Yesterday I went on an awesome tour of the city with a tour-guide called Norm and some people from just outside Seattle and New Mexico. We went through all the historic districts, past the Space Needle and Science Center, but one of the highlights for me was a stop at one of the lochs where salt water meets fresh water and salmon travel upstream to spawn. The salmon run began a few weeks ago, and there was a glass window that looked into one of the 21 steps in the ladder that the salmon travel up against the flow of water. It was amazing to see more than five species of salmon making their fateful run.
Later on I walked around the city and encountered quite a few homeless people who thanked me and wished me a good day after I lied about not having $1 to give them. This comes as quite a shock living in a town where best-case scenario in such an encounter is that you will only be harassed for 10 minutes and followed for a couple of blocks. It makes a nice change anyway.
Yesterday I arrived in Seattle, after an exhausting trip from Rio to Houston and Houston to Seattle (3 time zones in under 24 hours!). My last day in Rio was simply magic and I was very happy that I managed to visit Corcovador (Jesus Christ Statue) and Sugar Loaf Mountain on the day I left which was cutting it a bit fine. Many of the great folks that organized and attended the iSummit have stayed on in Rio for some R&R, and I envy them as long as Brazil stay in the World Cup!
So far the weather in Seattle is great and the city is buzzing with people, many of whom are also down for business or conferences. I was only able to get 6 hours sleep last night because of that darn jetlag, but hey, people are already drinking beer in South Africa when I’m still sleeping so I don’t feel that bad waking up early.
Today I plan on doing some sightseeing (and shopping) in this great city as Gnomedex (new media & blogging conference) starts tomorrow. It seems like it has been really well organized and I can’t wait to see what surprises are in store. The conference programme is available here.
NOTE: This was supposed to be posted two days ago, but the Wireless was broken so it appears here more as an archive of my trip…
So last night all the iSummit delegates attended a Samba night at the Rio Scenarium in downtown Rio, a beautiful and historical part of the city. This place was absolutely amazing and every single person there danced until way past their bed-time. The weirdest thing about the three-story venue was that during the day it opens it’s doors as a museum, so there’s antique furniture and ornaments integrated into the décor and taking a toilet break was always an experience.
After another late night and early morning the final day of the Rio iSummit kicked off with interesting presentations by Cory Doctorow, author, activist and boing boing blogger, and Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder.
Later on at an education commons panel, which included Cory Ondrejka, CTO of Linden Lab, the creator of the hugely popular MMORPG Second Life, discussed issues around open courseware and shared educational resources. Cory spoke about the potential of virtual learning and experiments that have been done with using Second Life as a core learning environment. I later spoke to him about the difficulties we face in South Africa with limited bandwidth and the university’s policy which blocks access to these games.
As the conference draws to an end and delegates discuss the future of iCommons, I can’t help but feel that I’ve been part of something really special – history in the making perhaps. I have been inspired by the enthusiasm and ideas that have engulfed this conference and have no doubt that what was discussed here and the friendships that were forged, will translate into a strong digital commons and benefit the community at large
The closing ceremony takes place in approximately 3 hours and the BNegao concert will take place shortly after at Teatro Odisseia (which I later missed due to severe fatigue but heard there was a great multimedia presentation comprising CC content and a band that rocked afterwards).
Tomorrow is my last day in Rio before I fly to Seattle and I plan on using it wisely by getting together with a bunch of people and doing some sightseeing. Can’t wait!
Heather Ford, acting-Director of iCommons has just opened the Rio iSummit in front of approximately 300 people. Also on the panel were Ronaldo Lemos — Director Center for Technology & Society (CTS), Gilberto Gil — Minister of Culture, Brazil, Prof. Lawrence Lessig – Stanford Law School & Creative Commons Founder and Joi Ito – Venture Capitalist & Chairman of iCommons.
Ronaldo Lemos welcomed everybody to Brasil and asked in jest that nobody complain about the series of parties that are scheduled for the next 4 days, one of them being a massive Samba party on Saturday night.
Lessig delivered a very interesting presentation on the current developments of Creative Commons around the world, in over 49 countries, and was especially proud that there are now over 160 million link-backs to Creative Commons Licenses across the Internet (100 million in the last 6 months). He highlighted some of the organisations and innovative web services that are making use of CC licenses, and one of the biggest surprises was Microsoft’s announcement of a new plug-in for its Office suite which allows an end-user to easily license their work under a CC license. Lessig also mentioned the new music video from Pearl Jam which was recently released under a non-commercial CC license and is very popular on BitTorrent as well as Scoopt, a commercial citizen journalism agency, which recently announced that it was introducing a new service called ScooptWords, to help bloggers get their work published by newspapers and magazines.
Gilberto Gil, who is not only a politician, but also a popular Brasilian musician, has just finished speaking about a series of seemingly unconnected things from his daughter on the cover of his latest CD, to the rich heritage of Capoeira, to nostalgic recounts of his childhood in Salvador and Brasilian culture.
So I’ve finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro after a pretty long and exhausting day-time flight from Jo’burg international. Although I haven’t had time to properly check out the city, the thing that’s impressed me the most is the great weather and the fast Wifi at the Marriot. Today it’s been 25 degrees with mild humidity and I’ve been walking around in a t-shirt and shorts – not bad for a winter climate.
In about 30 mins, Brasil plays their last group game against Japan and the ‘Ngo-In-A-Box’ workshop I’m currently involved in is ending in time so that everyone can watch the match. Apparently it gets crazy here and it’s very difficult to find somewhere to watch the game without being squashed like a breath mint in a laundry basket. As the game starts, fireworks and informal parties take-over the city apparently. Football is a religion in Brasil.
The iSummit I’m here for begins tomorrow and I’ll post more details as they follow.
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