Many thanks to everyone who responded to my earlier email - the comments were all very helpful to forming my thoughts prior to the conference. We're half way through at the moment and I thought it may be interesting to our supporters to hear some thoughts from the c&binet conference. The main output for me personally has been to improve the presentation we're putting together for the "Workplace Learning Lunches" seminar programmes - things like seeing attribution as a form of soft advertising and saying new forces are shaping business and they shouldn't be left behind. Understanding the corporate context is important to effectively link into that. More on that later, when we finish the draft, which I'll share with everyone and would appreciate everyone's comments. The other output has been in the people I've met. Particularly interesting was a conversation I had with the CEO of a leading UK technology infrastructure company, which has over 4,000 employees. They have implemented wikis on their intranet to capture employee suggestions, and have seen an enormous increase in take up over the past year. He's invited us to come and visit the company and see it working in action, and I very much look forward to taking him up on this offer, and possibly including the example in the seminars. Other interesting people include Joscelyn Upendran who works for Creative Commons and a young entrepreneur developing a user-generated search machine (wikia anyone?) I had an opportunity to ask a question during a "free content" session - which was more about "freemium" (free to paid) content - which hopefully planted the seed in the mind of people to hink about Wikimedia communities when looking at this. Other snippets: - Lord Mandelson's keynote at 9:40 tomorrow is billed to include a "big announcment" - possibly draft legislation on copyright enforcement . - Lots of talk from big business interests saying there is a "narrow legislative window of opportunity" at the moment (i.e. before the next general election) - David Lammy, the minister pushing through copyright reform, gave an excellent speech, very insightful and understanding of issues. Quote of the day from him: "Good artists copy, great artists steal". Either a very talented person or he has an excellent speechwriter! - For a "creative" conference focussing on new technologies it was remarkably lacking in opportunities for delegates to participate in asking questions etc - format is largely a panel discussing the issue among themselves. - SIon Simon, another politician present, mentioned that the copyright debate is highly polarised between the industry and free copyright advocates, both sides are deaf to the other and they need to engage. Despite this the discussions on copyright have been largely one sided, unbalanced, with some fairly extreme language used - "copyright warriors", "green ink brigade". "a generation of stealing" etc. - A few facts to promote donations to WMUK: "London is a leading creative hub of the world" (EU Commission Director General), "120,000 books published in UK every year", "creative industries comprise 6% of the economy" (largest % in the world), "creative industries larger than carmaking" - David Rowan (WiredUK): "Government should free data - postcodes, ordinance survey" - "obscurity for some artists is a bigger challenge than piracy" - "we need a new settlement to liberate archived rights" - "we should have extended collective licensing" - "businesses spend huge effort in clearing licenses - need more effective ways of clearing large numbers of rights holders" - "copyright switches should be turned to "on" by default rather than "off"" - "working on a new digital license to allow museums to publish in-copyright articles" - "free to air TV can survive, but only if it reduces its costs base" (creative commons / user generated content anyone?) - "licensing details should be included in the metadata" Comments, as always, appreciated. Regards Andrew "Andrew Turvey" <andrewrturvey(a)googlemail.com> wrote: