You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
Fumi and I are in Sapporo at the moment - working with the awesome team at the City of Sapporo to plan next year’s iSummit. Inoue-san took us to the Rising Sun Rock Festival yesterday. It was a truly awesome experience. 37,000 people, 6 stages, loads of artwork (by kids, professionals and amateurs), tree stump carving with chain saws, so many different kinds of food (from Russian to Chinese) and lots of beer.
In this picture, Fumi, Ellie and I are sitting waiting for ‘Begin‘ to start playing. They’re an amazing band. A vocalist (who also plays a variety of other instruments including ), a pianist and lead guitarist. They have an amazing diversity of songs - from blues to rock, jazz and pop.
It was an incredible feeling to be standing in this crowd of hundreds of people all knowing the words to their songs.
Pic: Heather Ford, CC BY-SA 2.0
Have a look at these great pictures taken for the September edition of Eslite Reader at the recent Wikimania conference. They asked me to do something ‘relevant’ with my laptop for the picture. So I tried to eat my laptop.
I guess I was trying to talk about the fact that information can feed people in a way that no amount of food can. But I have a feeling that no one will get it 
Pic: Eslite Reader on Flickr: CC BY-NC 2.0 GB
I nearly wet myself laughing at the amazing Gogo Hleba’s first column in the iCommons newsletter that has just come out. Brilliant. Download the newsletter and the beautiful cover (thanks, Loftwork!) from icommons.org.
This is another great video from TED - and not just because it’s about toys.
Will Wright makes an interesting comment about his experience in designing the Sims near the beginning of the movie. I think this perfectly encapsulates the world that we’re navigating and trying to make sense of in the free culture space:
‘Players love making stuff. When they were able to make stuff in the game they had a tremendous amount of empathy and connection to it. Even if it wasn’t as pretty as… professional artists would make…, they really stuck with it - they really cared what happened to it.’
It’s interesting. I was looking for a photo to illustrate one of my blog posts and, even though Joi’s photos are absolutely incredible and millions better than mine, I really still wanted to use my own. Wright does say that it doesn’t take too much to build the characters in this game (and, as such, there are limitations) but it shows how the need and opportunity for us all to actively create has been widely recognised. Figuring out how the power plays out, I guess, is the challenge.
Joi has kindly let me stay at the Lab in Meguro-ku, Tokyo this week while Fumi and I visit local companies to rally support for the iCommons Summit in Sapporo next July. I love Tokyo, and the area that I’m staying in is unreal. Along with the beautiful dark fiber network in the lab, there are equally unfamiliar things like the incredible ‘Three dog bakery‘ down the road (picture of doggie cakes left).
I’ve read a lot about Japanese people being over-polite and ‘crisp’, but I have loved every second of my interactions here.
When I arrived at Narita Airport, I was walking out of the bathroom when a lady stopped me to kindly and quietly pull my skirt from my underwear. ‘Sorry sorry,’ she said as I smiled at her and blushed and thanked her profusely.
The next evening when Fumi and I went to dinner at the soba restaurant that I demanded we eat at, the chef watched me intently as I drank my soup from the bowl and then rushed at me to kindly explain how to add the soba broth to it so that it wouldn’t be too salty. He ended up giving Fumi and I a pair of lovely paper fans that they were giving out at the traditional street dancing festival the night before.
Later, at the pharmacy, the young cashier first wrapped the tampons that I had bought in a brown paper bag and then painstakingly packed that and the other things I’d bought into another bag. When it didn’t fit perfectly, she giggled and blushed, and went to find another bag so that it would all fit at the bottom.
I feel a bit dumb most of the time because of my bad Japanese, but completely safe at the same time. If this is over-polite, then I’m very, very happy with over-polite - at least for now…
Picture: from www.threedog.co.jp/ (they don’t allow you to take photographs in the store and I just had to show you!)
I was actually about to take a nap before the final session of Wikimania when Jimmy Wales grabbed me and asked if I’d help him with his speech to close the incredible Wikimania 2007 in Taipei. He’d been inspired by my talk about parties in the earlier session, and suggested that we start a ‘50 free/sharing culture parties club’ where people around the globe hosted parties in their city and invited member of the free culture fraternity - Wikipedians, Creative Commoners, open access-ers, free software-ers and those interested in finding out more about free/sharing digital culture.
We’ve had an amazing response. Jimmy started a Facebook group that has 148 members after just 10 hours and we have parties planned for Cape Town, Chennai and Austin.
It looks as though Dave Duarte will be organising the first party and that it will be in Cape Town in September when Jimmy comes to town 
Dave is probably the best person I know in the world to organise a party, and so I’m really looking forward to it! If you’re in the Cape Town area, or if you want to fly in for the feast, go to this link and start preparing!
What a cool, chic chick. I’m in a Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board retreat in Taipei and have met Erin who is so incredibly clever, funny and - most importantly - loves dresses.
Erin calls herself a “dictionary evangelist”. She thinks that dictionaries are misunderstood and under-valued - and does a lot of speaking about this at conferences around the world (one of the latest was at TED).
But, the coolest thing about this gal is that she loves dresses and sewing even more than me - and has an awesome blog called ‘A dress a day‘ where she talks about her fabric, patterns and other similar blogs like the great blog ‘She wears shweshwe‘ from someone called Ann in Jozi.
Jimmy Wales says that she’s an incredible speaker and I’m really looking forward to hearing her here at Wikimania. And I’m going to send her shweshwe fabric for her next dress!
Pic: CC BY-SA 2.5 South Africa (dress by Erin)
