Ariadni Athanassiadis
S2 E5 27 June 2022
A conscious reimagining of IP laws
Audio
Video
Ariadni Athanassiadis
Attorney, consultant and educator
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We can use laws to nurture our common humanity or to create divisions between us. Intellectual property laws offer us a fine example of how we can unite, rather than separate.
Ariadni Athanassiadis is a Canadian IP attorney with a unique and conscious take on IP laws, which she applies in her Ottawa practice.
We delve into her reimagined IP paradigm, which is a much more effective and productive approach to nurturing the wellspring of creativity that lies in each of us, for the collective good.
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Bio:
I am an intellectual property and contracts legal professional practicing to support solopreneurs, creatives and small business. My passion has always been to creatively empower others. My wisdom path as a professional nomad has guided me to appreciate how our joyful expression in relationship with one another can bring about creative harmonics and generative outcomes for communities. Each phase of my own education and work experience has allowed me to be of service as an educator, volunteer in not for profit initiatives, and consultant exploring how the arts and sciences can be reunified to weave wisdom with wonder by applying intentional mentorship practices to foster collaboration.
On the current leg of my journey I am seeking to serve the diverse and complex needs of the multi-cultural communities I live and work within, through facilitation and conflict resolution practices. I hold within me the curiosity to better understand how cultural practices (e.g. arts, religion, ritual, education, governance institutions) enrich and shackle us, and how intercultural exchange on different levels impacts living in peaceful society with one another.
All of these passages in my life have opened up to me spiritual and soul level consciousness about how our creative life force can be nurtured working inter-relationally with the ‘sandboxes’ of intellectual property and contract law as part of my professional practice.
Show notes:
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[2:17] Ariadni describes her vision of intellectual property laws which honour the creativity of our Source essence and empowers the flow of that wellspring of creativity through us.
[11:22] Ariadni explains how she deals with notions of fear, scarcity and protection through her unique method which blends coaching and legal advice.
[19:37] How Ariadni's vision cane be maintained even by large corporations dealing with IP as opposed to solopreneurs and smaller enterprises.
[27:16] A beautiful retelling from Ariadni of how she shaped her vision of a new approach to IP laws, taking in Indigenous approaches and her own Greek heritage.
[39:14] Ariadni has practical advice for lawyers looking to practise IP law differently - get out into the community and learn from your clients!
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Links:
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Kyma Professional Corporation, Ariadni's law practice: www.kymalaw.com
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Kahlil Gibran's classic, The Prophet​
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A Beautiful Constraint by Adam Morgan & Mark Bardon about the impact of everyday constraints on inventiveness​
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The Alphabet vs The Goddess, by Leonard Schlain about how the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations
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Transcript:
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Geraldine 0:11
Hello everyone and welcome to the New Earth lawyer podcast. My name is Geraldine Johns-Putra and I'm your host. This is where we feature lawyers who are changing the practice of law to change the world. I'm speaking to you from Melbourne in Australia, which is Boonwurrung country, and so I wish to pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. Welcome to episode 4 of season 2. I have here with us today Ariadni Athanassiadis. She is an IP lawyer based in Canada. She is the founder, the lead IP attorney and a patent agent. She's now got her own business Kyma Professional Corporation. She applies relationship and learning-centred approaches to client service, and she counsels to help her clients make decisions. In addition to IP legal advice, she provides business legal coaching and education and she chiefly focuses on IP and on the entrepreneurial space. She has a close connection to the arts, creativity and business. She gives back to the community through being a director of initiatives on youth development, and creating better public spaces. I'm very excited to have Ariadni here with us. Welcome Ariadni.
Ariadni 1:32
It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you, Geraldine.
Geraldine 1:35
We had a great introduction through a mutual friend and one of the first things that I learned about you is that you are an IP lawyer, and IP specialist, I haven't really had IP specialists on my podcast before. And you immediately grabbed my attention by describing your approach to intellectual property, which comes from a space that respects creativity, and respects spirituality. So I'd love it if you would explain for us now, your approach to IP law.
