Earning money by giving away: Sebastiaan Ter Burg at TEDxUHowest
Channel: TEDx Talks
Date: 2013-06-17

Who is Sebastiaan ter Burg?

Sebastiaan ter Burg is one of the few people that will not complain if you reuse, remix or republish any of his work without payment. He even encourages it. No, he's not crazy. Sebastiaan is an open content creator: his photos, videos and other works are available under free licenses for the world to re-use, remix and republish. It often ends up in hyperlocal and international publications and gets millions of views on sites like Wikipedia. The best of it? He's been doing this succesfully for several years and his business is growing. 
 
Before he started his own company he studied business information management and worked as a project manager for several Dutch governmental organisations. In this period he became a self thought photographer and videographer. His lack of education in these fields gave him the freedom to experiment with different business models. 
 
Sebastiaan can become a bit evangelic when it concerns open content. That's why he frequently gives talks on this subject and motivates other creatives to free their content.
 
Sebastiaan lives in and works from Utrecht, The Netherlands. 
 

 
What is talk all about?

Earning money by giving away

How do you want to earn your money? Strangely enough this question is not asked very often. Most schools only teach one business strategy: protect your work. Squeeze every penny out of it. And drag violators to court. All this negative energy can't be good for anyone. 
 
Another negative effect is that a lot of useful, beautiful and inspiring content stays behind financial bars. 
 
But there are other ways. Licenses like creative commons and platforms like kickstarter offer new ways for creatives to share their content and make a living of it. 
 
Sebastiaan will tell his personal story how he experimented with different business models and adapted to more open licenses over the course of several years. He argues that awareness of alternative business models should be raised and that every entrepeneur should be able to choose a business and licensing model that fits him or her best.

About TED and TEDx

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)