39 Days to go!

1. How you can help:

Thank you to the Friends of the iSummit (including organisations such as Global Voices, IP Justice, the UNU Media Studio, the Open Rights Group, Sapporo City University and others) who have helped spread the word about the event by blogging about it, sending emails to their lists and generally supporting the event.

It would be awesome if you could add the friend button to your own site -  especially if you're attending this year.

We're still looking for sponsors to help bring participants to Japan. If you have any leads on this, please let me know at heather 'at' icommons 'dot' org.

2. The programme:

As you would have read in previous updates, the iSummit is being developed as a hybrid 'unconference' this year, with a focus on making sure participants get the most out of the global networking opportunity. The following people were chosen by their community on the mailing lists or volunteered as facilitators of the core labs at this year's iSummit. They've been hard at work with participants developing a programme that enables connections and some really focused learning to take place in Sapporo.

Open Education
Ahrash Bissell (ccLearn) and Delia Browne (National Copyright Director of Ministerial Council Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, Australia)

Although both Ahrash and Delia work on Creative Commons projects, they will enable discussion on all aspects of the open education production and dissemination cycle in the Open Education workshop. Ahrash and Delia are excited about the participatory workshop process that we're using for the iSummit, and have the passion and enthusiasm to help sustain the connections that are made in Sapporo.

Local Context Global Commons
Rebecca Kahn (iCommons) and Jessica Coates (ccAustralia)

Rebecca Kahn is the Editor of the Local Context Global Commons project at iCommons and is passionate at looking at the diverse ways in which communities around the world produce and disseminate culture. Jessica Coates has done a lot of thinking about how communities can build open works, and has done a great deal of work around networking with fellow commoners -  especially in Asia.

DIY Video
David Harris (Global Lives Project) and Anna Berthold (iCommons)

David is the passion behind the distributed, volunteer-driven Global Lives Project, which is creating a video library of human life experience based on 24-hour recordings of daily life around the world and showing their footage both online and in unique and immersive video installations. Anna has just graduated from the University of Southern California's Masters in Public Diplomacy programme and has come to work for iCommons where she is working on video documentation and strategic issues.

Open Business
Lanon Prigge (Indep) and James Cairns (iCommons)

Lanon is an independent facilitator who has volunteered for the iSummit and who will be training facilitators in the day before the iSummit. James is the iSummit Programme Coordinator and has done a great job of bringing everyone together and making sure that their needs are met by the iSummit programme to the greatest extent possible. Both Lanon and James are excellent facilitators and both fascinated with the area of 'What makes an Open Business?'

The First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture
Giorgos Cheliotis with the help of Tyng-Ruey Chuang and Jonathan Zittrain, has driven the research workshop from its initial inception in December '07 and has been instrumental in making this  workshop a reality at this year's iSummit.

Remember to join one of the following mailing lists dedicated to the parallel tracks at the iSummit this year where discussions are ongoing around the different aspects of the commons:
1. Open education - English
2. Open business - English
3. Local context global commons -  English
4. DIY Video - back due to popular demand! - English
5. Frontiers of Openness in Japan - mostly Japanese
Or the satellite event:
6. "The First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture"

I've also uploaded an updated version of the highlights of this year's iSummit programme on SlideShare, .

3. The language
Here's the second Japanese lesson by Fumi where you'll learn how to say "Give me beer" and other critical phrases.



If you've missed out on previous updates, read them here.

Main Picture: Sapporo beer by , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Facilitator pictures: Ahrash Bissel from Creative Commons site, CC BY 3.0, Delia Browne from IP:KCE site, CC BY-SA 2.5 AU, Jessica Coates by , CC BY-SA 2.0, Tyng-Ruey Chang by , CC BY 2.0