johndbritton

Luci Mino - Just Plane Fare 2012

2012-10-29T00:00:00Z

My First Trip Abroad

In 2007 I went on a trip to Costa Rica with my high school Spanish class. It was a huge deal for me and set me on a mission to see the world. I managed to save enough to cover nearly half of the cost of the trip, but there was no way I was going to be able to get the rest of the money myself. As the final payment due date approached, a few of the teachers in my school raised over a thousand dollars and paid the remainder of the cost for me.

Offering the Award

Since that first trip, just five years ago, I’ve traveled to over 30 countries. Exploring the world has become a lifestyle for me. As a way to “pay it forward” I started offering an award to students from my high school. Using my frequent flyer miles and credit card points I offer round-trip airfare to anywhere in the world. The only requirements are that trip be focused on some project, the trip must be longer than one month, and the official language cannot be a native language of the student.

NOTE: You can donate your frequent flyer miles to students too, just contact me.

The First Recipient

Luci Mino is a recent graduate of Monument Mountain Regional High School and she’s the first student to receive the Just Plane Fare award. Right now she’s living in Monterrey, Mexico and is working at El Rancho Del Rey. Here’s a note on her progress that she said I could publish:

On August 14th, I flew to Monterrey Mexico to begin an internship as part of the staff of a home for boys called El Rancho Del Rey. Along with the general internship, I came prepared to run a art/music program and set up a classroom on the ranch for this purpose. I came not knowing what to expect and was met with an incredible amount of hard work, as well as an incredible amount of love and support.

I have visited El Rancho on short term service trips for the past four years, but with the help of John Britton, my friends and family, and so many incredible supporters back home, it was made possible for me to go on a more long term stay. I am here until June teaching, cooking, cleaning, parenting, and learning. Needless to say, this is a dream gap year for me. I graduated from high school June 3rd of this year, and I am hoping to study creative arts therapy in college.

This is the perfect opportunity for me to get some much-needed experience, as well as sun and beautiful hot weather. Right now we have 23 boys from the ages of 7-15. They come from a variety of situations… but all come from broken homes. Some have only one parent in their lives, others are being taken care of by relatives, some have siblings working in the drug cartels, and most have been surviving in these situations on the streets. One of my main objectives in starting a program in the arts is to help inspire the incentive and encouragement they need in order to strive for a better life and a better future.

If they can see the fruits of their labour, a display of their own artwork, perform their first piano piece, maybe that desire to work harder and change their future will be their drive to succeed in school, and make the right choices. Each day, I see improvement in all of my classes. I have been blessed with so many talented, beautiful students who surprise me with new hidden parts of their personalities every day.

As of now, I am teaching four group music classes two times a week, four group art classes two times a week, and an average of twenty five private music lessons throughout the week. I also help to cook breakfast for thirty five people, parent, clean, and do anything else that needs to be done. My next project is to start teaching English as well.

The weather here is beautiful and sunny… it doesn’t feel anything like fall in the Berkshires. Instead of leaves blowing in the wind, we have hundreds of butterflies! They’re everywhere in many different colors… red, yellow, orange, purple, black, brown, the list goes on. With the arrival of the butterflies, I have seen the interest of the boys heighten and they beg me every day for extra classes. They all have such potential to do great and wonderful things in their lives. They just need to be given the chance!

How a Poet Learned to Program

2012-02-03T00:00:00Z

We recently kicked off a mentoring program at P2PU to help people learn web development. We’re in the pilot stage, but we’re looking forward to opening up for everyone very soon. Here’s a first hand look into what the program is like from the view of one of my mentees.

Vanessa Gennarelli is a P2PU community member from Chicago, IL. She’s an Editor at Flat World Knowledge, serving up open textbooks. She has facilitated two groups at P2PU: Open Creative Nonfiction and Hack this Poem.

In the fall of 2011, John Britton and I undertook a learning experiment. John would mentor me in webmaking. I would work on an idea for an interactive world history atlas. John would help me as much as I wished, upon the condition that I document each moment of the experience. We’ve been working together on a regular basis for about 4 months now. As we begin 2012, thought it was time to step back and share a few realizations from along the way.

Poets can program.

I’m a writer–and while my interests lie in digital learning, I’m no technical ace. To give you a sense of where John and I started, I could write HTML and tinker with a stylesheet. Scripts were mysterious, a plume of black magic that elapsed between tags.

My first assignment was Arnat Agnal’s lecture on “Lumped Abstraction.” Agnal prompts budding engineers and designers to see a continuum–from the nitty gritty details of nature to elegant operating systems–as layers of abstraction. A layer might be an equation, a crisp rationale that makes sense of complicated data. As their purpose, engineers take complex things, and, through abstractions like equations, build easy-to-use tools.

Enter a-ha moment #1. As a poet, this explanation of systems design made perfect sense. A layer that rationalizes concrete details in an abstract way–that’s metaphor, my friend. Effective metaphors build a relationship between the abstract and the concrete (i.e. “love is an island”). Like equations, metaphors also capture patterns in our lives–they “abstract out” the concrete details.

In a delectable moment, I realized it was entirely possible for a poet to think this way–and that the connections between the different disciplines enriched them both. For me, a discovery process happened when I could relate the new concepts to my framework for the world. Bring on the code.

Free to fail

I came to John with an idea of what I wanted to make–so I was personally motivated to complete the project.

I’d been thinking about the challenges in teaching Geography. Students often grapple with how to synthesize information across time and across continents–for instance, how rice production in 17th-century Asia might affect agriculture in North America. Usually these courses are organized by continent, which can further the impression that each area is discrete and self-contained. History and Geography instructors also usually want to show how geopolitical boundaries and climates change over time.

How could we mashup CIA World Factbook data and Googlemaps to overcome these challenges as an interactive historical atlas? I Skyped with John about what I had in mind, and told him I was ready to dig in technically.

We fired up JSFiddle, and began to play with maps. John introduced me to the Google Maps API, and I dug into geolocation like whoah. I learned how to construct objects & place markers, create polygons, and most recently created a loop of historical markers in Philadelphia.

Every few weeks, I’d email John, stuck and frustrated and forlorn about functions. I’ll admit to some anxiety about showing a friend of mine what I’d been working on. I often try to coax new poets to share their creative work, so it was useful to be back in that bashful stage when you’re trying something new. But John truly believes anyone can learn to program, so any missteps that you make are just part of process.

And it’s important to have someone to go to when you’re stuck. Really important.

Personally-powered learning.

Meeting with John anchored my learning path through the project. For each concept, John broke the idea up into parts to scaffold my understanding. After each session I went out into the world to teach myself more about the topic–be it arrays, loops or functions. I went to Stack Overflow with my particular questions. I watched videos from Treehouse and from Google on geolocation. As a learner, I explored to find the right resources for me. And I tried to bug him only if there were bits I couldn’t figure out.

The activities learners can do by themselves–education theorists call this the “zone of proximal development.” This phase happens when the learner is on the cusp of frustration, when they find the activities challenging enough to keep their energies engaged. Learners may “lose themselves” to the activity and become completely absorbed.

But if the goal seems too far away or the activity too difficult–that’s when folks can give up, walk away. For me, it was massively useful to come back to someone who could answer questions, connect the bits and pieces together, and move the goalpost to the next activity.

When I reach out to John, he quickly assesses where I made syntax errors or mistakes in the data. He’ll tweak the code or refocus my direction. And in that moment, I’d swoon with realization and pride. Code is a way I can think. Making something with it–this is something I can totally do.

What happens next?

I’ll keep trying to snag moments of John’s time in 2012. And the concepts we’ve explored together–like Boolean expressions, incremental operators and if/then constructs–are all gestures modeled by Scratch, the playful programming environment out of the Lifelong Kindergarten Lab at MIT. I’ll be a Research Assistant there in 2012 working on remixing curricula for educators.

Online assessments usually track student performance in terms of achievement–and that data is visualized in rows, a convention left over from gradebooks. I’m interested in visualizing how learning communities evolve together over time–so in the spring of 2012 I’ll be working on a prototype of a different kind of instructor dashboard. Using Processing. Hang on to your hats!

All of this good karma built up by School of Webcraft & John, this is time I’ll pay forward with my own efforts volunteering for P2PU. And you should too! Check out the School of Webcraft’s Challenges, review submissions for folks to earn badges, and chip in to help folks be more curious.

Let's Talk TED Talks

2011-10-27T00:00:00Z

I’ve had this idea for a while, but I haven’t really written about it anywhere yet. The 2011 P2PU Workshop in Berlin is right around the corner. Each attendee is supposed to bring at least one concrete idea and make it happen. This is mine. Sign up to join the group when it starts.

TED Talks spark discussion.

Every time I watch a TED Talk I want to discuss it. Inevitably this leads to me telling my friends about it and my related ideas before ending with “just watch the video.” Sometimes they watch right away, sometimes they don’t watch at all. Regardless, I always have to wait before I can find someone to talk to about all my new ideas.

It’s like a book club.

One solution to this problem would be to watch the TED Talks in a group, sort of like a book club. It’s a simple solution to a simple problem but it introduces overhead. Someone has to select the talks, manage the schedule, remind the group members when to watch, and shepherd discussions. There’s also an upper limit on group size if you want to have a strong relationship with each member.

Can we automate the boring stuff?

One person can easily manage all of the organizational tasks for a group at the cost of having a single point of failure. If the leader goes away it’s likely that the group will disband. To avoid a single point of failure, why not automate the organizational tasks? We can write a simple program that manages everything that happens in the group. Here’s how it works:

Suggest a TED talk when you sign up.

Each person who decides to participate in “Let’s Talk TED Talks” must submit a URL to a TED Talk that they think is particularly interesting along with three related discussion topics. Once ten people have signed up, a group is created and the first ten people that signed up are added to the group. A new group is created after every tenth signup.

Introduce yourself.

