Copyright for the Communications Profession – with Louise Buckingham

September 29th 2011 

Creators, curators, or consumers…as communicators we are impacted by copyright in every aspect of our working lives. The digital age has brought a whole new range of contexts in which the laws now need to be considered and, as the discussion at today's Be Heard illustrated, there is often a fine line between a permitted use and a potential infringement.

Ross McCaul of the Copyright Agency Limited and Louise Buckingham, PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales,  facilitated an interesting and spirited discussion that explored some of the do's and don't's of avoiding copyright infringement. Such issues included relating to posting of curated content online, internal electronic distribution of content of interest to colleagues, content streaming and posting of newspaper articles about a company on the corporate website and sharing of content through social media.
 
Key take outs from the session included:

• Copyright subsists in a litereary, artistic or musical "work" once it is created. There is no need to "Register" copyright.
• The best way to assert and record copyright is to mark the work with a (C) with your name and the date. This indicates that you are aware of your rights to the work and it alerts people as to whom they should contact if they want to use or reproduce the work.
• Saving the work electronically serves as a record of the date on which a work was created and so can help prove when copyright in a work first arose.
• There is no minimum proportion of a work that needs to be copied in order for an infringement to occur. The test is one of "substantial portion" of the work. This can be as little as four bars of a musical work or a brief extract from a literary work.
• Offences can occur for both reproduction and communication of a work – so a digital transmission that attaches a work in which copyright subsists can constitute a breach in both these respects.
• There is no copyright in headlines, ideas, screening times of television programs or train timetables.
• Posting links directing an audience to the site on which a work originates is not an infringement of itself - but care needs to be taken to ensure that the content on that site does not constitute an infringement.
• Internal distribution of content, other than by sending  link to an article is a breach unless that distribution is authorised by the owner of the copyright.

 
The presenters also touched on moral rights of attribution and derogatory treatment of a work.
 
Judging from the discussion there were many more potential issues that could have been explored and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who went back to my desk and made some "adjustments" to our online content and knowledge sharing processes. The presenters have kindly agreed to make their presentation available to our members. 

To download a copy of the presentation, click here.

 

Speed networking with Anna Whitlam

August 26th 2011

Anna Whitlam, of  Anna Whitlam Strategy Structure & People delighted a crowd of  IABC Victoria members and new friends in a session of how to get the best of your networking opportunities

Anna spoke first with some high level observations and tips on better networking. The audiance was surprised to hear Anna's candid admission that networking is difficult for her too. Her take-away for the audience was " know that you are  not alone, it is difficult for every one, and networking is hard work" .  The group were then broken into smaller group with set excercises to work through and report back. The ensuing group conversation was frank, rich with observations and not without a laugh or two.

A snapshot of Anna's networking tips are provided here:

Look for Low Hanging Fruit – seek introductions through your current networks, family, friends. It is much easier  meeting or connecting with people who may otherwise be cold if you can link them to something / some-one familiar to you both.

Give and you will receive – networking is about connecting with people without the need for immediate gain. It is about generosity – give and you shall receive.

Move outside of your Comfort Zone – you have to make the effort to get out and about. This includes seeking out people you dont know rather than gravitating toward people you do know. Don't confuse networking activity with networking  outcomes - make sure you are making new connections.

Be yourself - although you do have to make an effort and be more gregarious than normal, you shouldn't be artificial.

Follow up – sharing information whether it be a website, article, or report with a new contact builds your credibility. It demonstrates your committment and confirms you are not just a schmoozer!

It was a great night, and by the look of the Linkedin Updates today many of the participants have focused on networking outcomes, not just activities. Thank you Anna!

 

Is internal the new 'beige'?

February 24 2011

 

PR Warrior Trevor Young dropped a bombshell at the IABC Victoria Be Heard event on 24 February when he suggested his experience of internal comms was that their outputs were often a bit 'beige'.

Rather than being a comment on the practitioners, Trevor suggested this 'beigeness' was usually an outcome of organisational culture that often saw companies short-change their own people.

So what did the members in attendance have to say?

 

What should marketing and PR realise about internal comms?

• We have no budget!
• The internal audience is an influencer
• Our people are advocates and we are the gatekeepers (in a good way)
• It's good to let internal know before external
• We need our senior leaders to be the champions

Has your organisation integrated social media into its communications?

Overall less than half the room were able to say 'yes' to this question. Of those that did, people from GE reported more progressive cultures, while there was also discussion on the ANZ firewall opening up for crisis communications.

What seemed to be the most common denominator on the night was the organisational uptake of Yammer, which was more popular amongst members than Twitter.

What are the examples of PR and Marketing you would hate to see infiltrate internal comms?

• Becoming too reactive
• The noise (creativity and colour) undermining the substance

Is 2011 a year for change?

• Yes – a move from one way to two way communication
• Large organisations will need to change their culture for that to occur though

Lots of other discussion took place, in the real world and the twitterverse. You can catch up with the conversation here, and add don't forget to add your own thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Executive Breakfast: Social Media, Control, Trust and Innovation

Last Tuesday morning, eight IABC members and their senior Executives gathered for an Executive roundtable breakfast with Deloitte Digital CEO Pete Williams

Breakfast in full swing

Some of the key points stressed by Peter were:

• The necessity of an 'entangled web' e.g. ensuring that all of your community facing technologies enable communities and cross pollination of content and information
• The only way to protect a companies reputation is to be authentic and on point
• The web world is self-organising, pointless to try and control
• The growing value of crowd sourcing (e.g. crowds can provide what you need quicker and more effectively)
• The value in using Facebook for business is that you are situating your business where your community already lives. (Pete predicts Facebook will become the most important website in the world)
• The growing trend of nano-campaigns (tiny, targeted niche campaigns)
• Innovation is not having the ideas, it is also the execution (e.g. forget about stage-gate and innovation models, just try it and test, use micro funding, come up with a prototype, just try it and test)
• When innovating, it’s OK to launch things that aren’t perfect. Launch things people like and build on it from there.
• Engaging with social media and being agile requires a highly permissive culture
• The hidden benefits of yammer include decreased turnover of staff, reduced email volume
• Conduct social network analysis to understand who your influencers are (e.g. draw from telephone, email and social media data)
• Some data will always be sensitive – common sense tells you what not to publish
• If people are abusing social media (e.g. Farmville at work), don’t ban the media, call out the behaviour
• Use a digital dinosaur mentoring program (use digital natives to mentor older staff to becoming digital immigrants – wisdom is transferred both ways)

Participants left the breakfast highly enthused and ready to take their new learnings back to their own organisations.

Pete is a sensation – he's credible, cool and extremely clever. With a pedigree including accounting and IT geekery, he has the perfect blend of credibility to inspire, explain and debunk the myths of social media. This was the best session I have been to in years and I would recommend it to everyone in communications, or indeed, anyone in any business today.

- Larissa Garvin, Director, Strategic Communications and Engagement at Worksafe

IABC Victoria is committed to bringing you the thought leaders of your profession. We will be actively looking for more opportunities to deliver outstanding speakers to our members in 2011. If you have a particular area of interest that you would like us to explore, please leave a comment or contact us at info@iabcvic.com.au