It would be fun to get business bloggers together. I really think it’s an interesting way to connect with customers or possible customers. Of course we have the connection through our shops, but it’s hard, especially this time of year to always find out what people think!
And it occurred to me that it's been a while since Irish bloggers met up in Dublin (Blog Awards I think?)...So, I'm wondering if people would be interested in a summer get together in August? It would be great to get business people out at this one and I'll also be hosting a visit from two US bloggers Gary and Lorianne between 13 and 23 August and I'm sure they'd like to hook up with some Irish counterparts. How about Saturday 19th August? with an open invitation to anyone who blogs, reads blogs, is interested in starting a blog to join us for a summer drink and a get together in Dublin city centre? Leave a message in the comments. Oh yea, I think it would be fabulous PR for those ice cream, champagne and other goodie companies to do shameless self promotion and product placing on the day :)
An Líonra Sóisialta (The Social Network), a series of 64 short episodes over 13 weeks, which aims to introduce the radio-listening, Irish-language community to the world of online social networking.
This is the first time that an Irish podcaster has received funding from the public sector - not to mention - an Irish language podcaster. With all the recent discussion in the Irish blog world about the demise of Rattlebag and the Mystery Train; the demise of the public service remit and the increase in "reality" broadcasting, this investment is money very well spent. Comhghairdeas a Chonn!
RTE 1 is re-broadcasting the True Lives documentary about Frankie Byrne - Ireland's legendary agony aunt - this evening at 10.25pm. I saw the programme when it was first broadcast and I urge you to tune in, it's an extraordinary documentary not alone about Frankie's life but as an insight into the Ireland of the 50s, 60s and 70s. I grew up listening to Dear Frankie on Radio Éireann (as it was at the time) and remember the down to earth advice dispensed by Frankie to husbands and wives throughout the country in an age devoid of Oprah,Dr Phil and agony aunt columns in magazines. If you want an insight into how we got here...then tune in.
When Adam Phillips' American publishers were planning a US edition of his book Going Sane, they insisted on giving it an upbeat subtitle. The idea drove him, if not insane, then to distraction. "The woman at the publishers said to me: 'How about Maps of Happiness.' I thought she was joking, so I said: 'How about Maps Against Happiness?' And she said: "I don't think so. Against is such a negative word.'
The proposed subtitle rankled because Phillips is against guidebooks to happiness. "A culture that is obsessed with happiness must really be in despair, mustn't it? Otherwise why would anybody be bothered about it at all?" asks the psychoanalyst, closing his eyes as he does repeatedly during the interview when he wants to clinch a thought, and then leaning forward to put his head in his hands. "It's become a preoccupation because there's so much unhappiness. The idea that if you just reiterate the word enough and we'll all cheer up is preposterous.
Oh I wanted to clap and cheer when I read that. Philips is railing against the instant-fix, one-size-fits-all approach to being perfect, happy, sorted - call it what you will. I, like him, believe that you can only be happy if you are able to experience the darker side of life - I mean - how would you know what happiness was if you couldn't relate to not happy? And if we don't attend to not-happy then happy is merely a myth that can never be realised in real life. Consulting and coaching must attend to the "nots" in a meaningful way. Simply glossing over them won't work and the energy expended (particularly on change projects) will be wasted.
Is he saying suffering is necessary to the examined life? No: suffering is not essential. It's just unavoidable. All forms of sufferings are bad but some are unavoidable. We need to come to terms with them or be able to bear them.
And on the current craze for books on happiness he has this to add:
I've looked at them. They seem to me to be the problem rather than the solution.
We've got to move out of seeing things in such stark polarities - Adams is merely saying that our ability to be happy, be fulfilled is as a direct result of our being able to handle happiness, unhappiness and all that comes in between. Life isn't one or the other - it's both.
It's like [Beckett's play] Endgame: 'We're on Earth. There's no cure for that.
Have people got ideas for a location for a bloggers' meet up on 19th August in Dublin? Previous outings have happened in the Market Bar and Keoghs and have generally started around 6pm. Leave suggestions in the comments and please pass this around..
Why is religious language so common in the world of business? I see people who are "Evangelists" for products and services; Boards go on "retreats"; I've heard of "breaking bread" and "communion" with clients and fellow workers; poor customer service operatives "confess" to their "sins"...Is it because I'm from a (predominantly) Catholic culture that this seems at little odd to me?
I've never met an Irish Evangelist (in a business sense anyway!), and the only retreats I can think of were those we went on at school in the hormonally charged years - much fuel for confession was generated! But what is going on here? Are we asking people to have "blind faith" in products and services? Are we suggesting that a charasmatic leader with an on target message will generate the right business environment for success? Help me out here!
The venue for the bloggers' meet up on 19th August will be the Market Bar just off George's Street in Dublin from 6pm onwards. I'll try and get a table on the first floor and I'll be accompanied by a couple of American bloggers Lori and Gary - so look out for us. Please come along if you're a blogger, a wannabe blogger, a reader - heck come along regardless of who you are :) It would be great to see some business bloggers out at this get together also. Looking forward to seeing you all there.
Thanks to all the bloggers who turned out for the meet up on Saturday in the Market Bar. It was great to see Dick, Dermod, Lorianne, Gary, Kevin, Hugh and Keith, Tom - (have I left anyone out??). Which Irish blogger was strutting his new svelte and bionic body around the place? Which other Irish blogger is a serious braniac? (how many As did you get in the Leaving again?). Sorry to see so few business bloggers about but perhaps we'll organise another get together in the winter months when the ice cream and champagne people can join us.
A new tale of friendship, loyalty, expanding waistlines and bad haircuts, told to the backdrop of eighties male pop duos. Not to be missed.
These are the people who brought you the hugely popular Scenes from a Watercooler.
Trousers or Pants runs until 9 September and will open at 59E59 in New York on 8 October.
Gawker has created a new way to explore the big apple - the New York Subway Smell Map - hover the mouse over your local station and find out if it smells of alcohol, body odour, perfume, food etc. I'll be in Manhattan from Friday next and I notice that my local subway station hasn't got an olfactory tag just yet - maybe I'll add mine before I leave? Union Square is particularly aromatic have to say...not quite what I experienced last time I paid a visit ...Andrew Taylor asks the really interesting question though:
"Will seeing other people's experiences allow us to engage differently with our environment?"
