The following are events that I attended in order to further seek out career opportunities and receive advice from more experienced individuals.
1st Event: “Leap into Leadership”
This Kennesaw State event ran from 10:00 am (EDT) to 4:00 pm (EDT) and saw a focus on the topic of development of interpersonal and leadership skills of current students. The events consisted of several virtual breakout sessions spanning the course of an hour with multiple choices for topics.
The first thing I witnessed was the opening address from the Vice President of Student Affairs. This address was followed by a brief Q&A where Dr. Eric Arneson answered questions relating to his life at Kennesaw as well as how he developed as a leader. The address lasted around thirty minutes giving the attendees time to prepare to enter breakout sessions.
I attended the “Don’t Pop Off: Keeping Your Cool Through Civil Discourse” and “Leaving the Nest” sessions dealing with emotional stability during disagreements and finding job security out of college. Both sessions were interactive discussions that allowed for a back and forth between watchers and presenters. The presenters in question were graduate students giving testimonials as well as probing the audience for their experiences with the presented subjects. The experience was organized well enough, though some presentations flowed better than others. Still, the overall experience and testimonials were appreciated and I got some nice leadership advice coming out of it.
2nd Event: “Desperately Seeking Permission: How to Avoid Copyright Infringement”
For this event, which ran from 12:00 PM (EDT) to 12:45 PM (EDT), I sat in a meeting that delved into the topic of fair use and copyright. The speaker of the event had a PowerPoint ready for the attendees and went through various levels of what can be seen as appropriate for fair use. Much of the presentation was given with the asterisk that the rules of fair use are played somewhat fast and loose with things like the music industry only recently having rules in place for sampling music without the threat of legal action.
I found the event to be fairly easy to follow along with as the host of the event gave ample time to ask questions if needed. Though if I had to critique anything, I do feel as though I had not learned much more than what I had already known about copyright from my own research into the topic. That said, this is just one of a series of presentations on the topic of copyright, so my grievance could easily be addressed during those events. Overall, I’m glad I was in attendance.
3rd Event: “You’ve Gotta Fight for Your (Authors’) Rights”
This event was a derivative of the same event as event two. It follows the same topic around copyrights and fair use in line with “Fair Use Week” which KSU was hosting.
This particular event ended up answering questions that were still lingering in my head from the previous event. I went into the initial event wanting to know what the laws for copyright were, and while I got some answers, my curiosities on the finer points were not scratched until this session. Mr. Marshall went about a large portion of the presentation discussing the many different cases where copyright comes into play. An example of this was the fact that copyright begins to exist the second a creative work is made. From there, a trademark can be created, which is what leads to the owner of the creative work having the ability to pursue lawsuits should they believe their rights are being infringed upon.
The presentation also shined a light on the wishy-washy nature of fair use and how easy it is to blur the line of fair use and copyright infringement in legal battles as a concrete definition of what is and isn’t fair use is not something that exists. That said, there are a number of ways to prevent this from being a consistent issue. As long as certain checks such as “how much of a work is being used?” and “has the work been published before?” and “is the use of the work transformative or educational?” are made, then the likelihood that your work is protected under fair use will likely be higher. Still, fair use runs on a case-by-case basis and does not run on absolutes.
I greatly appreciated being able to view this session and should be able take the knowledge it brought me into my own creative works.
