planes, books and creative commons

I flew to Brisbane and back last week on Air NZ. Watched a film and some TV eps on the back of seat screen, which I took for granted. Coming back I figure I’ll do the same, had already mentally selected a couple of choices for the film, based on my previous scan of the selection available. Sit down in aircraft seat at Brisbane International to see a sticker advertising seat back entertainment coming soon, along with a photo showing me how it would look. One I was expecting the back of seat screen based on my experiences, flying with other carriers generally and specifically having had it available on the reverse flight but three days ago. So I was kinda gutted to find that this wasn’t the case. But having a facsimile screen sticker taunt my expectations really slapped the salt into the customer experience graze. I see the same stickers are now placed on the back of Auckland bus seats, where they are unreadable unless you bend down to read them. Winning strategy all round Mr and Ms Marketing bods.

So instead of a film on the way back I chewed all too fast through the sixth installment of Australian Labor politician/sleuth Murray Whelan, Sucked In. Whilst those around me were sucking in wind through their teeth as the lightening crackled around us on our descent into Auckland I was attempting to stifle my cackling laughter. Still no sign that John Clarke et al will dramatise anymore of these books beyond the first two novels Stiff and The Brush Off. Something should be done.

The purpose of flying to Brisbane was to attend the Building an Australasian Commons conference held by Creative Commons Australia. The Aussies are well onto it, well funded, well organised and producing projects that are being used throughout the global CC community. Though to be fair they based their version 3.0 set of licences on the NZ licences that were launched last year. I caught up with Louise O’Brien from CC Aotearoa New Zealand who indicated that they are still planning to hold regional CC events, including Auckland, and that they hope to launch a more complete web site in the future.
There needs to be greater publicity of CC in NZ and I hope these efforts raise awareness. I have come across a number of people using CC licences in NZ that were unaware that there were specific NZ licences available.