Every trip to New York begins in the same way - being overwhelmed by the assault of images and energy - not to mention battling jet lag! Even though I've been to New York several times, it's always familar and always new. In conversation with some Irish friends the other evening we began to explore the differences between Dublin and New York - after all, money is flowing in Ireland isn't it? We've modernised haven't we? We're rapidly becoming multi-cultural aren't we?
The difference between New York and Dublin boils down to the answer to this question "Is it possible?" the New York answer is always "yes" and the Dublin answer is invariably a variation on "no". Actually the Dublin answer will rarely be a direct "no" (the Irish language doesn't have a word for "no"). Even though there is a price tag attached to every NYC "yes" it's still possible to get stuff/anything done here. I wonder what it's like living in a society where (theoretically) anything is possible...it's only 3000 miles from my home town but it's a galaxy away in psychological terms.
Every now and then a blogger has a block. In fact, bloggers’ block must account for an enormous percentage of blogging posts…I’m currently in that phase myself. Since I got back from the US the muse has been absent and I’m curious about why.
I spent a lot of time reading blogs, pottering around in bookshops and watching TV news footage while I was in NYC. Being back in the sedate surroundings of Dublin is like coming down off some hallucinogenic. The personality driven hysterical “ultimate” solution focussed emphasis of much of what I observed, read and listened to really got under my skin. The dulcet and soothing tones of NPR presenters and now the BBC and RTE are a welcome respite.
I don’t have an ultimate solution to anything. In fact, I don’t believe in ultimate anythings – isn’t life a little richer and more sophisticated than that? I observed such a drive to create “syndromes” around the most ordinary experiences while I was in the US which naturally came with a range of “solutions”. Engaging with the media in most forms was an exercise in confidence eradication. If you thought you might have some kind of issue, well, 15 minutes in front of TV or reading a paper would convince you that you had more than an issue – you had a complex and potentially life threatening situation which needed immediate attention. How do you withstand that constant drip, drip nausea inducing stuff? It’s not possible in a city like New York to “switch off”…advertising is everywhere…my trip to DC was amazing because the streets are devoid of advertising hoardings, neon lights and the assault of images that are everyday realities in New York.
So the blog is sitting here, staring at me, wanting me to come up with 10 tips for the ultimate solution to a syndrome you didn’t know you had until I invented it 15 minutes ago and I can’t do it..maybe someone can offer me ten tips for moving out of my current predicament.
I adore New York…but really…how do you keep your head together in a place where so much of what you see and hear in public spaces reinforces the negative (albeit with “solutions” at a cost, to remedy it)…I’m genuinely curious.
Why are so few Irish arts organisations blogging? Apart from Film Base and some individual artists I can't think of another Irish arts organisation that's talking to its audience base via a blog. What better way to generate interest and an audience in a company's work than to blog? Here are ten things I would like to see Irish arts organisations doing in the service of audience building and artist development
1. Release podcasts interviews with the cast or author of new plays
3. Start a discussion about contemporary art in advance of exhibitions as a gateway for newcomers to the artform
4. Invite audience members to guest blog and review your work
5. Invite readers to create their own work – poetry, prose, photography in response to a new production or presentation
6. Allow audiences into the art making process with regular posts about the rehearsal process from the perspective of various members of the company e.g. designer and choreographer etc
7. Use blogs as archives so that audiences can check out the history of the company and its relationship with people who see the work
8. Create word of mouth on a performance by asking readers the only marketing question that matters “would you recommend this to a friend?”
9. Use the virtual space as a gallery or curatorial space for artists – giving readers a front row seat for the show
10. Ask readers how they want to engage with your work – online discussions with artists? Advance notice of booking options? Use the medium as an idea generation space
Cultural problems are almost never “out there;” they are almost always “in here.” If we all focus on the part of the Culture over which we have control – our own behaviors – the rest will tend to take care of itself.
Imagine what the world of work would be like if instead of looking externally, we focussed on our own contribution to the successes and challenges in the workplace?
“In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The images depict a world that is without beginning or end, here or there, past or present.”
Gregory Colbert, Creator of Ashes and Snow
Christmas is a season of over indulgence and to mark the occasion, I've been over-indulging in the feast of video podcasts from the TED Conference - a once a year gathering of some of the brightest and creative people on the planet. The podacasts are an extraordinary collection of ideas, sensibilities, creativity and down right good viewing. But one of the most amazing is that of artist Gregory Colbert whose Ashes and Snow Project
is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert has mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores and Borneo.
I wasn't aware of his work prior to coming across him at TED and the images in this film are some of the most beautiful I've ever encountered. So if over-indulgence at this time of the year can yield this kind of quality then I'm all for the festive season. See what you think (and while you're at it, check out the TED blog for more goodies.
Stuart is the latest innovation from the art collecter Charles Saatchi in the UK. It's a virtual gallery open to Student Artists wishing to upload images of their work for viewing and sales. While nothing can compare with the experience of seeing art in it's natural (?) environment (for digital artists the cyber space may in fact be the natural environment) - there is much to be said for a virtual space that allows one to wander through the imagery in the comfort of one's own home - hopefully leading to enough curiosity to explore the work in real time and in real life.
The site has a blog, gallery, social networking gizmos (i.e. a MySpace feel in terms of adding "friends" and a chat area etc), listings and a vast array of visual artists from around the globe sharing images, engaging in discussions and (hopefully) selling their work. It seems straightforward enough in terms of signing up. It looks like a fairly substantial site and I'm curious to know how it's serviced, used and the costs involved in running it. I frequently hear artists asking for this kind of environment as a showcase/networking tool but I've rarely seen costings or useage data to see whether it works in practice so I'll be watching developments there closely to see if it turns out to be the marketplace that artists are expecting.
