Update yourself on ‘Creative Commons’ licensing

Legalities were left outdated when the digital revolution took hold of electronic communications. Legal additions or changes to laws on copyright, attribution and ownership etc. have been slow to emerge. The world-wide nature of digital conflicted with country-specific laws. Legal traditions across countries restricted and controlled the use of media – using the equivalent of the ‘all rights reserved’ statement.

Enter ‘Creative Commons’ licensing (CC). This was seen as a breath of fresh air in a murky environment. It grew out of the ‘free access to assets’ mind-set that was prevalent in the online community.

So, what exactly is ‘Creative Commons’. Since it was introduced in 2001, it has grown to include all types of communication: audio, visual, and text. The definition is:

An organization that has defined an alternative to copyrights by filling in the gap between full copyright, in which no use is permitted without permission, and public domain, where permission is not required at all. Creative Commons' licenses let people copy and distribute the work under specific conditions, and general descriptions, legal clauses and HTML tags for search engines are provided for several license options.’

(From PC Magazine Encyclopaedia)

There are other definitions you may care to look up, but this introduces several concepts worth noting.

The definition mentions an organisation and this is Creative Commons itself, where you can get the best understanding of how the licenses developed, what they cover and how to use them. See creativecommons.org. The other concept worth noting from the definition is that these newer licenses work alongside, to complement, existing laws on copyright. They do not supercede them. They fill in the gap of use that digital access created.

Because CC licenses have grown to define various types of use and media, it is handy to get an overview of what is available so you can decide what might suit a particular client for a particular set of circumstances if they and you create new assets. Alternatively, Creative Commons allows you to search and use a variety of assets freely in your projects and this might be of value to you too.

Emma Crowley in the BU Blog, Getting to Grips with Creative Commons Licensing (15.4.14) summarises the current set of licences from Creative Commons using infographs. This gives you a great overview and will help you match the right type of license for the proposed use of your own and your clients’ assets. She defines the common features of all the licenses as allowing: copying, distribution, display, digital use, reuse in digital format, worldwide application, and lasting for the duration of copyright, but not allowing, revocation or exclusivity. She defines each type of the six licenses that form the Creative Commons group of licenses too from the most freely useable to the least free. You embed these licenses freely into your code where they are recognised by digital means.

You might be comforted to think that all your asset use problems are solved now: but not so. You really need to think through exactly where and how people might like to use your assets. Hugh Rundle in his recent blog, Creative Commons, Open Access and hypocrisy (23.3.14), notes a difficulty created for him by a request from a commercial publisher for use of one of his blogs. He chose to rethink and change the license, and in his post explains his thinking about just what non-commercial means to him. We have looked at the commercial/non-commercial divide in an earlier post, and it is one of those things that gets fuzzier the closer you look at it.

Another thing to remember about CC licences is that they can't be revoked and last for the duration of copyright. There may be circumstances where this isn't appropriate. For example you might offer free access to something as a 'loss leader' with the intention of commercialising it later ... or even just change your mind. CC doesn't let you do that because even if you change the licence type there is no way of knowing which licence your end user was subject to when they downloaded the material. None of this is a problem as long as you understand the licence.

So, maybe more types of license have to be created to cover more ‘use’ cases. Keep tuning in to creativecommons.org!

Digital projects scope, feature or requirements creep – everyone's nightmare

A lot of people really don’t like the word control.

It has such negative connotations in general and it implies squashing creativity. When you apply it to digital projects - or try to - it seems to be top of the list in job requirements. We have to accept that in our creative industry control in projects is highly important for the sake of the business. To put it frankly, without control the money coming into the business disappears into the æther. You end up working for nothing if the client takes control of your project, if they insist on getting more than they had implied at the start.

We can see from the title that project creep has been called different things. We need to understand that just because our processes for development might have changed over a few years, project creep remains a big issue. So even if you have moved away from the old waterfall approach to defining projects (that arose out of IT practices with its requirements specification and functionality specification) to Agile responsive development, or anything in between, or composite of these: whatever you call it, project creep still exists.

Llew Jury implies the waterfall approach to project creep in his blog, Scope Creep on Digital Projects (17.1.13) but gives a clear case about scope creep. Frank Cervone is very readable about an Agile control process in his presentation Lightweight project management for digital development projects (17.1.2012). See slides 27, 28 and 45 particularly.

