Category Archives for "Miscellaneous"

1 Copyright for Images, Video and Copy

I haven’t written much about copyright, so here are a few guidelines I follow to be on the safe side.

Images

I found this bulletin “Alert – Photo and image copyright compliance” in the Churches Together in England newsletter, CTE News July 2014.  Whilst this article addresses churches the main point applies to all organisations with websites.

I always warn my clients about images. For some reason they seem to cause the most trouble.  I suppose most websites feature many images and far fewer videos or audio recordings and so the likelihood of a mistake is higher than for other media.  Also tracking down the owner and asking permission is a hassle particularly if the owner lives on the other side of the world.

However, the dangers are real.  You have three options.

1. Use your own images.  If you carry a digital camera or a mobile phone you can record useful images as you encounter them.  You can scan images you draw yourself.  If you’re really ambitious learn to use Photoshop or one of the other similar tools.
2. If you have permission then attribute the image.  I use the title attribute in the html img tag, which means the attribution appears when the reader hovers over the image.  Captions are equally good and the attribution is always visible.  Best practice is to use these if your website features members’ images, for example.  So, it is best to attribute your own images if they feature on an organisation’s site, even if you put them there.  Make it clear the copyright of images belongs to the site unless otherwise stated.  If you use free images, and there are many sites that supply them, follow the instructions about attribution.  Remember many free image sites charge for images used anywhere other than on websites.  Don’t assume you can use an image in any way you like just because it is free to use online.
3. Get permission to use an image if it isn’t on a free site.  This may be a hassle but occasionally if there is no alternative it might be worth it.  Some sites might charge to use images, presumably a lot less than the fine.

Videos

Video seems to be less of a problem than images.  When you upload your video to YouTube, YouTube becomes in effect its owner.  Any website can embed a YouTube video without breaching copyright.  Presumably this is because the video is attributed back to the site and anyone who views it registers on the YouTube site.  Take care with other video sources, check their terms and conditions.

Text

This is the least problematic.  Unless you’re planning to copy the entire contents of a paper, blog post or book onto your website you’re in the clear.

You can reproduce short extracts from a text on your own site.  It should be attributed and if it is available a link to the full text is always worth adding.  This has been standard practice in academic writing for many years.  Linking to the full text, where possible, is new and has many advantages.  The reader has something to follow-up if they are interested and you provide a back-link to someone’s site.  In time they or others may do the same for you.

As far as I’m aware ideas are not copyrighted.  So, there is no restriction on expressing an idea in your own words.  What you choose to attribute is a matter of judgement.  For example, I sometimes take the structure of someone’s copy and adapt it to my own ends.  The overall flow of logic may shadow theirs but the content is entirely mine.  Should this be attributed?  It does depend upon how much they have influenced your own copy and you may wish to link your copy to theirs so your readers can see both arguments.  On the other hand if you are taking an entirely new direction there is little point in muddying the waters with an irrelevant link.

Do you agree with the basic rule: “If in doubt, leave it out!”?

0 Communities of Digital Practice

On Wednesday 16 July 2014 I attended the launch meeting of the Sheffield Digital Media Exchange.  Bizarrely it doesn’t seem to have a website.  It is a partnership to promote access to digital media in the city, building on a network of Digital Media Centres in its  disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

I shall summarise one of the speakers at the event.  Professor Simeon Yates is Director of the Institute of Cultural Capital at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moore University.  The title of his talk was “Building from the Bottom Up!  Using hyperlocal digital media to deliver content and innovation.”  I jotted down a few notes and so can convey the gist of what he was saying.  I thought it resonates with my thinking on this blog.

He talked about Communities of Digital Practice or hyperlocal delivery.  I’ve looked it up and it seems hyperlocal means: “online news or content services pertaining to a town, village, single postcode or other small, geographically defined community”.  That sounds local to me but why use a simple word when a complicated one will do?

Anyway, whatever it is, it has three characteristics:

Together these can

It addresses causes and not consequences.  Government action tends to discuss consequences and so, for example, they address lack of motivation when the problem is really lack of resources.  The focus can be on social and not economic approaches, eg poetry online or journalism in the BME community.

These are thin notes from a rich presentation.  It is significant investment is to be made into neighbourhoods.  My concern is perhaps this approach overlooks the contribution small businesses can make to re-building the local economy.

