• Increase the chances your content will be found. Full, or even partial, text is more searchable than tags and titles alone. “I’ve found that on several of our clients’ blogs, the transcript often outperforms its corresponding podcast,” says Janelle Kozyra, the Director of Editorial and Senior Managing Editor for Gregory FCA.
• Make your content more accessible. People who can’t hear the video, or those who don’t want to search through it, will find transcripts useful. Ted Cocheu, the founder and CEO of Altus (an enterprise provider of video search and management tools) said recently, “New technology is enabling enterprises to easily combine PowerPoint presentations with audio/video into a dynamic format that is searchable down to the point of interest or keyword. . . . As a result, users can have instant access to the information they need.”
• Make repurposing your content easier. Once you have a transcript, it’s a short step to a tweet, a blog post or a slide deck.

Creating these transcripts is becoming easier, and there are alternatives.

• Professional transcriptionists. These professionals provide high quality and full control of the process. But this may be overkill for some audio and video.
• Crowdsourcing. Ryan Lawler has covered the development of SpeakerText, a firm that supports the crowdsourcing of transcripts. The Kahn Academy crowdsources transcription and translation through Universal Subtitles.
• Automatic captioning. YouTube uses Google’s voice-to-text technology to create autocaptions.

This is a call to both content creators and users to support transcription. Content creators: Please use a service that adds transcripts to your audio and video content. Users: Help where you can by contributing to the crowdsourcing efforts.

How have you benefited through audio or video transcription in your web work?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Iwan Gabovitch

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1. Overcoming “hidden” conflicts. An obvious and undeniable challenge with managing an entirely virtual team is a lack of visual cues and body language when communicating that can trigger misunderstandings. But less obviously, frequent misinterpretations can chip away at someone’s confidence or comfort level, creating tensions that are hard to name and even harder to address. In one virtual work situation I’ve experienced, all the team members were only privy to what they read in emails or heard on the phone for nearly a year before the company brought everyone to the same location for a retreat. Just sharing moments in a physical space melted away much of the negative energy that was damaging the remote interactions. At this gathering, one person even said to me that just seeing my eyes showed them more kindness than my terse email messages conveyed. Ouch! What an important lesson to learn about e-communications and the human touch.
2. Building stronger bonds. Nothing can strengthen the bonds between team members in the same way as physical presence. I will never deny the incredible power of online communications and online community, but the bottom line is that we are social creatures. We crave belonging, being near others, not being alone. Virtual work can thrust even the heartiest of us into isolation, and the only real way to solve that isolation with lasting effects is a face-to-face meeting. It may not be feasible to bring an entire company to a single place due to the number of people involved or budget constraints. But maybe it is realistic to arrange gatherings of smaller teams or to put together a schedule of in-person meetings over the course of a year — even a series of one-on-one meetings. Another possible solution is to have team members meet up at industry events, several at a time, for both bonding and learning.
3. Delivering really bad news. If your company is in crisis, it is not the time to send out a short email that can be misconstrued or a long email that is confusing and triggers panic. Find a way to get everyone together in one place to drop the bomb. If getting everyone in a single physical space isn’t doable, you should have smaller groups meeting physically or management meeting team members individually. And if those options aren’t possible either, use the best virtual workplace solution you can find, be it a virtual world or virtual meeting space with video. An audio conference call? Barely a step above an email. Be a more solid presence to cushion the blow.
4. Delivering really good news. If you’ve got something big to report, do it when everyone is together on that big client pitch or the company retreat. Small wins can be shared well in email or on weekly calls, but the huge wins deserve more presence to infuse the team with the power of the accomplishment. When you’re managing a team of remote workers, the wins somehow seem a lot smaller than the losses, and over time that dynamic can drain morale and affect productivity. Surround good news with as much “physical” fanfare as possible. People often need something tangible to hold onto. Provide mementos of the big wins that they can take back to their remote workplaces to remind them of being a part of something real and positive.

In our everyday work, far from our team members, face-to-face and in-person may simply not be affordable. Invest in a quality virtual meeting space or conference tool, whether it’s iMeet, Google Talk, Skype, Second Life or any of the myriad solutions out there. Let your team test several of those solutions with you, and get their feedback before making a final purchase and rolling out the technology. Let your workers be just as invested in being present as you are.

What other situations warrant face-to-face and what do you do when you can’t be there?