Back to control then or maybe we should be calling it client expectation management as per Frank’s definition. Whatever approach you use, you need some control processes in place. Now these have to be agreed upfront or the client will move into a push cycle without the fear of penalties: just what you don’t want. The answer has been different for the different development processes. The older style approach advocated the time, cost, qualitytriangle where you educated the client that if they asked for anything that affected any one of these parameters, the other two would have to change. This can still work across all projects although it may be implemented differently.

In Agile development the client needs to agree that the bite-sized pieces of development (called sprints) that they agree to will be paid for even if they change their minds about needing them. The work can be redundant or altered but the time and effort to produce them has to be paid for. The project manager or team leader in Agile has a responsibility to protect the developers from any interference from the clients during a sprint.

Yes, these links are oldish in digital terms but this creep issue has not gone away. We shouldn’t dismiss advice when we think it is a bit dated. We need to think it through and apply it to now. We are all a product of previous world-experience whatever we would like to think. Just to reinforce that this is still a current issue take a look at Rachael Greene’s, A Good Scope Today Keeps the Scope Creep Away (27.8.13), and some tips for avoiding creep from Tim Ballard, Feature Creep (12.3.13).

Then if you really want to get to grips with this nasty issue (especially good in prep for any job interviews in a digital position) there are a series of articles in the PM Hut’s blog on Scope Creep.

Sweet dreams!

Sign-off – whose responsibility is it?

Digital projects – as with any other projects – are defined and split into stages of development. Now this can be true of the older waterfall approach to coding projects but also applies to agile development. The key point of sign-offs is that they have been linked to the payment schedule. Signed-off stages meant defined cash flow points for the business. That’s why they have been so important. But maybe this is being redefined.

If there is a project manager then often sign-offs would be part of their job spec. But it is amazing to see that the people responsible for sign-offs have proliferated. The relationship with clients is the important factor. And this relationship can be described in several ways: are the clients ‘clients’, ‘stakeholders’ or what? Is sign-off about money, satisfaction or quality?

Nadia Bianco sees sign-offs as a part of client management. She looks at sign-offs more as involvement and reassurance that the project is running smoothly for the client than money stages for the business in Part 1 Client Management (18.3.14).

JISC comes down heavily on the Quality Assurance side of the coin. They see the sign-off process as part of a Quality Audit system. Who signs off and when are important pieces of the audit. See the Personal Checking section (down the page) for this approach.

Ann Borg takes the stakeholder approach. Although her blog relates to designing training (and it doesn’t specify digital training development), the principle can be applied in a digital context too. She advocates defining the stakeholder’s sign-off role so that it is unambiguous as this will then make the process of sign-off smoother: Top tips to build and manage your stakeholder relationships.

So, whose responsibility is it in your company to get sign-off? What are they getting sign-off on? Why are they getting sign-off? It seems that the link to payment stages isn’t always the motivation now. Or, is this hidden by other factors?

Broadband ... the new UK postcode lottery?

So, your company has grown enough for you to move out of your front room or from that tiny office above the launderette and find somewhere better. Or you are on the run from your creditors and need to move house. If you are an iProfessional then you need your broadband. This is most likely to be what is called ADSL, which stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (or Loop). Fortunately you have a wide range of suppliers to choose from, even if most of them actually sell you something they bought from BT Wholesale.

What is more difficult is predicting just what kind of broadband you will get once you are connected up.

Having spent almost the last 20 years of my working life managing a database of digital television reception data I have some experience of the difficulties of predicting such things. With broadcasting it is the vagaries of how radio signals travel across the landscape and interfere with each other. With ADSL it is the layout of the phone network and how signals deteriorate as they travel down the, often ancient, copper wires between exchange and your premises and how they interfere with each other in the exchange. ADSL uses a high frequency carrier signal to carry the broadband data between you and the exchange. If you're lucky enough to have a 'fibre to the cabinet' (FTTC) connection (branded as 'Infinity' by BT) then the ADSL part only has to go between you and the green cabinet in the street. The onward connection to the exchange is handled separately using optical fibre. (Note that just because your exchange is 'enabled' for FTTC it doesn't mean every cabinet is.

The Wikipedia entry on DSLAM ADSL modems gives some interesting figures for the likely connection speed for the latest ADSL2+ technology which ranges from 25 megabits over just 300 metres down to 800 kilobits over five kilometres. You can see that since the line length in rural areas is usually longer, the connection speed is slower.

You can do a line speed check once you are in your new premises by putting your telephone number into checkers on the BT web site (and others ... more in a moment). However, it's likely you won't know the number until you move in. Even if you do, it can be misleading. When I moved house last time I was able to check broadband speed with the previous occupant's computer. Despite this, when I moved in, with a different ISP, my speed was significantly higher ... but it could have been lower.