I have for some time hoped to research asset-based community development (ABCD) and at some time to write about it.  It seems Yates’ approach is asset-based.  Rather than starting with buildings, his focus is on the latent potential of people.  Resources are introduced so that latent potential can become real.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up to my email list at the top of the right-hand column. You will receive a weekly summary of my posts, an email sequence about community development and occasional emails about community development online.

0 Things I Don’t Want to See on Your Website

A couple of weeks ago I ranted about the word “welcome” on website home pages.  Today I shall list a few more things I don’t want to see on your website.

It’s Not a Filing Cabinet

The thing to grasp is your website is not your online filing cabinet.  The words, “We’ll put it on the website” should always be met with the response “You must be joking!”

The sorts of things I mean are:

These have no place on your website!  How can I put this?  Nobody at all cares about any of this stuff.  Get rid of it!  If you need to share documents there are plenty of options:

For cloud working I’ve found Google Groups works.  Some people object to joining Google but once they see the benefit they usually give in!

No-one Cares About Your Mission Statement!

Another thing I do not want to see is aims and objectives, vision statements, mission statements and all the paraphernalia of corporate speak.  Especially if you’re not a corporation.

Things I don’t want to know include:

You get the idea?  Reverse any of these and you’ll see that they are meaningless.  These don’t differentiate between your offer and anyone else’s so there’s no point in including them.  If you say these things it means your offer cannot be serious.

Focus on explaining exactly what you offer in the language your likely followers or customers will use.  Pompous mission statements simply don’t have any impact.

What do you hate to find on websites?

0 Case Study 3: Sheffield Interfaith

Sheffield Interfaith approached me with the question: how do you set up a viable site with a limited budget?

How We Designed the Site

Three members of the group were willing to work on the site. So we set up a WordPress site, using the Genesis Streamline Pro theme.  Genesis designed this theme for mobile phones and tablets and this imposes constraints on the header.  Streamline Pro enables Sheffield Interfaith display information about its three constituent groups on the home page.

We were able to include the image intended for the header in the sidebar, so it is visible alongside every post and page.

The site is very simple although it has potential to expand as the group develops.  The two main  features are the blog and email list.

The home page is the main blog archive page on this site.  If you scroll down past the three information pages, the latest post is visible with earlier posts beneath it.  The Sheffield Interfaith site is mainly concerned with publicity for events and so this is a helpful way to showcase future events.  The primary navigation allows visitors to view posts about current or archived events.  Currently anything that is not an event is news but more categories can be added in the future.

Communication Through the Site

Members of the email list receive notice of new posts the day following their appearance.  They also receive occasional newsletters.  Existing members were added to the list and anyone who visits the site can subscribe.  This means anyone interested can keep in touch.  The group relies mainly on word of mouth and printed publicity to spread the word and so does not have to worry about search engines.

The organisation’s name is likely to be Googled and when it is their site is at the top.  It has a domain authority of 10 and a page authority 23.  This is not bad for a new site.  It is impressive for a site that has only one inbound link!

Feedback from Sheffield Interfaith

So far I have had a little feedback from the group.  One of them wrote:

I will prepare a testimonial but there was something that I wanted to say to you about the need to go at the pace of the customer. It has felt to me that the pace has been too fast and that there was not adequate space to ask questions and go back on things just to make sure that I understood how the website works, and how to maintain it. For me it is not just about design but about learning a new process.

I have felt that I have always been behind the curve and have been trying to catch up. Part of it no doubt is a matter of language – it has been complex for me to learn and I have been taken completely out of my comfort zone (beyond my knowledge base) and have had to grapple with something new. All this may be a result of the quote and the level of service that we agreed. I am having to do a lot of back filling just to make it easier for me to understand the whole thing. There is not a great deal of relevant IT literacy in the group.

Maybe as well as designing the website there was a hands on session on how to make posts, upload, maintain and deal with the likely issues that were to arise. This could be a need for others and I am not sure where we can go to in order to keep on top of things. This aspect is not part of the design process but it is something that needs to complement it. Maybe it is not something that is required to design a website but it is a need, especially as personnel change within organizations.

We do however have a clear and attractive website that is up and running and one that we can add to. It will be useful tool for SIF to use and to publicize.

Implications

I’ve shared this because it illustrates some of the issues working on this approach to websites.  I offer a time limited service (3 – 6 months) where my clients can contact me by email, phone or Skype, to discuss issues.  They also have a few short workshops, about 4 hours.  One thing I shall do, as a result of this feedback, is to be clearer to future clients how they can use this service.  Let’s be clear.  No website can work properly if those responsible for it are unable to maintain it.  The people development is as important, perhaps more important than the technology.