160 people answered that question and their answers can be found here. I was particularly taken with Paul Saffo's (Technology Forecaster; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University) response in which he says that Humankind Is Particularly Good At Muddling:
I am a short-term pessimist because the Millennium is still clouding our collective thinking and may yet inspire the addled few to try something truly stupid, like an act of mega-terror or a nuclear exchange between nations. But I am a long-term optimist because the influence of the Millennium is already beginning to fade. We will return to our moderate senses as the current uncertainties settle into a comprehensible new order. I am an unshakable optimist because in its broadest strokes, the future will be what the future has always been, a mix of challenges, marvels and endless surprise. We will do what we have always done and muddle our collective way through. Humankind is particularly good at muddling, and that is what makes me most optimistic of all.
Other contributors include:
BRIAN ENO
Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist And Now The Good News
Which brings me to my main reason for optimism: the ever-accelerating empowerment of people. The world is on the move, communicating and connecting and coalescing into influential blocks which will move power away from national governments with their short time horizons and out into vaguer, more global consensual groups. Something like real democracy (and a fair amount of interim chaos) could be on the horizon.
The Internet is catalyzing knowledge, innovation and social change, and, in manifestations such as Wikipedia, proving that there are other models of social and cultural evolution: that you don't need centralised top-down control to produce intelligent results.
Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur.
MIHALYI CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow We Are Asking And Answering
I am optimistic for the simple reason that given the incredible odds against the existence of brains that can ask such questions, of laptops on which to answer them, and so on — here we are, asking and answering!
It's a treasure trove of wonderful stuff (hat tip TED Blog) and got me wondering just what I'm optimistic about in 2007. How about you?
Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world
I've become such a lurker over at Post Secret. It's a community arts project where people mail in a secret on a home made postcard to the author. Some of the images and sentiments are extraordinary. Coming, as I do, from a predominantly Catholic country, and as a therapist, the confessional nature of both is familiar to me but there’s something so powerful in the visual representation of unmentionables...more powerful than words alone, more creative than confession and absolution.
Ben Zander, conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, was faced with the same problem every year for 25 years: Teaching students who were in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance, they were reluctant to take creative risks. One night, he sat down with his partner Roz Stone Zander, a therapist, to try to find a solution. They decided the best approach would be to give everyone an A, at the beginning of the course. The A was not intended as a way to measure someone's performance against standards, but as an instrument to open them up to new possibilities.
This didn’t mean students could slack off for the rest of the semester. Students were required to write a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…” and they had to describe in as much detail as possible, how they came to achieve this “extraordinary grade.”
In writing their letters, Zander said students must “place themselves in the future, looking back, and report on all the insights they acquired and the milestones they attained during the year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. Everything must be written in the past tense. Phrases such as ‘I hope,’ ‘I intend,’ or ‘I will’ must not appear.”
Zander asserts “the A is an invention that creates possibilities for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction.” The A allows teams to accomplish what is possible, and reduces “the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.”
Zander doesn’t say what happens to the A when his students don’t pull their weight. His point here is to help people we work with to remove the barriers that block achievement--and to embrace the mindset of giving an A, by letting go of rigid mindsets that keep people pegged.
Zander applied this kind of thinking to his conducting and it transformed him from being a dictator, to an orchestrator of collaboration. This approach opened the door for musicians to speak more freely with him about their concerns -- about the way a piece of music ought to be played, for example, and he discovered that "the player who looks the least engaged may be the most committed member of the group." This new openness in communication had a huge effect on the morale of the orchestra, improving the performance of both conductor and players.
Edit: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander will be at the Burren Leadership Forum on 21 and 22 July 2007.
Saturday’s New York Times (subscription required) carries a story about the 102 year-old Louis Padnos Iron and Metal Company a family owned business who have come up with their own unique solution to the sucession challenge.
The problem for the Padnoses is an age gap. Third-generation members who run the scrap metal company, which employs about 400 people and has annual sales of about $300 million, are in their 50s. They want to work less. But the fourth-generation Padnoses who might someday want to run the place are still only in their teens.
The company hired a philosophy professor to help them
groom six hired managers to become, well, more Padnos-like.
The article goes on to outline the differences between the founding family (politically liberal, middle class and Jewish) and the managers (conservative, working class and from Protestant backgrounds) and the policy adopted by the Padnoses to encourage the new managers to be “part of the family”
The managers were assigned readings of Thoreau, Sophocles and a recent essay on Freud. They spent a long weekend in Chicago seeing plays, touring exhibitions of art and architecture and eating at fancy restaurants. And in recent weeks they have debated how to give away $40,000 of the Padnoses’ money, an exercise in becoming philanthropists.
The article also goes on to say that although the managers are encouraged to think more like the family they are also denied some of the financial information that would give them more of the family’s power and this is where it becomes really interesting from my perspective.
Family businesses are complex places – you can’t avoid the personal because, well family is personal. On one level this looks like a sensible and somewhat philanthropic gesture on the part of the Padnoses on another it could be a way of them never letting go of the family’s way of doing business. How can you act like an owner if you are not an owner? How can you take the responsibility if you’re not given the authority? Family businesses are fascinating places because the sometimes underlying personal relationships that inform all businesses are much more visible - particularly those that affect competition and leadership. It will be interesting to see what happens in this company when the elder generation have truly moved on and that teenage generation are ready to take over..
One of my favorite shows on TV is called "Intervention" on A&E, which is about the struggles of people dealing with addiction. On the show, families stage interventions with the addicted member of the family in order to get them to seek help and change their ways. One of the principles that is encouraged is not only that the person is willing to change and get help, the family needs to come together in order for the change to work.
I haven't seen this particular programme on this side of the pond but am familiar with the concept - Travis applies the thinking to organisational change processes and suggests that there needs to be a healthy "family" and a desire for change if this process is to work effectively in organisations. He goes on to say:
The dynamic of the workplace, whether it be a team, group, division, or whole organization, has to be in a healthy state for the organization to undergo serious and permanent organization change. It is almost a paradox that in order for change to be successful, there must be some level of stability in terms of relationships, communication and culture before the instability of change takes place.