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user irum

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But does video really perform as well as face-to-face interaction? How does it compare to audio-only communication? Does it always outperform text-only channels like instant messaging and email? Let’s look at different types of tasks and see how video affects the work and communication quality experienced by remote teams.

Technical Tasks

In a study from Carnegie Mellon University, instructors coached inexperienced participants to repair a bicycle. Each pair communicated in one of the following ways: side-by-side, with an audio link, or with an audio-video link. The groups who worked side-by-side accomplished the task around 25 percent faster than the audio-only and audio-video groups. The latter two groups had no significant difference in time taken to complete the task or work quality.

How come video made no difference to the effectiveness of communication? In the experiment, the setup also made it hard for instructors to see referenced equipment; the worker had to maneuver the camera in its direction. This suggests for technical tasks, audio-only and audio-video connections might not result in a significant difference in work quality unless a sufficient quantity of visual information is shared. We should include views of the workspace, necessary equipment, and even the facial and gestural expressions of the participants. Plus, everyone must understand what visual information is being shared, to avoid repeatedly and unnecessarily asking other participants what it is they can see.

Negotiation

Research shows when it comes to negotiation, the richer the medium, the more collaborative negotiation becomes. Competitive bargaining is reduced, and negotiators exert more effort seeking common ground. This also reduces bargaining time and allows participants to become more open to future negotiations. So when you need to conduct remote negotiation and want it to be as collaborative is possible, always go for the richer medium. This means favoring videoconferencing over audio-only communications.

There is also more subtle kind of negotiation: the negotiation of meaning. In one experiment, researchers studied how pairs of native English speakers and non-native English speakers explained map routes to each other. Some teams performed the task with audio only, while others could see their partner on a screen.

Did video improve the negotiations? Not necessarily. Pairs that consisted only of native English speakers did not benefit from video. On the other hand, pairs with a non-native speaker had a much better performance with video.

According to the analysis, non-native English speakers with video had a higher rate of instructions and checked their understanding more. This might be because instructors could see visual cues as to whether their instructions were being understood or not. Without these cues, an audio-only team might go ahead to the next step without realizing that the instructions were misunderstood.

Team Cohesiveness

When it comes to team building, remote teams face several challenges. According to several studies, the perceived distance between members may lead to decreased cooperation and increased deception within the team. The good news is that there is evidence that increased and improved interaction may lessen the perceived distance over time. Can adding video help?

In one study, the researchers pointed out the cohesiveness of a group can depend on the following factors:

• Interpersonal attraction: the feeling of affection among members of a team.
• Group pride: the feeling of prestige, satisfaction and loyalty towards the other team members.
• Task commitment: the sense of attraction towards the tasks of the team.

Their findings showed when it comes to achieving these three factors, videoconferencing was the most effective means of remote communication. For interpersonal attraction and task commitment, the second most effective medium was email. Audio conferencing was the least effective medium. As for group pride, videoconferencing was followed by audio conferencing, with email and instant messaging performing considerably less well.

While the various methods of communication provided no significant differences in performance, videoconferencing seemed to have the best effect on their cohesiveness. Another study from the University of Amsterdam may hold the explanation as to why this might be, indicating videoconferencing lowers the perceived distance between members of a group by creating the impression of shared space, even when workers are remotely located.

Socialization

Interactions in the workplace aren’t limited to business. There’s water cooler talk where colleagues discuss their families, hobbies, and other personal topics. These spontaneous interactions happen less frequently (or not at all) for remote teams because we don’t have a shared office. We may be tempted to dismiss spontaneous social interactions like these as trivial, or at least less important than our work, but research from the University of Michigan shows informal conversations before collaboration were an important aspect of establishing trust for remote teams. If video is added, will it make a difference?

A 2007 study from the University of Calgary showed remote teams socialized at the beginning of a videoconferencing session, mimicking face-to-face encounters. This was true even for teams where the members were already acquainted and had some tasks to finish. According to the researchers, these teams were probably encouraged by the “shared space” they had, since the central team had a dedicated facility with multiple projectors and screens.

But this kind of dedicated space for videoconferencing isn’t always possible. Elaborate telepresence setups may be costly and can take up too much room. Though the use of “virtual space” is a good alternative — such as a separate monitor or a section on your screen — many workers may not have enough screen real estate to accommodate both social videoconferences and working applications. This may mean that for now, videoconferencing isn’t the best medium for spontaneous social exchange.