I’m also hoping to develop more material on this website to help past clients and any group working on their website.  I’m hoping Sheffield Interfaith will tell me what information would help them and the same applies to anybody.

What do you need to know?  If you would like to see specific “how to” posts on this blog, comment below and sign up to my list so that you can see when I respond!

0 Case Study 2: Search Engine Optimisation

Last Friday, I described case study 2, my work with the Bristol European Jazz Ensemble website.  My client asked me about search engine optimisation (seo) and I thought it would be worth sharing my reply.  The interesting thing about this site is it uses WordPress.com and so seo is not so straightforward as it would be with WordPress.org or any other independently hosted site.  Another issue is my client is trying to promote the name BEJE and not the full name of the band.  This raises some issues.  Here is my response to his question, as I sent it.

“Here’s my response to your question:

Of more immediate concern is, the web site itself comes low down on a Google search of ‘Bristol European Jazz Club’, marginally better with ‘BEJE jazz’ and not at all just with BEJE. How can any of these combos get in the first 3/4 places with Google?”

Read this through to the end before you act on it!

Search Engine Optimisation is a rapidly changing area and in some ways it’s a lot easier than it was.  Let me summarise current search results [NB Blog readers: these results will change]:

That’s interesting!

A couple of observations.

1. Check your Linked-In and YouTube accounts and make sure they have clear links to the website on them.  Not just the link but also copy encouraging people to follow the link.  Why should they go there?  The description below the video on YouTube does not include your web address.  If you do include it, it will be added as a special kind of link, called a nofollow link.  Nofollow links are not followed by Google bots, so it won’t effect the website ranking in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).  However, people can follow it and so where the video is ahead of the website on the SERP, there will be a chance they’ll find their way to the website.  You need to place the link at the very start of the description: http://bigbromo.wordpress.com/ – to look just like this.  The reason is that when the video is described on other pages, it usually only reproduces the first few lines of the description, so for example, the url would appear on the SERP under the video.
   
2. In all searches but “BEJE” there are some sites mentioning the band.  Check they have links to the website.  If you know the site owners, ask them to add a link.  Eg thebristolfringe.com features the video only.  colstonhall.org has a link to the site but it is on their site as a naked url.  They need to use the anchor text “Bristol European Jazz Ensemble”.  Google doesn’t know what the url on its own signifies (the rules for YouTube are different and there you must use the url).  You could ask them to use BEJE but I would advise not to because at present BEJE on its own is not ranking.  (It appears to be Lithuanian for “the way”.)

You could visit all the sites that mention Bristol European Jazz Ensemble and check how they are referencing you.  You ideally want a link to your site with anchor text that says something positive, the name of the group is fine or something like “for brilliant jazz listen to B… E…” although that might be too long.  The name includes the words Bristol and Jazz which is a good foundation.

But Google “Bristol Jazz” and you don’t feature at all!  Is this a target search for you?

One thing to consider is having your own domain name.  I’m afraid I have to introduce the concept of “link juice”.  If you have a link from a website with lots of authority, then this link will be especially juicy (I think this is what passes for American geek humour).  The problem is your site is on WordPress.com, which operates a bit like Facebook.  People can link to your Facebook page directly but it is part of a much bigger site.  Your website is part of the bigger WordPress.com site.  This means the link juice is shared with the entire WordPress.com site.  You don’t get the benefit.  (Your site has a domain authority of 100% and a page authority of 1%.  This means all the juice goes to the WordPress domain and virtually none to your site.)The remedy is to get your own domain name.

You can do this by going into wp-admin and accessing the shop, where you’ll find you can purchase a domain name.  You need to think through the domain name – it should reflect the content of the site, eg bristoleuropeanjazzensemble.org.uk – you’ll be offered a choice of endings.  The fee is something like £5.99 per year.  There is no limit to the length of urls and the advantage of this one is it tells Google what’s inside the site (I think you can use hyphens to separate the words if you wish).  I wouldn’t use BEJE because it isn’t ranking and it doesn’t inform the search engines.

You need to decide whether you want your own domain name before you implement the other recommendations above because you don’t want to go round a second time asking them to change your url.  But a change in url is a good reason to contact your current back-links.

So, in summary

1. Invest in a domain name that reflects the content of the site.
2. Make sure the new domain name is on YouTube and Linked-In.
3. Contact sites you know have back-links to change the url and use more relevant anchor text.
4. Contact other likely sites and ask them to include a link.

