Open by default

Web designers and developers rely on intense collaboration and openness to do their work. Every day we benefit from thousands of people who stay up late, after putting their kids to bed, to publish their thoughts, ideas, code and materials without expecting money or fame.

In this talk at Webdagene in 2014, Brad Frost, the web designer behind resources such as Pattern Lab and This Is Responsive, asks why people do this. Why give away your knowledge, tips, tricks and resources? At face value, people who share openly seem to be giving away their competitive edge, but Frost argues the benefits of sharing are many, and that collaboration trumps pure competition.

By broadening the scope of our creative work and encouraging “creative exhaust”, whether that is sharing a resource, writing a blog post, designing in the open, making a tutorial, answering a question on Stack Overflow or editing a Wikipedia entry, it has never been easier to contribute to something greater than yourself.