Last month, eSynapse was approached to put together a session for Business Blog and SNS World 08 at BigSight from May 28th to 30th.

With only a few days to settle on the session content, we quickly decided to do a panel discussion on Open Data and Mashups, and how they relate to the event main topic.  The session is on the 29th (Thu) from 12:00 to 12:45.

I pulled together a collection of industry colleagues to participate, and Andrew Shuttleworth from Tokyo2Point0 volunteered to moderate the session.  

The Panelists are:

Nob Seki, President of Six Apart Japan
Yukihisa Yonemochi, Enterprise Evangelist from IBM
Yusuke Kawasaki, Chief Architect at Recruit Media Labs
Yuki Naotori, Industry Consultant with 7ns.jp, Creator of OnGMap

I am truly grateful that they will help out in our little session.

On Thursday we all got together at Fujimamas in Harajuku to discuss the session and have dinner.

It was great to get to know the guys a little better, and to hear their thoughts and angles on all things web.  I have no worries that we won't have enough to talk about, I just hope we can keep the talk on topic for everyone listening. :)

Andrew will be there cracking the whip, as we only have a short 45 minutes.  We are accepting questions online before the event, and may also try out a QRCode based survey on the audience in real-time, if I can get the reporting screen working right by the day!

If you are thinking of coming out to the event, please check out our session.

Network Event

On a side note, we are co-hosting a network event on site at BigSight with Tokyo2Point0 that evening from 6:15pm ... please come along if you are out there.  There will be free drinks and nibbles after a long day's expo - many thanks to sponsors Paypal and Optia Partners.

On Tuesday night (2008-04-08), I took a couple of colleagues along to Tokyo2Point0 to present eSynapse to the community.  We just got the call at the end of last week, so we did a short introduction and a demonstration of the Blogging Platform.

Andrew Shuttleworth broadcast the event on UStream, and recorded the session.  The videos are below... We start at about 12:00 into the first clip.

Part 1. Intro - Site Setup Demo

Part 2. Site Setup Demo - Mobile eCommerce Admin Demo

Part 3. Mobile eCommerce Admin Demo - Closing - Q&A

On Tuesday I started working in Kojimachi, near the offices of Mozilla Corporation.  Gen Kanai, a friend from Tech Talk Japan chat and Tokyo2Point0, works at Mozilla and we got together for lunch yesterday chatted about various stuff including Mozilla Messaging, portable social networks and upcoming events.  He turned me on to the Tokyo Bloggers Dinner, a monthly get together of some of the local blog scene, where everyone has curry and perhaps a few beers, then gives a quick presentation about what they are doing, or some interesting sites they are using.  He introduced me to the organiser, Kohichi Aoki, and I was on the list.

It was a really fun evening with a great mix of people, and some cool, concise talks.  It's kinda late now, so I won't blog about the event in detail right now, but here is the slideshow.  You can click through to Picasa if you want to download larger resolution shots.  You can catch site of the about to be released Logicool Media Centre Remote, a Microsoftie caught operating a Macbook Air, Nagasawa-san from BlogPeople looking very surprised, and more!  (Turn on the captions and you'll see what's happening)

People and their URLs:

Masaki Ishitani from Mitaimon! and News2u Corporation

Matthew Skyrm, Brandon Wu and Takeshi Homna from Evevio showed off their video service

Hina Nakashima with HINALOG came up from Nagoya for the evening.

Takuya Terasawa and Takayuki Sato from Logicool showed off their new Media Centre Remote Control

Akky from Cybozu Labs

Hiroaki Totsuka from iPod Style

Pina Hirano from infoteria

Tomoo Mizukami from Uniden's Car Navigation Division

Ichiro Kiyota from Six Apart talked about their new content initiative and the first project, Blu-ray apart

Kazuyoshi Nagasawa from AIVY Communications and BlogPeople

Taizo Koide from ShoPro talked about the Shogakukan joint venture site for amateur cartoonists

Risa Nakanishi - PR Diva from Yahoo's new Search Ranking service - showed off all manner of rankings mined from various on and offline sources

Nobi Hayashi of Nobi.com 

... and many more!

Please send me a comment or skype me for any corrections or deletions.