1 Case Study 2: Bristol European Jazz Ensemble

Screenshot of Bristol European Jazz Ensemble website. Click on image for bigger version.

This is my second case study; the first was about Hope for the Future.  The Bristol European Jazz Ensemble was a coaching project mainly.  I should have taken a screen shot of the site before we started work on it.  The one on the right is how is appears at the time of writing.  The project was to equip David, the client, with the skills to maintain the site.  I also carried out some changes to the site.

Bristol European Jazz Ensemble is a WordPress.com site.  WordPress.com is really an enormous website hosting thousands of websites and blogs.  The analogy is perhaps Facebook where, instead of hosting profiles, WordPress.com hosts websites and blogs.  The alternative is WordPress.org, where WordPress has an independent host and so each website/blog stands alone.

One big difference is .com does not have plug-ins.  This makes it less flexible than .org.  It is possible to extend functionality of .com but at a price.

The main market for the client’s site is promoters and venue organisers.  The by-line in the header makes this clear.  Also the home page includes a contact form and invitation to the market to make contact.  The public may also be interested in the site and so the site publicises events featuring the band through the blog.  Promotion of events is usually carried out by other means and so is not a priority for this website.

What We Did

I worked on the site with David, using Skype and email.  It is possible for two people to be logged into the WordPress wp-admin panel simultaneously, although only one can work on the site at a time.  We are a few hundred miles apart and this is just as good as meeting in a room with a digital projector!  I also did some work on the site:

Outcomes

Here are David’s comments on my coaching work with him:

Chris is a meticulous mentor who helped me define what I wanted from him and from the web site. Just articulating the questions and goals was helpful. Even more, it helped motivate me to actually get on and do it in my busy schedule. Chris’s style is unflappable, approachable, analytical, non-judgemental, clear – and clear about what he doesn’t know but can find out. It’s a co-learning exercise as Chris himself improves on his already well-developed skills and I learn to use the website. I recommend Chris to anyone in the creative or voluntary sectors.

Do you like the site?  What additional information would you like to see on it?

0 Five Best Intermediate Body Websites

This is my second ever video and part of a short series.  The first looked at the five worst Intermediate Body websites and this one reviews the five best.

One issue I’m aware of is negativity.  The truth is these sites are disappointing and this video reflects my disappointment.  I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, when I reviewed feedback about the first video and suggested these sites share a lack of soul.  I don’t mean no time and effort goes into them.  I’m sure a lot of effort has gone into some of them but they seem arms length, peripheral to these organisations’ activity.

They have a low priority.  There is little awareness of what a good website can do for an organisation and how simple it is to transform the way the site functions.  I’m hoping to follow-up these two videos with another to show how websites can have soul.  I reviewed these sites seeking inspiration.  I’ve found inspiration of sorts!  How can organisations such as these, with limited resources create websites with soul?

Anyway, watch the video and see what you think!

One innovation is the captions.  I’m not sure about the speech bubble effect on reflection but captions can be used to underline learning points.  Do you think they work?

Here are the 12 captions for easy reference.  If you haven’t watched the video, you need to see where the captions come up to understand the context of these remarks.

1. Use WordPress.  Free use and full functionality.
2. Use your own images!
3. Avoid acronyms, especially in headings.
4. Address your visitors, say what your site aims to do for them.
5. Honour your promises.
6. A call to action on every page.
7. Follow conventions.  Start with an informative heading.
8. Think about what your visitor will want to know and give it to them.
9. Always have a heading and explanatory text on the home page.
10. Think about how the eye moves around the page.
11. Avoid sliders and other distractions.
12. Text should be in high contrast to its background.

Stop Press:  Black Country Churches Engaged has a new website that seems to be running alongside the old one featured in the video.  It’s worth a look and I may review it in the near future.  I would have expected the old site to include a prominent link to the new.  Presumably it is still active because some contacts have the old url.

Please leave your comments on the video here or on YouTube.

1 Case Study 1: Hope for the Future

This is the first of a series of posts about my work for clients.  Several of my first projects are coming to an end and so I shall be posting about them and what I have achieved.

Assessment

This project was an assessment as promoted on my site.  Hope for the Future planned a campaign within the churches throughout the UK in the run up to the General Election in May 2015.  The plan is to persuade churches to write to the candidates in all the parliamentary constituencies about their climate change policies.  They want climate change to be a major issue during the General Election campaign.

