Where:
Free Library of Philadelphia, Independence Branch (In the meeting room)
18 S. 7th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(7th Street between Market & Chestnut)
Closest “El” stop: 8th street.
VizThink local communities are gatherings where visual thinkers from a local area can collect and share insights about visual communication and visual learning. Following startups of successful local communities in Austin, Toronto, and London, Philly’s very own Vizthink local community is starting to meet, this April 22, Wednesday, at 6:30PM.
If you are into visual thinking and learning and want to connect with other VizThinkers, this event is for you.
This first meetup will do a 1-hour creative activity, a visual mind-spill, where you will spill out images onto paper and share them with your neighbors. Led by Jonny Goldstein. No experience necessary: You just need to be interested in visual communication and learning.
Afterward anyone who wants to keep conversation going is invited to stroll down to Sugar Mom’s in Old City for a drink and some pierogis.
I love these guys. The Creamsicles rock. I met the bandleader, John Sully, back in the late 90’s when he was pushing the edge of the theatrically possible in underground (sometimes literally undergound) happenings we called Augenblick—hybrid mashups of classical greek theater, glam rock, and cyberpunk that spilled into the Subways of NYC and exploded in lofts in Brooklyn.
After getting stranded in Europe after 9/11, Sully made it back to New York and started playing around with other expressive disciplines, including Flamenco and Gypsy music. And then Rock called him. He created the Creamsicles. We rocked Burning Man in 2004. I was the talkshow host and the Creamsicles were the band. We would interview Burners as they stumbled off the Playa.
This video showcases the Creamsicles in the studio recording “Rock on Rock”. For more of their music check out the Creamsicles’ MySpace.
As some of you know, I am now making explanatory animated videos like the one at the bottom of this post. I have branded this venture Envizualize and have created the Evizualize Blog. Here are some of the topics that I will touch:
“I’m Outta Here: How Coworking is Making the Office Obsolete” is a kickass book about the burgeoning coworking movement. It’s available right here.
This book is the right thing at the right time for people who are looking for a new way to work—not stuck in a hive of cubicles or isolated at home, but among folks working “On their own, just side by side.”
Recently, I decided to combine my interests in teaching, media making, writing, and drawing to create a business where I make explanatory videos. Luckily for me, Le Lefever, of Common Craft, has documented his process of making explanatory videos in detail on the Common Craft blog.
Here’s the video that started it all for Common Craft:
I decided it made a lot of sense for me to scan all the entries on the Common Craft blog to glean business and creative insight from his documented experiences. It was a fascinating experience, and I’m glad I took a couple of hours to do this. By no means did I read every entry, but I did at least scan the headlines, When the fancy struck me, I dove deeper to read the content of particular posts.
So here is some of what I learned.
1. Lee has been blogging at the Common Craft site for over 5 years.
2. Common Craft first started as a consulting practice to help organizations make the most of online community possibilities.
3. Lee and Sachi LeFever started creating their popular explanatory videos less than 2 years ago with RSS in Plain English. The response was so huge to their first video that it became clear that there was a huge niche waiting to be filled.
4. Lee has deep history and interest in the world of online social interaction and the technologies that underlie those interactions. This is important because:
a) He knows how to do stuff online effectively
b) You know the old English teacher advice “Write what you know”? Well, he and Sachi are making videos about what they know. They have branched out into new areas since their video making debut (e.g. explaining how the electoral college works is new territory for them), but they got their feet wet making videos about stuff they were quite familiar with. I think this makes a lot of sense to refine their media making process before jumping into unfamiliar content areas.
5. Lee is interested in explaining stuff clearly.
6. Lee and Sachi have stuck to some clear limitations in making their work. Here are a few.
-Only vocal sound effects in Lee’s voice. No music or voice overs by other people.
-Maximum video length 4 minutes
-Sachi and Lee are the only people involved in producing the videos
-Videos are made using cut paper moved by hand on whiteboard. No digital animation.
7. Common Craft’s self imposed limitations have created a recognizable, useful, commercially successful product.
Their limit on keeping their production staff to two people has pushed them to innovate their business model (toward a licensing and network building model, from a model where they create work for specific clients).
******
Spending a few hours scanning the Common Craft blog was great investment on my part. It’s so useful to see a record of how their practice evolved. It helps me give myself license to let my own stuff evolve, not to force it.
It also helped me value my past more. It’s not like the Common Craft video efforts sprung forth fully made. They grew out of a past—a past that included exploration of online community and a past of explaining processes and technology for clients. I have my own past, with my own skills and pools of knowledge that I can bring to my videos that includes teaching, counseling, blogging, drawing, information architecture, running my own business, storytelling, and performing. All good stuff.
Some big takeaways:
Figure out what your principles are
Stick to your principles
Create some stylistic guidelines and stick to them
Keep making stuff and refine techniques and approaches as needed
Change course when it makes sense (If Lee and Sachi hadn’t seen the opportunity that video presented, their business would be very different)
Work on the art of business and the business of art. Oh and work on the art of art too.
Put your process out in public.
My last thought: Find someone who blogs in a field you are interested in. Go back and scan their entire blog from beginning to end. I can’t think of a faster way to learn deeply.
SocComm was a feast of a day with awesome speakers such as Jeff Jarvis (what would google do?), Fred Wilson (truth in the age of social media), Chris Brogan (what happens when our village moves to the cloud?), and Laura Roeder (managing a celebrities social media presence).
Indy Hall is a gem of a coworking community in Philadelphia. To find out how Indy Hall works, check out this video. I made it myself, and I plan on making a bunch more. For more info about what I’m up to on this front check jonnygoldstein.info.
twitter/jonnygoldstein
