Fumi Yamazaki: November 2007アーカイブ

Overmundo is a community website on Brazilian Culture, as well as software tool.

We, at Joi Ito's Lab, is hosting the website of iCommons.org
and this site is using the technology of Overmundo.

Overmundo won the Ars Electronica Golden Nica award of digital communities division this year,
and Ronaldo Lemos made a speech there.

I have taken a video of his speech
- it is not very easy to understand just by watching the site
what is behind the site and its system,
and I think this speech is very good for people to learn about creating efficient websites.




Other videos of Ronaldo at Ars Electronica:



Ars Electronica Gala:



Speech at "Fair Music":

On 11/23, we had another photowalk in Shimokitazawa.

Thanks Brian for being the guide for the walk!




Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki


You can see all of the photos from the walk here:

We took a short tour of a street exhibition that was happening on a temporary wall adjacent to the station.

We went to take photos of "shutters" of stores.
In Shimokita, lots of stores suffered from people tagging,
so they started drawing pictures and tagging stopped.

So if you go to Shimokitazawa early in the morning before the shops open,
you'd be able to see great shutter pictures :)




Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki



We explored the Suzunari yokocho and the old black market area...


Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki



Then we went to Waffle Cafe to have late breakfast, and enjoy the exhibition of Brian's photos.

CC-BY-NC-ND by Brian (Zebrio)

Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki

Then we went to see Brian's photo exhibited at a gallery in Shinjuku.

 
Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki

Went to lunch.

 
Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki

Went to Gallery M to see more photos.

 
Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki

By the time we finished the walk, it was already dark... and I was able to get thess shots :)



Photo-CC-BY-NC-SA by Fumi Yamazaki

On 11/21, Nobi-san, Saharu-san of Gakken, and I coordinated to realize
Phillip Torrene and Limor Fried's visit to Gakken.

I have created a video here:

We were very happy to see how everyone, includingYumoto-san, who is the "face" of Gakken was excited..

Indeed, EVERYONE in that room was so excited and I think you can feel that excitement

from all the blogs that we wrote...

This is my post in Japanese:

This is the post Nobi-san wrote in Japanese:

This is the post Nobi-san wrote in English:

This is the post Saharu-san wrote in Japanese:

This it the post Phillip wrote in English:

This is the Japanese translation of Phillip's post:

Entrance of Gakken.

Meeting room has 40 years history of Kagaku!

Self Introduction.

Make wrote articles on Otonano kagaku in the past, and many wanted to buy them!

When they write articles on Make or post photos on Flickr, people wants to buy them.
It's like free advertisement :)

Presents from Limor.

Simple things are more difficult to make, because you can't adjust.

Corobot is a robot created on the assumption that they trip (fall).

Make promotes self responsibility.

Maker Faire will be held in May, so we want to help Gakken to have a booth there...

and also bring Maker Faire to Japan too!

*All of the photos here are licensed under CreativeCommons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license by Fumi Yamazaki

On 11/19, we did another Joi Lab Seminar,
this time we did in a show-and-tell format.





People who presented are as follows:
Thanks for the presentation, everyone!


1) Yu Takaki
    Future of the net and TV
2) Masanori Sugiura  
    Wikimania report
3) Masahiko Sato
    Tabebot
4) Fumi Yamazaki
    Ars Electronica report
5) Koichi Wada
    Wada world
6) Hiroki Eda
    How to write good articles


  
Photos by Fumi Yamazaki Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike License

...hmmm, I couldn't take a photo of myself  LOL



And as a special guest, Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried came to do a presentation!
You can see the video here:




Thanks for coming to our seminar, Phil and Limor- it was great having you!

Photo by Fumi Yamazaki Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License


Asheesh Laroia, who is a software developer at Creative Commons visited the lab,
and talked about various things including his background, his current projects at CC,
his speech at the conference in Tokyo and demo, his project that we are hosting at our lab, etc.

