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!