Group members receive a notification that ten people have joined. A new discussion topic is created and participants are asked to introduce themselves to the group.

Watch one TED Talk each week for ten weeks.

Each week follows the same schedule, the only thing that changes is content. The talks and discussion topics were selected by the participants as they signed up.

Sunday: Participants are sent a link to the TED Talk of the week, and asked to watch it.
Monday: Discussion topic one is posted. Participants are notified of discussion activity.
Wednesday: Discussion topic two is posted. Participants are notified of discussion activity.
Friday: Discussion topic three is posted. Participants are notified of discussion activity.

At the end of ten weeks, the group disbands and there is a record of participation for each talk and discussion.

How should I build this?

This is an example of an application that can facilitate a learning group that will scale with demand. If 100 people sign up, 10 groups will be created. If 1,000 people sign up, 100 groups will be created. I could easily build this as a standalone application, but I think it’s more interesting to think about this as a single use case for a P2PU API.

Let’s expose a P2PU API.

We don’t need a ton of API functionality to make this possible. Here’s list of the minimal API primitives required to build this.

Registration (& confirmation)
Group
Discussion
Notification

About P2PU

The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities.

Things I Hate About Skype

2011-10-19T00:00:00Z

It’s no secret, Skype sucks.

Skype has really been driving me nuts lately. I don’t willingly use it, but because of it’s popularity and the remote nature of my work I don’t really have a choice. Here’s are a couple of problems and how I’m dealing with them. I’m currently running Skype version 5.4.0.1217 on OSX Lion 10.7.2.

Microphone Volume Control

Because I’m a nomad, I work from coffee shops and restaurants quite frequently. It’s not uncommon for these places to have loud background music and lots of chatter. I’ve struggled with communication because my microphone pics up almost all of the background noise. The obvious solution is to lower the microphone volume, but that only works for a few seconds. Skype has a feature called “automatic gain control” that listens to the level of your microphone and adjusts sensitivity accordingly. The problem is that it cannot be disabled and the adjustments it makes are just plain wrong. From my reading, there used to be a setting to control this in Skype’s preferences but it has been removed.

The fix: Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml and add <AGC>0</AGC> inside the <VoiceEng></VoiceEng> element. This will disable automatic gain control.

Growl Notifications Are Broken

I recently upgraded to Growl 1.3, it adds the ability to pause notifications and also rolls up missed notifications after a period of inactivity. Now Skype’s notifications aren’t sent through growl. Usually I would blame this on the Growl developers for breaking backward compatibility, but I’m pretty sure Skype is at fault here since every other Growl enabled application I use works with the new version.

The fix: Disable all notifications in Skype. I don’t use it for chat, so I’m not missing anything but the sign-on and sign-off messages.

Webcraft Story: Caley Woods

2011-10-03T00:00:00Z

Caley Woods is a P2PU community member from Brookfield, Missouri. He’s participated in two courses in the School of Webcraft. This is his story in his words.

I believe this whole thing started when I saw a tweet where someone linked the live coding video from John Britton’s Twilio presentation at the New York Tech Meetup. I thought the clip was neat so I started following John on twitter and keeping up with what he was doing.

Discovering P2PU

Some time shortly after I started following him he tweeted about P2PU so I decided to check it out. I have always been interested in programming and things relating to it so it seemed neat. In high school I was going to start looking at schools which offered CS degrees but being a little naiveté then I was lead to believe that programming / development involved a lot of math. For some reason, at that time, rather than strike out and find out for myself I took others word and shied away from going to school for CS because I wasn’t a big fan of math and couldn’t see myself working in detail with it for an extended period of time.

After college (ended up training in computer repair/networking) my interest in programming was still there. I got a job working for a local publishing company in 2007 doing systems management work so I dabbled with enough scripting (batch, vb script, occassional C#) to hold me over. As I worked there I began to really develop a drive towards wanting to learn to really become a developer after interacting online and at work with some good people. I was shown that development didn’t always involve something like C/C++ and writing Fibonacci / Fourier transforms all day.

Joining the School of Webcraft

This all bubbled to a head when I saw P2PU and realized I could learn from respected teachers and peers in an environment where bettering oneself was the motivation for being present (versus something like highschool where you’re forced into it). I signed up for the 2nd cycle of classes I believe and took a class called “Beginning Python Webservices” taught by Jeff Hammel from the Firefox team at Mozilla. This was a great thing, I picked up a bit of Python which as it turns out was a great language to start with. Everything made sense and I had a great time doing it, even though we had a pretty late meetup time since Jeff was Pacific time (we met 11p-12a central for me).

In this class we used Webob and Paste, learned about VirtualEnv and I wrote a simple webservice that’s a random password generator. You can view the source. After Jeff’s class concluded I fiddled on my own with Django but I didn’t stick with it long because there was another course I enrolled in called “Beginning Ruby on Rails” taught by Andy Lindeman. Jeff’s course gave me enough Python knowledge to be able to complete one of Andy’s prerequisites for the Rails course which was: “In your language of choice write a script that will accept a string and reverse it.”

Where I’ve Gone

I started Andy’s course around the end of January and had a fantastic time learning from a truly great mentor. I’m still in touch with Andy today and I think (hope) he can attest to my growth with Ruby over the last 6 months from never having touched Ruby to where I’m at now. I’ve become actively involved in the open source community as well which P2PU is a part of! You can fork Lernata on Github and contribute to something really great.

My current projects are Rstatus and OpenMissouri. In addition to my current open source projects I’ve contributed to Ruby core, active_admin, and I’ve been working with John Britton on a Ruby gem called Cardshark. P2PU was key in helping me get to where I’m at today. There are several grassroots teaching initiatives going on right now and it’s really exciting to see what’s happening. P2PU and Ruby Mendicant are changing the landscape of learning and every day they’re opening doors for people who may be unable to afford conventional courses or may not be geographically able to reach such courses. I believe Andy is now facilitating a beginning Ruby course at P2PU and is trying to partner with Ruby Mendicant University to take you from Ruby beginner to expert all via free online learning taught by well respected and motivated individuals.

Opinions on P2PU

I think P2PU will continue evolve and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking to learn a new skill or pickup a hobby. The School of Webcraft is just one aspect of P2PU; there are so many other subjects being taught. I’ve seen courses on gardening, literature, and economics. I also wouldn’t simply recommend it to someone who is unable to take conventional courses, I would advocate seeing what you can get from P2PU before you look elsewhere.

Consciously Deciding to Learn

2011-09-30T00:00:00Z

Dropping Out of College

I dropped out of college about two and a half years ago, but that has not been an excuse to stop learning. In fact, I’ve put more effort into learning on my own than I ever did while I was in the system. School was very much about external validation, I lived for taking top marks with as little effort as possible. It wasn’t really about learning, it was about jumping through hoops to prove myself to the world.

Many factors contributed to my decision to stop pursuing a degree, but the biggest was that school got in the way of life. I had two options: continue to coast through courses with as little effort as possible or get out of the game and start living life. I chose life.

I had just come back to the country from living in China. I only had one year of school remaining, but even that was too much. The “back to school” motivation wore off pretty quickly and at just about the same time I landed a web developer gig at Flat World Knowledge. There I was, gainfully employed but still attending a $50k+/year institution. It didn’t make any sense.

School became unnecessary, so I left. I packed up my things and moved in with a friend near my new job and eventually made my way to New York City. At the time, it was a difficult decision. I was the first in my family to ever make it to college, and I was set to be the first to graduate. Looking back, leaving school was definitely the right decision for me. I left because it was getting in the way of doing important things and I couldn’t hold back any longer.

It’s Not the Only Way

All that to say, school isn’t necessary for learning. It can be great, especially when you don’t know exactly what you want. Many interesting, helpful, and incredibly intelligent people are part of the system. Without a doubt, joining them is a good way learn but it’s not the only way.

I spend a good portion of every day learning. I try to understand how things work. I secretly perform psychology experiments on my friends. I read as much as I can. I practice multiple languages. I dabble in the arts even though I’ve always been right-brained.

With my recent move to Warsaw, I got to do some personal housekeeping. I got rid of lots of stuff that I don’t need, I removed myself from the daily grind of the city, and I cleared my entire schedule. Slowly, I’m adding things back in and I’ve been very conscious of what is deserving of my time. Learning is definitely priority one for me these days.

Things I’m Consciously Learning

The hardest part of self directed learning has been deciding what I want to learn and what activities to spend my time on regularly. These are the topics I’m focused on and what I’m doing to learn them.

Reading - Pretty standard, lots of books on my Kindle. I prefer to read entire books in a single sitting. Not a very directed activity.
Coding - Building small projects in a short period of time. Going from idea to shipped in two days.
Design - This goes hand in hand with coding, I want my projects to look good when I ship them.
Spanish - Whenever possible I do language exchanges through Meetup and CouchSurfing to keep my Spanish skills sharp.
Polish - Living in Warsaw I practice all the time. I spend a few hours a week studying new vocabulary and grammar using Rosetta Stone and I’m enrolled in a course at the University of Warsaw. The course isn’t for a certificate, just for some people to practice with.
Poetry - This is out of my comfort zone, which I think is important. I joined ”Hack this Poem: a Workshop” at P2PU. “Take poems you like. Decompose them to find of why. Write your own.” I’m also getting insight into how people use the site.
Music - I’ve got a Monome and some crazy software and I’m experimenting with to make my own music. My goal is to perform something live for friends eventually. I don’t practice often, but when I do I binge for many hours.
Business - AVC / MBA Mondays - I read AVC daily, and try to get involved with the community there when appropriate. I’m using DailyLit to get back issues of all the posts delivered to my inbox three days per week.

Teaching is Learning

In addition to all that, I’ve taken on three “students” of my own. I’m giving free English classes to two Koreans in Warsaw and I’m teaching a Polish guy about web programming. Helping other people learn is really enjoyable, they’re really happy to get help and being responsible forces me to understand things fully before trying to explain them.

