Tony Edwards

Creative Exhaust: The power of being open by default – (not so) live blog

- 2 mins

This is a not so live blog of a great talk given at TEDxGrandviewAve titled ‘Creative Exhaust – The power of being open by default’. You can catch up with Brad on his website as well as Twitter.


For most of human history the act of creation has been an isolated task for the intellectual elite. The barriers of entry to creation was high, bearing mind that people were generally not literate.

This means that only the final work was ever distributed. The web has changed this in a short time.

The web is 25. The creators, when reflecting on the history of the web came up with four reasons to explain its success.

  • Ubiquity
  • Royalty free
  • Decentralised
  • Built on open standards and collaboration
  • As the web has evolved so have the tools, many of which fill the above criteria which facilitates collaboration.

    Git has revolutionised the open source world, through its encouragement of clear licences. Brad uses the CSS-Tricks licence as an example of the mentality of the web. It’s open by default.

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    Web developers are the first to stay up late to publish their thoughts and idea with the web being the perfect medium.

    He talks about a friend who works at a cancer research facility. By increasing the size of the font on the donation form they received 20% more donations. They were not however allowed to share this fact as it would destroy their competitive advantage.

    Competitive advantage!!!!

    Brad and his wife have donated their time to a local food bank to improve their site. Everything, even the contract was openly shared.

    It’s uncomfortable to share work before it finished. It forces articulation of ideas and uses the community to improve the project. The greatest benefit is that others have helped to improve the site. As a consequence like minded people have gravitated together.

    This hub served as a blueprint that could be used to help other.

    Data exhaust is the byproduct of a life online and its this data that makes companies rich (FaceBook). Brad suggests that a creative exhaust can be more beneficial to the world.

    Brad found out that this project became mandatory reading for a former lecturers web design course.

    By sharing we get great feedback. Without sharing we get none.

    It’s not about what you do, it’s about what you enable other people to do.

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    Whats better. Increasing donations on your own site by 20% or increasing donations to every non profit by 20%.

    The web is an amazing tool to that facilitates the things that society needs to flourish. To do so Brad gives three pieces of advice.

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