Many of my ideas that I’ve posted online, shared in my talks, and spoken about in various meetups for the past few years, have shown up as actual features — none of them, of course, bring me any revenue or perks. So why do I share my ideas as openly as I do?
Example, I presented my text & voice force alignment ML project at The Audio Programmer’s YouTube that uses markers as a tool for quick voice search & edit (link in comments) that I worked on as part of an automating animation pipeline. A year later, iZotope RX had the exact feature (Voice Lanes). A very similar tool is now in Steinberg's Nuendo and Avid Pro Tools showed that at NAB last week.
📖 I covered the details of the example in another article that can you read here: Ideas used in products
Did my talk inspire these? Maybe not, but I felt good to see something that sped up my work, now does it for others too. Same goes for Output latest plugin called Co-Producer & Splice’s Studio One integration that are very close to my Logic Pro hypothesis that I use to make creative audio folks feel comfortable about ML.
Here’s why I openly share ideas:
- I don’t have all the skills nor do I have unlimited time. While this can be solved by me collaborating with talented people, I just have way too many great ideas than I can build with one team in my lifetime (no exaggeration!). So by sharing them everywhere, I’m doing this selfish act of putting the seed of the idea in everyone else’s brains, just so I can enjoy point 3.
- I strongly believe that “Someone somewhere is already working on the idea you just had”. It’s impossible to find who that someone is, unless you share the idea and that person reads it and realises, “damn, someone somewhere is already thinking of the idea I’m working on” and they reach out to you and you start collaborating and there are stars all around and the world becomes a better place! ✨
- Existence of the idea as something tangible, irrespective of who made it: I’ve taken this higher philosophy that gives me 2 options, “Would I rather want the idea to exist as an actual product that can change lives or would I instead prefer to sit on it coz it’s ‘mine’ knowing well that I’ll never have the time or skills to bring them to life?”. The answer is pretty straightforward.
- Deliberate Detachment: I learnt early in my career that the world is full of vultures. You’ll always meet people who’d leave no chance to copy your idea, or at least listen to your idea & then vomit infront of someone important to gain credibility.
This, however, never moves beyond that. Since it’s your idea, the person trying to copy lacks all the subconscious information that led you to think of it in the first place. They know the “what”, but never the “why”.
So now when I share anything I know is worth a lot, I remind myself that people will claim it’s theirs, and I am okay with it. This quick self-talk lifts off a heavy load that one might feel when that idea becomes the biggest thing in the world.
PS: I wrote ideas about bringing the 3 worlds of audio industry together (read here). Use them wisely.