Ariadni 2:17
Well, my journey in the world of intellectual property has been one that of course has followed a very typical path in that I actually have a science background. And it was natural for me to go into the patent space where you're dealing with technology inventions, and in particular, I was in the pharmaceutical space. But the one common thing that you experience when you enter into this field is really the brilliant ingenuity, creativity and application of the arts, when you want to think of a scientific arts or fine arts or some other kind of art, you're constantly witnessing the brilliance of others, what they're bringing to you and then asking you to support them with the legal tools of intellectual property. And of course, as you get into that type of practice, you find that a lot of the times the system is geared towards the notion of protection. We use that language often in intellectual property. Protect your creations with a patent, with copyright, the brand that you have with with trademarks, so on and so forth, just to make sure that someone doesn't take it from you. And that somehow, having these forms of protection incentivises people to feel safe to share what they do for the benefit of the public, because ultimately, that's what government is interested in, is encouraging the sharing of all of this creativity in some form that can benefit the public and spawn, if you will, new rounds of creativity. But I think over the years, certain messages have gotten lost. And we forget to go back to the very sort of core of where all of this is coming from, in that we are creatures of creation ourselves. And we have our own creative ability. And we all stem from the same one source, which is continuously diversifying, in order to understand itself from so many diverse aspects. And so, being creative, being productive, doing work, is really an aspect of the love of Source.
And in fact, in the words of Khalil Gibran who wrote the Prophet, work is love made visible. So when you go back to these beginnings, you realise that whether there's intellectual property laws or not, people are going to create. The intellectual property laws themselves are not the incentive for creating. What the intellectual property laws are really supposed to be about is encouraging relationship through creation, and somehow that message has gotten lost because we feel by protecting, we cannot immediately trust the opportunities that we have to collaborate with others. And when you think about what it takes to take a market from inception, sorry to take a product from inception to market, you realise there's a lot of creativity to create that chain, right? You come up with the idea whether it's on paper or in the lab, then you have a prototype. And then from that prototype, you have to somehow scale it up to be able to gauge how widely available you can make it based on the interest that others show in it, you need a manufacturer, supply chain, distribution, and that's just on the technology side. And then in the world of the arts, it becomes a question of, well, you're going to publish something, and that's going to bring joy and pleasure, and how widely can this be distributed and published, such as music, or art, or performances and sculpture and the rest of it. So it really, when you look at it, you realise just how much productivity, work and creativity go into creating this ecosystem to be able to share these expressions of creativity that we have, which is really an aspect of our God essence, if you will, or Source essence. And so these intellectual property laws, they're there, and they sort of capture this indirectly.
But the orientation is overly emphasised on the aspect of protection, which creates an inhibition to the ability to relate and co-create, and just enjoy the harmonics that come from that aspect of being able to co-create with one another. And it works okay for big companies, because they're already self contained ecosystems in and of themselves, right? They have their marketing department, they have their development department, they have their departments that deal with operations, sometimes they're the manufacturers themselves, or they have a relationship with the manufacturer. It works for them in that sense, because most of what needs to happen is controlled under the roof. But when you're talking about solopreneurs, and small business, they're at a distinct disadvantage, and their best opportunities to be able to share and for the public to access what they have to share, is to be able to collaborate and partner with others without having this constant fear of looking over your shoulder about what's going to happen if I do that. And it's not about so much that what we create is ours, because we have this understanding that when we're in that space, something else is flowing through us. It's just we are part of that co-creative aspect with Spirit. And so we have been granted if you will, the stewardship over what comes through us as that last filtering point, to express the creation itself. And so that needs to be respected in the relationship. So there's a phrase that I like to use in my coaching, that it's really about doing your soul's work in relationship, and intellectual property laws and the way they function should really be a reflection of that - that principle. So.
