Context – Part 1

After posting Part 2 before Part 1 – I should get with the program, so eight months later, here’s Part 1 with some more general thoughts about context.  It’s really about content within context. 

 

I think content and context are intrinsically linked. We watch plays or listen to an opera today with the understanding that when they were written there were other times. We take them as a social comment on their times and within that context they become understandable. Of course there are the great classics that tell us truths that hold true to this day. And I take the word truth in its broadest sense, as there is no absolute truth as we so well know (or should know).  

Reading and Responding

Patience is not one of my strong suits. It serves me well in the heat of production to be comfortable to make quick decisions and to act on instinct. And I am usually right.  But I do have some ground rules. 

 

I have learned (yes, the hard way), to never respond to an email that elicits an ‘emotional’ reaction, or a complex answer on impulse, or as I might rather call it, with efficiency. Best case scenario I can afford to sleep on an answer, or go for a walk in the park.  If not, I get up from my desk and wander around the office for a bit.  We are so trained to answer immediately, be it because we feel it’s expected – the 60 minute rule - or be it that we desperately try to stay ahead of the curve on our in-boxes.  We’ve all come back from a meeting or lunch break to the mother-load of all inboxes.  That’s the moment we are thankful for the few spam messages that eluded the filter.

Copyright, Copyleft and Other Considerations

Since we just recently were on the topic of right vs. left I thought I’d educate myself a bit on copyright law. My interest in the topic came up during the recent Digital Hollywood seminars here in New York on a panel about the art of the deal.  Lawyers on the panel used a lot of verbiage that I had certainly heard of, but lets face it, had little educated knowledge about.  Did you know what a “sunset provision” was? No, not a deal involving Sunset Boulevard, nor Before nor After Sunset. 

 

Here a quick overview of some of the concpets that came up during this and other pannels: Copyright, Sunset Provision, Creative Commons Licenses, Copyleft, Public Domain, Fair Use, and FRAPA and what they mean to me as a content producer and filmmaker.  Texts in italics are copied if not noted otherwise from Wikipedia or other sources (noted). 

 

To bring it to a point:  this is really a discussion to be had about the space between all our first Amendent rights (as US citizens) and our rights as content creators. With the event of the internet in general and social media in particular the landscape has shifted into a new dimension. Legal concepts and structures like Fair Use, Creative Commons Licenses and FRAPA give us protection, rights and options to negotiate that space between our right of freedom of speech and our right to protect our work as content producers.   

Storytelling

Attending the event I posted about last time was an amazing experience. My friend Susanne Mueller put on this evening at the PSYA at Marymount College where 15 of us where sharing stories about our lives involving holistic women’s leadership and mentoring. Each had about 2 minutes to share. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I had prepared the thoughts and story I shared in my previous entry called “Mentoring”.  

 

The evening was powerful. The fact that 15 people shared a story without holding back and the other panelists and the audience listened captively created an amazing energy around the room.  The women came from nearly all continents and backgrounds; some from academia, some from the arts, or with business backgrounds; a real hodgepodge of ethnicities and the ages ranged from students to retirees.  

 

Mentoring

I’m speaking at a panel tonight at the Marymount Manhattan College’s Psychology Alumni Society on Women and Holistic Leadership.  The topic is Mentoring. I’m curious to see what I learn, and in the interim, here some thoughts on the topic. 

 

I’ve met some pretty fantastic people, men and women, both in my personal and professional lives. Some I only realized later had been mentors; some were clearly in a mentor role to me from the start. I thrive to emulate what I admire or value in a mentor the most and try to apply it to my own live where possible. I feel however, being “infatuated” with a person and wanting to be just like your mentor, no questions asked, is not a mentor relationship, that’s just being a groupie or member of a fan club.

Right from Left

I have a pair of socks.  One with an “L” on it, the other an “R”.   Some days I bother some days I don’t’. You see, I have to THINK which sock goes on which foot.  When I see the “L” and the “R” it’s not an automatic process there is a bit of guess work and some thinking involved.  Maybe it’s because I’m dyslexic. 

 

The other day I was sitting on a hotel bed about to put my new iPhone 5 headset into my ears and yes, it now matters if you put them on right to right and left to left ear, or not.  I happened to look at my socked feet and voila – the thinking part had been taken care of in the early morning when THEY were put on.  “R” to “R”, “L” to “L”…. awesome.  That I needed my reading glasses to see the miniscule “R” and “L” on the ear buds is an entirely different matter.

Mode of Communication

Found on Swiss Miss Blog. Thank you!  I'm a sucker for these wimsical diagrams...