What are you learning?

Learn anything with your peers at P2PU.

Always Changing: What is P2PU Today?

2011-06-07T00:00:00Z

Someone asked me to explain P2PU and School of Webcraft in an email. My description is always changing, this is what I came up with today:

P2PU is a community for learning about anything with peers. Right now we’re focused on online learning groups (courses, study groups, book clubs, etc) but are definitely keen on facilitating communities in the real world.

We’re breaking the traditional model of top down (teachers / students) learning and making it simple to learn from each other. Aside from making learning from peers easy, we want to help members track and share their progress as well as motivate them to continue.

We’re even working on new forms of acknowledging skills. For the School of Webcraft we’ve partnered with Mozilla, a leader in web technology, to map web developer skills and provide competency based assessment. School of Webcraft is the first partnership of many that will leverage industry based brand recognition and trust to give value to credentials earned from peers at P2PU.

School of Webcraft at Open Source Bridge in Portland

2011-06-03T00:00:00Z

I’ll be giving a talk on School of Webcraft at Open Source Bridge. It’s happening in Downtown Portland, Oregon at The Eliot Center on June 21 from 1:30PM to 2:15PM.

Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web developer skills. Our classes are globally accessible, 100% free, and powered by learners, mentors and contributors like you. I’m going to cover the history of School of Webcraft, where we’re going and how to get involved with the project.

Full Details on the conference site.

Look Out for Big Brother - They're Watching You

2011-04-20T00:00:00Z

I love to travel and I love visualizations of the places I go. I love the visualizations so much that I go out of my way to manually add all of my trips to a map using (the acquired by Nokia and now abandoned) service Dopplr. I’m actually writing this article from the Detroit airport and am on my way to Oklahoma City for the Red Dirt Ruby Conference.

I’m not happy with Apple right now, here’s why:

I came across this article via Hacker News which basically says that iOS devices are tracking location data without consent. The story links to iPhoneTracker, an open source project by Pete Warden that visualizes the data collected by iOS devices.

I wasn’t convinced that Apple would actually collect and store such personal information without my consent, so I downloaded the application and investigated for myself, here’s what I came up with.

Based on this map, you can clearly see that I’ve been a busy traveler. Aside from the obvious: I live in New York, I work in San Francisco, and I’ve taken a few trips around the country you might wonder about that long line going from NYC to Austin? That’s from my trip on the Startup Bus.

I’m glad that I know this data exists, and a bit miffed that it was stored for all this time without me knowing. The biggest privacy concern is that the data is very accurate and timestamped. Someone snooping around on my computer would be able to easily determine where I was at a given time accurate to within a city block.

From what I’ve read, the information isn’t shared with any third parties. Not even Apple. Nonetheless, this is a major violation of user trust. I’m seriously reconsidering using Apple products for the long term. The irony is that I’m the target market for this feature and am 100% sure I would enable it if I was prompted to opt-in.

Ars Technica has an article with more details that you should check out.

If you haven’t yet enabled encrypted backups for your iPhone or iPad, now’s definitely the time to start. Two security researchers have discovered a simple way to map out where you’ve been almost anywhere in the world—without any hacking involved. The information comes from a location cache file found within your iPhone’s backups on your Mac or PC, bringing out serious privacy concerns and opening the door for a jealous spouse, thief, or even a crafty trojan to take a detailed look at your whereabouts. And it’s information that no one should have access to—not even law enforcement, barring a court order.

NYHacker Presents Music Hack Day New York

2011-01-11T00:00:00Z

Register for Music Hack Day New York

On behalf of NYHacker, ”the nyc hacker union” I am proud to announce Music Hack Day New York. Since the first Music Hack Day, (London, July 2009) New York has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the most awesome music hackfest on the planet.

Music Hack Day is about creating software, hardware, art… anything at all related to music. We’ll kick the event off with a few short tech talks from leading music startups and then jump right into hacking. There will also be longer form workshops throughout the event to get down and dirty with the latest in music tech. To wrap it all up all creators will be given a chance to strut their stuff and win fame and fortune (prizes) for their hard work.

We’ve got a great lineup of speakers that we’ll be announcing over the weeks leading up to the event, keep an eye on http://nyc.musichackday.org for the latest info.

Event Details

When: 12-13 February 2011
Where: Manhattan TBA (it’s a great venue, we promise)
Info/Register: http://nyc.musichackday.org

About NYHacker

$ cat mission.txt
our goal is to support one another in work and play; to grow nyc as a tech hub; and to inspire others to do the same.

we are a group of hackers, developers, and tinkerers working in new york city.
we share opportunities, tools, connections, and more via a communal server.
members receive a free shell account with web space, email— the works.
not a meetup so much as an initiative to make ny a great place to hack.

Additional Information

What Happens at Music Hack Day

Sponsorship Opportunities

Contact John Britton to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Video

P2PU Sign-up Opens Today - Cycle 3

2010-08-26T00:00:00Z

We just opened signups for the third cycle of courses at P2PU which are starting in September. This is our third, and largest cycle yet. We had 6 courses in the first, 16 in the second, and 23 so far for the third cycle. I’m organizing a course called ”Web 200: The Anatomy of a Request” as part of the School of Webcraft. Here’s the story from the P2PU blog:

The Peer 2 Peer University announced its third round of free and open online courses today, opening sign-ups for a growing list of courses dealing in su bject areas ranging from Collaborative Lesson Planning to Manifestations of Human Trafficking.

P2PU is also excited to announce the launch of the P2PU School of Webcraft, run in conjunction with the Mozilla Foundation. The School of Webcraft is a powerful new way to learn open, standards based web development in a collaborative environment. School of Webcraft courses include Beginning Python Webservices and HTML5.

All classes are globally accessible, free, and powered entirely by learners, mentors and contributors with the goal of creating a vibrant, peer-led system that helps people around the world easy access to build careers on open web technology.

The P2PU community is growing and excited to have these new courses and their organizers on board.

Since the last round of courses, a few changes have taken place at P2PU, most noticeably on the P2PU site which has seen a major overhaul, and is simpler and easier to use than ever before. However, the nature of the P2PU community remains the same, and all community generated content is open and shareable under CC BY-SA.

The P2PU community consists of a diverse group of people. They are writers, teachers, designers, doctoral and alternative grad students, artists, copyright specialists, scientists, and blues guitar players. Above all, they are learners–peers working together to learn from each other.

Sign-ups for all courses are available at http://p2pu.org/course/list. Deadlines for sign-ups are 8th September 2010. The courses will run until October 27th. Each course application may require additional information.

Vote for Mozilla and P2PU at the SXSW Interactive Festival

2010-08-12T00:00:00Z

I put together a proposal for our Mozilla Drumbeat project, P2PU School of Webcraft, to go to SXSW Interactive and we need your help.

Please register for an account on the panel picker website: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
Confirm your email address
Vote up our proposal: http://bit.ly/sxsw_webcraft
Leave comments and start a discussion

Please pass this along to as many people as you can. If you tweet, RT this: http://twitter.com/johndbritton/status/20906260210

Mozilla School of Webcraft @P2PU

P2PU School of Webcraft: Web developer training that’s free, open and globally accessible. Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web developer skills. Our classes are globally accessible, 100% free, and powered by learners, mentors and contributors like you.

Our goal is to provide a free pathway to skills and certification to help people build careers on open web technology. Existing developer training is expensive, out of touch, and out of reach. We leverage peer learning powered by mentors and learners like you and self-organized study groups. We use existing open and free learning materials In this sixty minute session we’ll briefly cover the inception of the Peer 2 Peer University along with details and success stories from the first three cycles of courses.

We’ll then dive into more detail about our collaboration with Mozilla Drumbeat including Mozilla’s mission to engage the next million Mozillians. We’ll present the P2PU School of Webcraft, and a case study of courses offered so far, including the first course, ‘Mashing Up the Open Web.’ Additionally, we’ll introduce our plans to separate learning from assessment and our community driven credentialing system. At the end of the session we will invite the audience, and all of SXSW, to join a course on open web skills to be offered during the week of the event. Read more: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/one_pager

P2PU Invterview on Udemy Blog

2010-08-11T00:00:00Z

Udemy just posted a short interview with me about my experience with P2PU:

Entrepreneur John Britton is with us today. He has been a member of the P2PU community- a collection of short, college level courses made by anyone- since day one of its launch, and has spent much of his professional life focusing on making topics and education more open to others. John is here to share his views on P2PU and education.

7 Tips for Demoing at the New York Tech Meetup

2010-08-05T00:00:00Z

Here are 7 Tips for demoing at the New York Tech Meetup. This list is definitely not exhaustive, but it should help people out a bit. In the spirit of the advice I'm going to give, I'm going to get right to the tips.

1. Intro in Under 30 Seconds

No one cares who your partners are, they just want to see cool tech now.

2. Always be Demoing

This is the most important thing I can tell you. People don't give a damn about your Steve Jobs-esque Keynote deck, make sure everything you do shows off your product for real.

3. Make the Crowd Do Something

You want to avoid a distracted audience, the best way to do that is to have them do something that requires thinking and physical activity, even if it's just something small like raising a hand.

4. Play Off the Crowd

Sometimes things don't go as planned, take my little typo for example. Pay attention to the crowd and use their reactions to your advantage.

5. Be Unexpected

If the audience knows where you're going they may get bored. Also it's great to catch people off-guard and give them something to remember.

6. Do Magic

Literally. I have to thank Danielle for this tip because I tend to be a teacher. The crowd doesn't have to understand how things work to be amazed. The fact that they know it works is enough to get them to use your product.

7. Have a Damn Good Product

You're demoing to The New York Tech Meetup, your product better be good. If it's not, don't do a demo until it is. You've got more important things to do.