I asked a question about broadband on Linked-In's BBC Alumni group and it has generated a lively discussion, just demonstrating how frustrating it is for anyone trying to run a business that needs broadband, even if they are in an urban area. The news today has the Guardian reporting on customers in central London who can't get a phone line installed and Facebook saying they'll use drones to provide rural broadband connections. This is clearly a significant problem, but one you don't know you have until it's too late. [April 1st: More criticism for BT about how rural broadband is, or isn't, being rolled out]

So, if you are planning to move office, what can you do? I'm assuming that your proposed office isn't a serviced one with a ready-made internet connection. Firstly check that there is a phone connection already in place. This should be a direct line. The property web site RightMove now has a broadband speed checker attached to each result. This is probably based on the post code rather than a line to the premises but it's a useful indicator nonetheless. An alternative is PlusNet who, if you say you don't have a phone number, will allow you to search on post code and choose a premises from a list (which BT won't let you do). These will be useful but, sadly, there is no totally reliable way to know until you know the phone number.

One final note, a respondent to my LinkedIn topic said that moving from a consumer supplier to a business supplier got him an increased speed; so talk to your ISP ... or move to a new one. Good luck.

Stakeholders – a key piece of the digital project management jigsaw

Paying attention to stakeholder influence has become more and more important in defining the success of projects. Even if the project comes in on time and within budget, if the stakeholders are not happy, then the project hasn’t succeeded.

Katharine Thornber states this when she identifies Stakeholder identification and analysis as her second overlooked task in project management in Project Neglect: Four Overlooked Tasks for Starting Projects (27.2.14).

Let’s go back to basics. Who are ‘stakeholders’? They are any people that can influence the outcome of your project. So this can include internal as well as external people. There’s the rub. It’s hard enough getting your diverse and maybe dispersed, cross-functional team focused in one direction; but several divergent yet powerful client-facing perspectives affecting your direction, now that’s the reality of digital project management.

Many digital jobs - from marketing related, account management and project management - now demand being able to manage stakeholders. However, it’s very hard to find any helpful information on what this means in a digital environment. Classic stakeholder management has been around and analysed for many years. There are processes and tools that are recognised to help. We cover the power grid, RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) charting and Communication chart in our book with several updates in this blog.

It’s good to see a process in action though and Melanie Frank learns some basics from one of her students in Agile Coach learns from Coachee (3.3.14). Yes, even Agile can learn from older techniques! Melanie describes five stages of stakeholder management analysis affecting a project as demonstrated by her student;

1. Visual representation of the challenges.
2. Stakeholder mapping.
3. Analyse each stakeholder requirement.
4. Summarise core asset of success criteria.
5. Define core areas for improvement.

The link between identifying and analysing digital stakeholders with marketing and project management is well served in a recent PhD thesis by Steven Boyer, Glasgow Uni. Steven investigates the digital games industry. He defines his second and third stage of investigation as looking at the influence of institutional stakeholders and the way in which they analyse data about the audience (he prefers ‘player’ as a term for the reasons he gives) relating to the images in games, and the power-play within institutions that then influences the production of images in new games. This is the closest we got to a definition of how important an influence stakeholders can exert on digital projects. Congrats on the doctorate, Steven. Playermaking: the institutional production of digital game players, February 2014. Yes, it is necessarily written in a very academic and rhetorical style but we hope you can gleam the nuggets.

Overall, the environment in which we are operating is changing: no surprises there. What this means is that the business public and the way they are improving - in what is called ‘digital literacy’ - is becoming a factor we can’t ignore. The general public are changing their digital literacy too. This concept is one that needs to be watched and analysed as it affects how people relate to our products/projects. There’s a definition of ‘digital literacy’ and more at JISC – well, Northumbria Uni on behalf of JISC - that sums it all up in plain English. Honest, we didn’t aim to plug some universities over others!

When the economic situation improves, employees walk: Are you ready?

Just as you think your company is coming out of the repressed economic times and you can focus on improvements to the bottom line linked to project success, the idea of your talented employees going elsewhere may not be a factor you have considered. Worse, if they do walk, there is a skills shortage so it is harder to replace them. Can you do anything to mitigate this? Have you even thought about it?

The Hay Group have conducted research into the trends for employees moving jobs worldwide and predict that the UK will see this peak in 2015. The poor economic times meant that employees were prepared to stick with a job because there were genuine fears that there may not be another around. But, as the economy improves and confidence improves, employees will find that there are more jobs around. This means that they can leverage their expertise and skills for more money and they do not have to put up with aspects of their working environment they haven’t liked.