This got me thinking about the way in which interventionists are used - the 3Cs Counsellors, Consultants and Coaches. Very often (not always) the 3Cs are called in when an individual is perceived to be "unhealthy"...the 3Cs are marshalled in the service of keeping the organisation healthy by splitting off the unhealthy individual to be made more healthy externally and reimported once s/he is sorted out. To take Travis's example above (and addiction is a great example of a systemic approach) there are other questions to be asked about what work the individual does on behalf of the system and how the system itself contributes to and informs how the individual behaves within it. Increasingly I am working with client organisations to feed back into the system the dynamics that emerge within the coaching relationship and this is having significant impacts. The contract with the individual respects the content of the discussion but also makes space for the overall themes to be explored in the context of the whole system and as such is fed back as organisational intelligence.
It is possible to have a PowerPoint free conference
and now I'm wondering if I should pay attention to the conference proceedings or adopt a more post modern approach and read the posts of bloggers who are reporting on the proceedings....(Unlike AntonyMayfield I haven't yet interrupted proceedings with my loud typing.
PS: This is the scariest and most impressive conference I've ever been to in terms of punctuality. Every single session (including breaks and lunch) has started and ended on time..Brilliant!
**Update** Oh the mortification ... somewhere during the day my mobile phone has gone missing..of all the places on the planet to lose one's mobile...a media conference..
Yesterday I attended a workshop on blogging and podcasting organised by Theatre Forum and presented by Susan Hallam. I was there with a couple of hats on – for a start I was the only blogger in the room and as you know, I’m an advocate of blogging for the arts sector. I have written before about the minimal activity in this area for this sector in Ireland but I was really there for selfish reasons to learn a bit about podcasting. The podcasting section was brief and to the point and I got some useful starter material to think about.
The workshop was aimed at Ireland’s performing arts companies and was a basic introduction to the nuts and bolts of getting up and running with blogs and podcasting. Hallam is an advocate of Blogger as a publishing platform because of its integration with Google (makes a lot of sense in terms of SEO) but less sense when one of our main broadband providers can simply drop the connection (as Twenty Major discovered recently). Many of the people in attendance were very new to the whole area of blogging and seemed to get great stuff out of it.
However – I was surprised at Hallam’s stance on commenting.
Hallam doesn’t believe in allowing comments on her own blog (apparently the comments were from competitors critical of her work) – and she disagreed with me that commenting on other people’s blogs should be a part of your blogging strategy. I was genuinely surprised by that stance. Blogs are conversational media and conversations involve at least two people. If you don’t allow comments on your own blog and you don’t deem it to be important to comment on someone else's then the conversation on your own space is a monologue, not a dialogue - and if you're not reading other blogs you won't even know if the conversation has moved. Far too many businesses in my view simply use the blogging platform to update static websites with press release material under the guise of blogging. Hallam’s view of conversation seemed to fall into two categories – the “talk amongst yourselves” forum type of conversation where audience/customers/users discuss their views on a forum of their own - separate and distinct from the originator of the work - or the monologue variation described above.
I’m all for a third way
• One which leaves room for blogs to be informed and influenced by what readers think.
• One that is open to the possibility that our readers and users have an intelligence that’s useful for us in conceiving work.
• One that suggests that the audience is a critical part of the creative process and that conversation is a key way of opening up that creativity in the service of great art.
• One that sugests that our readers are peers, not only purchasers of a product
• One that decides to take on and engage with critical responses to art in a way that can lead to richer conversations about this sector.
Businesses are made smarter by receiving the kind of direct, candid feedback that focus groups and market research surveys rarely succeed in providing
or Bill Gates (courtesy of Tom Raftery)
Another big phenomenon is building communities around Web sites, around products. And virtually every company ought to have on their Web site the ability for their customers, their suppliers, various people, to interact and their employees to see the dialogue taking place there and jump in and talk to them and help them.
Art and culture are never created in a vacuum. The social architecture of the sector is key to its success – not only the “bums on seats” argument (which is such a reductive way of quantifying this community) but the qualitative experience of having access to creators and consumers in equal measure.
Capitalising on the various communities of interest would seem to me to be an enormously important part of that discussion – but then again, maybe some organisations aren’t interested in the immediacy of that conversation?
Of the 20 odd people who were in the room yesterday I think many will go away and assume that setting up a blog is a smart marketing strategy (and they would be right), but I think they may miss the other ways in which blogging makes sense for arts and cultural organisations – as genuine tools for connecting with audiences as active contributors to a community of interest, as peers and as co-collaborators. In an age when most arts organisations are being asked to invest time and resources in “audience development” (oh how I hate that term) blogging is one of the most useful (and one of the the cheapest) mechanisms for addressing that issue. The only real marketing question that matters is - "would you recommend this to a friend?" Arts organisations don't need to sell tickets they need to convert evangelists who will gladly spread word of mouth about their work. Waiting for "them" to come to "us" has proved to be a limited strategy in the world of arts presentation - more and more organisations have outreach and education programmes to connect with new communities of artists and audiences - commenting fulfills the same function in the blog world. You can't passively wait for someone to discover what you're about - you have to engage in a bit of your own outreach by entering into other people's communities and making your presence felt.
I’m all for marketing but if you don't want to be part of a conversation – why use conversational media?
Disclaimer: I have written an article for Poetry Ireland on blogging for the arts community which will be published in their upcoming newsletter.
I attended a Tribeca Talks panel discussion this week on Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod – essentially a discussion on the impact of social media on the production of art (notably cinema and literature). The line up of panellists included
and moderator Georg Szalai (NY bureau chief and business editor at The Hollywood Reporter)
There were a lot of pertinent points raised about the relationship between the old, the new and the vast space in between.
I can’t do justice to the 90 minute discussion (and subsequent questions and answers) but I did capture a few points which I think it’s worth mentioning here – particularly in the context of Irish arts and cultural organisations – some of whom are out there using social media, many others of whom are ambivalent about the impact on the production of their artistic artefact.
The panellists addressed the issue of giving work away for free, particularly if you’re struggling to make a living in the first place. Kathleen Grace and her crew have created a soap opera about Williamsburg which is viewable free and online. They decided to forget about pitching to the studios at the outset and are hoping that it will be picked up (before they drown in credit card debt I imagine). It’s given them a direct outlet for the creation of their art and an instant audience for the work.
