A few months back, I wrote a post about the power of video as a prototyping tool.  More such videos are coming out and it's exciting to watch this tool become so powerful even as it moves into more and more hands.  Again, distributed production. 

As I said before,

Perhaps not surprisingly, effective technology development teams
embrace prototyping to design products and services.  Yet those same
engineers and scientists turn around and try to describe and sell their
ideas without designing the communication process.

The short
video, done well, not only communicates more information in 3 minutes
than a powerpoint presentation can get across in 15 minutes, but allows
for prototyping.  Express, test, cycle.

Who wouldn't rather watch a compelling 3 minute video than read through 5 online pages, or download and read a brochure?  And as broadband gets broader, and publishing tools get easier, this will push production capabilities out to the margins in ways we can't imagine yet. 

Here are some of the more interesting recent examples I've seen. Sure, these are done by professionals, but increasingly for smaller customers and means.

XPlane has made the move from graphic design to video communications tools—and using Apple's Keynote software to do it.  This video, Did You Know 4.0 (an update to earlier versions), is wonderful:

As is this compelling video by Jake Harriman, founder of Nuru International, and a Marine Corps veteran (and Stanford MBA student), describing his new social venture.  The quality of the video (and their website) demands the viewer to take the organization seriously.  

The End (Jake's Story) from Nuru International on Vimeo.

Every entrepreneur should figure out how to tell their story in this medium.