On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Watchman <skunkingrahim@gmail.com> wrote:

@All.

I speak from experiences similar to Aki's with the car seat alarm. In the 90's ( albeit late 90's ) i was amongst the pioneers in KE with Flash technology and animation. With this, Tanzania had even fewer thus forth, i presented myself in 2001 to a company in TZ which no longer exists, i think it was called something similar to the Priting Hub. The idea was an ad for Coke. I was young. And was fresh. They were "family friends" so the concept of trust never arose.

The idea was never good enough for them. A week later, it was on TV. Actualized and paid for. Needless to say. I consulted legal matters but they had muscle.

I have not walked in to a meeting thus far after that without and i will stress this very strongly. Not without an NDA signed. This is a very powerful document that gives you: the Creative / the Idea person strength.

I agree that 99% of what we think of is recycled ideas 1% is Creative new Ideas. But so what? you have the current idea. Go for it. Take an NDA, get it signed. and when you get taken advantage of, it'll be your best friend. It's the same as a prenup at a wedding. Cover your rear end.

Once your NDA is signed, get a sign off in place for all your meetings with your client. That way you'll be saying 2 things.
1. You're a professional
2. You're a professional that can't be played around with.

This has been my model of working for the past few years.

I will try and be more descriptive and also have my contracts forwarded on the list for the benefit of the group.

When i said why can't we as like minded individuals survive. I meant quite simply, why do we need to support large corporates when we can work on our own?

I for example may not be a big firm but have a Design, Photo, Video and Web agency. My core focus is on quality.

How many people here are for Quality?

Watchman.

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 1:59 PM, ndungu stephen <ndungustephen@gmail.com> wrote:

There is a problem I have with this idea of "theory" and "execution" argument:

Case and Point:
You come up with an idea in theory; a company likes it and says they need a demo.

Lets say its a programming system you create in C++

You break your back and create the demo. They bring their "best minds" to absorb as much as they can from the demo so they see how your idea actually works. Then they tell you that they are waiting for the 'management decision'.

Since the company has muscle power (money and all); these "best minds" recruit "beautiful minds"; they describe your system; and fund them to create the same system; but they insist that the new developers use "Java" (for example).

And since they paid for development to these new "beautiful minds" ; then the company now owns the system.

What do you do in such cases? You knew that you cudnt get an audience (or contract) without showing what you can do.. and once you let out your idea,, its out,, and the best you can do is hope they dont try to Screw you!

===

This is the scenario in most of these conflicts; but my thoughts are, instead of trying to screw up the 'small man' out of 3 million shillings (someone adding value) ; when you can spend 80 million on some stupid advertisements;

Why not as a company negotiate with these new individuals; pay them off; or keep them relevant during the development process (cos the person who came up with the idea has much more insights on how far the whole thing can go) - And everyone is happy !!!?

Else this is what I see playing out: You screw someone, or you screw a bunch of people; these people shy away and rumors begin to spread

e.g "Orange is better than QB for preserving ideas"... "Or KTN is better than CTV to develop TV programs"

And since the "creative team" was kinda poor in the first place and was just ripping off ideas,, people stop coming to bring ideas. The ideas these companies have stolen may lose their flavor, or get competition after a few years.

Meanwhile; the people good at coming up with ideas continue coming up with other ideas; but they will avoid those companies that have become "inclined planes wrapped helically around an axis for a number of turns" (screws)

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--
...and I shall shed my light over dark evil.
For the dark things cannot stand the light.

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