Novelist Jonathan Lentham created The Promiscious Materials Project which was specifically designed to distribute his work (at the cost of $1).
I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.
Lentham described his online activity as an “analogue gesture in a digital cloak” because he is very clear that he creates the artefact and then allows it to be discussed, modified, mashed-up etc once that creative act has taken place.
Leadbetter posted 11 chapters of his book online and sought feedback and comments – he is incorporating some of those into the final draft and will credit those whose work he includes.
The panellists were in general agreement that creativity is a collaboration, and while the origination of the artefact (book, sculpture, video etc) may be the work of one person – the conversation that surrounds it (both before and after) is the way of entwining both spaces and expanding on the relationship between artist and community.
There was a lot of discussion about the future of the business of social media, particularly from Futurist Jerry Paffendorf (whom I could have listened to all evening and who focusses on ROA Return on Awesome rather than ROI..) on how online worlds are evolving and changing (virtual worlds are increasingly “opt in” and the mantra is “Don’t have sex with Google”) and and notably Brent Weinstein who heads up a division at United Talent Agency that specifically handles artists working in/with new media. There is money to be made and business models are evolving but Paffendorf described it well when he said
The currency we are using doesn’t know how to quantify what we are making
I really enjoyed the discussion, it got my own creative juices flowing and I came away with the following which I think are going to be pertinent issues for Irish arts and cultural organisations.
1 There’s no going back. An active, updated, interactive online presence is a must if you are a creative and it’s about driving traffic to where you will get paid even if in the short term it’s unlikely that you are making money.
2 Circling the wagons and adopting a defensive approach to creativity is self defeating. In the old days (6 months ago as Weinstein suggested) retaining and restraining may have worked – in this new era of social media community is where it’s at.
3 As one producer (in the Q & A) described it - people are in control of their ipod screens, their computer screens, their TV screens and ultimately their cinema screens. This model of drag and drop cultural consumption is only going to increase and impact on all other areas of media/cultural production. If creatives aren’t driving that traffic then they’re going to get stuck in a traffic jam that’s going nowhere fast.
4 There are no residuals on the internet so new ways of creating work and more importantly commissioning opportunities for this medium are going to have to evolve, particularly in countries like Ireland where we have a grant-aid culture.
5 Commerce, community and creativity co-exist in an internet age – the challenge for many creatives is how to make that relationship work for them.
The Tribeca Film Festival broadcasts a daily webcast on Youtube
September 2005, quit his job as a computer programmer and, with his wife’s guarded blessing, became a full-time singer and songwriter. He set a quixotic goal for himself: for the next year, he would write and record a song each week, posting each one to his blog
The piece goes on to say that
More than 3,000 people, on average, were visiting his site every day, and his most popular songs were being downloaded as many as 500,000 times; he was making what he described as “a reasonable middle-class living” — between $3,000 and $5,000 a month — by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on iTunes and on his own site.
Congratulations to the Arts Council of Ireland for being the first of the National Cultural Institutions to install an RSS feed on its re-designed website. The feed doesn't appear to be working at present but hopefully that's a minor technical hitch. I hope it's not going to be too long before the rest of the members of the CNCI follow suit - some of the websites of these major institutions are very poorly designed and I gave up trying to navigate through the National Library's site in an effort to find out more about their series of talks (I saw a printed brochure about them) but there's nothing on the site for an interested ticket buyer or if there is, it's buried somewhere very secret. Look instead at the New York Public Library's site with 8 different feeds for various areas of its activities...A quick scan of many of the websites of smaller Irish arts and cultural organisations reveals the same thing ... all this great activity going on, in secret, buried in the bowels of dusty websites ... let's not make it so difficult for interested people to spend their money on what you have to offer!
And for those of you who aren't sure what I'm talking about here's a brilliant explanation of RSS in Simple English from Common Craft.
There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.
The way you enter an organisation has a big impact on how you perceive the place you work. The recruitment process (really part of staff induction) creates a range of expectations and if these expectations are unmet a subtle erosion of trust occurs—not what you want on day 1. A common view of staff induction is that it all happens the day you start and mostly over within a week. A typical induction involves being taken around the floor by you manager to meet your new colleagues and shown the places to eat, then the new employee sits through a session with a group of other new starters where senior people tell what they think you should know—strategy, policies, who's who in the zoo. Invariably there is too much information to take in on day 1.
That's from a great post from Shawn over at Anecdote and he goes on to outline a model of staff induction and learning that might roll out over a year. At the heart of his post is the idea that induction is a learning process - learning how to enter, how to belong, how to reflect on the learning and how to pass it on to someone else entering. It's a balance between formal and informal learning and also creating spaces for people to share their stories and experiences of belonging.
I think this is so important because very often people like me are called in to work with people about not belonging - perhaps it's because a team isn't functioning as well as it might; or there's a disjoin between theory and practice or someone isn't "fitting in" in all the creative ways that we don't "fit in". Shawn's model is an ongoing one where reflection is a critical part of creating the active story of belonging. I wonder what might happen if spaces were created to tell stories of belonging instead of creating mechanisms for helping people fit in?
Today's workshop on Blogging, Podcasting and the Arts hosted by Poetry Ireland and delivered by myself and Conn was great fun. There were nearly 40 people in attendance in the theatre at the College of Surgeons who waited patiently while every piece of technology available failed to work for us in the 30 minutes proceeding the event. All of the sites we wanted to use were initially blocked by the college's firewall and when we got them up and running the projector died, then we lost internet access again and finally, 15 minutes later than scheduled, we were up and running.
Conn and I did a whirlwind introduction to what's a blog? and what's a podcast?; where you can find them and more to the point demonstrated the ways in which artists and arts organisations are embracing these platforms for both the production and promotion of work. I also took the opportunity to introduce TED and used Rives' If I Controlled the Internet as my opening salvo.
