In the coming weeks James Cairns will be giving you an inside track  on how things are going with the programme as we hurtle through the to-do deadlines that all culminate in the iSummit '08 in Sapporo. He writes...

The worst thing that a conference can be is vapid and the iSummit is going to be anything but. Our six labs have burgeoned into potentially spectacular events and it seems that there is going to be severe competition for your attention at the summit. Let's have a look at some of the sessions jumping out at me off the top of my head...

A highlight of the event will be the merging of the Open Business and DIY Video labs during session 3. Here delegates from both tracks will be encouraged to mingle and attend the session of their choice. Open Business will be hosting a session on collecting societies, moderated by Paul Keller, to discuss some interesting new developments on that front in Australia and Denmark. Musicians will also be there to give first hand experience on the effects that collecting societies have on their work. The DIY Video lab will be hosting a session on open tools and business models pertaining specifically to video - Camille Harang and David Harris will be facilitating here. This cross-pollination between the DIY Video and Open Business labs evolved out of the number of open businesses that are involved in video - as this became evident it started turning into a 'natural fit' of sorts.

The Open Education lab will be having the pre-event session on Day 0 as they did last year to start laying the foundations of the track. If you would like to be a part of that session make sure that you get there a day early. Ahrash, Delia and the rest of the volunteers are really looking forward to using that session as a springboard for Open Education again this year.

Frontiers of Openness in Japan promises to deliver as much as it's title implies. A session that I am very excited about is that being run by Sapporo Artists in Residence (S-AiR) and involves an enormous piece of paper, a bunch of wax crayons and a whole other part of the brain as that being engaged in other sessions at the iSummit - read more about it in this blog entry.

The Research Workshop on Free Culture community has really come to the party and they have a really exciting line-up this year including such luminaries as Yochai Benkler and Jonathan Zittrain. They also have made a point of getting some young blood in there and you'll see some fresh faces presenting new perspectives on the commons. Take a look at the Commons Research wiki for the extended abstracts of the papers, and take advantage of the comment functionality where you can leave your opinions on the abstracts so far.

The facilitators have been getting warmed up for the event in the last few weeks, meet them here. In terms of process, we are looking at a fertile mix between 'unconference' (arrive and take it from there) and setting things in place beforehand so that we do the work that we can online in the run-up to the event and then make maximum use of being in together in Sapporo. This discussion is happening on the lab lists and we need opinions and ideas out there! So put those fingers on the keyboards and let us all know what you're thinking, because it's probably something that we haven't thought of yet and it deserves to be out there.

More coming as it happens - on a web page, wiki or listserv near you!

This is a report by Programme and Labs co-ordinator, James Cairns.