Jim Grisanzio

Some images from Mobile Monday Tokyo this week …

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A quiet and lazy night on the streets of Tokyo tonight …

Everybody is so busy out there. Are you?

Why do people in cities rush all the time? Train stations in Tokyo are utterly frantic places. It’s difficult to walk slowly and mindfully among the cortisol-soaked masses buzzing by in every direction. But why? Out in the country among the trees no one worries about saving two minutes – literally — by diving on to that express train. Why the hurry? Are we that inefficient that we can’t take it easy getting from place to place?

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I guess things are getting wild out there in Tokyo this year as the new year approaches: Tokyo times: Stressed-out salarymen going off the deep end at year-end parties. Be careful where you eat. It can get messy. I’ll stay at home this year.

Here is an excellent Q&A with Akiba from Tokyo Hackerspace about how hackers in Tokyo are coming together to help people suffering from the massive earthquake in Japan on March 11th: Hackerspace Happenings: MAKE Interviews Tokyo’s Akiba. Especially heartening is that hackerspaces from around the world are contributing as well. Here are some comments from Akiba about community:

We had a discussion yesterday about hackerspaces and community resilience. Hackerspaces foster a maker culture where you’re encouraged to take apart, modify, and build things …

One of the things that really struck me was how fast the other hackerspaces responded to our call for help and support. Within one day, we had offers coming out of hackerspaces in Oklahoma, Arizona, Detroit, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Germany, Singapore, and many other places …

So hackerspaces not only contribute to community resiliency by having the capability to make and modify things as needed. There is also a network of support from other hackerspaces that can respond almost immediately to a cry for help …

In Tokyo Hackerspace, we’re putting together a plan to have designs specifically for disaster situations and that are ready to go immediately. They’ll all be OSHW/OSS and we’d like to start an effort to work with first responders like search and rescue organizations to train them on how to use the technology. That way, first responders can set up mobile charging stations, set up wide area portable intranets, and have a variety of tools at their disposal based on the situation …

The points Akiba makes about community are most important. To me the topic represents a clear way of thinking about the world and our place in it.

In modern societies too many people are too used to core problems being solved by governments or non-profit organisations. But those resources are never enough when things really break down under the stress of a major disaster. Sure, hundreds of millions of dollars are being donated in a global effort to help people affected by this earthquake, but we are well into our 3rd week now and far too many people are still suffering. That is inevitable given the scope of this particular disaster, but it should also be a reminder that we are all vulnerable.

The real lesson in every disaster is that people — all people everywhere — need to be as prepared as possible to care for themselves, their families, and their local communities in those critical weeks immediately following the initial hit. That helps reduce the burden on the first responders so they can better attend to those who are injured and can’t care of themselves in the short term. People who build things, people who participate in communities, and people work in fields that support the health and well being of others seem to understand this quite naturally. Hackers included. Obviously.

I spent most of the day at the Tokyo Marathon yesterday. Really nice time. Warm and sunny all day. Good friends. Hundreds of thousands of people walking around the city with not a single piece of paper on the ground (and no garbage cans, too). Runners snaking their way along the race wearing every piece of clothing imaginable. Just fun. I was there to support the iRun by Joseph Tame, where he strapped on some iPhones and an iPad and offered the world a live digital venue with which to join his run to support children with cancer in Japan. Images of Joseph running here. All of my photos from the marathon here.

I am really looking forward to seeing Joseph Tame (here, here) run the Tokyo Marathon on Sat Feb 27. He is not just running, though. He will also be streaming his run live via some iPhones and an iPad strapped to his body, so viewers can run right along with him every step of the way. See two videos here and here. So creative. I have never run a marathon, but maybe this will inspire me. My best pic of Joseph. Japan Times article. Tame on Twitter. One week to go. Will take some pics.

I went to the TBTPE event last night. Every light in the house was orange, which I had no clue how to deal with, so I just went with black and white images. Hundreds of people from 18 tech communities in Tokyo came together for the year end party to raise money for Beers for Books. A great cause. A great night.

Here are 101 images from the O’Reilly Make Meeting 06 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. More Make and Hackerspace images here. See Oreilly Make Magazine here.

The 2010 version of Tokyo’s Biggest Tech Party Ever (TBTPE) will be on December 6. This is an annual charity Bonenkai for Beers for Books, which is an organization that raises money to fund reading programs for children in developing countries. Many international tech communities in Tokyo will be coming together for the event, as they did last year. If you are interested, register and come along. It will be big …

Here are some images from the Tokyo Linux User Group meeting last night at Digital Garage. Edward Middleton spoke about deploying Gentoo servers with chef, Andreas Kieckens talked about developing a gamers site, and Tomoyuki Uchida presented on Open Network Lab. Get involved in TLUG here. All my images from TLUG meetings from the last few years here.

I took a couple of days off last week to attend the New Context Conference at Digital Garage in Tokyo. Excellent venue. Excellent conference. The event was an interesting mix of traditional tech conference with a formal keynote and panel sessions on the first day, but on the second day the format evolved into an open un-conference where anyone could present. I think the combination of the two styles was implemented very effectively by the organizers. The theme for the conference was primarily focused on social media. It all worked well. I have organized and participated in a bunch of un-conferences (BarCamp, Community Leadership Summit, Developers Lounge), and I very much like the concept because it levels the playing field and honors the expertise in the audience.