In the book Distributed Work from The MIT Press, authors Bonnie Nardi and Steve Whittaker suggested chat contributed to a remote team’s sense of social connection. It also provided a venue for real-time impromptu conversations between members of a team. Perhaps chatting or instant messaging — without video — is a less intrusive, more cost-effective way of being open to social exchanges.

When it comes to technical tasks, negotiation, team building and socialization, simply adding video to communications doesn’t automatically add value. We need to make informed decisions about how and why we want to use it. Only then will our video equipment, software and efforts be worth it.

Do you use video in remote communication? When was it essential and when was it unnecessary?

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Since I last wrote about VoxOx, it has improved considerably. The basic functionality works well. Incoming calls work fine; outgoing calls are available at competitive rates.

It’s been rebranded, and its screens are no longer the hideous and hard-to-see colors that they were in the last version. Managing one’s contacts has improved, and the service has some cool new features, like:

• A free iNum, which is a special toll-free number that can be called globally.
• The ability to share files of up to 100MB via chat, SMS or email.
• A “universal translator” for translating instant messages on the fly.

Unfortunately, with an app that does this much, I suppose it’s inevitable that there will be shortcomings.

• There is still no integration with my existing contact lists from Google, social networks, or the Mac Address Book. In fact, there is still no way to import or export contact information.
• VoxOx doesn’t yet let you port your existing phone number to its service.
• While VoxOx supports Skype messaging, you must have the Skype software open for this to work. That’s a limitation of Skype, and not really VoxOx’s fault.
• While the interface is definitely more readable than it used to be, the Mac version doesn’t use native font rendering, so screen text is poorly displayed.
• VoxOx doesn’t use oAuth or equivalent systems, so you must give the program your login information for the IM and social network accounts you add.
• VoxOx is pushy. The software registers itself to start automatically on boot, and although you can turn this setting off, it should ask before adding itself to autostart. And whenever you add an account to the program, the option marked “Invite my contacts to VoxOx” is checked by default. I unchecked it, only to find that it was checked again the next time I entered that preference screen.
• Surprisingly, there are no mobile apps for Android or iOS, and there isn’t even a mobile-friendly version of the VoxOx website. Apps are said to be in development.

I could live with many of these issues, but the inability to import and sync contacts is a deal-breaker for me. There’s no way that I can enter 1,600+ contacts!

VoxOx has promise, but I don’t think that it’s quite ready for professional use yet. Maybe by version 3 I’ll be able to use it regularly.

Have you used VoxOx? How do you manage your communications?

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Fried talks about the how absurd it that many people are most productive in trains, cafes, dens, but not in the office. One of the more salient remarks in Fried’s talk is that “people go to work and they’re basically trading in their work day for work moments“. In essence, Fried is suggesting that creative work that requires long uninterrupted stretches of focus is inherently disrupted by the distractions of modern office life.

Curiously, Fried draws parallels between sleep and work as activities that are “phase-based,” requiring prior phases to complete before being truly rested or productive; you may sleep for many hours, but interruptions will lead to more tiredness.

Fried goes on to suggest that the perceived distractions of Facebook and web surfing at work are false, with “M&Ms” (managers & meetings) making up greater, involuntary, more disruptive and expensive distractions.

The talk concludes with three recommendations from Fried:

1. “No-talk Thursdays.” A period of “quiet time” prohibiting coworkers from talking to each other and limiting distraction.
2. Replacing active communication, like conversation, with passive forms such as email, IM and collaboration tools.
3. Cancel your meetings. Things will still get done!

Though I agree with Fried’s thesis that disruption is at the heart of low productivity, I’m not so sure about the general value of the closing recommendations. Email and IM can be just as disruptive as office conversations and meetings, for example, but Fried didn’t offer any insights into best practices in using those communication methods.

Nevertheless, I’m finding the essays in Fried’s book to carry some very useful insights. You can watch Fried’s TEDxMidwest talk at TED.com and learn more about Fried’s book, REWORK, at 37signals. (And if you want to find out more about enabling a remote workforce to to be more productive, you should also come to our Net:Work conference in San Francisco on Dec. 9 — Ed.).

How do you manage distractions in your workplace?