I intend to follow their progress to see how they implement my strategy.  Circumstances will change as they respond to a developing campaign but hopefully it will be possible to see how the assessment has been helpful.

I am going to say very little at this stage about my recommendations.  The campaign has its plans and it is not for me to reveal them.  I shall say more as the campaign goes public and plan to develop further and publish some of the tools I’ve developed for their use.

This client was remarkable as I had almost nothing to do with their website.  I never had access to it.  I have made recommendations for changes to the site and at the time of writing these have not been implemented.

Resources

In common with many similar small groups and campaigns, Hope for the Future is very short of resources.  They number 4 or 5 volunteers working in two Anglican Dioceses.  They have 11 hours of paid administration and very little more.  One of the things the Internet can do is amplify the voices of a few people, so long as they use their resources effectively.  There are plenty of stories of one-person businesses that have accessed a massive market, for example.  Is it possible to launch a nationwide campaign from such a small base?  Yes, it is!  Will Hope for the Future do it?  We shall see!  If they are successful it will be through many hours of hard work carried out by a few dedicated people.

Today I shall outline the assessment’s content and in future posts, as the campaign develops, I shall explain some of the elements in the assessment in more detail.

Report

The assessment is a report with six appendices. The report suggested a new approach to their campaign.  One problem was getting feedback from my clients.  I started with a questionnaire and then drafted a few documents.  Getting feedback for these first drafts was difficult and this is something I need to think about in the future.  Towards the end I had a very productive one to one meeting, that actually transformed the assessment.  It was an example of a generative conversation.

Appendices

The six appendices were tools to enable Hope for the Future to carry out the report.  I drew not only on my understanding of online marketing but also my experience as a community development worker and working nationally with mainstream churches.  The appendices included:

1. A template for assessing potential partners.  A campaign like this, with very few active volunteers needs to build networks of partners.  So they needed a ready method to find and assess partners.  This template will help them select the most productive potential partnerships and name key contributions they might make to the campaign.
2. Guidelines for rolling out the campaign nationally.  Sheffield Anglican Diocese is the pilot for the campaign but it needs a strategy to cover four nations and all Christian traditions.
3. A review of the website and recommendations for changes.  This included some wireframes, new and rewritten copy and an outline script for a video.
4. Recommendations for the campaign in local churches.  The campaign was already accumulating experience in local churches and so there was not so much to do here.
5. A campaign schedule, particularly for the website.  It is crucial to be ready to add new material to the website as the campaign develops.  By planning ahead it is possible to ask partners to prepare website content as the campaign develops.  The schedule shows the campaign how to plan ahead; they will need to fill in the detail as the campaign develops.
6. A task list enables the planning team to identify the work that can be completed in-house and the tasks for partners.

The report showed how these various documents can be used together to support the campaign.

Testimonial

Finally, here is a testimonial from Revd Michael Bayley, who was my main contact with Hope for the Future:

Chris’ great gift in helping us work out how the website could work for our campaign most effectively was to ask the really searching questions about what we wanted to get out of it. He questioned us persistently and skilfully until we had really sorted out in our own minds what we wanted and was then able to suggest ways in which we might do this most effectively.

He used the technical questions of website design to make us think about the fundamental questions and he was also good at asking questions from “outside the box”. In one instance this led to a radical and extremely fruitful alteration to the way in which we organised the campaign.

We valued Chris’ careful and thoughtful approach; the way he listened carefully to what we wanted; the way in which he pressed us to make ourselves clear about what we wanted. We were grateful for his help which enabled us to develop the website much more quickly and effectively than would otherwise have been possible.

If you are running an online (or offline!) campaign, would this approach help you?  I’d like to hear from anyone who thinks I may be able to help.

1 Feedback About My First Video

I’ve had a little feedback about my first video.

Amy

Amy responded with one word, “Ouch!” She went on to say she wouldn’t let me review her website. (I’m not convinced she has a website but that’s not terribly relevant.)

Ouch is actually a good point. Most of my reviews come across as negative. Whilst I’m sure there are some excellent sites around the problem is finding them! The voluntary sector often has poor sites because they can’t afford good advice. The designers who work in the sector tend to be amateurs and few people seem prepared to research the basics.

Last night I attended a talk about poetry.  The speaker talked about criticism and said he always started with positive comments because however poor a poem is, it has soul.  It means something to the person who wrote it.  I think the problem with many websites is they lack soul.  When I look at them my impression is their owners don’t care.

