Creative Technology Professionalism

IP rights and their importance in the creative industries.

What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual property is any form of original creation that can be bought or sold, be that inventions, literary, art work, design, symbols, names and images used in commerce, it is an asset like a car or a house, it need to be protected from unauthorised use. Types of intellectual property protection includes copyrights, design rights, patents, trademarks and registered design.

Types of Intellectual Property Protection

Creative industries core relays on art and technology, the professionals in the creative industries produce innovative creation, they create intellectual property products such as music, films, games, designs and even logos they are all need some protection as they are considered an asset with a market value that could be exploited by unauthorised users or competitors.

Does it stifle creativity in the creative industries?

It is important for the inventor to protect their invention considering the cost of inventing it.

And that is exactly the case with patents, it gives the inventors years of exclusively managing their invention to cover the cost and make some profit out of their product before it enters the public domain.

But is this always the case?

Does IP law restrict competition and creativity?

Sometimes patent protection can be excessive and could affect creativity, a live example could be the patents war between Apple and Samsung. Such misuse of the intellectual property laws allowed the appearance of what is called patent trolls, who get patents with the goal of suing those who violate them.

The importance of IP for web development:

In the UK copyright vests automatically in a work that is original it doesn’t have to be unique, it must not be copied but must be created as a result of some skill, labour and judgement, and it should be recorded in writing or otherwise, which can also include a computer memory.

Therefor any original content such as design, code, logo, text and images that are included in a website are automatically copyrighted.

If the web developer is not the owner of any material that are used in a website, they have to obtain a license from a copyright owner to use, alter and include these material into the website.

If a web developer created a work for his employer, the copyright of that work belongs to the employer, copyright ownership must be agreed regarding work that is made by contractors as it would normally belongs to the contractors’ not the client.

Working in the creative industries: is freelancing the road to success?

Creative industries is one of the most appealing sector for young people nowadays, with all the technologies and cultural impact around us, each year the number of graduates are rising while the open jobs are almost stable, the competition for a secured jobs is rising, we often hear parents of graduates complains about how hard is it to secure a job for their children, facing the struggle to get a secured job, young graduates tend to head toward freelancing.

The Benefits of freelancing within creative industries:

Flexible working hours: freelancer can work whenever they want.
Flexible working place: freelancer can work from anywhere they like.
Control over the job: freelancer can choose the job to take and client to work with, unlike working for a company while they have to do whatever they’re told.
Be their own boss: freelancer has all the control, they don’t have to listen to anyone other than their client and themselves.
Keep all the profit: no matter how big or small is the project they are working on, they can keep all the profit or allocate it to expand their business.

The drawbacks of freelancing:

Inconsistent workload and cash flow: an employee can rely on a steady income to pay their regular expenses, unfortunately that is not the case with freelancer, unless they are lucky enough to secure a few clients with regular work.
They are responsible for finding their own clients: freelancers has to undertake the legwork to get jobs, there are ways to do that, online like freelance web developer jobs, or through networking.
Freelancer have to do more business activities: freelancers are responsible to do all the required administrative work, sales and marketing and accounting matters.

The importance of networking within the creative industries:

Business networking is building a business and personal connections and contacts for purpose of securing more business related opportunities. It is considered a crucial skill for any entrepreneur. The creative industry in Scotland on a business scale can be considered a small community especially if you focused on one discipline such as web development, in order to expand any business an entrepreneur needs business related contacts, a freelancer needs contacts to secure more jobs, a graduate needs contact to simply hear about job opportunities.

Does the concept of professionalism apply to the creative industries?

Professionalism is a set of qualities, skills, knowledge and behaviours that are gained by higher education/training and by practising a profession, professionals usually are governed by rules and code of conduct.

Some people argue that for a person to be considered a professional do not have to adopt any ethical guidelines or has to undertake any high education, and the key word to be professional is practice, by practising their work they gain more experience and considered professional. In my opinion being a professional has to adhere to the ethical side of the job, a person who deals with people and society has to have some guide rules to deal with that society in the way that serves them better.

Creative industries is businesses inspired and driven by individual creativity and skills, which has the economical potential of creating wealth and jobs, it includes advertising, art, crafts, film, music, software and computer games …etc.

Creative industries are built around culture and talent and driven by youth, it has a contribution of £10 million per hour to the UK economy.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/creative-industries-worth-almost-10-million-an-hour-to-economy

People who work in the creative industry field are usually governed by some rules and code of conduct just like other professions, it is expected from them to be able to understand their customers’ needs and to be bound to their contracts showing a level of respect to the work they are expected to achieve, as the lack of any of these qualities can seriously harm others.

Therefore professional code of conduct is important in the creative industries, for example a professional web developer have to adhere to some ethical behaviours such as being honest with their client, being able to deliver their work in time, not to publish any misleading information, not to share any information about their clients, not to use spywares.

What Makes a good portfolio or showreel?

What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is an Italian origin word in English has two definitions, either a brief case used to collect sheets of papers or maps. Or a range of investment held by a person or a company, it has many more similar definition but they are all describes a grouping or a collection of materials that in a way showcase the range of products that is related to a business or an organisation. But nowadays a person’s portfolio is a range or a collection of evidence of his skills, expertise and learnings represented in pieces of his own work.

With the rise of the technology most of these portfolios nowadays are electronic or e-portfolio, these evidence or work pieces are assembled and managed on the Web, so the user can benefit from sharing it or send it to someone electronically.

So what makes a good web developer portfolio?

A strong and relevant skill sets to the kind of web development work that web dev is specialised in, there are three trends of web development each has a required set of skills.

Front-End Web Developer: is responsible for building what the website user see and interact with in the browser. The required skills for this kind of development is a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript in addition to these languages there are some frameworks to insure good looking content regardless what kind of device used to view it like Bootstrap, Backbone and AngularJS, there are also libraries which is a packages of codes that is put together which are useful and time saving like jQuery and jQuery Mobile.

the following link provides more information about the type of required skill set:

https://skillcrush.com/2016/02/11/skills-to-become-a-front-end-developer/

Back-End Web Developer: is the dev that is responsible for the back end of the website, where the data stored, managed by an application and the server behaviour. The skills required for back-end development are a combination of a server side languages like PHP, Ruby, .Net, Python, Java, C# and database languages like MySQL, SQL Server or Oracle. also should be familiar with frameworks such as Spring, Ruby on Rails and Node.js

the following link provides more information about the type of required skill set:

https://www.roberthalf.com/technology/blog/back-end-developer-skills-what-to-know-to-be-in-demand

Full-Stack Web Developer: is a developer that combines the two side of the story which is building the back bones of the website and can communicate with front end language to meet the client needs and requirements.

figure source: http://www.skilledup.com/articles/reimagining-the-full-stack-developer

For a Web developer it is utmost important to represent his portfolio online, assembled with images, wire-frames and links to show his skills in the field. It is expected to see these skills in his own website that represent his portfolio.

Some inspiring portfolios:

http://cihadturhan.com/

http://www.fcinq.com/