Geraldine 8:36
Thank you. That was brilliant. So many thoughts came to me while you were talking. One is that it's about looking at things through a unified lens, rather than a separated lens. So the gift, as you say, comes through the person and is a gift for everyone. It's a gift for all of humanity and the collective, the person who brings it through happens to be the vehicle. So if we focus on the unified aspect, then we can focus on that, enhancing that, how do we encourage people to bring their gifts forward? Rather than focusing on what you say, which is the protection and that's the separation perspective, where I'm separate from the other person rather than I'm bringing it in for all of us. I'm separate from the other person and that person is going to take it from me so I need to protect. That's a scarcity mindset as well, versus abundance. Worried that there's not more that can come through and worried that there's only so much that we're limited to, each person is limited to. So that person will want what I have rather than creating more and more for everybody.
I see a very similar mindset come through business in general and because you coach entrepreneurs, you'll know what I'm talking about, it's that mindset between coming together and collaborating for the collective. That's what entrepreneurship is about. Capitalism is actually about encouraging collaboration and encouraging ideas to come forward rather than making money out of those ideas. That's really not why entrepreneurs go into business, they go into business to bring their ideas to life. And when a business person or an entrepreneur begins to see others as competitors, rather than collaborators, or begins to see their customers as those who are paying you money, rather than those that you're bringing a gift of an idea to, then that's where business, just like IP laws, begins to get distorted. And like you said, the emphasis is on the wrong thing. But I'm really interested therefore, there's a segue into a question, how you deal with clients who do have that protective mindset who do say I am worried someone's going to steal my idea, or that person has stolen my my IP? What do you do when you do come across a dispute? And in the old paradigm, you might write a letter of demand? How do you deal with those?
Ariadni 11:22
Well, I think the first thing that I try to do, too, is to help an individual come back to a place of ease and groundedness about the situation. And really, stopping and helping them remember that their creative wellspring is unending, unending, right? So you stated that specifically, what you created in one instance, is not the end of it. Think of composers and musicians and artists, it's very obvious how they have this continuous wellspring of creativity. The same holds true for scientists, for engineers, for anybody who's coming up with a new business model, being able to pivot your business model, it's a language that we hear often in the entrepreneurial space. And so that faith in your ability to continuously come up with something new, is always there. And in fact, you know, we sometimes think we don't want to have restraints on creativity. But in fact, there's a beautiful book called A Beautiful Constraint. And I'll get the authors for you and I'll provide the link for that. A Beautiful Constraint. And it talks about how in fact, having constraints is what spawns greater creativity. In many instances, they say, necessity is the mother of invention. That's a common phrase that we hear. So you always have access to this. So when someone comes to me, I first try to coach them through to get to a point of realising that they have complete independence from the outcome of the situation that they're faced with.
And they need to get to that place of understanding that they are independent and sovereign of the outcome. So in a simple scenario, someone may come to me and say, someone's copied my website, they've taken the text word for word, and they've copied it. So you go through and you say, well, okay, maybe they did, but who really knows your business? Who really knows what you were feeling and experiencing when it was flowing through you to create this business and that website in the first place? What's your story, your story behind this, your inspiration to create this, that person doesn't have that experience? And so the energy of that has been captured through your essence. And what if this was an opportunity for you to say, maybe it's time to update my website? And oftentimes, what you find is that someone has initially put down the technical things, it's great to go to a spa, because these are the health benefits, but they haven't taken the time to bring their story into their website, their story about how it came about that they were inspired to be a service in this way to others. And that's something that much harder for somebody else to just blatantly copy. And so the minute you start to do this, you start to distinguish yourself, not only from the aspect of copyright, but also at the level of your brand, your story, who you are, what is it that's really going to attract people to come to you. There's an expression that a coach of mine once use which I just love you're here to heal agreements, right? Our experiences are here to help others heal, as well as we heal, others heal, we just sort of have that experience that in retrospect can help somebody else who's closely following in that type of experience behind us. And so by bringing forward that much more of who you are, and tapping into your creativity, to know that where you've gone already is not the end of where you're going to go. With this creative expression is always the opportunity to cultivate your independence from any wrongdoing that may have happened along the way. And once you get there, then you have the ability to sit back and access your resources a little more easily. And you say, okay, I get that. But is this fact that this wrong has happened, really still the issue that I still need to address?
