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Tech. Popped. Twice

Reader's with an interest in emerging markets research you may wish to check out my colleague Joe McCarthy's presentation at Pop Tech: Empowering People Through Mobile Technologies in Developing Regions on slideshare here. It provides a broader summary of the work Nokia is doing in this area than you'll find on Future Perfect.

As a presentation author whose research presentations have been uploaded to slideshare (for worse and for better without my knowledge) I'm in two point zero minds about slideshare. On the one hand it provides a useful service for making presentation material accessible and clusters tech orientated research in a relatively easy to discover format. And on the other hand the company founders are making advertising revenue out of someone else's work. It will be interesting to see whether and how slideshare offers sufficient control and revenue generating opportunities to original authors before someone gets legal messy. Given that the presentations are largely uploaded by individuals that day in court is a long way off.

From a design researcher's point of view I have the legal right to present this research in the public domain, but not necessarily the legal or moral right to generate direct monetary profit or to allow others to do the same. We spend a lot of time reviewing what material to reveal outside the company in particular to protect the people whose lives we are allowed to document. Slideshare and a multitude of similar services add an additional moral filter to the process of deciding what publish.

Expect to see less published, more widely disseminated.

Writing from | October 24, 2007 | Permalink