Proposition: a new video workflow tutorial website

Question

A few weeks ago, I was helping a buddy of mine--who happens to be a recent convert from FCP, thanks to me--get a better handle on a few things in Premiere Pro that he was struggling with in his transition. I'd also offered up a few bits of collected advice about good third-party apps to use, and a few places to find information about this or that. After about twenty minutes of describing a number of things to him in great detail, he stopped me and said, "Why don't you just make a website for all this?"
Funnily enough, I'd been thinking the same thing. A little prior to this, I'd gotten a small job to do in After Effects--at least, I thought it was going to be small. It involved replacing the screen of a laptop--no problem for the Tracker in AE, right? Wrong. This was a nightmare--reflections from the glossy bezel, the screen on the laptop went black (that's why it had to be replaced) there were numerous obstractions between the camera and the screen, it was handheld, and I was working off a compressed H.264 file. It was the perfect storm. Fortunately, I knew that I had a pretty cool new tool at my disposal--mochaAE. Problem was, I had never used mocha before; I'd opened up the application, looked at it in fear, and quickly closed it down before it bit me. But I would not be deterred...
Now, I'm usually pretty good about just sitting down with an application, banging away at it awhile, and then figuring it out. Sometimes, I get pretty proficient--I'm self-taught on Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Avid, Final Cut Pro, Edius, and who knows what else. This mocha thing, though--man, that sucker just sat there and taunted me. I took it as a personal challenge to not only complete the job, but to come out the other side (relatively unscathed) with a decent grasp of the program.
The help file was really not that helpful, so I turned to the interwebs for some video tutorials. About 6 hours later after watching tutorials that covered the most minute details with painful precision, but ultimately told me nothing, and other tutorials that demonstrated uses of mochaAE for such things as creating "realistic flesh wounds in cybernetic arms," I was throughly disgusted but felt I could finally wade in and give it a crack.
To cut to the chase--it was an ugly, drawn-out battle. It's really not clear who the victor was, but when the dust cleared, I'd finally tracked and replaced the screen on this ten-second shot, and it was actually pretty good. Of course, it had cost me about 12 hours of my life. I would have loved to have found a tutorial that actually demonstrated a situation similar to the one I was working on, or at least offered some useful advice about what to do or not to do. Most of what I had viewed was simply not practical for my uses of such a piece of software.
This was incredibly frustrating to me. I have no issue with working toward a goal and earning it, but this was madness. Like many folks here, I'm running a small business, comprised mainly of myself and the voices in my head, and time spent on one thing is time and money lost elsewhere.
Now, the forums here are a great place--probably one of the friendlier haunts around the web that deals with video productions tools and techniques--but it's geared toward the "this is broke how do I fix it" mode. At times, there is a rather closed-minded, even antagonistic attitude toward folks looking for certain kinds of information. This grates me more than a bit, because everyone has the right to ask the questions they want to ask, without worry of condescension or ridicule. Maybe it's the pacifist in me, or the fact that I come from a family of educators, but I've decided I want to try to help.
With that in mind, I'm thinking about starting a video and text tutorial website that focuses on the practical applications of some of the video production software that many of use--both payware and freeware. I want to develop the kind of tutorials that are less about how to create a certain look or effect, and more about how to save money, brains and time, by giving an example of a realistic working situation and some various ways to handle it. I don't think it's enough to just tell someone what works, but you need to explain how something works, and why it works--that's the essence of education. If you can give someone the a better understanding of how a certain tool can be applied, he is much more likely to be able to apply it creatively in various ways for his own benefit.
I've got a number of ideas that I've been cooking for some time, and I think they'd make for useful tutorials, but my question is this: is there actually interest in this kind of material? I'm talking about stuff that is less about glitz and more about crawling through the trenches to get your job done--I know I've conversed with several people here who often find themselves in situations like mine, and can understand this ethic.
This wouldn't be all about Premiere Pro, or even just about Adobe applications; yes, it would be a great deal about that, since those are my primary "paid" tools, but there are a lot of great freeware applications out there that often perform as well or better than the paid applications, and can often do things those paid applications can't even imagine. However, these things usually aren't push-button-flip-switch kind of applications, and involve a greater level of understanding to get something done.
I remember that when I first started using Premiere Pro 2, I searched out some tutorials--the ones that I liked the best and found the most useful were done by our very own Jeff Bellune. I think it was Jeff's frameserver tutorial that made me realize I was going to be playing in the right sandbox In any event, Jeff has a great way of communicating really useful information about topics that might seem a bit blase at first, but ultimately form the core of some pretty awesome workflows in Premiere and beyond.
So... talk me into this or talk me out of this... whatever. I'm really interested in hearing people's thoughts about this--ideally, this would be a type of site that would allow the community-at-large to communicate about things that work and don't work, hopefully making everyone's job and life a little easier. The Wikia was a pretty good source of information, but that has languished, and frankly, I don't think the format ever worked that well. This would be the next evolutionary step...
Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this; I appreciate any thoughts.

