the Net at work
Just heard from a colleague about an unfortunate? release of a new cookbook. It seems a very well known chef who is also an international television personality has just written another book and unfortunately it seems a Word version has escaped from the publisher so it is now flying around the Internet uncontrollably. If this is all true and the leak was accidental, I wonder what happened to the poor person who was responsible. Here's a dilemma for the author - what should he do? He is extremely well known and well liked and very, very successful (ie well off). Here's a suggestion - the book's out now so potentially hundreds of thousands of Net (email) users have it already or soon will. How about making it an 'open source' (excuse the pun) cookbook. Make it Creative Commons or something similar. No doubt many, many people will purchase the high quality print version but why not have a free one too? Give it to the community although as I understand it, the cook in question is already one of the most generous and does an awful lot for people in need already. The Internet is a fantastic thing but this does serve as an illustration of how seemingly naive actions can very quickly get out of control. If this all did happen a number of people will probably have been hurt in some way because of this unfortunate event. Following up on this story - it appears it was a hoax (and also not so new) but it is still makes an interesting hypothetical. What could you or would you have done in if you found yourself in a similar situation - try and recover some of what may have been lost, turn it round and exploit the marketing potential of it through the web's viral marketing reach etc. Cheers, and good cooking.