Maybe many owners are overawed by the technology.  Whilst it can be daunting, so much is a lot easier than it was a few years ago.  There’s no excuse any more for an unloved website.  In the end it is disrespectful to those who visit it.  Whether or not they are people with a long term interest in what a site offers, they deserve to at least have a clear explanation of what the site offers.

This is why spirituality is relevant.  The online world is not the preserve of geeks.  It is a marketplace where all sorts of people search for help and for relationships.  A careless website is worst than no website.  If you can’t be bothered to maintain it, then take it down.  But before you do that it is always worth considering whether you can find a way to look after it.  With the right technology it is easier than you think.

I’d like to be write or record reviews of a good third sector websites.  There are plenty of good commercial sites.  So far, I haven’t found anything suitable in the third sector.

So, my question for readers is, can you recommend a good third sector website for me to review. I promise I’ll try to be positive but I want to see improvement and so I do feel obliged to point out weaknesses!

Penuel

Penuel made the following comments:

Observation. You need to make a link for videos now that you have one. Probably would be good to have it linked up to the navigation bar. Also it cuts off you saying bye at the end. If you can extend the video by a second or so that would be good. Other than that it seems very informative and it is clear and gets your point across which is the main thing. But for your next video you might want to change the PowerPoint design. It feels a bit dated. The simpler the better. The colour fade really isn’t great.

I had some issues with YouTube to begin with and they are now resolved. If you go back to the original post, you’ll find it is now a YouTube video. I have a lot of work to do optimising my videos for search engines and it will take me a while to work through this. They will need more prominence on my site once I’ve worked out all the details.

I hadn’t noticed the problem at the end. I had a lot of empty space at the end because I couldn’t work out how to stop the recording! I removed a couple of minutes from the end and perhaps was a bit sharp with the scalpel. I’ll watch that in future.

The colour fade or gradient may be an issue. I’ve recorded the

Mark

Mark wrote:

I have watched and listened to your video – or at least some of it.

It is only some way into the video that it becomes clear that these ‘intermediate bodies’ you are talking about are church bodies – rather than other things that might be called intermediate bodies such as CVSs.

You claim that you prefer laughing to crying. Really?

Your phrases about learning from mistakes – a good and valid and perhaps important point, but I think Robert Chambers, in his work on participatory appraisal/participatory learning and action, puts it more pithily and memorably – it goes something like this – ‘we’ve made a mistake. Good. What can we learn from it?’

What fun

Mark’s comments are more concerned with the content. The term ‘intermediate bodies’ is a pain. It says nothing about what they are and very few church people have heard of them. If the CVSs want to lay claim to the term it is fine by me.

If you refer to the cartoon at the top of my website, you will see I prefer a quizzical look to either laughter or tears. My tears will flow in the next, 5 best websites, video. When you see how poor the best sites the intermediate bodies can produce are, most people would weep profusely.

I may use Robert Chambers’ quote in my next video.

That’s all the comments I’ve had so far. What do you think?

0 Producing a Screencast Video

I shared my first screencast video last Friday and today I shall write about the technical side of video production.

Video is a lot easier to produce than it used to be and if you plan to offer quality information on your website, it is worth considering using it.  The people who use it say that the best way to improve the quality of videos is to produce them.  So, my advice is strive for a good video but don’t worry if your first efforts fall short.  You will improve.

I’ve just started and today I’ll write about my experience and encourage you to experiment.

There are two main types of video, screencast and live action.  The latter is where you have a camera and film somebody or something.  This is more complex than screencast because you have to think about technical issues such as lighting .  I shall write more about it when I try it.  Screencast is the type I used.  This is where you record what is happening on your computer screen with a voice-over.

If you have a modern lap top or tablet you have almost everything you need.  The only extra bits of equipment I used were:

I knew what I wanted to say, rehearsed a couple of times and then got going.  Camtasia interfaces with PowerPoint and so the first part of the video was straightforward.  Camtasia than offers the option to leave PowerPoint and continue the screencast.  I lined up the five websites on a browser and moved across.  I cut out the transition.

Once the video is complete it needs to be produced.  Camtasia takes care of production.  I’m still ironing out a few issues, particularly the interface with YouTube but overall it was not too difficult.  I can see video production will become easier now that I’ve made a start.  The main constraint is finding time!

I’m happy to answer questions and try new things, so do ask if you want to know anything about video production.