Blasting Off With The Copia Institute: Creative Solutions To Big Innovation Challenges

from the swap-ideas dept

Mon, Mar 23rd 2015 12:37pm — Mike Masnick

A week and a half ago, we launched the Copia Institute, our new business network/think tank. The two day event was really quite amazing, and tons of great ideas came out of the discussions. We'll be sharing some videos and some ideas from all of those discussions as we go forward, but wanted to start out by sharing the presentation I gave at the kickoff, explaining just what we were trying to do, inspired by the Homebrew Computer Club forty years ago. You can see the opening presentation here: As mentioned in the presentation, one of the things that we're focused on is bringing together lots of smart people to think through creative approaches to big challenges, that don't require waiting for bureaucrats and policymakers to make some big decision -- and the number of great ideas that came out of the summit directly, and in a series of conversations since then, has been astounding. In fact, there are probably too many good ideas. However, in the coming days, weeks and months, we'll continue sharing with you the followup on some of these discussions, including additional gatherings, new research and new projects, all designed to help drive innovation forward.

I know that many of you who were unable to make the inaugural summit have expressed interest in staying informed and helping out as we launch various initiatives. Please, stay tuned, as there will be plenty of opportunities to join in the discussions and to help accomplish some amazing things.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: abundance
Companies: copia, copia institute

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

antidirt (profile), 23 Mar 2015 @ 12:40pm

Congrats and good luck. I hope you're more successful with this venture than you have been with your earlier efforts. I look forward to your concrete ideas, whenever you decide to share them. I'm especially looking forward to what you guys come up with concerning copyright law. Hopefully you'll be willing to defend it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chris Brand, 23 Mar 2015 @ 12:50pm

abundance
"there are probably too many good ideas"

If only there was somebody who could help you figure out how to deal with that abundance...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 12:50am

Congrats on the successful launch! :) I was interested to finally hear the whole story on California's worker-swapping law.

Blast off!!!!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ninja (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 3:44am

Whatever small effort to bring sanity and progress will always be appreciated. Keep up with the good work!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pragmatic, 25 Mar 2015 @ 3:30am

Re:
Copyright is not property, Antidirt. End of discussion.

As it happens, Mike currently defends the law according to its original Constitutional purpose as a temporary monopoly privilege for the ultimate benefit of the public.

Had the terms, etc., been left alone, I'd be defending it too but since its enforcement has created an onerous, oppressive regime I'm less inclined to defend it and more prone to thinking we should probably get rid of it altogether.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pragmatic, 25 Mar 2015 @ 3:32am

Re:
Heh! I see what you did there. That was one of the funnier parts of the video. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities Mike spoke of and look forward to seeing more of these.
[ link to this | view in thread ]