Posted 8 years ago

As part of our new approach to content, we have been adding text content to every video page. This means taking the video and trying to "write it down".

I started doing this all myself, but that became difficult. It's hard for me now to look at the old videos without thinking, "I want to replace this with a better video". I found it difficult to focus on the work.

Thankfully, Phil (my dad) helped me out. He has been going through the old videos and writing text for them. I've taken the text and made some minor copy editing changes. This means I've been spared the ordeal of watching myself on video yet again, and the work has been completed much more efficiently.

Phil made an interesting comment about this work. He said it was impossible to express some of the most important ideas in text. We looked at some examples together and I agreed.

We already knew this was true, but the process of adding text content to all the video pages has really driven it home. In the past, I've tried to get around this sometimes with lengthy explanations in articles, but this isn't effective. You end up with far too much text, and it is still ambiguous without the video. Many ideas just cannot be expressed effectively in text.

That's why we are changing our content to be "video first" instead of "article first". We now see video as the main content, with text in a supporting role.