Turn Your CC Up Past 11

This image is from the imagination of Bryan Mathers who releases similar sketched ideas under a Creative Commons license on his Visual Thinkery site.

As he describes his work:

These visual thoughts are usually a result of a conversation, stumbling across a blog post or someone tweeting some verbiage at me. All these images are available for use under a Creative Commons licence – I’m always interested to hear how you used them.

I’d become aware of Bryan’s style in seeing his images in presentations by Catherine Cronin and Doug Belshaw, in looking at the badging work he has been part of at City and Guilds.

A few weeks back he contacted me via Twitter direct message:

I see from the twitters that you have undertaken a project with those super people at CC. I have some thoughts on CC (and how it’s often misunderstood). My Visual Thinkery business model sort of depends on enough people understanding CC. I wondered if you’d be interested in helping me articulate some of them visually, and in turn possibly make use of them in your project?

This led to a wonderful conversation where we talked about his rationale for sharing works under Creative Commons, how attribution is an act of gratitude, etc. He relayed that many times he does not have to track down the places his work is re-used, sometimes with credit, sometimes without, because people will tell him when they see it.

We brainstormed this idea of a possible role for people aiming for a Creative Commons Certification, to be a “Defender of the Commons”, e.g. people who are positive advocates. And thus he drew:

To the people who defend our creative commons – I salute you @cogdog @mweller @amyburvall @dajbelshaw pic.twitter.com/7Js0ZSwDb1

— Bryan Mathers (@BryanMMathers) May 12, 2016

Our colleague Kelsey Wiens has said she is making that the tagline on her CV

And out of the blue today, Bryan shared another visualized idea from our conversation

Make some noise…
A @creativecommons thought from a conversation with @cogdog #edchat pic.twitter.com/7rbOBv7Uav

— Bryan Mathers (@BryanMMathers) July 8, 2016

I find this interesting to think of us, our work being not just some binary of open/closed, but on some continuum between © and CC, and naturally, we hope for more on the noisy side

I hope we get to do more work with Bryan; he not only has these skills to visualized ideas but also the ethos on the value of openly sharing his work. It makes it easy for me to say this: