Sapporo at work Japanese service staff are so eager to assist, to ensure one is more than adequately served that it is a wonder, in their exuberance, they do not break! It has been said many many times that the Japanese are efficient. Today, Day 01 of the iSummit, I could do with a healthy dose of efficiency to bolster the headache incurred at the hand of the Shot Bar’s skilled shaker of an 800 Yen Martini.
The iSummit kicked off with a pro-active presentation and welcome introduction from Heather Ford, diving straight into global issues and the scope, the urgent need for open strategies to address them. She was also quite direct about the global instrumentalities and institutions that have been largely ineffective in dealing with the very real problems we face… climate change, poverty, land use.
Heather points to the need for open commons frameworks, open commons innovations, broad open commons protections to not only provide solutions to our problems, but to support ongoing development in general. Perhaps we need to understand what we mean by development in the context of global and local crisis? If we are to tackle climate change for instance, we need to address consumption and excess… but I digress.
Today we begin work on the joing icommons and APC video, Identifying the Commons. Unfortunately, one of the two cameras I came here with has not lasted the distance. So, we’re down to one camera and a lot of people to interview… in essence, we are seeking to know what people at the iSummit understand as the commons, what they feel constitutes an information commons and finally, what are the concerns of developing countries in relation to the information/knowledge commons?