I hear you on the ideas vs works… But works are simply…ideas someone put into a form others could attribute in a more clearly ethical way. Does that make sense?
I agree that it’s difficult to recognize original ideas. You’re right that the idea of me joining your meeting may have been inspired by Virtually Connecting, that Virtually Connecting itself, while it takes an original angle, is inspired by lots of other things… But what happened e.g. With the Prof Hacker post, is that I WROTE it up, and by writing it, made it into a work that others could attribute. See where I am going with this? I think if I had written about it on my personal blog it would have had a different impact, maybe? I don’t know…

In this instance it’s really really not a big deal 🙂 but in real life, at work, where people are rewarded for initiating good projects/ideas, it does matter if someone does this. When we write, we create something attributable that someone else may have articulated in a much less formal way… And… You know what I mean?