Because at the end of the day, we talked about how we are the stewards of something and someone is copying something, but misapplying it potentially in a way that's not aligned with the spirit through which it was intended to be shared and given, then that can pose a problem. Similarly, there may be certain situations where you feel okay, this is going to mess up my ability to care for myself and my family in the short term, because the issue is more egregious than that. But at least at that point, you have a grounding to be able to assess different options for how you can move forward, while at the same time making a determination of how much energy you want to put into addressing the issue that has come up. And oftentimes, you find that the scope of what you have to fix, in a sense, or feel like you have to fix, starts to get very focused and much more narrow and targeted. And that becomes much more manageable, emotionally, and possibly, as well, from a resource point of view in terms of monetary issues, and so on and so forth. To be able to address and you start to be able to look at things and say, I have the patience and the ability to ride this thread through for, you know, the belief that I have, that still needs to be addressed. But then I have at least enough energy to keep moving forward as well. And many streams make a river. And so hopefully, through that approach, you can ride the storm and come back to a place of calm again, on the other side.
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Geraldine 17:38
Brilliant, thank you. So from everything you've said, it's consistent with the idea that if I'm bringing something forth here, that is that we call intellectual property, then it is just and reasonable to receive royalties for it if someone else is using it. So it's not, you're not saying that in your framework, people don't deserve to be remunerated for what they're bringing forward. That makes sense. Because I think also you could think of it as energy exchange, you're bringing something forward, you deserve, so to speak, or for want for a better term, to be rewarded for it. I have another, I am going to take this another direction, because comparing it to the work I do with business, I was going to ask you, I really value what you were saying about the closeness of the relationship between what's manifesting as the copyright or work, shall we say and the initial inspiration. Do you think that the larger a business grows, the harder it is to maintain that connection? I see it all the time and I, in business, that the larger the business is, the harder it is to maintain that ideal of enterprise, of collaboration, when people tend to forget what it is they're actually here to do or what it is they're actually here to bring forth. Do you think that your spirit, of your interpretation of IP laws is inconsistent with how large corporations manage their IP and protect their IP?
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Ariadni 19:37
I don't think it's necessarily inconsistent but I do agree with you that it is challenging to maintain a congruency of that ethos and that spirit throughout all the different levels of a corporation and that of course goes back to communication and the glue if you will, of any relationships. So there's always going to be pockets within a large organisation where you have that that sort of raw energy of creativity and even beyond that, the people who see ooh now we can take this and pass the baton, and pass it to our marketing group to do this with it. But I think one of the problems that happens, and for me, this is probably the key issue within a larger organisation, is you start to see the creative output as the commodity and the thing that has the value, and you forget the fact that this is coming and flowing through people. And so the relationships aren't nurtured and cultivated well within the larger organisations so there are places where that breaks down. Once you try to sever, or you don't nurture the relationships, well, then in a sense, these creative outputs start to lose some of their energy, right, and some of their God essence, if you will, because they need to stay intimately connected with the people, and the feelings of the people and the relationships between people in order to stay energised, and to still bring forward all the benefit and love. And so the more we see people as simply a resource, and not really as wellsprings of resourcefulness, that's sort of a reframe that I like to use, that's when we start to lose the connection with the beauty of the creation itself, it becomes easy to use it in a context where it may not be aligned with the spirit within which it was created, or to adapt, working with it in a way that is inconsistent with the spirit through which it was created. One case in point, I think, where that's captured, actually quite well within intellectual property laws is under copyright and the moral rights aspect, right. So we have these moral rights which always stay with the creator, with the author. It's the integrity of the person as well as the integrity of what was created as well. And what we constantly do is get authors to waive these moral rights. So that even though we can't take the moral rights from them, right, because it's so intimately connected to who they are, we can get them to say, never going to say anything about this, even if I do the most horrible thing to what you create, it's too bad, so sad. You have nothing more to say about it. And for me, I think that's problematic.
