www.johndbritton.com

This blog post is my application for a travel scholarship to attend OpenEd 2009.

Last year I applied for, and was awarded a scholarship to attend OpenEd in Logan, Utah. I came all the way from Hong Kong, and I'm tremendously glad that I did. My experience at OpenEd has made an enormous impact on my life. I met some great people, found a great project, and subsequently landed an excellent job in Open Education.

There are four main reasons I plan to attend OpenEd 2009:

1. P2PU - Most (if not all) the people from the Peer2Peer University will be there, it's a perfect time to meet up and move forward.
2. Open Everything - I'm facilitating the organization of Open Everything unconferences in more than 10 cities around the world. OpenEd will be a great place to find more people to get involved. Open Everything NYC featured an entire Open Education track.
3. Flat World Knowledge - I've recently taken a position at this innovative Open textbook publishing company. I'll be there to share and answer questions.
4. Open Sessions - I thrive on Open sessions. I'm sure I'll lead at least one, and will be active in many.

There are plenty more good reasons for me to be there, who knows what new things I'll discover.

The most important issue I'm currently facing relates to the commercialization of the Open Education field. If I'm selected to attend OpenEd 2009, I'll be there to gather information and discuss the topic of for-profit commercialization of Open Education. Important decisions lie ahead and I want to be sure to do the right thing. It will be valuable to interact with people who have experience in commercializing Open and building sustainable business models.

Thanks for reading, feel free to contact me. I appreciate your consideration for this opportunity and I hope to see you all at OpenEd 2009.

Last year I organized a gathering in Beijing's Beihai Park for Couch Surfing Day 2008. This year we were featured in the Wanderlust Newsletter. Check it out!

This past Friday a few friends and I ventured in to New York City to see a live performance by CAKE (Official Site, Wikipedia). It was everything I could have hoped for. Back during my freshman year at RPI, CAKE came to Albany and I've been kicking myself ever since I missed my chance to see them live.

The show was sold out, but I was able to snag a couple tickets off eBay. The crowd was good fun, I could tell there were tons of die-hard fans there. They played a good variety of tunes, but I was disappointed they didn't play "Mr. Mastodon Farm" even though I knew it was unlikely.

I streamed a few live videos of the show from my iPhone using the Qik application. Check them out, and keep an eye out for my future live streams.

Open Everything NYC is less than 48 hours away. Before giving the schedule there are a couple of announcements:

• There hasn't been much use of the Open Everything NYC Wiki, feel free to dive in and add content before, during, and after the event.
• As per Philip Ashlock's suggestion, there is now a page on the Open Everything Wiki to post suggested topics for Open Everything NYC - Thanks Phil!
• For United Nations security reasons, we will stop accepting new registrations for Open Everything NYC as of noon, Friday 17 April. As of now there are 200 registered attendees, we're capping attendance at 250. Please register as soon as possible.

Doors to the event open at 8:00AM, the program will begin promptly at 9:00AM. We'll start with a welcome and introduction to the event and a short talk by Schuyler Erle who is working with UNICEF Innovation on RapidSMS.

After the brief introduction, we'll dive right into planning the open sessions. The vast majority of the Open Everything event will be crowd generated, so please come prepared to participate. In an organized, but uncontrolled, fashion we'll scribble down ideas for various sessions and create our schedule for the day. We have space for five concurrent sessions (maybe more if necessary) and there will be eight open session slots for a total of 40 possible topics.

Projectors, dry erase boards, and wireless internet access will be available.

The first open session slot will begin at 10:00AM, with a total of three slots before lunch. Just past noon, we'll serve a free lunch followed by a talk by Robert Steele on Open Source Intelligence. After the OSI talk we'll jump back into open sessions.

The last open session will end just before 5:00PM. Leslie Hawthorn from Google, Inc. will give her talk on "Common Sense" followed by a brief recap of the day.

Immediately following the closing talk, there will be a guided walk to the post event socializing venue. We've negotiated a deal for half off all drinks and appetizers from 6-9:00PM. At 7:00PM we'll start the screening of "RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO" at McFadden's.

Should be an excellent day, see you there.

Questions/Comments/Concerns: Please contact me.

Full Schedule

Robert David Steele, one of the featured speakers at Open Everything NYC, has decided to distribute copies of his book "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political" to all registered attendees free of charge.