Nice advertising remix here, definitely not produced by the agency:
Petrol or Johnnie Walker whiskey? They cost pretty much the same.
Archive for May, 2007
iCommons.org is calling for bloggers to help raise attention for an urgent fundraising campaign they launched yesterday.
You can read more about the campaign here, but I’ll give you the skinny version in the meantime…
- iCommons has one week to raise $63 000 for the iSummit in Croatia… Largely to pay for scholarships for 300 deserving volunteers from around the world.
- They are calling for “21 Visionary Patrons” to sponsor a “basecamp” each on the way to the summit. Each basecamp is $3000.
- You can help by adding your blog post, or vote (digg, muti etc) to help spread this idea – one of the “visionary patrons” might come from your blog!
- You can help by just popping the button into your sidebar… here’s some code to make that easy:
<a href=”http://icommons.org/fundraising/21-visionaries/”><img border=”0″ src=”http://icommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/3.thumbnail.jpg”/></a>
- If you’re a designer, you can create your own button and submit it for use as part of the global campaign.
The button is designed to live on blogs after the campaign is over, so you won’t have to take it down again after a week.
iCommons is an organisation that supports and promotes stuff like free software, open-education and creative collaborations online. Very, very important now, and increasingly important as the web becomes more influential in global business and economics, particularly for emerging economies in Africa. (more)
There’s been a real uproar in the blogosphere recently after David Bullard, a very popular journalist, slated bloggers in his weekly Sunday Times column.
In classic Bullard style, it’s over-the-top, opinionated, and tongue-in-cheek arrogant. The man is a master of fuelling debate and controversy…. typically selecting prominent public targets who will make lots of noise. Hence bloggers were ripe and ready to be picked…. And boy were they juicy! (This incident has been dubbed BullardGate)
I’ve often echoed P.T. Barnums assertion that “No Attention is bad attention” (if you channel it well). Colin Daniels, Sunday Times’ New Media strategist, would probably agree… Bullardgate has attracted a massive influx of traffic and inbound-hyperlinks to SundayTimes.co.za.
Kudos to the Sunday Times multimedia team for making the most of this (they grabbed the bullard by the horns) and immediately recording a follow video-cast series and dedicated page on their site.
Best of all, this gives me a good reason to point out that Mike and I were quoted in the same newspaper on the same day in another article about blogging: Business Times: Business Missing Out on Blogging.
I often drop the following two quotes into talks, to emphasise the fact that what I speak on is borrowed and built from the work of others:
Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal – Picasso
Interesting, considering the source of that one. And:
A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton
I mention them to emphasise the importance in business of sharing and collaboration in order to increase speed, productivity, and (ironically) creativity. This is a big reason why we should support Creative Commons.
Check out this vid of the recent iCommons Salon (entitled “Bring and Braai”) held in Cape Town, where Lawrence Lessig (CEO of Creative Commons) emphasises the point that digital borrowing and remixing is being criminalized… and what we need to do to make sure that we have the digital freedom to create freely. Jimmy Wales also appears with a call for more African Language contributors on Wikipedia. Heather Ford and I had fun MCing the event 
:
By the way, Missing Link sponsored and produced this video… They rock!
p.s. 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 :-p
