big ideas we must be able to communicate about our licenses. We updated our FAQ, created a Licensing Guide and a new video that describes how to share Common Craft videos responsibly. It's now on the front page and on the Store page - and below:
Equipment - We've reinvented our studio to make video production more comfortable and efficient. You won't see big changes in the videos, but you might notice smiles on our faces thanks to having a studio set up that makes production a joy. The big change? We moved the whiteboard off the floor and onto a table, mounted the camera from the ceiling, added a connection to a TV and clamped on smaller lights with less heat. This is hopefully our foundation for years of videos to come.
New Commercial License - As a result of our review, we're now offering a new Commercial License. This license is for companies that would like to display Common Craft videos on their public-facing web site. We ask these customers to fill out a form to apply for a Commercial License.
New School Program - We want students to benefit from our videos. We're now offering a special deal for schools of all types. Entire school districts (K-12), independent, and post-secondary schools only need to purchase a single Site License to use licensed versions of our videos. Further, the Site License is offered to schools at a 50% discount. Apply for the discount here.
New Format: Kindle Books - We've started to adapt our videos into Kindle books that are availabe for purchase from Amazon's Kindle Store. More on this later.
So, we've been busy behind the scenes, but now we can focus once again on videos for you. We've been receiving some great suggestions for future videos. If you have one to add or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.