We had a number of bloggers in attendance including Omani, Dermod (who's review of the Crucible at the Abbey is number 1 in Google right now); ; Bernie McAdam; Deirdre Eustace (who is looking for some help to move to wordpress so if anyone is inclined - please drop her a line); Eoin Purcell (and there were others - so if you were in attendance today please leave a comment and I'll include a link to your blog here).
Lots of interesting issues came up including the challenges of how to fund artists wishing to create and present new work using these platforms; how publishing online impacts (positively and negatively) on offline book and journal publishing and how bloggers can spread word of mouth about your work if you're not within the reach of the Irish Times. I think if Conn and I tried to do anything it was to instil a sense of confidence in people to give stuff away.because what goes around comes around.
The full list of sites and resources we used (and a few more besides) are listed on this page and I'm looking forward to progressing many of the topics raised in future workshops.
This was the first time Conn and I had presented together. We designed the session via email and over the phone and several people said to me that we looked as though we had been doing this for ages (is that a good thing?). I guess we know each other's work and interests from blogging and I'm thrilled that translated into "real" life this morning. I'm looking forward to catching up with what other bloggers made of the day and if there are suggestions, comments or ideas for future workshops please do get in touch!
I was delighted to attend an event in Dun Laoghaire last night where Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council launched their first published arts strategy. I have to declare an interest here as I worked with the arts office to design and manage the consultation process that informed the shape of the strategy.It's always satisfying to see a final document after a long and complex consultation process, particularly in this case as great care has gone into the design of the plan which includes a series of commissioned photographs by Ros Kavanagh. I was really impressed by the way in which the arts officer Sharon Murphy acknowledged the work of previous staff of the arts office by naming them and inviting others to contribute written material to the documentation - she placed the current plan in a context that is wider and richer than the period of time that she has been in post at the local authority. I am also delighted that Sharon has become the most recent recipient of the Jerome Hynes Fellowship and will take up her role as Clore Fellow from September onwards.
So much of the work we do as consultants is "confidential" and does not result in public documents which can make it challenging to talk about the work with new and potential clients in the absence of something "tangible". That's one of the reasons I started a blog and increasingly I am bumping into people who are reading even if they are not commenting. I'm wondering how other consultants find this issue of the absence of publicly available "evidence" of their work?
I will post a link to the pdf of the plan once it has been uploaded to the DLR site
Pilobolus began as an experiment among three guys and one puzzled professor in a Dartmouth dance class back in 1970. It was survival of the giddiest, as the three non-dancers goofed around with the material they'd been given -- themselves -- and got entangled in science-inspired poses (think: "soft-belly protoplasmic thing") and movements. From these humble, biological beginnings has emerged an innovative, unlikely and almost-uncategorizable dance company that combines athleticism, grace and humor with a profound sense of unity.
Have a look at this 14 minute performance from Pilobolus (where else but at TED 2005). The piece is called Symbiosis and like so many of the arts and cultural events at this conference it blends extraordinary technical skill with a deep emotional impact. I'm going to choose a number of my favourite arts/cultural events from TED to publish here over the next few weeks but for now, enjoy.
Mmm I think there may be a problem with that embedded video - here's a link to the TED site where you can see the video.
In recent years, a handful of chefs and restaurateurs have invoked intellectual property concepts, including trademarks, patents and trade dress — the distinctive look and feel of a business — to defend their restaurants, their techniques and even their recipes, but most have stopped short of a courtroom. The Pearl Oyster Bar suit may be the most aggressive use of those concepts by the owner of a small restaurant. Some legal experts believe the number of cases will grow as chefs begin to think more like chief executives.
Fascinating article in today's New York Times (Free registration required) from Pete Wells about an impending law suit amongst the culinary classes in the big apple. Chef Rebecca Charles is suing Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo and her sous-chef at Pearl for six years for breech of intellectual copyright. She claims that McFarland's new restaurant copies "each and every element” of her eatery and it's going to court.
What makes this case so interesting is that it appears there's nowhere safe from litigation these days. The piece claims that chef's are taking this very seriously and one ..
has applied for patents on a number of his culinary inventions, like a method for printing pictures of food on flavored, edible paper. Mr. Cantu also makes his cooks sign a nondisclosure agreement before they so much as boil water at Moto, his restaurant in Chicago.
If lawyers are now in the kitchen can it be long before they're in the rehearsal room, the gallery or the theatre as well?
So, what do you do? If creativity plays a big role in your life, it’s probably not an easy question to answer. If you work in the creative industries, it’s probably even harder. Reworking concepts,
information, ideas and knowledge for a living often doesn’t lend itself to a job title that adequately explains what you do. If you work in the creative industries, the chances are you work for yourself, for a small organisation or for a small team in a big organisation. You’re probably working in a close network of collaborators and associates. You probably find yourself working on several different things at the same time, and many of those activities are often one-offs not to be repeated. Your job makes sense to people you work with but explaining it to people at parties becomes almost like relaying a joke that you ‘really had to be there’ to get.
or how about this?
Over the last ten years public policy has paid considerable attention to supporting creativity through the provision of education and skills, a copyright framework, business and innovation support,public agencies and the funding of work. But among employers, entrants and people working in the creative industries many of these interventions are resulting in confusion, indifference and, in some cases, irritation. Why? The aggregate result of jobs that are hard to
understand is a sector that is hard to understand, and therefore hard to support.
These are quotes from the new Demos publication So What Do You Do? available for download at their site. I've only just skimmed the document and am looking forward to a more thorough read over the next week or so but so far I'm impressed with their thinking on how creativity can be resourced through increased access to resources, spaces and meeting places and most interestingly stories of how this community actually works in practice, not in theory.
I'm hoping it may also help me answer that age old chestnut "what do you do" - I really need an elevator pitch!
should, for the most part, forget about issues, policies, even facts, and instead focus on feelings.