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Here’s my video interview with Darren Rowse of Problogger fame. Rowse was one of the unlucky presenters whose lecture was interrupted by a convention center-wide fire alarm. But he was able to present long enough to reveal that his real “claim to fame” and his largest web site is the Digital Photography School; he considers Problogger to be his “side project.” Quite the large side project!

Stay tuned for the rest of the video interviews from SXSW.

What is your favorite web app so far this year?

For the GigaOM network’s complete SXSW coverage, check out this round-up.

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You can also watch the full quality version here (28MB).

Since the dawn of the Internet, it’s been an article of faith that connection speeds will get faster and costs will drop. We might be seeing the end of that trend. If predictions are correct, we’ll be facing a mobile bandwidth shortage in just a couple of years.

Once upon a time, web developers knew that we had to keep graphics to a minimum, since many Internet users had slow dial-up connections. Today, we’ve become dependent on multimedia, which, in many cases, is a crutch for those who don’t have the time or just don’t want to bother to write effective site content. This is a bad idea. Sites with content that is wholly, or mostly, contained in videos are probably not reaching:

• Most of the people who use mobile devices, including iPhones. Over 50 percent of Internet shoppers are using mobile devices, most of which don’t support Flash, and have small screens that don’t display images — especially moving images — well.
• Many people with mobile connections who have data plans that cap bandwidth use. Exceeding those caps can be very expensive. You and I are probably already considered part of the “mobile workforce,” and this category is growing rapidly. One-third of all workers are anticipated to be mobile by 2013. These users will likely be on capped connections.
• People who don’t install Flash for security reasons.
• People with old browsers.
• People with visual disabilities.
• People who are behind corporate firewalls.
• People who use software or browser add-ons that block multimedia content.

If you’re a web developer, or are updating your web presence, try not to get too dependent on video, audio and other bandwidth hogs. I like a friendly multimedia experience as much as anyone. But do yourself a favor and ask these questions.

• Is this video (or audio) really necessary, or is it being included because it’s easier than actually writing a cogent description of what the site is about?
• If you must include a video, then what will people see if they can’t load the file? Will the site degrade gracefully? That is, will people see helpful alternative content?

It’s possible that faster, better and cheaper bandwidth may be on the horizon. Google seems to want that. But they are also pushing projects to increase the efficiency of the web. So living with limited bandwidth may be the next “inconvenient tech truth,” and we should plan our web projects accordingly.

How can you make your web projects more bandwidth-efficient?

Image from sxc.hu user CDWaldi

I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature.

Adium is my favorite IM client for the Mac OS. Its latest beta supports all of the instant messaging protocols, and also has rudimentary support for Twitter and Facebook Chat. Unfortunately, the latter is not working as I write this, although a fix is expected shortly.

VoxOx is an ambitious program combining IM; social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. As I wrote a few days ago, it is very rough around the edges now, and desperately needs improved tools for managing contacts.

Imo.im is a web-based multi-system instant messaging client with some intriguing features, like shared whiteboards. This service is listed as being in alpha, so we can assume that it has considerable development ahead of it.

Brizzly is a web-based service that looks a lot like Twitter’s own web interface, but with improvements. It supports multiple Twitter accounts and has recently added Facebook support. The multiple accounts aren’t as well integrated as I would like, but I assume that will come.

Tweetminer is another web-based service that includes support for multiple Twitter accounts, tweet scheduling, and RSS feeds. Its interface is attractive, but features are minimal at the moment. There are also Adobe AIR or Fluid-based desktop versions, for those who prefer standalone apps.

Socialite (formerly EventBox, which Imran wrote about here) has just released beta 2, which seemingly broke support for Facebook updates. When this issue is fixed, Socialite could become my favorite, as it combines support for Facebook, Facebook Pages, multiple Twitter accounts, RSS feeds and Google Reader in one attractive interface.

Seesmic Desktop is another Twitter and Facebook program which has worked well for me, but it shares with many Adobe AIR programs some ugly screen fonts and a propensity for using large amounts of memory. Seesmic also has a promising web version, but so far, it lacks support for multiple Twitter accounts, and for Facebook.

Nambu only does Twitter, but does it very well, in what I think is the most attractive interface of any program of its type. I can choose three different layouts, and switch between them easily. Nambu’s development is very rapid, with a new beta released every couple of days.

I find the popular Tweetdeck to be totally unreadable and unusable, due to its AIR interface. I wish Adobe would make AIR on the Mac look as good as the native OS X fonts and windows.