Whereas with solopreneurs, and artists and smaller business, the conversations rarely go to that degree. And so you have the sense that there's a continuity of collaboration, even if it's only a threat, right, where you have to sort of say, is this the right use of this creation that was made for me? So it could be a logo, by a graphic design artist, and your logo, you were going to use it for produce, right, providing nourishment to the others, and then all of a sudden, you get the idea, and you sort of say, I would make a hell of a lot more money, if I was allowing this logo to be used in the advertising of smoking, which isn't so great for health and wellness. Well, does the person who created this with the original vision in mind of providing nourishment, and trying to infuse the logo with that energy? Should they have a say, in being able to at least highlight and bring forward using this to advertise for smoking is not really aligned with how this was created in the first place? Let's have a rethink here, what's really going on, at least on that level, to maintain the connections and the relationship we need in our transactional approach, whether it's through employment agreements, policies, or through contractual arrangements between small enterprises, still maintain that ability to keep in mind the fundamental relationship that was there and the vision that brought that relationship together. And that's what I think gets lost in the ecosystem of larger organisations.
Geraldine 24:49
Thank you. I agree that when we begin to mechanise things and to see people as resources, that's when we lose all of these opportunities. And so it's possible to have a very large business that remains conscious, remains conscious of who people are as individuals, what they're bringing as individuals and yet, is profitable and sustainable and doing good things, I would see it as just extra challenges that we have to deal with, we're so used to, to setting up a business in a particular way. And there's a set-and-forget way of doing things with business. And then beginning to focus on wheels turning to make money. I see conscious business as offering a completely new set of challenges. But ones that actually are more engaging to confront, and engaging to resolve. Because it's, it's more like being an adult, it's if we just all grew up, and then did whatever we liked as adults without worrying about our impact on on the wider public, then it would actually be in a sense, easier to be a human being. But as human beings, we want to get along with other people, and we want to leave a positive impact on the world. It's the same with companies. We don't want to bring up companies that are irresponsible citizens, we want to bring up companies that have a positive impact. And if that's the case, then companies have to continue to do inner work in the same way that human beings have to continue to do inner work. And it's just a function of, it's just a consequence of living in a world that's better for everybody that's going to be kinder for the planet, that's going to be kinder for individuals, it's time to grow up and do that. And I think your approach to IP laws reflects that in a most excellent way. I was reflecting while you were speaking and also the first time I heard you talk about intellectual property and your approach to it, that you didn't develop these ideas overnight. They sound sophisticated and mature. I feel like you've been cogitating on it for a while. How did you, what's been your journey into developing this approach to IP?
Ariadni 27:16
Oh, it's really been a multi-dimensional and multidisciplinary type of of experience. When I went from the sciences, I worked in the labs actually, working in the lab is quite a solitary function. You're sort of at your bench, you're doing your thing, and then somebody else bets it and decides where to publish or what have you. And you only talk to other people when you have to negotiate who gets to use the PCR machine next. Basically! So that's the world of being in science. And of course, you have opportunities to exchange ideas, but your work is more solitary, not unlike what it is for an artist. And then I went into a company. And I was in a law firm that I not only was taken in and mentored through, but I had the opportunity to help grow all the way up to a partnership type level. And my role in the company was really very much centred on the HR functions, and really being able to look and sort of say, well, this person's sweet spot is to churn out working with many files, they love to do many files during the day, that makes them feel good. And they have this brilliant way of organising themselves, they do it. And then there's this other person over here that loves to dig into a problem. So they may only touch three files, but they're touching the really ugly sticky ones. And they're just going at it and they're digging, and they love to hunt for the solution to a problem that has no solution. And you put them together and you get magic.
And so I started to appreciate how the creativity of different people can come together to create that magic. And from there, when it was time for me to leave the law firm as happens to many lawyers, I started working on my own and I decided I really want to work with solopreneurs and small business. Because as we were saying before, the sense of purity, if you will, I'm not sure that's the best word, but its most authentic essence of what's being created is never more true than when it's still with the person that it came from, in that sense, right? So solopreneurs and small businesses still have that so they're still connected to that higher feeling of that purpose behind what it is they've created. And so when I started working with them, I also started exploring, what did I need for my own creativity, especially now that I was starting my own business. So I went back to school, I love going to school. And I went into a programme that I felt would help me understand the diversity of cultures in Canada. So I come from an immigrant background, myself, my parents immigrated from Greece to Canada. So I understand that world to an extent, but I didn't really understand the origins of Canada's sort of culture, original cultural diversity, which of course, includes indigenous peoples. So I went and I did an MA in Canadian and Indigenous Studies. And that's when my mind started to go. And just being able to get an exposure to different members of different indigenous communities, who would come and speak to us being able to understand simple things, how the conception of God, or the creator is something as simple and beautiful as he moved first.