Why You Should Care

I gave a demo of Twilio at the August 2010 NYTM and it went over pretty well. See my summary blog post for a video and recap.

Live Coding Demo at New York Tech Meetup

2010-08-04T00:00:00Z

Quick Recap

Tuesday night I gave a demo of Twilio to a crowd of around 850 people at the New York Tech Meetup. The event was a ton of fun and jam packed with great demos. I'd like to thank Brandon Diamond, Nate Westheimer, and the rest of the NYTM people for putting on such a great event. I can't wait to come back and demo some more cool stuff, these guys are awesome.

The demo went over really well. Here are a few of my favorite tweets from the evening. There were a lot more than I could list here, check out the Twitter search.

Some Press Coverage

Silicon Alley Insider called it "the best demo we've ever seen" and Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures featured it in a blog post called "How to Pitch a Product." Scott Heiferman, the guy who started NYTM, cited it as his reason for starting NYTM. Read Write Web, The Village Voice, and Technoverse blogs also covered the event.

Fred's blog post was picked up on Hacker News and then I posted it to Reddit. The article was on the front page of both sites for most of Wednesday night and Thursday. I eventually started an open conference call for anyone on the web who wanted to see the demo... I'll be calling everyone back later with a special message.

Other Stuff

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<p>I'd also like to congratulate <a href="http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/robots/texas/overview">Texai</a> and <a href="http://www.indabamusic.com/">Indaba</a> on super-impressive demos. <a href="http://www.playphilo.com/">Philo</a>, <a href="http://www.eventros.com/">Eventros</a>, <a href="http://shop.marketpublique.com/">Market Publique</a>, and <a href="http://www.turntonetworks.com/">Turnto</a> showed off some pretty cool stuff too. I don't know how I feel about <a href="http://bing.com">Bing</a>, but they had a <a href="http://twitter.com/johndbritton/status/20263724149">great quote</a>. <a href="http://www.cleverkoala.com/about-me/">Mike Lewis</a> has a <a href="http://www.cleverkoala.com/2010/08/another-phenomenal-ny-tech-meetup-august/">blog post</a> summarizing all the demos, so I won't duplicate that here.

If you're interested in catching up about Twilio, check out our <a href="http://meetup.com/twilio">Meetup Everywhere</a> page.

Peer 2 Peer University Call for Courses - Cycle 3

2010-07-23T00:00:00Z

P2PU is going strong. We're getting ready to launch our third cycle of courses, but before we do that we need you to propose them! Join in on the fun, all the cool kids are doing it.

From the P2PU Blog:

The Peer 2 Peer University is gearing up to launch its third cycle of courses this coming September, and we’re looking for new faces to join the community. Do you have an idea for a six week course? Whether it’s Physics 101 or Poker and Strategic Thinking, all ideas are welcome. You can propose a course at http://wiki.p2pu.org/Create-a-Course (deadline is August 6, 2010).

If you’ve never designed or run a course before, that’s okay, too. P2PU is running a Course Organizers Orientation for newbies to introduce organizers to the practice of online facilitation and provide support while they build a new course. The orientation will be three weeks long and will enable future course organizers to:

Experience open social learning first-hand

Distinguish peer-2-peer learning from formal online teaching

Navigate the different features of the P2PU site

Design a course on a topic of their choice on the P2PU site

Learn how to use different synchronous/asynchronous platforms effectively

Review and provide feedback for others; revise and refine syllabi for their course

Weekly video conferences will be held to discuss important aspects of community building, course design, finding and creating course content, open educational resources (OER), and troubleshooting. Conferences will be recorded and posted for those unable to attend. The orientation leader will also post office hours to provide additional support.

Building on the feedback from participants and organizers in the last two cycles of courses, the P2PU community realised that many potential course organizers had reservations about some of the technological and pedagogical aspects of running courses online. This orientation aims to address these concerns, as well as help organizers become an active part of the P2PU community.

The P2PU community consists of a diverse group of people. They are writers, teachers, designers, doctoral and alternative grad students, artists, copyright specialists, scientists, and blues guitar players. Above all, they are learners–peers working together to learn from each other.

More information, including how and where to sign up, can be found on the P2PU wiki: http://wiki.p2pu.org/orientation

You can submit course proposals until August 6, 2010.

Mozilla Drumbeat NYC

2010-07-22T00:00:00Z

August 7, 2010 - 12:00pm - 5:00pm OpenPlans 148 Lafayette Street New York, NY, 10013 http://www.drumbeat.org/events/drumbeat-new-york

Join us Saturday, August 7th for a look at some cool people and projects that are keeping the web open. Plus, free pizza and beer!

About Mozilla Drumbeat

Will the web still be open in 100 years? Mozilla thinks it can, and should, and must be. That’s why we’re starting Mozilla Drumbeat, an invitation to everyday internet users to imagine ideas and projects that build a more open web. We want you to get involved!

We are building a new community that includes teachers, artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, lawyers, and policymakers—not just open web geeks. Online, Drumbeat is catalyzing new open web projects that address critical needs and make the Web healthier. Check out current projects or initiate your own at www.drumbeat.org/projects.

About Drumbeat NYC

The Drumbeat NYC event will showcase cool projects and people that are keeping the web open. Come to Drumbeat NYC and learn how you can get involved, or show others what you’ve been working on.

Drumbeat events aren’t just for geeks. We’re here to weave together local networks of creative, Web-loving people and start new projects to make the web better.

Please RSVP at Facebook OR Eventbrite

Check out the agenda.

Open Video Conference, October 1-2, New York

2010-07-19T00:00:00Z

I’ll be at the Open Video Conference in NYC, if you’re in town, you should definitely join. Here’s a quick message from the organizer:

Open Video Conference October 1-2, 2010 New York City http://openvideoconference.org
Register by August 1st for early bird rates! See a preview of confirmed OVC programming
About OVC
The Open Video Conference (OVC) is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of video on the web. Join us October 1-2 for two days of learning and inspiration. And stick around for the OVC hack labs, presented in partnership with NYU ITP.
Who's coming to OVC?
Connected creatives, technologists and businesspeople of all stripes. Over 100 open source projects. Innovative filmmakers. Visionaries like Tim Wu, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, former Obama adviser Susan Crawford, and Damian Kulash of OK Go.

OVC partner organizations include Creative Commons, the Workbook Project, Intelligent Television, Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and more.
Sponsor application deadline
If your company or organization is interested in supporting the Open Video Conference, please be in touch by August 13th.
Open Video Conference Contact: Ben Moskowitz conference@openvideoalliance.org

Mozilla Summit 2010 Recap

2010-07-12T00:00:00Z

The Mozilla Summit far surpassed my expectations. The event was personal, technical, creative and inspiring all at once.

The Mozilla Summit is an invitation-only gathering of some of the most active contributors in the Mozilla community. This year's theme was "Be More Like the Web".

I was lucky enough to be among those who were invited, due to my involvement with the Drumbeat project. There were a total of around 600 Mozilla community members at the event: hackers, localizers, testers, marketers, and the individuals formerly known as 'users'.

Background

Mozilla is most well known for the open source browser, Firefox. In addition to Firefox, there are number of other software projects like Jetpack at Mozilla Labs. Although Mozilla has been incredibly successful with open source software, they're ambitious and ready for the next big challenge. As stewards of the open web, Mozillians around the world are banding together through Drumbeat: a collection of practical projects and local events that gather smart, creative people around big ideas that improve the open web. The Summit was our forum to share the project with the greater Mozilla community.

Day 0: Arrival & Reception

I flew in from Alaska, direct from my family vacation to Vancouver and then hopped on a bus to Whistler, BC. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon just in time to join the Mozilla Foundation meeting and presenter's workshop. I spent the better part of the afternoon working on a speed geek with my new partner in crime at P2PU, Pippa Buchanan. We rehearsed our talk a few times and got valuable feedback for the next day.

The rest of the attendees arrived in time for a reception, where we had a chance to get to know each other and kick off the event properly.

Day 1: Getting Started

The day started off early with a few inspiring keynote speakers and an extended lunch break to watch some of the World Cup. After lunch I headed to a session from Mozilla Messaging where they demoed experimental Thunderbird mail client features.

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA, Nathaniel James

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<p>The next session was "Drumbeat in 2100 Seconds," led by <a href="http://commonspace.wordpress.com/">Mark Surman</a>, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation. Mark took about four minutes to describe Drumbeat and why it is important to Mozilla before splitting the crowd into groups for the speed geek sessions. All three of the featured Drumbeat projects (<a href="http://www.drumbeat.org/p2pu-webcraft">P2PU School of Webcraft</a>, <a href="http://www.drumbeat.org/webmademovies">Web Made Movies</a>, &amp <a href="http://www.drumbeat.org/universal-subtitles">Universal Subtitles</a>) were represented along with Drumbeat Events and a couple others. The speed geek session went really well; we got a few people to join the project.</p>

Day 2: In the Groove

The second day was filled with more sessions, and some especially interesting HTML5 demos including WebGL and the <audio> and <video> tags. I had a chance to talk to Ben Moskowitz about open video and the upcoming Open Video Conference in New York City.

The Flight of the Navigator is a WebGL demo rendered in the browser that built by the Mozilla audio team. The demo pulls in live data and video from the web while rendering. Everyone in the crowd was awe-struck.

I spent the better part of the afternoon at the Summit Science Fair. There were around thirty individual booths showcasing all kinds of software. Everything from accessibility for the blind to a JavaScript framework for building Firefox extensions.

Photo CC-BY-NC-SA, Michael Morgan

We rounded out the day with the Summit World Expo and International Dinner, where representatives from the over forty countries in attendance showcased their local communities and cultures.

After dinner, there was a late night JetPack hackathon. I built a Firefox extension (more details in a later blog post) in just a few hours. The extension is called 'Clickable Phone Numbers' and it makes any number on the web into a click-to-call number using the Twilio API.

