StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

A Short Conversation with Christina Vaughan, the New CEPIC President

Christina Vaughan, Founder and CEO of Image Source, was so kind to respond to some questions during the CEPIC congress.

Andy:

Under your guidance as the new CEPIC president, what will change and how fast? What are the next real steps in daily life to make CEPIC as a association and as a congress event a better experience?

Christina:

In Dresden, the National Associations gave a unanimous vote for the position of new President, and an almost entirely new Committee was voted in. Afterwards it is safe to say that the Members and Stakeholders of CEPIC are looking for change. There is a huge appetite for Positive Enhancing Change, to see that CEPIC is not only relevant to their business, but it is critical to help shape the business culture of the image industry.

The three new Officers, Klaus Plaumann, Dominique DeLouis and I were elected on a Manifesto of Transparency, Membership Enlargement and Inclusion, Lobbying and Networking. We believe that Europe requires a powerful voice, a voice that will harness all creators, suppliers and distributors of visual communication media. That voice needs to be forward thinking, inclusive, confident and bold.

CEPIC 2009: Free Images and Free Flying Crown Caps

So while Obama Barack stayed in Dresden during the CEPIC congress for nearly a day when we were out in the evening for drinking a beer and wanted to return to the hotel while all roads were blocked, the fun continued with our session on Saturday morning, moderated by John Balean from Topfoto, on Free Images: Friends or Foes, with Patrick Lor of Fotolia, Kelly Thompson from iStockphoto, Charlotte Lippmann of UK-based Picture Research Association and me.

Up to now you never ever had a tiny chance in your lifetime to sit on a panel with two iStockers, one former one and one present one, and the session partly mirrored this dramaturgy of its very own kind with crown caps flying from the right side all over the panel desk to the left side.

Thanks also to Jon from Shutterstock, Serban from Dreamstime and Alex from 123RF for contributing their opinion on the matter. And a special Thank you! to Barack who responded to the question if a professional picture researcher should use more free images with a clear voice by kindly saying: Yes, we can´t. But I don´t go into the details here.

Off to CEPIC 2008 in Malta

I´m off to the CEPIC congress in Malta for a few days to chair a session together with Klaus Plaumann on new trends in microstock, the consumer space and photo portals. We´ll have Lee Corkran, Eyal Gura, Bruce Livingstone and Oleg Tscheltzoff as panelists.

Thus - no updates here for a couple of days.