Asheesh LaroiaさんはCreative Commonsのソフトウェアディベロッパーで、
先週来日中にJoi Labを訪れ、経歴や、今回の来日の主旨であったカンファレンスでのプレゼン内容とデモ、
現在取り組んでいるプロジェクトについて、そしてJoi Labでホスティングしているサーバの
プロジェクトの内容について等、語って頂きました。

This is the video:


Video by Fumi Yamazaki Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License

Tim O'reilly came to Japan for Web2.0 Expo Tokyo.
Joi is on the advisory board of Web2.0 Expo Tokyo, and one of the keynote speakers.

I thank CMP and O'reilly media for organizing this event in Tokyo,
getting Tim, Evan and all other interesting people to gather here.




http://flickr.com/photos/nobihaya/2029828565/
Photo CC-BY Nobuyuki Hayashi

The keynote  "Conversation with Joichi Ito, by Tim O'reilly" touched upon the Japanese reality that
in Japan, it is difficult to have changes and venture businesses face difficulties.
Also, Japanese market is large enough for Japanese companies to focus on Japanese market and
become ignorant on the world trends. (and I think there is language barrier too...)

Joi mentions the data "In US, 80% of the people admires the entrepreneurs, in Japan less than 10%"
When people face failures with their startup, you are still respected in US- not in Japan.

Localization was another topic. Yahoo and Microsoft had wonderful partners in Japan,
and it is those "individuals" who makes the localization successful- not merely the business models.
-Which reminds me of Reid Hoffman's speech at New Context Conference
that it is always the individuals who makes the companies successful,
and it is important to be networked with those individuals.

When talking about the Japanese market, mobile industry is something you can't miss.
Joi introduced as an example of Second Life, which started in US,
but it might take off in mobile in Japan earlier than the U.S.
(I've seen Sun -not Sun Microsystems - at Virtual World Summit Tokyo
already started the development and is going to start the testing with Docomo.)

It is important to start your company at young age, Tim says.
Although - as mentioned earlier- Japanese public is not opt to changes,
so entrepreneurs trying to do new things face difficulties,
also when they fail, the public recognizes them as "people who failed"
and there is not much incentive to take that risk.
Also, most companies (including the company I work for) prohibits their employee to start companies,
so you really need to quit your job to start a company legally.

This reminded me of a friend of mine from my NTT days
(NTT is the largest telecom in Japan, similar to AT&T in US)
who started Amazon Japan when he was actually working for NTT
insisting that it says "it is prohibited to work for another company,
but it doesn't say we are prohibited to start another company" (LOL :P)
In the end he quit NTT, forcefully made Amazon Japan successful,
and he started his own company Fujisan.com.
Not many people are like that... most Japanese are obedient and just follow the rules,
which makes this country very far from entrepreneurship.

This argument sort of links to the courage and entrepreneurship of Evan,
which was the central topic ot the keynote on Day 2
-conversation between Tim and Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter (and Blogger in the past).

http://flickr.com/photos/nobihaya/2037076904/
Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Nobuyuki Hayashi

Here is the brief history of Evan's entrepreneur life:

In 1993, he started an internet company in Nebraska which he eventually shut down,
went to California where there seemed to be more interesting things are happening,
and worked for Tim O'reilly, but realized he doesn't like working for others.
             
In 1996, he started a company called Pyra
-this company lacked funding, especially because of the dotcom bubble bust.
They started Blogger as a side project, and in 2003 sold Blogger to Google.
He worked for Google for 2 years until he was confident Blogger will survive without him.

He then became the advisor of Odeo which his friend started
- this company raised money too much before we knew what they were doing,
focused on the company more than the product which was a big problem.
Twitter was a side project to Odeo.

The important take away here was:
1) start with decent funding, don't fundraise too much in the early stage
   as you will be distracted by the investers etc, the company stuff. instead,
2) focus on your service, product.
   If the service is good and the users are using the service- then there is a way in making money in some way.
3) Open APIs helps you in various ways. Sites and services using their APIs
    (like Flickrvision etc) itself will not help Twitter directly, but it makes branding etc.
4) Don't fear failures. Evan faced many difficulties too.

