“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” - Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

“It is good to be able to celebrate an American invention that, for all its faults, tries to spread around the world a combination of unpaid idealism, knowledge and stubborn civility” - Timothy Garton Ash, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of European Studies at Oxford U.

At the end of 2011, I promised myself that in 2011 I would give away more free gifts (labor, time, energy, skills, knowledge). This week, I began that journey by publishing my first FREE e-book The Actor’s (Short) Guide to Personal Branding, a 40-page how-to guidebook/workbook for actors interesting in learning how to brand themselves. I chose to make the book free because I feel every artist should know and understand how to brand themselves and should not have to pay astronomical fees to have someone do it for them or show them they way. But I’m disturbed by how many people have asked me why I’m not charging for the book.

Does everything need a price tag?

Growing up in a Nigerian household, reading was breathing and knowledge was life. While there was no Dr. Seuss or Mother Goose, I had our grand and stern, beautifully bound Encyclopedia collection. I devoured each volume – A-Z – over and over again; they were my teddy bears and yes, I slept with the letter “P” faithfully.  So its no surprise that I consider myself a Wikipedian and that I am one of the 400 million researchers that log on to the site daily to acquire (or update) some bit of information that is offered FREE of charge.

I celebrate Wikipedia for holding the torch on this Utopian and idealistic model of “free shared knowledge” for the past 10 years. While those years were probably filled with repeated questions of “who will do what and how,” I’m sure that the answer was always and continues to be “it doesn’t really matter, because we must.” I am inspired by Wikipedia’s sense of obligation to give everyone access to the same well of knowledge, the same opportunity to uncover and discover; to open the doors of innovation by providing everyone access to the same key.

I am sure that all Wikipedians that put in their time and energy to give us the gift of Wikipedia everyday would agree that the payoff of the labor is in the artistic spark that this gift ignitest and the potentiality of the new gifts that it can foster.

Wikipedia, I wish you many more years of sustenance, inspiration and innovation, and I thank you for your insurmountable gift-giving.

Do you agree with Wikipedia’s model? When is the last time you gave a free gift (knowledge, skills, time, energy, etc.)?

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Learn more about the Wikipedia Foundation
Read Timothy Garton Ash’s Op-Ed Piece on Wikipedia in the Los Angeles Times

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