Day 3: Grand Finale

The final day of the conference was a bit more laid back, we talked about the Drumbeat event strategy and did a bit of planning for Drumbeat NYC (August 7th) and the Drumbeat Festival (November 3-5) which is going to be held in Barcelona. I attended a few more lightning talks and a session on the future of client-side debugging.

Pippa and I ran our session on the P2PU School of Webcraft. There was a 10 minute intro, and then we split the audience into four groups with tasks:

Design a course for P2PU School of Webcraft
Brainstorm a list of core web developer skills
Brainstorm a list of 'soft-skills' that employers look for in web developers
Come up with ways to legitimize P2PU School of Webcraft so that we have some 'street-cred'

The session went incredibly well, so well that we had a lineup of people to talk to for almost 30 minutes after it was over.

At the end of the day, we took a Gondola ride up to the peak for a farewell party of sorts. The views of Whistler were magnificent and the "Army of Awesome" was incredibly fun. We enjoyed a delicious dinner, cartoony mascots, toasts, and a dance party before calling it a night.

Day 4: Departure

We left Whistler by bus through the mountains, luckily unobstructed by rock slides. Now I'm on the ground in Seattle for the next week, followed by a trip to Portland for OSCON. Get in touch if you're nearby.

Crowd-sourced Coverage

P2PU is in 'The Hindu'

2010-07-11T00:00:00Z

P2PU just got coverage in The Hindu, which, according to

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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hindu&oldid=370224129">Wikipedia</a>

“is the second-largest circulated daily English newspaper in India.” The author, Ajai Sreevatsan, quoted me and mentioned my course “Mashing Up the Open Web.”

Video discussions John Britton, course organiser of 'Mashing up the Open Web,' says time zones are a problem while attempting to simulate a "sit around the fire and learn by discussion" environment virtually. "But lively weekly video discussions (using a combination of Skype and IRC) to review materials and work through the questions presented by the peers still happen." The 'class' is very diverse, he says. "We have peers from Korea, Japan, India, Spain, the U.S. and Canada. They're artists, technologists, environmentalists, and traditional students."

Aside:

Call for Courses - P2PU School of Webcraft

2010-07-01T00:00:00Z

Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, the ultimate environment in which to learn the craft of open and standards-based web development.

This coming September we'll be launching our first cycle of six week courses including Introduction to HTML5 and Building Social with the Open Web. We still have space for a few more courses, so whether you can teach a class for novice web developers, or run a workshop for web developers managing thousands of user accounts, we'd love to have you involved.

Following on the delivery model developed by P2PU, course organizers volunteer to take existing open learning materials or develop their own content and lead a group of peers through 6 weeks of online classes. Courses focus on project based learning in a peer environment and are proposed, created and led by members of the web development community — so the content will always be up to date with the latest technologies.

Over the next 18 months we'll be developing a new way of assessing and recognizing skills, hacker attitudes and knowledge that rewards project portfolios and realistic developer challenges, rather than hours spent cramming for a meaningless exam.

We'd love for you to become a part of this project and until July 18 we're inviting course proposals for P2PU School of Webcraft. We've made it really easy to get started, just fill out the proposal form, it takes less than 5 minutes!

Propose a Course

If you're unable to commit to organising a course this September, there are other great ways to become a part of the community whether as a curriculum adviser, web development guru and of course, as a student.

Participate in a Course

Join the P2PU Webcraft community

Find out more about P2PU School of Webcraft

Mozilla Drumbeat is a global community of people who use web technology in new ways that help them understand, participate, improve and take control of their online lives. The P2PU School of Webcraft is just one of many exciting projects that Drumbeat supports. Find out more here.

Mozilla Drumbeat: Innovation on the open web. Powered by everybody.</p>

Mozilla Drumbeat Festival: Learning, Freedom and the Web

2010-06-23T00:00:00Z

The Mozilla Drumbeat Festival is going to be happening in Barcelona right around the same time as the P2PU workshop and the Open Education Conference. I’d say it’s very likely that I’ll be there, you should come too. Spread the word.

Save the date: November 3-5, 2010, Barcelona The web is changing how we learn. It surrounds us with a massive and remixable tapestry of perspectives, facts and data. It gives us the freedom to learn whatever we want at our own speed and in our own way. It lets us become our own teachers. Fundamentally: the free and open nature of the internet is revolutionizing learning. Who among us has not fallen into a long journey across the web on a surprising topic? Or learned a new skill by making, building or creating something online? Or, for that matter, found a new mentor or apprentice in a forum or on a social network? More and more, this is how we learn. The open technology and culture of the web are at the heart of this revolution. They give us raw material to take control of our own learning. Teachers and learners around the world are experimenting, inventing, creating, exploring and building in wonderful ways with this raw material. They are living at the intersection of learning, freedom, and the web. Mozilla's 2010 Drumbeat Festival is a gathering of these people. Sign up for updates: http://drumbeat.org/drumbeat_festival_2010 What? Shaping the future of learning right now. Drumbeat Festival 2010 will showcase people, ideas and projects making connections between learning, freedom and the web. Things like:

A secure 'data backpack' where students control their own learning materials and credentials

Libraries transformed into digital garages where kids learn to make, do and create with an agile, hacker attitude

Massively scaled apprenticeship, we people learn by diving into the world of open source master craftspeople

Hackerspaces where people teach each other about everything from robots to lasers to knitting

Alternative accreditation models based on web and open source peer review techniques

The idea is to gather people with the puzzle pieces needed to ideas like these real: data portability; open educational resources; secure, decentralized storage in the cloud; open content licenses; agile thinking; open, user controlled online identity; massive, credible informal learning opportunities; passion. Who? Inventors. Learners. Hackers. Teachers. Artists. You! The good news: we have all these puzzle pieces in our hands already. We just need the right people to get into a room and use them. That's the spirit of the Drumbeat Festival. People and orgs we'll invite to Barcelona include: Web tech companies. P2P University course leaders. Digital learning startups. Hackerspaces. Creative Commoners. Online identity experts. Wikipedians. Software developers. Filmmakers. Web standards nerds. Open web activists. Artists. Web developers. Teachers. Foundations. And, of course, learners of all stripes. Why is Mozilla doing this? We believe that everyone has a role in keeping the web open and vibrant. That's why we started Mozilla Drumbeat: a collection of practical projects and local events that gather smart, creative people around big ideas that improve the open web. The annual Drumbeat Festival is a part of this, bringing together people doing things at the intersection of the open web and other important aspects of our society. The first Festival will focus on the connection between learning, freedom and the web. Drumbeat Festival 2010 is being organized in partnership with Creative Commons, MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. If you are interested in joining as a partner, please email drumbeat-events@mozilla.org. The Festival will take place on November 4 + 5 in Barcelona, with an opening keynote and reception on the evening of November 3.

Summer of Code Meetup at Google San Francisco

2010-06-10T00:00:00Z

I’m in San Francisco for the month of June getting ramped up at my new job with Twilio and it just so happend that Google hosted a Summer of Code Meetup at their office just a few blocks down the road.

I joined a group of about a dozen others, including Carol Smith and Cat Allman from Google’s Open Source Programs Office. There were GSoCers from all over California, including two exchange students and one who came all the way from Guadalajara, Mexico.

We started the event off just after 3PM with introductions and some background info on the various projects for GSoC 2010. There was one other GSoC alum from 2008, João Antunes, who worked on a file transfer protocol for SIP Communicator.

After João shared his experiences and advice I talked a bit about my experience working on a Summer of Code project while I was living in China. In addition I gave three lightning talks on projects I’m working on after GSoC.

I started with an interactive demo of Twilio followed by a Q&A on the technology. There were a lot of great questions and there seemed to be a very high level of interest. After I finished up with Twilio, I shared an update on Mozilla’s Drumbeat initiative which naturally segued into a discussion on P2PU and the Open Web Craft project.

After my presentation, a few guys from Scripped gave advice on communication and it’s importance in project management.

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Carol was super nice and gave us a tour around the office. We got some free food from the micro-kitchen and rode the Google Slide.

We rounded out the day with a trip to a pub on the waterfront overlooking the Bay Bridge. Overall, it was a pretty sweet day.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndbritton/sets/72157624248710936/">Flickr Set</a>

<strong>UPDATE: Guest <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-summer-of-code-2010-san.html">post</a> on Google Open Source Blog.</strong>

The Catalyst Campaign: Donate Now to Help Fund CC's Catalyst Grants

2010-05-31T00:00:00Z

Some friends over at Creative Commons tell me that they’re launching a new grant program. The awards range from $1,000—$10,000. They’re going to start distributing funds as early as August, so apply right away if you’ve got a good idea. I’m really psyched to see them making funding available to the general public like this. I’ve got a couple ideas of my own that might be eligible so be ready for some tough competition.

UPDATE: If you like the program, you should support it by donating today!

Here’s the official announcement:

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<blockquote>
We’re thrilled today to announce the launch of the Catalyst Campaign – from now through June 30, Creative Commons is raising money to fund our recently-launched <a href="http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Grants">Catalyst Grants</a> program.

Catalyst Grants will make it possible for individuals and organizations to harness the power of Creative Commons. A grant might enable a group in a developing country to research how Open Educational Resources can positively impact its community. Another could support a study of entrepreneurs using Creative Commons licenses to create a new class of socially responsible businesses. Anyone may apply for a Catalyst Grant, which ranges from $1,000-$10,000.

But we can't do it without your help

Thanks to the Milan Chamber of Commerce which has generously donated EUR 10,000 to jumpstart the effort!

Will you join in?

Advocate: Take a moment to spread the word about the Catalyst Campaign and Grants program on your blog and social networks with our banners and buttons.