Answer 1

Thanks, Todd--I appreciate your support and willingness to assist. It would be great having an official recognition from the Big A The posts you put on the PPro blog are the kind of information I'd like to be able to arm people with; I think that sort of detail helps folks gain a better understanding of the "why" behind the "what," which further empowers them to effectively use the tools in other situations.
Chuck: thanks for the feedback. I need to tread carefully into areas regarding hardware, because frankly, I'm more of a software guy. Yes, I built my own system, and I've built a couple more in recent months, but I wouldn't be able to go so far as to be able to make recommendations on what to get--that's the domain of other people here. That is certainly legitimate information, though, and I think having a component that is based on visitor submissions about "this works, that doesn't" is a great idea--think of it as a distributed review and vetting system.
Truth be told, though, part of the reason I want to do this is often the answer to questions posed here is simply, "get a new/faster/better system." While that often is legitimate advice, there are plenty of scenarios where the underlying problem is not hardware, but some sort of operational issue. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly in no position to upgrade or change out my hardware every time I encounter a problem--I think most people in small businesses want and need to do more with less. That's a big part of my motivation to create this resource.
Ultimately, there are three audiences I want to address:
New users of Premiere Pro and related Adobe products; since those are my bread-and-butter, I think I've got a pretty good handle on basic operation to achieve common tasks
Intermediate users of Premiere Pro and related Adobe products who have encountered some sort of error, problem, or other roadblock; how do you work with, work around, or fix those issues
Seasoned users of Premiere Pro, related Adobe products, or any of the multitude of other video production tools who want to discover ways to achieve a certain effect, process, or workflow
I think there are numerous resources for the first category; you can find some decent tutorial videos on Adobe's site as well as other locations that cover this. However--and not to discount the merit of these tutorials and resources--I find that many times these fall into the category of what I'd call "sales-torials." They're designed to show how to use a certain feature in some fabricated (and usually, unrealistic) scenario. What I want to do is take real scenarios, and show how to use the features available to work in or solves those scenarios.
For the second category: that's where the forum usually comes in. Someone encounters a problem, and this is often a place they find when searching the web. Sometimes they find help here, and sometimes not. Obviously there is a wealth of information and a broad base of experience here, but it isn't codified in anyway, so a questioner is at the mercy of good searching skills (or luck) or posting on the forum at the right time. As you mentioned, Chuck, we see many of the same sorts of questions being asked again and again. I don't mean to discount the forum as a place to answer those questions or solve those sorts of problems, but I know how frustrating it can be when all you want to do is get back to work. Obviously, there is no way to address every possible problem or issue that can occur, but if a database of common or not-so-common problems can slowly be built, I think this would be an excellent resource for the community.
For the third category: well, there isn't anything like this, that I've found. Ultimately, this is what I'm most interested in creating. I've spent countless hours trying to find information on the Internet about how to do this or that, but there seems to be no solid resource for kind of information I want. Sure, there are lots of sites for "filmmakers," but I'm not a filmmaker. I'm a guy trying to run a small business, minimizing my time involved and maximizing my profits. I think there are lots of people in the same boat; you rarely hear from them because they're so damn busy trying to keep above water. I want to help give these folks a tool bench, a laboratory, a coffee klatch they can turn to when they are at their wits' end (or preferably, before ). I know that a lot of us have developed our own workflows and solutions; since I'm kind of a community-minded guy (particularly because I live and work in the middle of nowhere), I feel compelled to share what I've learned with the community-at-large. My hope would be that others would feel the same, and we can collectively create a resource that benefits everyone.
OK, with that said, it's time to work