In an article in yesterday's New York Times (free subscription required) Westen is described as wanting more passion in politics - Bill Clinton thinks it's great so it won't be long before the rest of the Democrats row in behind establishing their USP as the party that's emotionally intelligent. The New York Times piece goes on to outline the rational and scientific justification for attending to emotion in political life which is awfully familiar if you're aware of the EI industry. For the record I'm not a fan of EI - while it may be a useful tool to begin a conversation about emotion in organisations it's still a rational instrument for the control of feelings and largely designed to manage and hide "negative" emotion. Cognitising emotion is reason not feeling and if we don't pay attention to how feelings (and their public performance as emotion) are generated in systems then we get more "irrational" behaviour and less intelligence about what's really going on. Organisations are emotional and emotion generating environments so feelings are valid intelligence in their own right and not experiences that should be considered toxic, dangerous or 'out of control'.
We also need to be aware that reason and feeling are inter-related and not separate domains that exist in parallel universes...but maybe I'm getting too emotional about this stuff?
Ernie is a 37 year old single male (?) muppet with borderline intellectual functioning (vs. ADD?) who presents with a chief complaint of a "silly squeek" when he plays the saxophone.
The patient is self-referred to Mr. Hoots, a wise psychotherapist & jazz musician, with a full practice (a "busy bird") who is experienced in a number of psychotherapeutic modalities.
After a brief period of observation, Mr. Hoots identifies the source of the squeek: Ernie is holding his support rubber duck while trying to play the saxophone. Mr. Hoots points out this maladaptive behavior pattern to Ernie and identifies corrective measure for him ("put down the duckie"). Despite repeated behavioral directives, Ernie is not able to follow through with Mr. Hoots' treatment recommendations and the issue of compliance is raised. Frustrated, Mr. Hoots uses self-disclosure as a psychotherapeutic maneuver, telling Ernie, "I've learned a thing or two, through years of playing in a band, it's hard to play a saxophone with something in your hand!"
Ernie remains resistant to Mr. Hoots' interventions. In the video rendition of the psychotherapy, during the Put Down The Duckie refrains, Ernie is shown to be participating in group psychotherapy with a number of celebrities (Madeline Kahn, Danny DeVito, Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, & Jeremy Irons) who all instruct and encourage Ernie to Put Down The Duckie while modeling the appropriate behavior of playing their instruments without a squeeky support animal.
Acknowledging the failure of these behavioral interventions, Mr. Hoots turns to a more psychodynamic understanding of Ernie's persistant dysfunctional behavior. Addressing the separation anxiety which prevents Ernie from parting with his duckie, Mr. Hoots reassures Ernie that he does not need to permanently part from his duckie, and adding a cognitive component, he takes Ernie through stages of imagining progressively more difficult forms of seperation ranging from putting the duckie in his pocket, to sending him off on a train, and finally to flying duckie off on a rocket! With his internal conflicts identified, his fears exposed, rehearsed, and allayed, Ernie is at last able to Put Down the Duckie in what is truly a successful psychotherapy.
Arguing for the value of the arts is a full time, headache inducing activity that most arts organisations and policy makers know only too well. Unfortunately, many of the indicators reached for are quantitative and economic, making the intrinsic value of the arts for their own sake more difficult to articulate. Liverpool is hosting the European City of Culture title in 2006 and there's an interesting project under way there to broaden out the indicators for precisely this measurement exercise.
Impacts 08 – The Liverpool Model, is a joint research initiative of the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, which will evaluate the social, cultural, economic and environmental effects of Liverpool’s hosting the European Capital of Culture title in 2008. The research programme, commissioned by Liverpool City Council, will examine the progress and impact of this experience on the city and its people.
This is a five year study organised around "indicator clusters" which include:
* Economic Impacts and Processes
* The City's Cultural System
* Cultural Access and Participation
* Identity, Image and Place
* Physical Infrastructure and Sustainability of the City
* The Philosophy and Management of the Process
More details about the research framework are available here. This is going to be a very interesting project to watch and I hope that it will go some way to offering a more creative framework in which to have conversations about why the arts matter and how we demonstrate more effectively (in a qualitative way) that they do.
The Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar is hosting a weekend of workshops, discussions and screenings on 28 and 29 July entitled Toys on Film. I'll be chairing a panel discussion on Sunday 29th July between 1 and 2pm at the IFI exploring 21st Century Toys – play or dismay?
How does your child play today? As Internet, mobile phone, computer games replace more conventional toys, what might be the long-term effects of such technology-driven play?
Leading representatives from Internet safety, film distribution, classification and parents’ organisations will be present to discuss this question and issues relating to contemporary toys and film.
What an impressive line up of panellists don't you think? Tickets are free (but do book in advance) and if you need further information call the education office at the IFI on 01 679 3477 or contact the booking office. You can always stay around to see Toy Story 2 which will screen after our discussion!
The slam poet/tech artist/paper sculptorRives does eight minutes of lyrical origami, folding history into a series of coincidences surrounding that most surreal of hours: 4 o'clock in the morning. This elusive hour, both very late and very early, appears often in art and literature as a way to describe the most extreme states of affairs. Rives -- aided by a nimble mind and extensive online research -- reveals 4 a.m. as an iconic moment, drawing hilarious historical connections. (From TED).
I wonder about the state of Irish arts criticism. More often than not the critics begin by telling us how disappointed they are that the show they are about to review isn't the show they want to review so they'll settle for what's in front of them (the sigh is almost audible) and off they go. It's still difficult to find an online listings portal for cultural events in Dublin that includes all art form areas and up until now online reviews were fairly jaded - that is until Dermod Moore decided to put pen to paper and start reviewing theatre in Dublin. Dermod is a journalist with Hot Press and a blogger and he's been attending Dublin theatre events (and a notable gig starring Barbra Streisand), paying for his own tickets and writing some of the most intelligent and informed reviews I've read in quite some time. (His reviews of the shows at the Abbey are top of the Google rankings).I hope the publicity people in Irish cultural venues start paying more attention to Dermod and his ilk, recognising that the power of the blog can be a great marketing and information tool for their events - if word of mouth is what sells a show then shouldn't all arts organisations be courting bloggers?
Another fine TED talk - this time from Charles Ledbetter. I heard Ledbetter speak at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier in the year about creative collaboration. There are so many interesting ideas in here for any organisation with consumers, customers or audiences...like - how do you organise without organisations? What do you do when your consumers, customers or audiences know more about what you do than you do? And of course...the advent of the pro-am. Interesting stuff
One incident that’s stuck in my mind was an interview I had 24 years ago for a financial consultancy. The interviewer talked about money, about wealth, about owning yachts.
