Tag: Creativity

4th Annual Creative Business Expo

From the folks @ the Denver Cultural Resources District:

Friday, January 9, 2009

 
The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs invites you to participate as a workshop presenter and/or exhibitor at the fourth annual Building Creative Businesses Expo (BCBE), a program for the creative community, including artists, filmmakers, musicians, gallery owners and designers. As part of the Create Denver initiative, the BCBE is a “one-stop” opportunity for creative individuals seeking information on business development, resources and opportunities to stabilize and grow their creative enterprise. The 2009 BCBE is scheduled for Saturday, March 21.
 
There is no fee to participate! This is a great opportunity for your organization to grow membership, market its services and create greater awareness to a new community of creative individuals and businesses. Attached is more detailed information about the BCBE as well as a participation response spreadsheet. We request that this be faxed or emailed to DOCA by Friday, January 23, 2009 for inclusion in the online brochure and media announcements.
 
Now more than ever is a time for our creative community to collaborate, share ideas and resources, and work together to support Denver’s venerable creative enterprises. We hope you will join us, Mayor John Hickenlooper and keynote speaker, Elaine Mariner at Colorado Council on the Arts, in helping us make this a day worthwhile for you and Denver’s creative community.
 
Thank you for considering this partnership opportunity.

TM for Authors and Speakers

You may know that you cannot trademark the title of a single book or speech. So, how do you protect your brand?

Simple: you use the title of your book and speech as the brand for an entire service package. Then, instead of trying to register your trademark in the books (printed materials) classification, you register the brand in the education and entertainment services classification. Then enforce your mark if anyone enters either category.

Remember to always place the “TM” superscript next to your brand when you’re using the title AS a brand. This stakes your claim and puts people on notice that you intend this title to be an indicator of YOU as the source of the relevant goods and/or services.

Do NOT use the (R) superscript until you have a registration certificate from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in your hands.

Finally, note that a TM application has a filing fee of $275-325. These are non-refundable. So, I strongly encourage you to hire an experienced TM lawyer to handle the application for you. I’ve seen far to many examples of people trying to do these by themselves to save a few hundred dollars, then messing it up, and ending up spending far more than if they would have just hired help in the first place.

Feel free to submit questions.

Why Creative Business?

I just got back from a short hike with Tobin and Merrick (5 and 3).  I took along Deepak Chopra’s little book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (you can find that in my Amazon widget at the right) and within a few minutes was inspired to write a few lines…

I’m calling this a “Creative Manifesto”

1. The purpose of life is to create – or at least co-create with God and our fellow humans.

2. In order to fulfill this purpose we need:

  • Some freedom from worry about the hand-to-mouth burdons of living – some material weath. We can’t be expected to be creative and fulfill our full potential when we’re starving or homeless.
  • Time to be creative (which is maybe part of the above discussion).
  • Confidence and the Self-esteem/image to share our creations in the face of potential criticism.
  • Knowledge (personal or through a team) to enable us to have the freedom and prosperity that provides that time and confidence to create and share our creations.

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This is what many lawyers do – provide the space, time, and confidence for people to find and fulfill their creative potential.

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