The Desire For Attribution
I need a sounding board. It's AI and robot-related in the sense that it affects the members of the community that generate content, offer support, and share ideas.
Here are my questions to the community:
In general, ideas being taken or appropriated is quite normal. There's also the case where good ideas also seem to rise to the surface in multiple minds when the time is right. Still, is it justified to still want some attribution or recognition for those ideas if you were the original source for them?
In the end, is it just best to advocate for yourself, rather than waiting to be recognized by others, build your own personal brand via social media or otherwise? The concept would just be to be the loudest voice for yourself and to have undeniable and documented proof that the idea is yours.
Personal remarks:
I'm struggling, I used to find personal reward and satisfaction in generating and sharing ideas, but that's been tarnished over time. I have had some ideas taken and used without attribution or they have been ultimately appropriated. I don't expect to always financially gain or see rewards from my ideas and contributions, but I do hope to see some recognition or attribution. I live by the concept: give credit where credit is due.
Generating ideas often takes me a lot of time because as much as I love and value creativity, my mind works so much better when working within limited parameters. I'm more engineering-minded and can execute much faster in a limited scenario rather than having to build a creative concept from scratch. Generating ideas isn't all that I'm talking about here, it's only half the issue. The other half is actually executing on them.
Executing ideas is the real battle, bringing ideas into existence is something that requires time and investment. This is where someone can really win or lose monetarily. It depends on how much time and effort to put into your idea and if you are even well-equipped to execute it. Often time there are people or organizations that are more equipped to execute your ideas than you are.
Should we then see our ideas as just the initial step in a process and not place any arbitrary value on them? The advent of generative AI also brings up the concept that ideas are now valueless (democratized) because AI can exude billions of ideas per second. We no longer need people to generate ideas but only to prompt them. This now puts much more value on the execution of ideas.
If I execute an idea, is my desire for attribution justified?
Hi Jeremie,
Having worked for a large corporate for most of my career I have been conditioned to believe that my ideas do not belong to me. I do not agree with this and it caused me considerable frustration throughout my career. I rarely received attribution or recognition for my ideas as they were most often taken by multiple lines above me. What was worse is I was not allowed to blog or post about my ideas prior to implimentation as I was bound by various NDA's and employee contracts.
I no longer work for a corporate and now I look at my CV and there is very little I can prove are my original ideas, even though they are commercially available products or systems in production today. I was lucky in that I have over 100 patents with my name on them but I don't actually get any financial reimbursement for their usage. The company I worked for owns all my IP.
If you are in a position to file a patent before you share with others is a good first step. You don't actually have to build the product to file a patent, it just has to be well documented and technically feasible. This of course costs money and your employer may assume ownership of your IP anyway. I do think if you can demonstrate you are an expert in your field and post your ideas as they arise in a time stamped format, you are in a better position to demonstrate your initiation and development of an idea.
Should you get attribution, Absolutely, Will someone take your ideas if they can and not attribute it to you, Guaranteed.
Thank you for the response @Nink
I don't know if I would ever file a patent but I do like the idea of publishing the idea with a time stamp.
For most of my content I have done just that, I have published YouTube, Instagram, TikTok videos, Instructables, and posts here in the community with time-stamped dates.
From what you mentioned, it seems my desire for attribution is founded but actually getting attribution is another story. I would rather not have to chase someone to get to force people to attribute, some people just don't even have that in their nature.
Do you think I should just assert myself even more and publish my content more aggressively and more often?
> Do you think I should just assert myself even more and publish my content more aggressively and more often? It depends on a number of factors. If you are working on ideas for your employer and your employment contract stipulates that your intellectual property belongs to them or if it can be assumed that it belongs to them then I believe you would need to obtain clearance. Personally if I was your employer I would say no. I would suggest you wait until after product launch and unfortunately I would probably not give you credit.
If it is personal work and you are allowed under any contractual agreement to work on something outside of your employment then it would also depend. Do you want to keep the idea secret, will you manufacture the product or a variant of the product in the future.
I am going to assume what you are really are looking for is increased level of visibility and public awareness of your skill, expertise and contributions to your field. If this is the case then publish away. We have all watched videos of people who have little to no expertise in a subject who publish hundreds of videos and have millions of followers and you ask yourself why is anyone watching this. It is always refreshing to view content from someone with real skill actually publishing what they are working on versus just taking someone else's ideas and producing tons of content.
Thanks again @Nink
It's a bit of a grey area as I have gained a vast amount of knowledge and experience over the last 2 decades working for my employers, most covered under NDA, some not. It is sometimes hard to differentiate. If I do plan on producing some content closely related to my contract, I do ask for permission first.
You assume correctly
I am quite frustrated when seeing people give advice related to my field who are not fully informed, lack experience, or mischaracterize information.
hi jeremie
i think the hole world has become a grab culture . i agree you should always atleast ask , a person to use there designs . i also think platforms like thingevers were most things are free , is part of the problem . if your an annest person you dont do that . i can imagine its easy to , make excample an alan robot head like will design . i allreddy saw them on youtube . there's allot of bad stuff going on in this world . its all about the money and who's first . i hope i understand a little off your question .
Hi Jeremie,
For me your post hits home in a "I feel your pain" moment. You have a creative problem-solving mind and you've invested in your knowledge and skill set to be able to do what you do and you do it well and you can see you've contributed a lot to others and in larger communities like here, but you aren't feeling the appreciation and acknowledgement returned. It even feels a bit taken advantage of.
It's like energy out, but where is the energy being returned, right?
I'm like you, I believe in giving credit where credit is due as well. At work if I did 90% of the work but others did 10% or even 1%, I make sure everyone knows it was a team effort. Sometimes I see others lead a project and I might have contributed a significant amount to the project, yet I'll hear the project lead say "I" a lot instead of "team", lol. I've made peace with it and I try to understand it isn't a slant towards me and shouldn't color my outlook negatively.
What would it look like for you to feel positively about your work being appreciated?
Thanks @Nomad and @Justin, I appreciate your input!
@Justin I do really like your question and I will have to consider it closely. It's not something I have seriously asked myself.
I guess the problem is that there aren't that many good ways that I can think of to formally recognize people in the public space. It's usually a distant afterthought.Off the top of my head, I can come up with the following: You could use shoutouts and tags in social media posts or have a contributors list at the bottom of a project or video description. You could create a social media post or video that directly thanks the people that inspired/helped you. In a community forum like this, you could show idea credit by elaborating on someone's post by stating for example: "To build off what @Justin was saying..." or "@Justin had a great idea when he mentioned...." There's also wikipedia as well to immortalize credit.
Thinking in reverse I will now ask myself the following question: "How will I recognize others in the public space and make them feel appreciated for the work they've done and the ideas they've contributed?"
When it comes to these kinds of things I shouldn't forget that sometimes it's easier to "be the change" rather than just desiring it.
Awesome points Jeremie! I really do believe if people see us practice gratitude and do positive things like spread appreciation for contributions or similar works that lead to inspiration in any public spaces it will have a positive impact.
With my Cylon project I'v tried to share some credit for inspiration I've taken from Robo Rad and Will Huff. I could do much better though at recognizing others.
It's curious to me, because every time I succeed at something with my robot or even art projects, I do think about all the things I learned from others that contributed to this thing I just accomplished, yet I largely keep that appreciation private in my own head and don't acknowledge others as often as I should. This thread inspires me to do better. Thank you for that @Jeremie!