The 30 Second Commons

With my recent work on ccValidator and mozCC , I’ve been faced with the challenge of communicating about my work to lay-people (my parents, siblings, therapist, partner, etc). In each of these cases, the people I’m talking to ask what I’ve been working on. They’re educated people who can synthesize information and form their own opinions, but as soon as I start talking about the Creative Commons , their eyes glaze over.

Now I think this has as much to do with the way I’m communicating as it does with their interest. I intuitively know what the CC is all about, but have trouble articulating it in the 30 second time slot they’ve mentally alotted me. I’m proud of and excited about what I’ve been working on, so I want them to be excited to. So I’ve been contemplating how to sum up the Creative Commons purpose and mission in 30 seconds. Basically two well structured, coherent sentences.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far (with thanks to the Creative Commons: About Us page ; have something better? Leave a comment, please.

“The Creative Commons works to expand the range of creative works available for others to build upon and share. It does this by building a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright options which steer a middle course between no artist protection and all rights reserved.”