How can you encourage creators to become consumers?

At my talk on Creative Commons last night (I believe heard only by the San Francisco audience, alas), I used the "strategic questions" posed by the Future of Media Report as a foil for the role of the commons in the future of media. I want to post here about small points I raised regarding a few of the questions.

How can you best draw on social networks for content and ideas?
How can you encourage consumers to become creators?

Turn users into stakeholders: give them some rights.

Turn the second question around: "How can you encourage creators to become consumers?" Creation is often a consumption good: rather than expecting to be paid to create, people will pay you if you can help them be better creators. The millions of bloggers who pay for blog hosting are a case in point, as are the vast majority of artists and musicians who spend more in a year on gear than they will directly earn from their artistic efforts in a lifetime and (back to the web) those who pay Flickr for a "pro" account so they can better share their photography.

Remix is not just [re]creation, it is a conversation. Make that explicit -- and thus more exploitable, sticky, etc. A particular implementation.

How can you faciliate social media commenting on and annotating content?

One emerging technology that I like to turn people on to are semantic wikis. The data in your wiki (assuming you're using one) may be more valuable than you imagined.

Users should obtain private benefit when annotating. If they do, the social benefit (or the value added to your website) may be enhanced.

Again, make users stakeholders: allow them to export annotations they've contributed at a minimum. Several [inter]related ideas here, which may be exploited selectively.

Regarding several of the questions, which I won't repeat here, I mentioned the importance of open formats. Consumers are rapidly becoming aware that the media they create (and that you help them create) should be usable for their lifetimes -- decades. Users who couldn't care less about open source software want access to their data. Stay ahead of the curve and make open formats and open standards compliance a part of your strategy.

These are just some relatively narrow considerations. For a big picture introduction to Creative Commons specifically, visit creativecommons.org and watch Get Creative (5 minutes) and for the big picture check out the book Free Culture.

Finally, I forgot to mention that Creative Commons has a monthly event in San Francisco featuring people (essentially) building the future of media. Hope to see some of you at one.