Donate: If you give $75 or more, you can become the proud owner of one of these bright and cheerful, limited edition “I Love to Share” t-shirts. Every bit helps so give what you can today to ignite openness and innovation around the world! </blockquote>

P2PU: How it All Started

2010-05-27T00:00:00Z

CC-BY-SA Alison Jean Cole

A few years ago, I had an idea: I wanted to travel around the world and meet interesting people who I could learn from in exchange for sharing my skills. I remember having the idea very vividly. I was on an airplane, as I often was back in those days, and I was scribbling as fast as I could in my notebook. There was going to be an online component to a mostly offline experience. People would be able to lend resources such as classrooms, domain knowledge, books, supplies, and equipment. I was convinced something like this should already exist, so I did what you'd expect, I scoured the net high and low. As I searched I came across a number of different communities and resources but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

Sure there was CouchSurfing, but that was mainly focused on the travel community with a very minor attempt at a skill sharing system. I also found things like MIT's Open Course Ware, but there was something lacking, the community, the people. In my searching I came across a new term, Open Education. I had long known of FLOSS, so the concept of open education was pretty natural to me. Further down the road I heard about the annual Open Education Conference, so in 2008, I attended. My trip was kindly funded by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation based on my intent to share the idea. As it turned out, I wasn't alone in my thinking and I met Philipp, Stian, and Joel.

At this point, tons of ideas were brewing for all of us. There were a million directions that we could go. Different people had different ideas and we took a slow growth route in order to solidify what it was we were trying to accomplish.

Fast forward two years and you've got Peer 2 Peer University, a thriving community of individuals passionate about learning. Our core values are clear. We're an open community for peer learning. We're here to facilitate learning groups and give participants the recognition they deserve. P2PU encourages experimentation, and I love experiments.

As of now we've run more than twenty courses in two cycles. In the most recent cycle, I organized my first course, Mashing Up the Open Web. Mashing up The Open Web is the first course in a series of Open Web courses that we're working on in conjunction with Mozilla as part of the Drumbeat initiative. I'll save the details for a later post, but I will say that the course was an amazing success and that I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. I've always had the idea of becoming a teacher in the back of my mind, P2PU has helped me prove that idea is a good one.

P2PU: Mashing Up the Open Web Recap

2010-05-27T00:00:00Z

Photo CC-BY-SA gi

As I mentioned in my previous post, my course, Mashing Up the Open Web, was a huge success. Since I started participating in P2PU, I’ve wanted to organize a course. I haven’t yet taken part in a course that someone else has organized, although that is on my todo list. I really would have liked to join in on Kitchen Science, but alas my schedule did not permit it.

Background

Since I’m a web developer by trade, I naturally swayed toward the subject area when I was coming up with course ideas. I knew I wanted to organize a course at P2PU, but I wasn’t really sure what it would be about. After a few days of thinking I came up with a few different ideas. By chance, while I was toying around with the idea of creating a course on building web mashups, I got wind of the Mozilla Drumbeat project. I don’t remember how it all came together exactly, but there was already some steam behind a collaboration between Mozilla and P2PU. The Drumbeat connection definitely made openness even more important. One thing led to another and soon enough I had settled on organizing Mashing Up the Open Web.

When I started, I didn’t really know what the course was going to be about so I got on the wiki and started hacking away at a syllabus. The course was designed pretty much top down without anyone helping out or vetting me. If I could do it again, I’d have a few people review the syllabus and help me improve it before running the course. By convention, P2PU courses last six weeks. Mashing Up the Open Web was no exception. I decided to stick with a six week course because it gave us ample time to cover the materials without being over taxing on me or the other participants. Also worth noting, I wrote the entire syllabus while riding a bus back and forth to work.

What did it look like?

The course was project based, and split into two parts alternating between theory and practical skills each week. For the theory segment we covered things like what it means to be open, why openness is important in web development, and how to be open. For the practical skills component we covered some basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and a number of APIs. Although I didn’t state it so clearly at the beginning of the course, we basically focused our efforts on answering a question. Each participant needed to come up with an idea for a mashup that would answer a question of importance.

Dennis Riedel was wondering how search results differ from language to language so he built i18n-picture-search on top of the Flickr and Google Translate APIs. See it in action.

Between each class session participants had three assignments. The first and ongoing assignment was to work on the project, be it drawing wireframes, searching for applicable APIs, or actual coding, the project was always the most important aspect of the course. The second assignment between each meeting was a passive assignment to prepare for the next discussion. Participants read papers like The Cathedral and the Bazaar and watched videos on the semantic web by Tim Berners-Lee. The third and final assignment between each class was an active assignment. Participants were to write short essays reflecting on the previous discussion, imagining a closed web, or even contributing to open source projects in the form on patches, bug reports, or support.

Notes from Mashing Up the Open Web Week 3Who Participated?

The course received 32 sign ups. I admitted 27 of the 32 applicants based upon application completeness. I only rejected applicants that didn’t answer all of the questions on the very short application form. Immediately after closing signups I set out to coordinate a weekly time slot for us to have synchronous meetings. The best we could do was 11AM & 1PM Eastern time which would allow for around 20 of the accepted applicants to make the course. For the first week I held two sections, but consolidated to one section at 11AM Eastern for the remaining five weeks.

The participants were extremely varied in skill level, from complete novice to expert. I wasn’t incredibly surprised by the wide array of skill levels because I didn’t put any technical barrier to entry in place. Over the six weeks a core group of around ten participants emerged. If one was unable to attend, I would receive an email in advance announcing the absence. All of the members of the core group were on a first name basis by the end of the second week.

Participation in Mashing Up the Open Web was truly global. In the initial pool of 27 accepted participants there were almost as many countries represented. Among the core group we had participants from Japan, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the USA.

In the Classroom.

We started the course by using a web based video conferencing tool, Tokbox. Each week at 11AM Eastern, the group would gather in a video conference room to do three things. First each participant would give a project update, followed by a review of the active assignment, and finally a group discussion around the passive assignment. During class, I encouraged participants to ask questions and lead the discussion in whatever direction they wanted it to go. My goal was to facilitate the discussion, not control it. I generally tried to defer answering questions to other participants, unless I was the only one able to answer.

Two sections of Mashing Up the Open Web at P2PU in Tokbox

In addition to the weekly hour of class time, I held two office hours. One at 10AM Eastern (before class) and another at 12PM Eastern (after class). I had a much higher participation rate in the office hours after class than before class, but generally always had at least one participant taking advantage of the time. Office hours were especially useful for working with the less experienced participants.

Why Bother?

This course was an experiment. I wanted to prove a few things. There is a demand for this type of course. Participants will lead themselves to what they want to learn. Organizing a course is intellectually stimulating for the organizer. All three are absolutely true.

What Next?

We’re working on a whole series of courses like Mashing Up the Open Web. The goal is to create an entire academy within P2PU where anyone can come and learn all the requisite skills of an open web developer for free. We’re also working on a way to provide recognition of accomplishments and certification for the participants who want it. We’re not quite sure what that’s going to look like yet, but we’re working with Mozilla and a panel of experts to give it some real weight.

Sign Me Up!

If you’re interested in getting involved with planning and organizing courses you should join the mailing list and introduce yourself. If you’re not quite ready to organize a course, but want to be notified when we release our next round, please fill out this

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<a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dG0waTVHcnZkZ2gyTnJTVXJBbHJub0E6MQ#gid=0">very short form</a>

. I promise to keep your data safe. You can also fill out the form if you have a course idea that you’d like to share with us.

ccSalon New York & San Francisco Events on Open Education

2010-05-11T00:00:00Z

It’s been a busy couple of months working with Creative Commons. Back in March, Jane Park and I organized ccSalon New York and exactly one month later I was lucky enough to attend ccSalon San Francisco.

CC Salons are global, informal events focused on building a community of artists, developers, and creators of all kinds around Creative Commons licenses, standards, and technology. The first event took place in San Francisco in 2006 with the idea to replicate in other locations internationally. Since then salons have sprung up in cities around the world. Whether you're familiar with Creative Commons or are brand new to the concepts behind it, we encourage you to check out a salon near you.

The format for each event varies based on the location, but the overall concept is simple. CC Salons are open forums for people who are interested in the issues surrounding Creative Commons and global participatory culture. If you're interested in attending - check out the upcoming salons. If your city doesn't have one - feel free to start your own. Check out the resources for starting your salon for extra info.

Both salons were focused on Open Education, an area that I am very passionate about. I’ve spent the last two years focused on the intersection of technology and open education. Here are some of the highlights from each of the events:

New York - 4/3/2010ccSalon New York Announcement

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<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.flatworldknowledge.com">Flat World Knowledge</a></dt>
<dd>Eric Frank, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer spoke about the company's freemium business model for open college textbooks.</dd>
<dt><a href="http://p2pu.org">Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU)</a><dt>
<dd>Neeru Paharia spoke about P2PU and I gave a short talk on my course 'Mashing Up the Open Web'.</dd>
<dt>K-12 Educator Panel</dt>
<dd>Dave Bill, Arvind Grover, and Kerri Richardson Redding discussed integrating CC licensed content into the classroom and teaching students about copyright.</dd>
</dl>

San Francisco - 5/3/2010ccSalon San Francisco Announcement

REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: 
<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.clrn.org">California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)</a></dt>
<dd>Brian Bridges talked about CLRN and the review of a number of open textbooks that meet California standards.</dd>
<dt><a href="http://www.ck12.org">CK-12 Foundation</a></dt>
<dd>Murugan Pal shared an update on the CK-12 foundation and the non-profits "FlexBooks"</dd>
<dt>OER Brazil & P2PU</dt>
<dd>Carolina Rossini brought us up to speed on the state of OER and P2PU in Brazil. (There are number of P2PU classes in Brazilian Portuguese with enrollment in the 100s!)</dd>
<dt>Panel Discussion</dt>
<dd>Brian Bridges, Amee Godwin, Murugan Pal, and Carolina Rossini discussed open education, specifically with reference to adoption of open textbooks and the future of the textbook.</dd>
</dl>

Both of these ccSalons were great venues to meet newcomers and reconnect with people I’ve met in the past. I was especially excited P2PU and Flat World Knowledge represented by multiple parties at both events. I even got to meet Tanushree, one of the Peers from ‘Mashing Up the Open Web’. Organize a ccSalon in your city!