There are lots more betas out there, of course. What beta software and services do you use?

Image credit: Stock.xchng user OmirOnia

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While video production may involve location-specific elements where you need to go out to capture visuals and sounds, you can still make it a career where you can work anywhere you want.

Is video production the career for you?

Video Production Careers

In video production, some stick to just one task, while others do several things, or even do all the jobs to take a video from start to finish. Here are a few video-related jobs:

Producer: Video businesses vary in the area of production based on the type of videos they create and the topics they cover. Producers may specialize in one or several different types of video. The title “producer” has many meanings, but a producer often oversees the entire video production process.

Post-production: Folks in post-production work with existing video to enhance it, edit it and add to it. These tasks could involve animation, audio, voice-overs, DVD menus, music and graphics.

Editor: Editors compile audio and video to create the final product that meets project requirements. “The editor is much like a cook. We take raw ingredients and combine them artfully into a video that meets the clients’ goals,” says Ed McNichol of EDcetera.

How to Qualify

Video producers and editors are a diverse lot when it comes to how they first entered the video business and gained experience. Tim Clark started on Ken Burns’ documentaries in the editing room. Jack Dever, director of post production at PACSAT,  literally started on the bottom floor by sweeping in a studio before and after shoots. After that, he climbed to assistant video editor, editor, producer, director and supervisor. Many folks in video started at the bottom and worked into jobs in the field.

Kim Brame, executive producer with creative illusions Productions, took every job available to her after college to build a network and learn the craft. Her coworkers have degrees and training in audio engineering, programming, graphic design and animation.

Steve Mann, owner of MannMade Digital Video, lost his job in the dot-com bust. “Over 50 and no higher degree made me virtually invisible in the collapsed high-tech job market. Since my passion was always photography and more recently videography, doing what I enjoy seemed like the best career move,” Mann says.

Vicky Poole didn’t start at the bottom. Rather, she started in a different job as a secretary working for a post-production company. Her boss gave her opportunities to work with equipment and on smaller projects.

A handful of folks say they received a college degree in mass communications, media, film production or something similar. But these same people say that job experience is what really matters. In terms of gaining skills, many say they just learned how to use the software and practice often. No matter where you are in your video career, everyone has benefited from attending seminars and trade shows. Jeff Davis of JD Savage Productions says, “Do what you love, and never stop learning new stuff.”

“There is a balance of technical aptitude and creativity,” says Tom Hinchey of HincheyStudios LLC. Not only do video producers need to know the technical side of things, but also how to create the message the video must communicate.

A person who knows how to use all the video production equipment and tools doesn’t always have the knowledge and skills to be a full-fledged video producer. “You need to first know how to be a storyteller. This is one of the key components that people don’t understand with video,” says David Spark of Spark Media Solutions.

Video Production Tools

Video production involves a long list of tools. After all, you can’t capture sound and visuals without cameras and microsphones, or put all the footage together to tell a good story without apps.

The following popular tools are a smattering of what the professionals use: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, HD cameras (especially Sony and Canon), AVID, Adobe Creative Suite, Affect Effects and Premiere. Some also use mics, lighting, DVD authoring and scripting tools. Of course, many use a Mac computer to do their work. They often post their videos on web-based video services like YouTube and Vimeo.

Find Clients

Word-of-mouth and happy current clients rule the roost as the best way to get business. Networking both in person and on social network sites works well. Some do formal marketing or post on craigslist. Video producers create a portfolio for their web sites. “Gone are the days of DVD reels. If a client wants instant access to your portfolio, your website can help you lock in that client instantly,” says Kico Velarde.

Crystal Pyramid Productions’ Patty Mooney not only uses a web site and networks, but also finds clients through the Chamber of Commerce, search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising in online and print directories. Another way to break in the field is to volunteer to get experience and build your portfolio.

Thomas Hoebbel took the old fashioned approach by connecting with organizations that could benefit from his work, and they hired him. Some people like Clint Till of Parc Entertainment, Inc. hand out demo reels on DVD and make cold calls.

Would you consider a video production career?

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VoxOx wants to take multi-system communication several steps further. In addition to the various IM protocols, it supports social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. VoxOx also supports Skype messaging, although you have to have the Skype software running, which sort of defeats its purpose.