More photos from the 2010 edition of the New Context Conference on Flickr. And there was a New Context Conference in 2008 a couple of years ago as well.

Do your shoes match your scooter?

Some Tokyo Tower with a touch of antique from January 2010 …

I ride the trains in Tokyo all the time, and I rarely see such rude behavior as sleeping full length on the seats. Well, sometimes on Friday nights things get messy when people get drop dead drunk, but I have only seen this bed behavior one other time. This particular train below is actually full, but everyone got out of the way when I got my camera out and started taking images of the sleeper. And although people always sleep on the trains in Tokyo, they generally have the courtesy to sleep while sitting or standing. But at least this guy didn’t put those fancy shoes on the seat. That would be really bad.

Here are some images from the Tokyo Linux User Group meeting on Saturday. Many more images from previous meetings over the years here as well.

Last night I posted the schedule for TLUG’s August 14, 2010 technical meeting. Zev Blut will talk about Emacs and Patrick McKenzie will present search engine optimization. We’ll do regular introductions, news, and the auction as well. As always, anyone involved in open source community development is welcome. Also, we’ll have a short discussion about new meeting space requirements for the group. If you participate in the Linux or FOSS community in Tokyo, let us know if you have access to meeting space at your organization and are interesting in donating that space on a monthly basis for technical meetings.

The Tokyo Linux User Group met on Saturday, and then we had a little FOSS nomikai with OpenSolaris developers in Tokyo. 36 images here.

Rakuten switches to English for their internal corporate meetings. For Japan, this is a rare move. But they want to be a global enterprise and that means doing business operations in English across multiple languages and cultures. And they are hiring more foreigners as well. Again, rare for Japan. I heard about this story at BarCamp Tokyo the other day and to be honest I didn’t believe it. It just didn’t make any sense based on any of my experiences thus far in corporate Tokyo. But I guess it’s true. See The Japan Times and Asiajin. Good deal, Rakuten. Good luck.

Here are my images from Tokyo BarCamp 2010 on Saturday. It was a long day — 18 hours door to door, actually. But that’s BarCamp. And it was frustrating to miss so many great sessions since there was so much going on simultaneously. But that, too, is BarCamp. Aside from that, though, it was a really great day getting together with the international community in Tokyo.

This is the third BarCamp here in Japan in the last year where OpenSolaris community members have contributed in a significant way — either by presenting, organizing, or sponsoring. Also thanks to the organizers and participants who directly contributed, and to the sponsors for offering so many resources so freely. People from dozens of communities participated all day in sessions on software development, networking, security, content, hacking, science, ecology, politics, community building, activism, language learning tools, etc. Great to see so many guys from the Linux community participating again as well. Hope the images came out ok.

I tag all my BarCamp blogs here. And I have thousands more general community images here. More BarCamp Japan stuff here: Fumi Yamazaki, Rick Martin, Johan Rooms, Yoshifumi Yamaguchi, BarCamp Tokyo tag on Flickr (tbarcamp). Also, for more on this type of open community conference, see the Community Leadership Summit.

Lessons learned here.

Shoji, Matthew, and I took Duke to Aoyama tonight to get ready for the BarCamp conference tomorrow. I guess Duke does not ride the Tokyo trains very much because we got some interesting looks. And some people took photos with their cell phones. Then we met up with the core organizing team for BarCamp to get things set for tomorrow.

Tokyo BarCamp tag: http://jimgrisanzio.com/tag/barcamp/. Also, for more on this type of open community conference, see the Community Leadership Summit.

We just posted the schedule for BarCamp Tokyo 2010:

• 09:00-10:00  Arrival and Breakfast
• 10:00-10:15  Welcome/Orientation
• 10:15-10:30  Sign-up for Morning Sessions
• 10:30-12:00  Morning Sessions
• 12:00-13:00  Lunch & Sign-up for Afternoon Sessions
• 13:00-18:00  Afternoon Sessions
• 18:00-19:00  Dinner & Sign-up for Evening Sessions
• 19:00-21:00  Evening Sessions
• 21:00-21:00  Close

These are just the time slots, of course. All of the actual session topics will be filled in on yellow stickies and moved around on white boards (very high tech) at the event in real time. So things will be pretty flexible. Anyway, if you booked to go to BarCamp, come by at 9 a.m. Stay all day. And all night.

I tag everything involving BarCamp here: http://jimgrisanzio.com/tag/barcamp/

For those attending BarCamp Tokyo 2010 this Saturday the 29th, I look forward to seeing you soon! If you’ve never been to a BarCamp, here are two examples of what these events look like from right here in Japan: BarCamp Tokyo 2009 | BarCamp Yokohama 2009. And there is some basic information about BarCamp here and here. BarCamp Tokyo 2010 is just four days away, and it should be a really great day. We’ll have some nice donations from some sponsors (multiple servings of food, shirts, stickers, pens, software, and the building itself, of course).

