Free London seminars on running an open creative business
Free culture - giving versions of creative works away, and even allowing others to copy, distribute, sample or create derivative works from them - is at the heart of these new opportunities. This approach seems alien to many in the creative world who assume that free culture cannot generate income, but a freer attitude to cultural distribution will help you connect with a new audience, to develop a more engaged audience and even to make new business connections.Link (Thanks, Michael!)The Creative Business in the Digital Era seminar will help you understand the opportunities presented by open IP (intellectual property) and how being open should be a central part of your creative business model.
The project is being prepared openly, under a Creative Commons licence, on the Creative Business wiki.
Who should come?
This seminar is aimed at people interested in doing business in the open environment presented by rapidly developing networked communications. You could be a C-level executive or an independent creator, or anyone in between, from any size of company:* C-level executives, independents, freelances, entrepreneurs, corporates, SMEs
* Musicians, record labels, music publishing companies
* Writers, journalists, publishers
* Film makers, production companies, broadcasters
* Visual artists, photographers, artists, illustrators and designers
(Disclosure: I'm a founder of and advisor to the Open Rights Group)
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Wow! We could really use this at The Groundswell Collective. Anybody willing to fund it?
This sounds like a very interesting idea, I'm into the concept, but I do not understand how creative professionals are supposed to generate income with this model. I understand how this could help people reach new audiences and make business connections, just not how we are getting income from our images (in my case as a photographer) if anyone could use them for income as well.
Please discuss this, thanks!
Sounds like it could. Mr. Doctorow should organize something like this in Toronto. Besides, I'd rather give my dollars to my Canadian brothers and sisters. Or maybe do a workshop at a sf-f-h con.
#2: to some extent, nobody is really sure. A few models are emerging, but which ones will turn out to be dominant, no-one knows. For software, it seems to be service (installation, management, customisation, training). For music, live performances.
For a photographer, I suspect the service path may work: people would pay you to photograph what they want, rather than what you want, and/or for expert post-processing of the images. You charge them fairly for the time you spend and let them do what they like with the photos afterwards.
In some ways, it's a "growing the pie" approach: you may get a smaller slice, but out of a bigger pie it should still work out well.
I'm working on the Creative Business in the Digital Era project along with Michael.
#1, James: all the materials, including recordings of the presentations, and the exercises for attendees as well as the case studies and other materials, will all be up online under Creative Commons licence. You'll be able to take them and present them - or build up on them - wherever and whenever you want.
#2, Brook: The point of this project is to look at how people are both giving stuff anway, and making money from it. We have spoken to writers, film makers and a record label, but so far, we haven't been able to find many photographer working in this way, despite looking pretty hard! I think #4, Sabik has a very good outlook on the problem, but one thing I'd like to do is prompt discussion amongst the photography community to see what potential models for photographers could be.
#3, Jeff: As I said, it's all CC, so you'll be able to take it and present it yourself!
SUW, I will be sure to take advantage of that option. Thank you for doing the important work you're doing - keep it up!
Thanks for your helpful responses.
There is another issue that comes to mind, that of Fine Art photographers (or any other fine artists) that are trying to make a living from their work. In this case no one pays them to take and post-produce the work, so the above idea would not be of benefit.
In addition I am still skeptical about the benefit to commercial photographers as well. In some service fields like perhaps wedding photography, that may work fine, however, for fields such as advertising I could see the photographers (or other image makers) getting completely ripped off. Big money advertising relies on creative imagery and makes a huge profit, why should we let them take all the profit from our skills and talent? I put a lot of time and money and expertise in to my work and I am hoping that it will allow me to have a fulfilling career, which also means relying on my skills to pay my bills and knowing I will be fairly rewarded.
All this said, I would still be interested in figuring out how this would work, perhaps in limited cases?