I am at Tokyo BigSight right now for Business Blog and SNS World 2008.   The midday session that Andrew and I led went very well.  Despite the terrible weather and a smaller than expected turnout for the event, we had about 120 to 150 people come along to the session.

After the MC's introduction, first up I introduced the session survey.  I put together a simple mobile based survey system for the event, and projected a QRCode onto the screen.  This went pretty well, and about 30 people responded in the first few minutes.  Then I talked about the network event we are running this evening, and launched into the panel discussion.

Andrew was moderator, and the panelists did most of the talking.  45 minutes was soon up, and I presented the real-time survey results.   Although there was Q&A time at the end, no-one had questions.

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.

I went along to the "Facebook Developer Garage" at an event space in Harajuku.  There was a fairly basic introduction to Facebook Applications given solely in English :( , followed by free wine and snacks, and then a series of talks from local developers of Facebook apps.  I hung around to see Junya Ishihara present his "Kanji-Fandom" application, and Yuki from OnGMap informs me that there were three more demos after that, followed by a bit of networking time.

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

Armed with a digital camera and a webcam, I accidentally became a cameraman for BlogTalk2008. Wireless limitations meant that UStream live streaming was shaky at the best of times, and constantly having to shuffle large AVI files off the digital camera meant for a suboptimal experience, but the icing on the cake was accidentally deleting everything from the trip on my notebook the day after I got back to Tokyo. Being too large to go in to the recycle bin, I resorted to buying a utility that got back around half of the videos.

So here we are ... a mixture of my digicam shots and the UStream feed recordings, with a little Picasaweb in for good measure.

WebCamp on Social  Network Portability 2008, Cork, Ireland

WebCamp on Social Network Portability (SNP) 2008 Cork - Ajit Jaokar - Social Privacy and Revocation

WebCamp2008 - Social Network Portability Presentations *

WebCamp2008 Dan Brickley

WebCamp2008 Breakout Session 1 - Technology

WebCamp2008 Panel Discussion

BlogTalk  2008 Day 1

BlogTalk2008 - Salim Ismail - Entrepreneurship and social media

BlogTalk2008 - Anna Rogozinska - Everyday body regimes: the construction of self in dieting weblogs

BlogTalk 2008 Day 2

BlogTalk2008 - Joe Lamantia - The DIY future: what happens when everyone designs social media? *

BlogTalk2008 - Robert Mao - Open Portable Social Network - a Prototype *

BlogTalk2008 - Brian O'Donovan (IBM), Gabriela Avram - What is happening behind the firewall at IBM *

Blogtalk2008 - Andera Gadeib, Dialego - MindVoyager market research service *

BlogTalk2008 - BlogTalk2008 - Michael Breidenbrücker - Let's face it: Web 2.0 is all about advertising... *

WebCamp and BlogTalk After Dark ...

BlogTalk2008 and WebCamp on Social Network Portability - Social Shots

* = UStream (Ustream video feeds were having issues at time of writing...)

Anna Rogozinska (Institute of Polish Culture, Warsaw University)
Everyday body regimes: the construction of self in weblogs about dieting

Q&A on Ustream:

Joe Lamantia (Keane)
The DIY future: what happens when everyone designs social media? Practical suggestions for handling new ethical dilemmas

Brian O'Donovan* (IBM), Gabriela Avram*

What is happening behind the firewall? The emerging role of social software in IBM

Part 1

Part 2

Wireless access at the venue was a bit patchy, so the UStream clips are on a "best effort was not very good" basis. ;)

Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems Inc.)
Neovictorian, nobitic, and narrative: ancient anticipations and the meaning of weblogs

"In contemporary social software, we encounter once more the deep controversies of 19th century art, reinterpreted to meet the exigencies of time and technology."

Goth and anime stuff ... ;)

Keynote talk: Salim Ismail (recently ex-Yahoo!)
Entrepreneurship and social media

&