Using Titanium Mobile

2010-05-09T00:00:00Z

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I recently gave a presentation entitled “_Using Titanium Mobile: Mobile App Development Using Web Skills, by Example_”.

Titanium Mobile is an open source JavaScript framework for building cross platform mobile applications. It takes the learning curve for creating complex mobile apps way down, especially for experienced web developers.

The embedded slides are available on Scribd. More information on Titanium Mobile is available on the developer site.

P2PU Open Web at Drumbeat Toronto

2010-04-16T00:00:00Z

Next Saturday, 24 April 2010, I’ll be at Drumbeat Toronto to work on the P2PU Open Web Certificate. If you’re in or around Toronto, you should definitely come by.

Also keep your eyes peeled for an NYC Drumbeat event some time this summer.

UPDATE: This is a REMIX of HACK THIS POSTER.

More Than Code, It's a Community Too

2010-04-07T00:00:00Z

Yesterday, I posted ”More Than Code, It’s a Community Too” on the Google Open Source Blog. The post is about my recent experience with GSoC students in India, go check it out!

P2PU Course: Mashing Up the Open Web

2010-03-02T00:00:00Z

Are you interested in learning more about the Open Web? Then sign up for my course, Mashing Up the Open Web at P2PU. Sign-ups close on 3 March officially, but if you’re really keen on taking the course, contact me.

Course Description

An introduction to open web standards. HTML, CSS, JavaScript (and more?) through project based learning. This course is not for complete novices, some web experience is required. Participants will work on a self defined project that leverages open datasets and web services to create a mashup that is useful to their target audience. The participants will engage in weekly real time meetings (irc, voice, or other) as well as ongoing asynchronous communication. The role of the organizer will be to guide participants in selecting a feasible project and assisting the ‘just in time’ learning experience associated with technology discovery.

The course will include discussions on the Open Web and help participants understand the importance of keeping the web open. Aside from practical web skills like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript participants will be introduced to a number of free and open data visualization tools. Participants will learn how to find open data and use those resources in creating a web mashup.

What are you waiting for? Sign-up Now!

United Arab Emirates & India

2010-02-11T00:00:00Z

Today I’m taking off for a trip to the United Arab Emirates and India. I’m traveling with a good friend and we’ll be Couch Surfing the whole time. Last year I took a similar trip to go to Education Without Borders in Dubai followed by a short trip to Mumbai. This year, there’s no conference to attend and I’ll be staying offline as much as possible. While I’m traveling I’ll be thinking about things like the upcoming NYC Creative Commons Salon and TEDxNYED along with preparing to run my Peer 2 Peer University course ”Mashing Up the Open Web”.

You can keep up with my travels on Dopplr.

P2PU & Drumbeat Open Web Career Track

2010-02-01T00:00:00Z

If you’ve got ten minutes to spare, I suggest you check out the presentation that I just gave about the soon to be ‘Open Web Career Track’ at the Peer 2 Peer University. The Open Web Career Track is one of the first few Drumbeat projects being kickstarted in collaboration with Mozilla.

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.

P2PU is entirely volunteer driven, open, and free of charge. Anyone can lead a course about anything, and starting on 12 February we’ll be accepting applications to participate in each of the 15 courses slated to start in March. Keep a lookout on http://www.p2pu.org for more information on how to participate.

Courses proposed for March 2010 Cycle at P2PU

Behavioral Economics
Copyright for Educators
Cyberpunk Literature
Non Ficton Writing v2.0
Mashing Up the Open Web
Solve Anything! Building Ideas Through Design
Transformational Art
Running a Campaign
Green Action: Creating Sustainable Communitites
Urban Disaster Risk Management
Intro to Economics & Finance
Introdução ao pensamento de Paulo Freire
Cidadania Hacker – Novas Formas de Ação na Esfera Pública Interconectada
Cidadania e as Redes Digitas
Music Theory

Great Firewall of China, Stopping Contribution to Open Source

2010-01-25T00:00:00Z

I just received the email below on the Google Summer of Code Students mailing list. In 2008 I worked on Gallery as part of Google’s Summer of Code. I did the bulk of my work while I was on exchange in Beijing, China. Luckily, at the time, the Summer of Code management application wasn’t censored, apparently it is now.

This really hurts. If the Chinese Government doesn’t lift the ban on the GSoC site, there will inevitably be a drop in participation by Chinese students. Further, these tech-savvy individuals will likely bypass the firewall by using a proxy and may be in direct violation of the law.

This could all be sidestepped by providing an alternate URL & IP address for GSoC, but this is really just one example of censorship catching more than intended.

I’m a GSoC 2008 student from China. If Google hold SoC this year, I will apply it. But I found I can’t access socghop.appspot.com in these days.

In China, sometimes socghop.appspot.com was accessable, but in most time it is unaccessable. Under GFW(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project), many websites can not be visited in China. The govenment thought these sites threaten country’s stability. Websites like YouTube, Blogspot, and any website with appspot.com domain name were blocked.

The govenment have no intention to ban GSoC, the reason of blocking appspot.com is that Google App Engine can be used to set up proxy sever and circumvent the GFW, so the government blocked all sites with domain name appspot.com.

Yes, it is very ridiculous, but what we can do? There are many Chinese students participated in the past GSoC seasons and made remarkable contribute to Open Source. It would be a heavy losses to Open Source if there are no Chinese(and other undemocratic countries) GSoCers in 2010.

If google can provide an alternative entrance besides http://socghop.appspot.com and students can commit applications on it, that would be enough.

Google Wave Invites

2009-10-23T00:00:00Z

I just got a bunch of Google Wave invites. Post a comment here if you want one, be sure to include your email in the form (it won’t be displayed).

P2PU Sign-up Closed, 227 Applicants in 7 Courses

2009-08-27T00:00:00Z

On August 26, 2009 at midnight EST we closed applications to the first cycle at the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) with a total of 227 applicants across 7 courses. The six week pilot phase will begin on September 9, 2009 (09/09/09). Each of the 7 courses has a maximum enrollment of 8 - 15 students. All applicants will be notified of their status within a week.

P2PU Course Application Distribution

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<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=P2PU+Course+Application+Distribution&chts=000000,12&chs=500x250&chf=bg,s,ffffff&cht=p&chd=t:23.78,14.97,21.14,13.21,11.01,7.04,8.81&chl=Copyright+for+Educators|Land+Restoration+and+A...|Behavioral+Economics|Open+Creative+Nonficti...|Cyberpunk+Literature|Neuroethics+and+Intern...|Poker+and+Strategic+Th...&chco=ffcc00,339933,ff9933,00ffff,9933ff,0033cc,ff0000" alt="P2PU Course Application Distribution Pie Chart" />

Number of Applicants to Each P2PU Course

54 - Copyright for Educators
48 - Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
34 - Land Restoration and Afforestation
30 - Open Creative Nonfiction Writing
25 - Introduction to Cyberpunk Literature
20 - Poker and Strategic Thinking
16 - Neuroethics and International Biolaw

Summary

These are exciting times, all of our initial courses have more applicants than we can possibly accept. At the end of the first cycle, we’re going to meet for a retrospective and iterate on our methodology. During the second cycle I’ll be leading a course on web development. Hope to see you there.

P2PU - Enroll Now, Classes Start 09/09/09

2009-08-12T00:00:00Z

Today at the Open Education Conference in Vancouver, Canada we will open applications to The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU).

The first round of six week courses will include:

About P2PU

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.

Fast Company Article on Open Education

2009-08-12T00:00:00Z

Photo: CC-BY-SA

Fast Company has an interesting article about Edupunk. It covers Academic Earth, Flat World Knowledge, and Peer2Peer University (P2PU).

It’s also worth noting the total contribution to Open Education by The Hewlett Foundation is $68 million. Thanks for sending me to the Open Education Conference last year!

Wiki-Conference New York

2009-07-25T00:00:00Z

This weekend is Wiki-Conference New York. I’ll be there to kick start the Open Sessions on Saturday. Hope you can make it! I’m also going to lead two sessions: ‘Steering Communities of Practice’ and ‘Using Wikipedia as a Translation Engine’.

The Nitty-Gritty

Date: 25 - 26 July 2009
Location: New York University: Vanderbilt Hall
Host: Free Culture @ NYU / Wikimedia NYC
Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference_2009

Open Education Conference 2009 Vancouver, Canada - Scholarship Application

2009-06-30T00:00:00Z

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: <ol> <li>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.</a>

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.

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.

Open Sessions - I thrive on Open sessions. I'm sure I'll lead at least one, and will be active in many.

</ol>

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.

Couch Surfing Day 2009 - Beijingers Featured in Wanderlust

2009-06-27T00:00:00Z

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!