These are my favorite "learning" clips from and on Evan from the past:
Ten Rules for Web Startups
Gigaom's article on Evan Williams


BTW, it seems that Tim O'reilly met "Hiroyuki", who started "2channel", one of the largest BBS in Japan,
and also "nico-nico-douga (nico video)", one of the hot video sites in Japan.
(CNet Japan article covering the meeting between Hiroyuki and Tim)

Create a product or service that the users want (don't focus on the company, focus on the services)
and I think Hiroyuki always created what the people wanted
- and that is why the users are using those service so much (some of them becoming addicted...)
Lots of youngsters are addicted to 2 Channel (called jyunin or 2channel residents).
Lots of youngsters are becoming addicted to Nico Video (called Nico Chu or Nico video addicts).



For those of you who doesn't know what Nico Video is,
it is a video sharing site except you can write comments "on" the video,
which enables you to have a conversation-like comment with other viewers.
YouTube etc enables you to comment beneath the videos, but commenting on the screen of the video itself
gives you a sense of feeling that you are watching together with other viewers.

It has 570,054 video clips, 2,702,639,096 views, and 584,413,493 comments.

NetRatings Japan released an interesting report in August, and you can read the full article here:
http://csp.netratings.co.jp/nnr/PDF/Newsrelease09212007_e.pdf

Nico Nico Doga (nicovideo.jp) is fast surpassing YouTube (youtube.com) in
average length of visit and average number of visits per user.

On 11/11, 2007 we did an event called CCphotowalk Shibuya.


Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki


You can see all of the photos here:
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/ccphotowalk071111/

You can see the video here:  

What is CC photowalk?

People volunteer to guide people in areas of Japan that they know really well.
Then they can be like guided tours with photographers and bloggers.
Then people can sign up for the tour.

We CC license the content, the bloggers can use the photos for content.
We are also thinking about working with the train station or the city
and donate the works as well... or maybe even contribute these to travel guides.

CC Photowalk Shibuya

Guided by Joi, we walked through Maruyama-cho, Penguin-zaka, Nonbe-yokocho, Miyashita-kouen.



Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki

You can also see the video of the lecture on "Photography 101" that Joi gave:

 

http://flickr.com/photos/joi/1973885389/

Photo CC BY Joichi Ito

http://flickr.com/photos/jimgris/1976261814/

Photo CC BY-NC-SA Jim Grisanzio

http://flickr.com/photos/chiaki/1991569169/
Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Chiaki Hayashi

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki


Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki

Then, we went to eat dinner at an organic restaurant called "Mominoki House"
They have a great concept, "You are what you eat"
and based on that concept, they serve food that they are confident in creating your body.




Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki



We actually did a photowalk back in July in Shinjuku and Omotesando,
photos which you can see here:

*******************************************************************************
11月11日、CC Photowalkというイベントを行いました。

街を決め、（今回は渋谷）その街について詳しい人がガイドを行う（今回はJoi）
というイベントです。

これから色々な街で写真を撮影して、Creative Commonsライセンスで公開し、
市役所や駅やガイド本等を作っている会社等に寄贈したらどうかということで
このコンセプトでは今回初めてやってみました。

今回の写真は全てこちらでご覧頂けます。

ディナーはもみのきハウスさんという、オーガニックレストランで頂きました。
"You are what you eat" あなたの体はあなたが食べた物でできている。
。。。というコンセプトのもと、美味しくて安心な食材でお食事を作って頂けるレストランです。



なお、7月にまずはphotowalkをやってみようということで
新宿／表参道を練り歩いた時の写真はこちらでご覧頂けます。

On September 15th-16th, 2007 Mozilla did a 24 hour event called "Mozilla 24".




































