Corporate Artistry

Copy Right?

If I give you the right to copy/use my work, how far should that right go?

In a weekend post titled “Don’t buy this book” Seth Godin explains that an e-book he wrote in 2005 as a ”freebie” (available here) is now being sold on Amazon by BN Publishing. Seth does not know the publisher, nor did he authorize the publication of the book.

How is this possible? Chris Carfi at Social Customer points out that the Creative Commons (CC) license Seth used for the e-book does in fact allow the work to be used for commercial purposes. CC has a similar not-for-commercial-use license available.  For some reason though, Seth did not choose this license. Chris concludes that Seth may just be out of luck. I agree.

Seth points out the issue:

If you want to buy a copy, feel free... the issue isn't the royalties, it's that people are being willfully misled. This isn't a new Seth Godin book. There, now you know.

Clearly, Seth never intended to sell this book.  It has been and remains freely available, but I don’t think people being willfully misled is what is at issue either. The Amazon e-mail that precipitated the post did not refer to the book as “new”, only that it was available.  While it's true Seth is the author, the book is not hot off the press.   

The real issue is one of image and the lesson is one that anyone who writes or publishes using creative commons licenses should at least contemplate. The e-book Seth wrote is really a white paper setting up the business case and value of Squidoo, his latest web2.0 venture. While the book is insightful it’s a marketing piece and a sales pitch.  Some business readers who purchase the book are likely going to be left with a sour taste in their mouth, which I believe is one of the reasons Seth didn’t charge for the book in the first place (that, and giving it away is good marketing).  Did Seth ever think that someone would take the work and publish it in it's original format with a new snazzy cover?  Perhaps, but I doubt it, and that's the point.   

Lesson: People can and will do the craziest things with your work. If you don’t intend the piece to ever be a commercial work, license accordingly.   

Finally, I am not an attorney, and this is not legal advice.

Kickstand

If you are an entrepreneur in Boise or one of the surrounding cities, there is a group you should get to know.  Kickstand is a local organization formed to achieve one goal, empower entrepreneurs. To that end the organization holds meetings at least monthly where members from the community, financiers, layers, and others address many of the topics that are so key to starting a business.

Check them out.

No Small Potatoes

This past week I had the opportunity to hear Admiral (ret.) Archie Clemins who is a member of the Idaho Science and Technology Council Advisory Board share a presentation he gave to the full Idaho Legislature. The presentation encompassed recommendations given to the state to stimulate investment in technology.  The recommendations included a number of items including tax breaks for Angle funding, matching funds for grants and tax breaks for certain investments in bio-energy. Over-all, the total cost of the recommendations totaled just under $50 million. I would say this is a good first step. 

You can here the latest on this topic this Wednesday via webcast from 8:00am – 4:30pm.   The Governors Advisory Councils are meeting and hopefully, preparing to take the next step.

Loofah Warrior

Yesterday I was looking through the Amazon best seller list and I happened to check out the Bill O’Reilly book Culture Warrior.  As I looked down the page, past the editorial reviews, past the product details, I came across a section I had not noticed before.  The section was “Customers tagged this product with” followed by a list of tags. And what is the first tag on the list, loofah.  Loofah?  I cocked my head sideways like my dog does when I ask him a question. What does loofah have to do with Bill O’reilly? After a few seconds of dredging the pop culture sectors in my memory, I made the connection.  I couldn’t wait to see the other 250 tags.

Tags are tremendously usefully little things. Typically tags are used to describe, categorize, or associate things. Del.icio.us created a valuable business out of social bookmarks (tags).  But I think this falls into another category altogether. In this instance, Amazon users have used tags to not only categorize/describe the book, but also as a type of feed back (and as a type of social statement). It is the customer feed back equivalent of the ink blot. Is it useful? In the context of O’reilly’s book, not really. Aside from not enhancing the ability of other Amazon users to actually find O’reilly’s book, the tags paint a picture we all intuitively know; O’reilly is a controversial figure. But that is the point exactly.  Used in this this way tags paint a picture.      

What if your cellular phone service company allowed you to tag their products and services? What if you allowed your readers to tag your blog postings? What if news papers allowed you to tag their articles and editorial? The result would be raw, unfiltered and unpredictable. Would the results be useful ? Perhaps. Would the results be entertaining? Absolutely, but not for the faint of heart.

 

I Believe

Over the summer my wife and I visited The Winery at Eagle Knoll to see Toad the Wet Sprocket perform. Summers are warm in Idaho and the days seem to linger on forever, perfect for drinking wine and listening to some good music.

Shortly after arriving at the winery, the opening act was introduced, Matt Nathanson, from San Francisco.  I'd never heard of him.  Matt has an incredible voice, his music is from the heart and he connected with the crowed. Bonus! He was funny as hell, first bantering with the 6' 4" bald red neck and then getting every woman's inner rock star going with a sing-along warm up to Journeys Don't Stop Believin'.  Long story short, I left the concert a new Matt Nathanson fan.

Opening for a band who is most well know for a single song that was released in 1991 is not the definition of hitting the big time. My guess, however, it is just a matter of time before Matt makes it.  What Matt has working in is favor is the power of the Internet coupled up with word-of-mouth marketing. Music is a natural birth place for word-of-mouth.  It provides a focal point, a topic, something others relate to (or not), something interesting.  Matt's web site includes a journal, links to press clippings, a place to purchase his wares and a message board with 2,800 registered users, or better yet, 2,800 little marketing engines. Actually, it's now 2,800 and 1.

Now,the real trick and the topic I'll explore over the next few weeks is how to create 2,800 little marketing engines for my company, better yet, 28,000!

Day one...

Welcome to the inaugural Corporate Artistry post. Over the last twenty years I've had some extraordinarily diverse experiences, ranging from duty with the USMC as an aerial navigator, where figuring out where you where based on the position of the sun, moon and stars was, without a doubt, more art than science, to my work at an international consumer goods company that had taken process refinement to the point of pure art. Lately I've been involved with several technology start-ups that have started with "art" and then tried to figure out how to market and sell it. Currently I'm  working with one of the most talented marketing minds and corporate artists I know,  Chris Carfi. We are building a new company, Cerado. All of these experiences have led me to the conclusion that creating value is as much art as it is science. 

So, what is Corporate Artistry? The focus of this blog is to look at the corporate world with an eye towards the creative side of things and, hopefully, to present my perspective in a way that doesn't suck. This blog is a place to explore the cool and the creative and to  admire those among us that are true corporate artisans. Let the adventure begin.