He moved first, and just that aspect of really appreciating how we are all an extension, and a continuity of that which moved first was so beautiful for me. And it started to really impact my understanding of how we interrelate with each other. I remember I was writing an essay one day, I had my daughter on one side and the son on the other side. And my daughter was trying to help me improve my PowerPoint. So she was bringing the use of of her creativity to mom, you can try this, you can try that. Whereas my son was looking at my computer and noticing that there were photographs from our past, and really intrigued by these photographs from our past. And I felt like this tree in the middle, that was a gathering place with these roots going into the future into the past, as represented by the attraction of my children sitting beside me. So then that led me at first to read all kinds of different books, one I mentioned, A Beautiful Constraint. Another one is Designed by Nature. I started exploring the nature of creativity, through different lenses of just how the world is around us and how we behave. And slowly but surely, I started to appreciate intellectual property through these lenses, and how my own creativity would bubble up in designing, say, educational type materials or presentations for people about IP, and being able to connect it and see them feel energised by the idea of IP, in relationship to their creations.
And so it's just been a journey in the progression that way. And around the time that COVID came up, I just took another step of my own spiritual journey, and started exploring different programmes around shamanic practices and understandings of the world working with the Medicine Wheel, this is a tool, working with the four directions, the elements, air, water, fire, the whole shebang, the feminine and the masculine. And then, of course, that leads you to more books that will take you back to history. And even with my own cultural background, I got excited, because I had a sense that oh, I think I know why, in this lifetime. I was born as a person of Greek heritage, because so much of what we're experiencing today in the western modality of being is a function of a divergence that happened around that time in Greek civilization, where we went from developing the vowel for the written language, to allow language to become something that could more predictably and more consistently capture the expression of ideas and suppressing the goddess aspect, which was the feminine divine that existed at that time in that culture. So there was this flip that happened. There's a book called The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Dr. Shlain. He was a doctor who travelled around and many places and studied many cultures. And he started to make this correlation that when the written word started to rise, that's when we started to suppress a lot of other cultural practices that were rooted in the feminine divine, feminine spirit. And so we created this imbalance between the masculine and the feminine, which has led to a lot of the imbalance we have and the way we have our relationships within society, within business and within the legal system, frankly. So I just love bringing all these pieces together. I don't have time to dive deep a lot but I love capturing essence, and just being able to be aware of these linkages, which then help certain ideas form the forefront they need to, to guide and understanding how creativity and then intellectual property within business could work, if you want it to work that way. And if you like the old way of doing it, well, there might be somebody else who's better suited to help you with that, because that's what I find now is that I want to work with people who are feeling called to work with intellectual property in this way, for their businesses, rather than with the companies that want to maintain an approach with this paradigm. And so at least, all that work has brought me to that point where I feel comfortable being able to make that choice for myself for my own spirituality and my own integrity. But it's been a process of doing this now for over 20 years. So.