The Hay Group list five factors that have an impact on employee retention as:

• Confidence in the organisation and leadership
• Room for employees to grow
• A fair exchange between employee and organisation
• An environment for success
• Authority and influence

Here is the Hay Group web page. It’s worth watching their 2 minute presentation on ‘Preparing for take-off’ to get the impression of why and how they have reached their analysis. It’s linked to from the page.

These wider concerns for a company are echoed in ‘Higher pay does not equal higher retention rates’, HR Review, 26th February 2014, (look at the quoted last paragraph for this.) Also, ‘Great with Talent’ has researched ‘Why employees leave and retention for 2014’, meaning improving retention in 2014, we believe.

Well, do your employees line up with those the Hay’s five factors? Would you know? It’s interesting that more and more companies are conducting ‘exit’ interviews with employees who are leaving to get to grips with aspects in the company that work against retention. These ‘exit’ interviews need to be handled well, of course, so there are specific training courses to prepare people to get the truth from leavers, and, even specialist companies that will do this for you (See ‘Great with Talent’, as an example). Do you have anyone qualified to conduct ‘exit’ interviews? Are you prepared to use the information positively to change your company?

It may well be worth your while, as the costs of recruiting someone are real costs. There’s the recruitment agency fees (if you use them), time for reading CVs and interviews, meetings to make decisions, then the integration time to up-skill him/her to get them working efficiently for your circumstances, teams and clients. You may well have to take on a contractor to cover the interim etc. The Hay Group mention 12-18 months to find and get a new employee up to speed. Is this true for you?

And, just to rub it all in: there’s a great question in ‘The Value of Project Team Members’, Francis Hooke, 19th February 2014, that asks, ‘If you are a project manager and you completed your project on time, in budget, but 30% of the team members have left the company, did you fail?’

See Quality Project Delivery for the answer!

An interesting week in UK image rights

You know that old Chinese curse: 'May you live in interesting times'. This last few days have been interesting for followers of copyright in photographs and other images ... but not necessarily cursed. If you're putting together a web-based project some things just got a lot easier.

We are already well advanced in discussions about how to implement the scheme for using orphan photographs. I've attended a few meetings at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) discussing how the licences might work. One key discussion point is just what constitutes 'non-commercial use'. So I will briefly digress from my main point to refer you to an old document from the Creative Commons people which, based on a survey, does just that.

The reason why this question is important is because there is a significant difference between what rights owners will allow a 'commercial' user to do as opposed to a 'non-commercial' one. And often it is the use itself rather than the user; so it's complex.

Recent UK government legislation made provision for the IPO to occasionally issue 'notices' to explain and clarify aspects of copyright in a way that can be understood by the average person. This is what Lord Justice Greer once famously called the man on the Clapham omnibus back in a 1933 court case. So now there is some suitable reading for that bus journey for the IPO has issued its first such notice ... for photography on the web. They plan to issue more and will link them from this web page. On the whole it's a very good document. There are a few niggles I have with it but it is possibly the first step towards a universally useful Copyright Highway Code, so I'm all in favour.

Images on the web made the news yesterday, when the huge image agency, Getty, announced that it was now providing a service to allow people to embed images from its library, free of charge, on web pages that fit their quite broad definition of 'non-commercial'.  The story broke in the British Journal of Photography and their piece includes helpful elaboration from Getty's senior vice president of business development, content and marketing (must have a very long business card) Craig Peters. He says that a web page or blog with Google ads would not be considered commercial.

The fact today that a website is generating revenue would not limit the use of the embed. What would limit that use is if they used our imagery to promote a service, a product or their business. They would need to get a license.

The question of whether Google ads on the average blog is 'commercial' or not is one issue that makes deciding where to draw the line between the two very difficult. [There is a separate issue of just what Getty's initiative might do for the stock photo market and for stock photographers. However, Getty are being pragmatic: there is a lot of web infringement of their images and they now have a plan to control and eventually monetize this.]

Finally, in case you missed it, the British Library have placed over a million of their scanned images (basically etchings from 'old books') into a Flickr Photostream for anyone to use. The BL have said that they are not aware of any copyright restrictions, which is probably good enough for most of the rest of us. I should add that this project, with definitely out-of-copyright images, should not be confused with scanning of 'out-of-commerce' books, which may well still be in copyright. That's a whole different ball game. The typewriter engraving above is from the BL collection and, good for them, includes title and attribution metadata.