This morning I saw a post which essentially suggested that you should use really cheap freelancers to help you build a website that you don’t really need to do anything with other than take care of the substantial yearly earning it will bring you.
I’m sure that for some that can work, but for most of us, nothing comes unless we put substantial effort into it. Just over a year ago I hadn’t done any public speaking or teaching, or writing for that matter. I’d attended a few conferences and events and I’d mentored, held workshops, presented etc but it was all at work, just as the conferences and events had all been through work. When I started to freelance I had to rely a lot more on myself in order to make things happen. Funnily enough that also made me want to be more active and as a result I reached out and started to explore a side of my profession that I hadn’t so far been really involved in.
I’m quite pleased with the way things have progressed over the last year but I’ve worked a lot of extra hours to make it happen. My submission to Euro IA last year, which was my first public speaking event, was a quick write up before the midnight deadline on the last day, but other than that anything that I’ve written has taken its fair share of time to do. Though writing comes fairly easily to me I still spend substantial amount of time putting together the more official things like proposals, outlines, bios or contributions. For the shorter pieces most of it it’s still fairly quick but I’ll be honest, sometime I can fret over a short synopsis or panel question for an hour or even two if I don’t think it flows. So yesterday, when I stumbled over something I’d written presented under someone else’s name I got a little bit cross. It wasn’t a big thing but it still wasn’t right. It was a direct copy paste but without any attribution or mention of my name what so ever. Though the matter has been solved and there was no ill intention behind it, it did make me think about my reaction.
My gut reaction was similar to that of a small child, namely “That’s mine. Not yours.”. Probably quite common but not very noble (though it’s not very noble to use what someone else has done either). After that first reaction I then reacted with a “Hmm… that’s not very nice…” wondering why it made me so cross and why I felt I had to have my mark on it. It wasn’t a big deal but apparently big enough for me to care.
I’m just over a year in when it comes to all of this and I have put in a lot of extra hours to be able to achieve some of the things I wanted to do speaking, teaching and writing wise. With all that extra work that I’ve put in over the last year it didn’t feel completely right that someone else would take some of the credit for it. After all I’ve done some of it in order to establish myself out there so that more opportunities around e.g. speaking, teaching and writing come up. So, to see what I’d written presented as if it “belonged” to someone else it made me a bit defensive.
Amongst some people, luckily not that many in our profession, there is this idea that the internet can make you rich or famous with very little effort. Yes, there are some exceptions of near one hit wonders but for most individuals, bloggers or start ups, substantial amount of time has gone into creating what you’ve created but also making people aware of it. Angry bird was e.g. not Rovio Entertainment’s first game. They started the company (under a different name) in 2003 and the first release of Angry birds happened in 2009. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes but it’s easy to forget about that when we read the headlines of successful startups or internet ventures. The other week I read an article in my local news paper back home about a 19 year old guy who tweets for a living. It sounds simple and like anyone can do it. But it’s not as simple as just sending out a few tweets a day. For months he’s built a loyal and ever growing following base and spends the equivalent of a working day to keep his tweeting living going. And that’s how most things work. Very little in life comes without some effort put into it and the least we can do in order to help each other along the way is to ensure that we include the rightful attributions when we find something we like. A simple ‘Inspired by…’, or ‘via @twittername’ if someone has tweeted a link that we then pass on goes a long way. And so does mentioning someone publicly that deserves getting a bit of attention for something they’ve accomplished.
Tomorrow – Day 277 | Stop and look up
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/kenjonbro/4873195806
