Good Content Travels Fast

Copyrights must be a thing of the past…in the last several weeks I can’t count the number of people who have seen my House & the Cloud message on someone elses presentation! For some reason, when people see a good thing, they roll it right into their own material without a second throught…Good content travels fast. One story recounts a presentation over in the far east…an attendee comes up to the presentor at the end of the session and says, “Do you know Dave Stelzl?” In another case, someone, who does not know me, is putting together a marketing seminar right from my Data@Risk book – no mention of the book or the author.

While this might be unethical, there’s another problem. When a speaker gets up and presents material that came from someone else’s published materials (in this case Data@Risk or the House & the Cloud), and someone recognizes it, they completely discredit themselves. The other possibility is, they see the material repeated at a later date, either by the real author, or another copycat unethical sloth, at which time they either learn the truth or discredit the real author. Neither is good. What is the solution?

Good speakers are always losing their material to wannabes. Rather than stealing material, simply quote the author. It saves you the embarrassment of exposing your character flaws, allows you to appear well-read (even if you’re not), and gives credit where credit is due. Good speakers do quote others – there is a lot of great content out there, and well respected authors like to be quoted. It helps the speaker and the author…Copyrights actually do mean something!