Geraldine 36:43
Hearing you speak has reminded me of something that I was reflecting upon recently, I love the law as almost a living thing. And I found that echoed in the traditions of the indigenous people of Australia, the way for them law and culture is living. So they have ceremony to reenact or to enact the customs and the laws to remind, to remind their people, that law has to be constantly lived. And it's one of the things that intertwine along with people and land and spirituality. So law is, when you begin to think of it as something to preserve, to nurture, that is living and breathing, as a lawyer, then we begin to appreciate that we are custodians of that. And I began to think about how that the personification of law and the personification of other things in Greek, ancient Greek philosophy. There's a, there's an interconnectedness with that, you know. So I have a picture of the famous goddess of justice up on my wall. And I see that interconnection with the indigenous tradition. So it's interesting that you go back to that, you touched on the indigenous learnings that you had, as well as that connection of when, when we forgot about the divine feminine. It really all comes together. So I can appreciate why you have those traditions and your learning about that tradition. But you also have a tradition in your bloodline. You talked about how it's been 20 years in the making coming to where you are. I just wanted to ask you whether you'd have any advice or any thoughts for anybody who's listening who might think well, I love IP, but I'm in the old way of doing things. And I'd really like to explore the new way of doing things, your way of thinking about IP, that interconnectedness with spirit. What advice would you give to someone who is thinking perhaps they'd like to try practising IP law in a different way?
Ariadni 39:14
I think for me that what made the biggest difference in terms of taking what I was experiencing through my own learning initiatives, and bringing that into my practice, was also going out into the community. And I think that's really important to understand that. That wellspring. What's happening at grassroots level is really informative of what the future will hold. And when you have solopreneurs and small business, starting to reject some of the approaches that big law still tries to maintain, and then law societies, I think it's important for law societies to also be able to take another look at the prescriptive approach and this idea that because it's in an adversarial system, you're only competent if you minimise risk for your clients, and you're minimising risk by relying on the certainty of the written word of the law. And I was actually intrigued what you were talking about just leading up to this question about law being a living essence in and of itself and evolving, we sort of acknowledge that in the way that we deal with common law and how we take new facts and, and apply things. We still resist. We're trying hard not to have to change something or help something evolve, we kind of only do that when okay, I've got to do something here. So all right, I will grudgingly now pronounce that this is different. And so there's this new principle or this other concept that's emerging. So there's this resistance to it. But really at the grassroots kind of level, there's so much happening. Social enterprise, experimentation with different types of communities, intentional communities, the application of different types of governance models, like sociocracy, instead of democracy, there's, there's all these different things happening. And you can only experience it by going out into the communities. And you can do that easily through your own interests and hobbies. Through where you choose to network. A lot of firms are always vying for, we got to go for the big companies because they have the money to pay the bills.
And yet, you know, I'm going to do my movie thing. I know you've been exposed to this before. But my movie thing with Pixar movies, that's A Bug's Life, here you have Flick who is really, who comes up with all these crazy ideas that buck the norm. But in the end, it's that collective, right? It's that ability to band together where everything is happening. And it is creating the groundswell of the future. And so our emphasis on the top 2% of who can pay the bills, if you shift and just start exploring what else is going out there, and how that aligns with your own interest, immediately your own creative juices, about how you practise will start flowing, and you'll start seeing new opportunities for how you can connect and be of service to your clients. And that's basically been what my process has been. And the blessing of leaving the law firm, when I was in the law firm, I was worrying and taking care of the people within the law firm. When I left the law firm, well, I had to become a mother hen, if you will, of people in the community in terms of how they interacted with them as my clients, at least from an IP lens. And then of course, they would mother me then in different ways, from their perspective, but it really is about going out there. And with, almost like a toddler, I like to say that, you know, a toddler goes out into the world, and they just have this form of innocent perception, just go out there and look, and then decide to engage on some level. That's where my volunteer activities have been absolutely invaluable, because it's helped me understand better, what's happening there. So you engage with them. And then you just need to, and celebrating the sense that you participated in something. And it's done, just let it soak through. Just you know, how a toddler just, they've finished doing something and they just plump on the ground, look up at the clouds and in the sun and relax until the next time they feel moved to engage again. And I think if you can go out into your community with that type of spirit, it's all going to happen and fall into place for you.
Geraldine 44:24
Ariadni, thank you so much. That was exceptional. I want to thank you for sharing space with us and sharing your ideas and insights with us. I got a lot out of it. I'm sure anyone listening would as well. It's been a pleasure.
Ariadni 44:39
Oh, likewise, it was really nice. Talking with you and listening to the way you've helped kind of distil and wrap around the ideas that were coming through today. So an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Geraldine.
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