But as Karamoon said in his opening speech last year, BarCamps are basically living human wikis. People make BarCamps. People sharing interesting content and experiences openly and actively in many-to-many relationships. It’s all about direct participation. That’s the key. There are no special speakers standing on elevated stages lecturing at people safely separated from passive and silent audiences. Everyone engages. Everyone contributes. Everyone teaches. Everyone learns. And everyone picks up the trash.

So, start thinking about what you will present. Or what conversation you’ll lead. Or what idea you’ll plant. Or what project you’ll start and with who. Formal, informal, technical, non-technical, software, hardware, community, panel discussions, debates, photography, artwork, evangelism, marketing, hacking, leadership, activism, internationalization, science, innovation, development techniques, environmental issues, solutions to the world’s most difficult problems, health and safety challenges, economics, etc. What ties all these things together is a spirit of doing and building and sharing and that’s what community is all about.

We have plenty of time and space for everyone to present something. We have multiple rooms for short 15-minute talks, and a larger room for longer 1/2 hour sessions (or even longer events if needed since the schedule is made up on the spot and must remain flexible). And if you don’t actually deliver a talk, that’s ok, but please participate by engaging in discussions with speakers and others and in hallway conversations or over lunch or dinner or at the bar afterwards. You could very well find yourself directly involved in a new life changing experience just by showing up and discovering a new project to which you can contribute. Your input is valuable. Your voice matters. The world changes by people doing things at the grassroots level, not from the top down. This is where the ideas come from. This is where the real value is generated. Down here where people do things.

The facilities we’ll have for the day are seriously beautiful. Bring your cameras. The views of Tokyo are great. Bring your laptops. We’ll have free wireless. Bring your ideas and keep your mind wide open. Also, keep checking the wiki this week for more information and schedules.

NOTE: If your name is listed on the wiki that means you are committed to come. If you can’t make it, please remove your name so you give someone else the opportunity to participate from the waiting list.

We are getting close …

Here are about 90 images from the Tokyo Make Meeting 05 2010 this weekend at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Campus. I saw a bunch of guys from the OpenSolaris, Linux, and Java communities and also the crew from Tokyo Hackerspace. Great fun. Lot of interesting hacking going on in Tokyo, and everyone I spoke with said the community is growing in size, diversity, and quality.

See Make on Twitter here. See Make Magazine here. Also related from the past: Tokyo Hackerspace, O’Reilly Make Tokyo 04 2009, Tokyo BarCamp 2009, Yokohama BarCamp 2009. And don’t forget to participate at BarCamp Tokyo 2010 next week on Saturday May 29th!

Here are 320 more images from Tokyo Make 05 2010 from Lem Fugitt (Robots-Dreams).

A few shots from the Tokyo OpenSolaris Study Group 2010.05 today …

I really enjoyed this lovely program about Toshiro Kanamori’s 4th grade class in Kanazawa, Japan. It’s called Children Full of Life (One, Two, Three, Four, Five). It’s a wonderful look into how Kanamori-san draws out feelings and emotions from deep inside a bunch of 10 year olds. He’s a natural community builder and he seamlessly mixes academics and life in his classroom. Was your 4th grade class like this? Mine wasn’t. Warning: There are some sad scenes in this little film. If you have children you may cry as you connect with these kids in Japan. They are inspirational. Thanks for the link, Paul.

BarCamp Tokyo 2010 is coming together fast now. We have a building (always an interesting task in Tokyo), some sponsors are starting to show up, the website is taking shape, the list is becoming more active, we are planning for t-shirts and food and give-a-ways and an entire day of self-organized presentations, and we have about 100 people signed up already. There is room for more, though. The target for this year is 150. But you have to sign up on the wiki. And we need more sponsors, too. I’d really like to get a lot of photographers, videographers, bloggers, and reporters to help document the event locally and get the word out internationally. We need developers and artists to present, and we’d like people from a variety of communities and nationalities in Tokyo to contribute and tell everyone what’s going on around the city. Translators and organizers would be nice, too. Presentations should be technical and non-technical, so everyone can contribute something and everyone can learn and benefit. Remember, new things are created at BarCamp as a result of entire communities getting together. See Tokyo Hackerspace, which grew out of BarCamp Tokyo 2009. We are building new communities with this event, but we are also connecting existing communities as well. So, go to the wiki and sign up. Get involved. 3 weeks to go.

The Details

Date: Saturday, May 29, 2010
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Register by putting your name and contact information on the wiki.
Previous BarCamps in Japan: BarCamp Tokyo 2009 | BarCamp Yokohama 2009
General BarCamp info: here and here

I see planning for BarCamp Tokyo 2010 is coming along rapidly. The event will be held on Saturday May 29th. I’ll go for sure. I bet the turn out will be huge this year. In 2009 I participated at two BarCamps — Tokyo and Yokohama. What I like best about BarCamp is that no one is special — everyone organizes, everyone talks, everyone contributes. It’s community. Simple.

I track BarCamp stuff at this tag here: http://jimgrisanzio.com/tag/barcamp/