When you sign up for the service, you are assigned a telephone number in southern California (other locations are apparently on the way). Incoming calls to that number, and voice conversations between you and other VoxOx users, are free; other calls are charged at rates similar to other VoIP services. VoxOx has just begun offering flat-fee voice and texting plans, at prices it claims are significantly cheaper than Skype’s. VoxOx’s other services are free.

In recent days, VoxOx has released beta 2.0.5. The software has improved since I first tried it a year or so ago, but it is very definitely still a work in progress. Its dark background with white text theme is hard on the eyes and isn’t editable, and its contact manager has no provision for importing from or syncing with other address books.

VoxOx seems to be trying to collect the useful features from Skype, conferencing services, virtual PBX services, instant messaging and file sharing services, and putting them all in one place. It’s a pretty cool idea, and VoxOx is definitely worth trying, but I’m not quite ready to make it part of my daily workflow yet.

Have you used VoxOx? What did you think of it?

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You can always provide a covering letter in the body of your email when you send something along, but a recently launched web app provides a tool that’s much more useful in sharing that context along with the web content you choose to share. Layers.com allows you to layer images, text and video on top of any site of your choosing, and then to share your annotated version with whomever you choose.

Initial Impressions

At first, owing maybe its noisy interface, Layers.com seems a little overwhelming. There’s a lot of visual static going on, but if you can get past the initial shock, you’ll find it surprisingly easy to use. If you know how to find an article or blog post’s permalink, then you’re already well on your way to mastering Layers.com

To take full advantage of Layers.com, you should sign up for account, which takes no time at all, and allows to create and manage as many identities as you want for sharing your annotated pages with others. You can keep a separate identity for work and for your friends, or even create multiple work identities for different lines of business or if you wear multiple professional hats. You could also create individual client-specific identities.

Layers of Research

The obvious application of this new site, for me at least, is with research-intensive engagements. Especially if you’re doing a literature survey for a larger company, the ability to not only provide links and an attendant context and analysis document, but to incorporate said document directly on top of the information in question (which ups its relevance considerably for a reader) might provide enough of a “wow” factor to ensure a client comes back to you for similar work again and again. It should make analyzing individual pieces much easier for you as a researcher, too.

Layers of Creativity

Of course, there are many other applications, too. As on editor of online content, and as someone who knows a lot of web designers, I can see how helpful layers.com could be for the creative process, too. You could provide direct feedback on top of the content you’re editing, including mock-ups via your own image files, screenshots of other sites for comparison, and/or video and audio feedback for that added personal touch, or if you’re more comfortable formulating your thoughts that way than in writing.

Layers of the Everyday

And then there’s the applicability on an everyday basis for sharing links among your network of colleagues, coworkers, and peers. You can share a Layered link via Twitter or any other social network, so that if you’re inclined to do so, you can provide more than just 140 characters worth of contextual explanation with something you’ve flagged as interesting. You could even provide additional related content as a Layer, like a video interview from YouTube from a few months back atop a print piece that’s just been released. In your textual comment, you could point out the apparent contradictions between the two.

Layers.com represents a new, more interactive way of browsing the web. Best of all, it encourages people to do more than just read and accept web content in a passive way. Instead, it actively seeks out your opinion, your perspective on things. It’s sort of like the idea behind CNN’s iReport, but more democratized and without the implicit patronization. Obviously, writing an essay to accompany every link you share isn’t practical, but having the ability to do so is a welcome development.

I’ve outlined a few possible uses of Layers.com in this post, but what would you use it for?

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Once you’ve chosen what type of content you want to produce, Celtx lets you build a Project Library, where you can house scripted materials, graphics, video and audio content, and more. If you click on the “My Studio” icon seen at right below, the application will take you to Celtx Studios, an online environment where you can collaborate on your pre-production with other people online.

Using Celtx Studios, you can track who you’re working with, and point each other to shared projects:

As you build your pre-production in the Celtx application, you’re gradually building the components in your Project Library on the upper-left of a multi-pane screen, a collection of scenes just below that (with your current scene on the right), and pop-up dialogs for adding materials to all of these repositories. The multi-pane view is seen below:

Celtx has an excellent reputation among professional storyboarders, screenwriters and producers of commercials. Many of us who have been thrown hurly-burly into producing multimedia online don’t have academic pre-production and production backgrounds. Celtx is a good, free way to get help with the pre-production part, which is important. If it interests you, I recommend beginning with these video walkthroughs.

