A CogDog Franchise

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Cristina Costa has asked me (and I've agreed) to do a presentation on openness in education on the 14th September. I was thinking about this and on doing something that demonstrates the power of openness, when reading through my backlog on Google Reader I came across  Alan Levine's presentation on openness at Open Ed. This is a) exactly what I want and b) much better than I'd manage.

So here's my idea: Alan starts up a CogDog Franchise scheme. Franchisees pay him an annual subscription and get to have the CogDog seal (bark?) of approval which means they get to give his presentations (instead of having to you know, create their own), and they are trusted to have sufficient knowledge to answer questions from the audience. Everyone's a winner: franchisees get to give good presentations, the audience gets a quality guarantee, Alan gets to spread the CogDog brand.

And the thing is - I'm only half joking. Sign me up.

Comments

[CogDog]

Congratulations, you have been granted the CogDog Franchise for the United Kingdom, and you might as well take all those other neighboring isles (woah, hands off- France is NOT an island).

You're making me spit my coffee across the room in laughter ;-)

My deal is better- you can do this for free, no subscription cost, and you can take whatever material I created and re-use, re-do, re-play, re-improve as desired. Call it CogDog Commons.

Seriously, Martin, feel free to use the amazing stories, they are not even mine.

[Brian]

Sheesh, I always thought the cost of ripping off the CogDog was a bowl of ceviche, at least...

[Ewan McIntosh]

Is it not what Al Gore's made millions from? Go on, Alan. Live the dream and make a mint :-) I should point out that all my witicisms, piercing statements of verity and illustrations are a) completely my own, b) fully researched, c) copyright and trademarked, d) not repeatable without the payment of a really large one-off licence fee (workshop repeats get a 25% reduction), and e) come free with a leatherette wallet to keep all those business cards of your new conference admirers.

Well, actually, no. They're all nicked from Alan. You can have 'em.

[CogDog]

Ewan- I'd certainly work for ceviche- Brian's is the best evah

[Martin]

@Brian - I am ashamed to say I had to Google ceviche. Looks delicious, post me some over.

@Ewan - the leatherette wallet is tempting, I must say.

@Alan - semi-seriously while it may not work at a personal level, for institutions there may be something in this. What the pay-for model offers over the 'everything is free, reuse as you like' model (which works well between peers) is that there is a quality guarantee, ie in the CogDog (TM) case you vet people to say that they are good enough and competent to answer questions on the subject. And if (what do I mean if, when) the CogDog (TM) brand is recognised and valued then it becomes something worth paying for.
Bagsy first go on your yacht.