Then he began to talk about the losers, the [sorry, but I’m quoting] c**** who didn’t recognise money and its importance, that in five years you could walk away, that you could have other people doing the work for you. That the world had two kind of people - people like him and the “stupid c****” who didn’t understand. He went on and on. It was like talking to low-end devil.
Finally, he let me get a word in. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m one of the c****.” And I walked out. One of the more terrifying experiences of my life.
At an individual level, each of us needs to do the same. I have something of an email habit, clicking "refresh" on my inbox like a rat in a Skinner Box - but I don't have a PDA/Blackberry (which is a bit like a meth addict proudly claiming not to touch heroin). I have decided I need to have one email-free day a week. The computer will stay off*.
We also need to examine the relationships that are mediated through these technologies. Are we driving people crazy with our behaviour? How do we manage ourselves to get the best out of our interactions with others? For some of us, this might be too painful. Best get back to hitting them with emails/txts/IMs I guess - that'll learn 'em.
I've just started to read The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (more about why later in the month) suffice to say it has one of the best opening sections of anything I've read recently.
There is no mystery to happiness.
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.
But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
inspired by Sigmund Freud's 1909 visit to America, accompanied by protégé and rival Carl Jung. When a wealthy young debutante is discovered bound, whipped and strangled in a luxurious apartment overlooking the city, and another society beauty narrowly escapes the same fate, the mayor of New York calls upon Freud to use his revolutionary new ideas to help the surviving victim recover her memory of the attack, and solve the crime. But nothing about the attacks - or about the surviving victim, Nora - is quite as it seems. And there are those in very high places determined to stop the truth coming out, and Freud's startling theories taking root on American soil.
Psychoanalysis rarely takes things at face value so I'm sure Freud would have appreciated the many promotional pieces for the book - award winning works of fiction in their own right. Freud is not a central character, he has nothing to do with solving a murder (the 'killer' confesses); and the interchanges between him, Jung, Firenze and other are interesting diversions but hardly central to the plot of a murder mystery.
As I mentioned here the book has a brilliant series of opening paragraphs but unfortunately it's all rather disappointing from then on. The strength of the book is its attention to detail. The descriptions of turn of the century New York are very evocative and lovingly written. The weakness of the book is also its attention to detail it’s generally over researched, over written, too clever for its own good and could use losing at least 100 pages. There are three stories going on. The murder (or is it?); the solving of the case and an attempt to draw together the areas of expertise of the author – psychoanalysis and Shakespeare.
The novel attempts to gather many of Freud's core ideas and use them as a way of developing and driving the plot. I didn't think it worked. The dinner party scene where Freud gets to have his dilemma about what women really want answered is but one nod to the psychoanalytically inclined reader but again, hardly important in the greater scheme of things. The book is far too contrived for me and I didn't know whether this was a covert lecture on psychoanalysis or a poor murder mystery in need of a credibility makeover. I read the book in three sittings and with over 40 characters I found it hard to keep up with who was talking about what (anyone who reads this a chapter at a time and keeps up with the plot gets my admiration that's for sure) and by the end of it all I didn't really care - I had lost sympathy for the characters and connection with the plot.
Yes, psychoanalysis gets a look in as an 'interpretation' of something (the 'victim' Nora is in fact based on Freud's famous case of Dora); Hamlet's procrastination is given a psychoanalytic makeover and Freud's Oedipus complex is revised so, we have an interpretation of two philosophical and psychological murders. Confused yet? Well join the club - I found the latter two interpretations interesting (and credible) but can't say more because it would ruin one of the more curious moments in the novel.
It's marginally better written than the DaVinci Code but in the same territory in its mixing of fact and fiction and the text reads more like a film script (I'm sure it's already in development) but it's too academic – The author includes an epilogue outlining the research that went to making sure so much of the book is accurate. I've seen several interviews where he talks about the amount of 'fact checking' that went into it. It's a novel isn't it? Would it matter if he took liberties with the 'truth'? I hardly think so. I have an interest in psychoanalysis so that's what kept me reading - I wonder how it reads to someone with no interest or knowledge of the area? One blogger I know said this about it:
That scene under the river made a total farce of the book, which up till then had an interesting take on New York society, Freudian/Jungian theory, sadomasochism, sexual innocence and perversion. After the river scene we were expected to believe the most outrageous stuff that not even a panel of big brother residents could swallow without incredulity.
But Freud gets the last laugh because the author is the
But then again, that's what you get when you search for meaning instead of being happy with what's sitting in front of you!
Tune in and add your own views to the conversation, I'll post the link to the podcast as soon as it's on the Newstalk website.
Update: I see a fictional meeting between Henry James and Sigmund Freud forms the basis for another book Lions at Lamb House by Edwin M. Yoder Jr. I wonder why Mr Freud is making guest appearances? What does that tell us about the state of psychoanalysis these days?
I'd almost given up trying to read the Irish Times online because of the amount of advertising busyness (particularly the flash stuff) you have to wade through to get to the text. So I've become a big fan of Adblock Plus the lovely application that gets rid of advertising noise on websites. Have a look at the difference between the Irish Times home page without Adblock Plus and then with it - almost makes reading the paper online a possibility again doesn't it? I realise that free content sites have to make a living with advertising (Irish Times is not a free content site) but is there really any point if the advertising inhibits readers digesting your content?
In this TED talk Stanford Professor and chair of Creative Commons, Larry Lessig presents his argument that the law is strangling creativity. In particular he argues that amateur culture (those who produce for the love not the money) is not the same as amateurish culture and the internet is moving us back to a read-write culture as distinct from read only one. He makes the compelling distinction between piracy/plagarism and using the tools of creativity for literacy in this new generation of digital technology.
Why is it that you need permission to copy? and if you want to create something 'new' you are defacto a trespasser because you have to copy? And why does copy equal plagarism in the eyes of the law - and indeed those who are resistant to new techno
