Creative Commons Conference
This Friday I attended a Creative Commons Conference in Göteborg, Sweden. The purpose of the conference was to get several people from the Nordic countries to come together, learn about CC, and figure out a way to market it in our own areas. The conference provided a lot of insight and helped me to use a lot of what I’m learning in school… It also taught me that if you want something done right, you just might have to do it yourself.
Friday, 9 AM. Göteborg, Sweden.
I woke up on a boat aka my hotel, with my husband. Tired, and hungry and in desperate need of caffeine we headed off in the rain to the Creative Commons Conference. I really didn’t know what to expect, what I would learn, or what we were even meant to do at the conference. I learned I really had nothing to worry about, as the organizers of the conference wanted people like me, who really didn’t know anything about Creative Commons in the first place; those who could go in with a clean slate so to speak.
We arrived at the conference and met people from Iceland, Sweden, The Faroe Islands and others from Norway. They were musicians, journalists, artists, web developers, photographers, filmmakers and even actors. Our kind of people, really. Creative types… Nerds to perfectly sum it up. We began the conference with an introduction to Creative Commons; an actually interesting powerpoint presentation created by a lawyer who works for and as far as I know, helped create Creative Commons. I was excited about the day and our tasks. First we would be split up into groups and discuss what we had learned that morning, and how we could explain Creative Commons in layman’s terms to people (like myself) who really didn’t know what Creative Commons was, or how to explain it if they did know. This was good for me because I got to put a lot of what I’m learning at TITAN to use (working in groups, elevator pitches, marketing, etc.) The people in our group were interesting, well spoken, and had very different and amazing backgrounds. Our first session, in other words, went over great.
After that we had lunch provided to us, and we had a chance to talk to the other people at the conference whom we had not yet been able to get to know yet. This detail may not seem important now, but I have to mention it for what happens later. At one point during lunch, my husband and another person at the conference were discussing different slogans to use for CC. My husband, laughing, said “Creative Commons: You Can Still Sue.” The people listening laughed, and the person he was talking to loved the idea. Alexander (my husband) joked that he should trademark it.
Later on, we got back together with our previous group members and our task was to form a specific idea or marketing scheme for Creative Commons to use, another fantastic exercise for me. Our group, by the end of two hours, had a really fantastic idea that we all formulated by ways of what my Rektor Jim Hart would say “You can’t get to banana without apple.” What I mean is, we all said at least one idea and someone lead it to one better. No one was protective of ideas or thoughts, we were all open to what would come next and in the end, we had a great marketing idea.
We now needed to share our idea with the rest of the conference, and we had already delegated one person to do this for us. Unfortunately, when push came to shove, our idea fell flat on the floor because of a terrible elevator pitch. Everyone and everything at this point was moving quite fast, and this is when you needed a perfect short, to the point, and interesting pitch… Just what I thought we had! After hearing other people only talk about barriers we had, and things we couldn’t do, I could hardly wait for our group leader to share our one solid idea… Which didn’t happen. Needless to say I was disappointed, and then another blow came. The person who we were speaking with at lunch raised his hand and said: “Well my group… Well, I, actually thought of a great slogan! ‘CC: You can still sue!’” Everyone laughed, and he was praised literally the rest of the session for ‘his’ idea. I was absolutely astonished. This person is here to defend Creative Commons, a licensing company that encourages people to share their work and not worry about people taking credit for it. I love CC, I think they do great work. But this person, this hypocrite, basically ended the conference for me then and there. First, it was the fact that the idea I had spent a lot of time and investment in fell apart, and then this. I have to admit I shut down after that and was only worried about going back to the hotel at that point. Especially since next, we were divided into our country groups and I listened to Norwegian for the next hour without contributing at all.
I can’t say the conference was a total success, nor was it a total failure. I exercised independently what I’m learning in school, and I should be proud of that. I came up with great suggestions and ideas and I should be proud of that, too. I also learned a lesson with the negative sides. You should always take responsibility for your ideas. I feel if I had presented the idea it would have had a much better response, and could have been something great. If Alexander had said his slogan (though I doubt he was even thinking of it) then, he, rightfully would have gotten credit for it. No matter how similar or capable you may think the people you are working with are, you should still go the extra mile yourself to make sure what is supposed to get done, gets done.
Comments