What tools do you use to assist with storyboarding and pre-production?

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A tool that might help both videographers and their clients work through the video production process is Market7. This online suite of tools lets you upload a video to a private area of the site. Your client can then review the clip and comment on it. Their comments are embedded into the video timeline to match up so you can see the exact sections of the video they are discussing in order to help pinpoint and streamline the feedback process.

As the cut is in-progress, team members from both sides can continue to enter their input on the cut itself. Comments can be sorted, filtered and exported to an editing program such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere via XML so none of the valuable communication gets lost in translation.

But Market7 provides more features than just an embedded video commenting tool. It offers modules for collaboration on every step of the video production process, from building a creative brief, composing a script, organizing stored files and planning tasks and events related to the video production process. There is no software to download — every tool is web-based.

The creators of Market7 are former video producers and video clients who say they recognized a lack of tools and services for video production collaboration, a void that was causing both sides of the production process a great deal of frustration. Market7 is meant to help producers get more detailed feedback to produce an end product that the client is happy with, while for clients the tool should be easy to use and understand, even for the person who knows little to nothing about video production.

I saw a demo of Market7 at SXSW. Although video production is a very small portion of my web work, I can clearly see the value in having a collaboration tool on those few occasions when it is part of my project mix. There are definitely occasions when I feel like I’m going around in circles, with the client asking for one thing, the video editor delivering something else, and me not getting the information I need from either party to realize why we we’re all heading in different directions. Market7 could probably help me avoid some costly mistakes.

Market7 uses a freemium model, with free accounts offering a single admin account, one project, 100 MB of storage and up to five project members or participants. The premium level starts at $49.95 per month for 500MB of storage and unlimited projects and participants. Higher levels include more tech support, branded hosting, and more storage (up to 15 GB in total, with fees per additional gig).

How are you managing your web video production process?

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I spoke with Alex about his motivations for bootstrapping IndyHall, the experience of running the community, his hopes for the future and advice for others. Incredibly, Alex recorded an extraordinary and engaging 30 minutes of video for us, telling the fascinating story of IndyHall’s history and future.

We edited together some highlights on the background of IndyHall, along with plans for the future of Philadelphia’s coworking community as a single video here for readers who want a brief introduction to the IndyHall story.

You can find the full set of questions, answered as short video clips, over on YouTube:

• Introducing Alex and IndyHall…
• Tell us a little about the background of IndyHall – what were the motivations for coworking in Philadephia?
• What’s the breakdown of residents in terms of permenent residents, drop-ins, part timers. What kind of work are they involved in? Do you see much cross-fertilisation between residents?
• What were your greatest challenges and surprises in bootstrapping IndyHall? And the largest operational challenges?
• What’re your plans for the future?
• What’re the key pieces of advice you’d give to people thinking about coworking and people thinking about establishing a coworking space?

Incidentally, the relaunch of the IndyHall web site site just a few days ago is noteworthy in its approach to cohering and aggregating the community of coworkers in the city, providing a platform and a voice for their agenda.

If you’re interested in the experiences of coworking community founders, you should also check out our earlier interview with Stephanie Booth, founder of Lausanne’s Eclau coworking community.

Like Stephanie, Alex’s insights and experiences are invaluable. Do share your own experiences of coworking or founding a coworking community in the comments below.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

ScreenToaster is an eay-to-use application that runs as a Java applet; it works in pretty much any browser on any operating system. It can record audio from a microphone and video from a webcam, as well simultaneously recording the action on the screen. The results are high quality and you can add subtitles after you’ve finished recording. Here’s a quick screencast of ScreenToaster in action (made using ScreenToaster, naturally!)

WWD Screencast: ScreenToaster from WebWorkerDaily on Vimeo.

ScreenToaster announced some nice new features officially today, although I believe they may have actually been available for a little while. You can now choose to upload your screencast to YouTube in HD, or download your video in .mov format. This greatly increases your flexibility: it means that you’re not stuck with hosting your screencasts at the ScreenToaster site, and you can also edit your screencast videos. Choosing one of these options has a few drawbacks though: you’re left with a ScreenToaster logo on your videos, and you lose your subtitles and webcam footage (as you can see in my video). The other new feature is a beta test of the Recorder API, which might be interesting if you’re a web developer looking to add screencasting into your app.

What do you use for recording screencasts?

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks