Haranguing the crowds at Speakers Corner
We had the monthly London Copyfighter’s Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop on Sunday, and despite the rain we had a good turn out. There are a few photos on Flickr, but it was a dismal day and my camera doesn’t much like the rain.
I think we actually had some of the most persistent heckling that I’ve seen so far at Speaker’s Corner. There is, of course, always a risk of heckling, but there was one guy who was particularly peeved at our presence and who was very loud and annoying, and another guy with a plastic bag on his head who obviously felt that hats were too passé. In a surprising heckle, I was hassled about the dates for the various Roman invasions of Britain whilst attempting to draw a parallel between the Brits building stuff from Roman ruins and building software from existing code. As a metaphor, I think it has potential but not in the face of historically anally retentive types, obviously. I shall, of course, never now forget that the Romans didn’t build anything in AD55, even though I never actually claimed that they did.
It’s a bizarre kind of masochistic fun, speaking at Speaker’s Corner. Maybe after a few dozen more of these, I might even get used to it.
See you there next month, even if you only come to watch us get heckled. (Or to heckle.)
May 28th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I’ll have the video up soon, Suw… hopefully by the end of the weekend!
June 1st, 2006 at 11:37 am
While this looks like a lot of fun and it’s a nice publicity stunt in a very limited way, does ORG have any plans for events that might actually be worthwhile? While my current cirumstances don’t allow for active participation, I’m donating money to help the cause and it would be nice to see something a bit more proactive (sorry about that word) than standing in the rain and shouting at people.
June 1st, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Copyfighter’s is more than just “standing in the rain and shouting at people” - it’s about getting people together to talk about copyright issues, to help them understand what others are thinking, to help them practice their arguments and give them ideas for how to express what can be quite esoteric concepts, and help improve people’s public speaking skills. All of these things go on to help improve the level of activism around these issues.
We will be doing other events too - we have an occasional series of networking events where we have one or two people come to speak on digital rights issues which I am hoping we can turn into a regular monthly event. And we are looking at what we can do around the Gowers Review issues too.
So don’t dismiss Copyfighters, but also keep an eye out for the other things we’re going to organise.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:27 am
I’m sorry I missed it (although maybe not because of the weather). I found the last copyfighters I attended and podcasted (over 300 listeners btw) very informative and I definitely want to attend another.
Naich - There’s more to Copyfighters than Speakers Corner, that’s just the finale. It’s mainly a networking event.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:02 am
i realise you do a lot more but can i just say, for myself, that i would be genuinely delighted to think i had paid £60 a year for a campaign group to shout at people in the rain. if you are not it, can you think of any others that do roughly that?
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Don’t forget, we shout at people in the sun too. Or if it’s partly cloudy. So far, haven’t done it in the snow yet, but it’s only a matter of time.