September is about change change change! Open Sourcing Smell Culture kicks into gear, we open submissions for the awards soon, and – as always – much much more.
Un cambio, coño!
If perfume is to be understood as a contemporary creative practice, and if it is to thrive, we need to loosen our grip on how we understand ownership, and stop being afraid of sharing. For that to work, cultural knowledge and research should be placed in the public domain. This, so that other cultures may take part, and so it can be examined and expanded upon to fit the changing face of our world.
It’s only with a more open approach that the culture(s) and commerce built around perfumery will survive: The successes won’t be based on who does and does not have access to information, but on efforts to put shared information to better and better use. For this to work, we need to share with people both inside and outside the perfume industry, while fiercely protecting the attribution rights and preferences of the people who do the creative work that the industry thrives on.
Here at the IAO, we want to make the fragrance and flavors equivalent of a free media. In fact, we are working on that very thing: We launched our Open Sourcing Smell Culture initiative in Amsterdam with Mediamatic in July. Now, we want your help: Host a working session, tell us your ideas, and above all, send us your developers, coders, and database designers. We need them all!
OK. Beyond that, we also have some swell news for September and beyond.
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