creative commons

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, reflects on the pressure placed on artists to be geniuses. She proposes the older idea that creative people have a genius that visits them rather than being one.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

Ed Catmull of Pixar speaks at Stanford's 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference on running a creative company. He argues for surfacing small problems early and building good teams, with stories like the Toy Story 2 crunch.

Larry Lessig's TED talk argues that copyright law chokes creativity, drawing on John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the ASCAP cartel to make the case for reviving remix culture.

A five-minute clip of Ira Glass on the gap between good taste and early creative work. He says beginners know their work falls short and must keep producing to close the gap.

A TEDxBangalore talk by The Ugly Indian, an anonymous collective, asking why Indians tolerate filthy public spaces. It describes their volunteer approach of quietly cleaning up spots and turning the tragedy of the commons into a victory.

Mike Monteiro's CreativeMornings talk on getting paid for creative and freelance work, covering contracts, working with lawyers, and refusing to work for free. It is delivered with blunt humor.

Jonathan Blow's CreativeMornings talk arguing that business models shape game design, drawing an analogy between 1970s TV and HBO and between free-to-play and premium games. He calls for games that inspire awe rather than chase constraints.

Dylan Beattie's NDC London talk on code written for art, fun and curiosity rather than utility. It includes quines, live music programming with Sonic Pi, and a memorable closing.

Dan Pink's TED talk argues that traditional carrot-and-stick rewards often fail for creative work, drawing on the candle problem and social science research. He points to autonomy, mastery and purpose as better motivators.

Andrew Sorensen's OSCON 2014 keynote in which he live-codes generative music on stage using his Impromptu environment while narrating his computational and musical choices. It imagines concert programmers as a performing art.

Louis CK speaks at a 2010 NYPL tribute to George Carlin about how Carlin's habit of discarding material and writing a new hour each year changed his own career. He becomes emotional describing it.

Jensen Harris of the Office 2007 design team tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Ribbon at MIX08. He covers early prototypes, mistakes, and the UX principles used to design and validate it.

Morphcat Games explains how they fit Micro Mages, a full-featured NES game, into 40 kilobytes. It covers compression of sprites and level layouts and other space-saving tricks.

Mick Gordon's GDC 2017 session on composing the Doom (2016) soundtrack. He details his compositional process, production techniques and the experimental instrument and synth design behind the music.

Mike Monteiro's Creative Mornings talk "Fuck You, Pay Me" with his lawyer Keith Levine, on contracts, scope creep and making sure designers and freelancers get paid. This copy has Portuguese subtitles.

Raph Koster's 2014 GDC Next talk on what science says about creativity, with practical steps game designers and developers can use to be more creative. It frames creativity as applying existing patterns in new contexts.

David Heinemeier Hansson's RailsConf 2014 keynote argues that programming is closer to writing than to science, with clear code produced by iterating through drafts. It prioritizes clarity and craft over technical superiority.

Joseph White, creator of PICO-8, retraces the design of the fantasy console and how tools can shape and guide creative work. He discusses cozy, constrained design spaces and the influence of user-made cartridges.

Brandon Sanderson's keynote on AI-generated art, arguing that the artistic process and the journey matter more than the finished product. He explains why he rebels against generative AI in creative work.

UCLA professor Dario Nardi presents brain-imaging research suggesting that different Myers-Briggs personality types use their brains in different ways. He discusses how each type can reach a state of creative flow. It is aimed at a general audience.

C J Silverio, former npm CTO, explains how the JavaScript package commons ended up in the hands of a for-profit company with no accountability. She discusses the cost of running a registry and what the community should do next.

Adam Grant's TED talk on the habits of original thinkers, including procrastination and embracing failure. He argues the greatest originals fail the most because they try the most.