Photos by Fumi Yamazaki, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.1

Today, they launched the video archives of the event,
which will be open to the public for half a year from today.

Various movies are available, including Joi's panel discussion with the students on open source,
panel of Prof. Jun Murai, Mr. Vint Cerf, and Mitchell Baker etc.

It is incredible that we can see those videos online.

Thanks and kudos to the Mozilla Japan team for making this happen!

http://www.mozilla24.com/

As Joi Ito's Lab, we did a presentation of MOGA,
we provided Kula, the island we have in Second Life for their SL event,
we provided the servers for Firefox CC Studio as well as
helped set up the video interviews with Joi, Mr. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Mr. Keigo Oyamada.


*********************************************************************************


2007年9月15日-16日に、Mozilla24というイベントが開催されました。

本日、そのときの様子の映像が公開されました！
Joiが学生さん達と行ったオープンソースについてのパネルディスカッションや
村井純先生、Vint Cerfさん、Mitchell Bakerさん等が行ったパネルディスカッション等、
貴重な映像の数々です。

半年間の限定公開となっておりますので、是非お早目にご覧下さい。


http://www.mozilla24.com/

Joi Ito's Lab的には、CCMIXで行っている「MOGA」のデモ、

Second Lifeの島 (Kula) の提供、坂本龍一さんと小山田圭吾さんとJoiのインタビューの準備と
Firefox Rock FestivalのCC Studioのサーバの提供等を提供していました。

Loftwork is one of my favorite companies.

Loftwork connects the creators that wants to create artwork
and companies that want good creators to create artwork for them.

Currently they have 8535 creators registered to their network.


Video CC-BY 3.0, Fumi Yamazaki

One example of their work can be seen in the cover page of iCommons Lab report
which Loftwork artists create each month.

Last night I was going to have a serious meeting with Chiaki, the cofounder of Loftwork
with various other people regarding Creative Commons but yesterday happened to be the Halloween day.
So as a joke we talked about having a Halloween party
and went to their office and saw a GREAT Halloween party held by their staffs!

It is great to see how creative these folks are and really enjoying their work and the company.
Loftwork is also helping us out with iCommons Summit 2008 that is going to be held in Sapporo.

Catharina from Creative Commons International who happened to be in Tokyo joined too!

























Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0, Chiaki Hayashi

























Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0, Fumi Yamazaki


Thank you for the great night! > Chiaki and Loftwork members

























Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0, Fumi Yamazaki

You can see more of those photos here:

If you are interested in Loftwork, also check out this video I shooted with Yuki Mikami,
one of the creators of Loftwork on one of his projects "Creative Journey".

 


Video BY Fumi Yamazaki

ロフトワークという会社をご存知でしょうか？

ロフトワークとは：
8,535人のクリエイターを擁し、サイト制作、映像制作、キャラクター開発等を行う代理店。

Loftwork.comはクリエイター向けのサイト。
クリエイターは自分のポートフォリオ、ダウンロード用コンテンツ、ブログ等をアップすることができます。
ここで自分の作品をアピールして仕事を得たり、
お互いのスキルを活かしてコラボレーションをするための仲間を見つけたりすることができます。

Loftwork.jpはロフトワークの企業ホームページであると同時に
「制作会社」としてのロフトワークのお仕事の場。
クリエイティブなお仕事を依頼したいクライアント企業の方への窓口となっています。

こうして、作品をアピールしてお仕事を得たいクリエイターの方と
素晴らしいクリエイターによるお仕事を依頼したいクライアントの方の
マッチングを行っているのが、ロフトワークという会社です。

昨日、このロフトワークの創業者の林さんと色々な企業の方何人かで
真面目にCreative Commonsについてのミーティングを行う予定でセットアップしていたのですが
たまたまハロウィンの日でもあるので「仮装でミーティング」という冗談を言ったら
本当にパーティに発展してしまいました！

ロフトワークの社員の皆さんのノリのよさとクリエイティビティ、すばらしい！