CAKE, Live at Terminal 5 in NYC

2009-05-31T00:00:00Z

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 Tentative Schedule

2009-04-16T00:00:00Z

Open Everything NYC

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<ul>
<li>There hasn't been much use of the <a href="http://openeverything.wik.is/New_York/New_York_City"> Open Everything NYC Wiki</a>, feel free to dive in and add content before, during, and after the event.</li>
<li>As per Philip Ashlock's suggestion, there is now a page on the Open Everything <a href="http://openeverything.wik.is">Wiki</a> to post <a href="http://openeverything.wik.is/New_York/New_York_City/Suggested_Topics">suggested topics for Open Everything NYC</a> - Thanks Phil!</li>
<li>For <a href="http://www.un.org/">United Nations</a> 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 <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cEYzbkdPeEMzOEFISkw0U0VySGtRV0E6MA">register</a> as soon as possible.</li>
</ul>

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

REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: 
<table>
<tr><td>08:00</td><td>Doors Open & Open Session Planning</td></tr>
<tr><td>09:00</td><td>Welcome - <a href="http://www.johndbritton.com">John Britton</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>09:20</td><td>UNICEF - <a href="http://iconocla.st/">Schuyler Erle</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>09:40</td><td>Open Session Planning</td></tr>
<tr><td>10:00</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>10:40</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>10:45</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>11:25</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>11:30</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 3</td></tr>
<tr><td>12:10</td><td>Free Lunch</td></tr>
<tr><td>12:50</td><td>Open Source Intelligence - <a href="http://oss.net">Robert Steele</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>13:10</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>13:15</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 4</td></tr>
<tr><td>13:55</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>14:00</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 5</td></tr>
<tr><td>14:40</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>14:45</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 6</td></tr>
<tr><td>15:25</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>15:30</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 7</td></tr>
<tr><td>16:10</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>16:15</td><td>Open Sessions - Slot 8</td></tr>
<tr><td>16:55</td><td>5 Minute Break</td></tr>
<tr><td>17:00</td><td>Common Sense - <a href="http://www.hawthornlandings.org/">Leslie Hawthorn</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>17:40</td><td>Closing - <a href="http://www.johndbritton.com">John Britton</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>18:00</td><td>Group walk to <a href="http://www.mcfaddens42.com/">McFadden's Pub</a>, 800 2<sup>nd</sup> Avenue - 1/2 off all drinks and appetizers for Open Everything participants</td></tr>
<tr><td>19:00</td><td>Screening of "<a href="http://www.ripremix.com">RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO</a>" at McFadden's</td></tr>
</table>

Screening "RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO" at Open Everything NYC Afterparty

2009-04-15T00:00:00Z

We’ll be screening ”RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO”, an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture at the Open Everything NYC after party.

From the RIP REMIX website:

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<blockquote>
In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Which side of the ideas war are you on? </blockquote>

Free Book: "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Politcal"

2009-04-15T00:00:00Z

Robert David Steele, one of the featured speakers at Open Everything NYC, has decided to distribute copies of his book ”

REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: 
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0971566119?tag=wwwjohndbritt-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0971566119&adid=1TNWBS80M5JBNB46S8NN&">The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political</a>

” to all registered attendees free of charge.

Wikipedia License Update - GNU FDL + CC-BY-SA

2009-04-14T00:00:00Z

CC-BY 2.0

The Wikimedia Foundation is currently holding a vote on the possibility of dual licensing the content of the various Wikipedias. To qualify to vote you must hold a Wikipedia account with at least 25 edits prior to March 15. If the vote passes, there will no longer be a licensing conflict between Wikipedia and CC licensed works.

You should vote. I did and here’s the proof:


SPID:       5574
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

hQQOAzWmQkC5j9heEA/+IB3gJP1osPamvlEDwiAZ5R0lrLb4IYrPzQUfUB/wVZl4
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Open Everything NYC 2009 Featured Speaker: Robert David Steele - OSS.net

2009-04-10T00:00:00Z

I’m happy to announce the second featured speaker for Open Everything NYC 2009. We’ve got just over one week before the big day; space is going quickly. Spread the word and

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<a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cEYzbkdPeEMzOEFISkw0U0VySGtRV0E6MA">register</a>

now!

Robert David Steele Vivas, 56, is a former US spy, co-founder of the US Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), and CEO of Open Source Solutions Network (OSS.Net, Inc.) as well as pro bono CEO and angel funder of Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity that creates public intelligence (decision-support) in the public interest. For 20 years he has been the foremost international proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and offers 30,000 pages of free information online from 750 international authorities, all easily accessed via www.oss.net/BASIC and www.oss.net/LIBRARY. Since 2002 he has helped pioneer peace intelligence and is the originator of he proposal for a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) to be funded by the United States of America, and to include an Assistant Secretary General for Decision-Support, a Multinational Decision-Support Centre that relies exclusively on open sources of information that can be easily shared with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) and other stakeholders, and a diplomatic Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements.

He is the author of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World; THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political; INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time; THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest; and ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig. He is the contributing editor of PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future and is the contributing publisher of COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, and of PEACE INTELLIGENCE: Assuring a Good Life for All (forthcoming, raw material at www.oss.net/PEACE). All of his books are available at both Amazon in hard-copy, and free online at www.oss.net. His vision for the future of Earth Intelligence can be reviewed at www.earth-intelligence.net.

Open Everything NYC Updates

2009-04-09T00:00:00Z

Outline

Volunteers needed
Arrive on time
Free lunch
T-Shirts
Spread the word
Suggestions

We need between three and five volunteers to take notes directly onto the wiki during the event. It's very important we record the success of the event. Aside from taking notes, you will be responsible for collecting slides and other materials to post on the wiki. Volunteers will receive a free Open Everything NYC T-shirt! Contact me to volunteer.
Please arrive on time, the doors open for registration at 8:00AM and the first session will start promptly at 9:00AM. The event will come to a close at 6:00PM. A designated food/drinking establishment will be announced - we're currently seeking group deals in the vicinity of UNICEF HQ. contact me with suggestions.
Free lunch will be provided for all registered attendees. A vegetarian option will be available.
We still haven't found sponsorship to provide free T-shirts. A limited quantity of shirts will be available for sale for $10 (cash only) at the event. Volunteers will receive a free T-shirt. If you or your company would like to sponsor free T-shirts please contact me.
Open Everything NYC is just nine short days away, please help get the word out by blogging, tweeting, denting, facebooking, emailing, sending to lists, calling, and talking about the event. We're depending on you to reach the best people in New York, we know you'll do fine. Make sure to note that registration is required at (http://nyc.openeverything.us).
If you have ideas or suggestions, please send them my way.

One Year Anniversary

2009-04-09T00:00:00Z

It has been exactly one year since I re-launched this site using Drupal. That’s one year of blogging, and quite a lot has happened.

localhost:~ whois johndbritton.com

Domain Name: JOHNDBRITTON.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1.HOSTGROWN.COM
Name Server: NS2.HOSTGROWN.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 04-dec-2008
Creation Date: 03-dec-2005
Expiration Date: 03-dec-2009

Announcing the "Just Plane Fare Award"

2009-04-08T00:00:00Z

I’d like to officially announce the Just Plane Fare Award. I’m now accepting applications from

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students planning international travel during the summer of 2009. One winner will receive free round trip airfare to anywhere in the world to go and do something.

Why? Because I can. Because the students deserve it. Because others have done for me. Pay it forward.

Partially inspired by Sidharth (… Ben, Prashant, Neha & Co.) from Life Unlimited.

Read the full details for eligibility and restrictions.

Madison, WI to Hold OpenCamp (an Open Everything Event)

2009-03-22T00:00:00Z

Madison, Wisconsin based Douglas Whitfield is organizing OpenCamp: an Open Everything Event to be held on April 18, 2009 (that’s the same date as Open Everything NYC). If you’re in the area you should definitely stop by.

Open Everything 2009 Featured Speaker: Leslie Hawthorn - Google, Inc.

2009-03-20T00:00:00Z

I’m happy to announce the first of two featured speakers for Open Everything NYC 2009. The event is just under a month away and space is limited, so please

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<a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cEYzbkdPeEMzOEFISkw0U0VySGtRV0E6MA">register</a>

. Don’t forget to tell your friends!

Leslie Hawthorn

Leslie Hawthorn is a Program Manager for Google’s Open Source Programs Office, where she’s the Community Manager for the Google Summer of Code community. She recently conceived, launched and managed the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, the world’s first global initiative to get pre-university students involved in all aspects of Open Source software development. Leslie has also organized more than 100 open source conferences and hackathons, most held at Google’s Corporate Headquarters in Mountain View, California, USA. When not wrangling FOSS developers, she’s usually speaking about Open Source, FOSS in education, and community building or writing for the Google Open Source Blog. Prior to joining Google, Leslie got her feet wet in Silicon Valley high tech at a small communications semiconductor startup, where she worked in Marketing and Public Relations. She holds a Honors B.A. in English Language and Literature from U.C. Berkeley and her personal website is http://www.hawthornlandings.org.

Mozilla and Creative Commons Teach Practical Open Education Skills

2009-03-17T00:00:00Z

From the Mozilla wiki:

Mozilla (in collaboration with ccLearn and the Peer 2 Peer University) launches a practical online seminar on open education. This six week course is targeted at educators who will gain basic skills in open licensing, open technology, and open pedagogy; work on prototypes of innovative open education projects; and get input from some of the world leading innovators along the way.

The most exciting part of this is that Mozilla is teaming up with the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), I guess this will be the first official course from the P2PU.

Announcing Open Everything NYC 2009

2009-03-17T00:00:00Z

Open Everything NYC

The event will be 100% free and open to the public on a first come first serve basis, online pre-registration is required. The main hall can hold up to 250 guests.

The event will consist of two keynote presentations (one opening & one closing) each of about 1 hour in duration. In the time between the two keynotes attendees will be in control of the program (Barcamp style). There will be a number of conference rooms available for individuals to hold talks & discussions on topics they see fit. Past events have included topics such as Open Publishing, Open Education, Government Transparency, Open Access, Open Research Data, Creative Commons, Open Hardware, and more.

From http://openeverything.net:

Open Everything is a global conversation about the art, science and spirit of 'open'. It gathers people using openness to create and improve software, education, media, philanthropy, architecture, neighbourhoods, workplaces and the society we live in: everything. It's about thinking, doing and being open.

Open Everything was started by a few people back in the beginning of 2008, and it has grown to include events in cities around the world. New York is going to be the next and we’d be delighted if you would participate.

National Circus

2009-03-15T00:00:00Z

Got Couch? - American Apparel Brown Ringer Tee - Official Order Form

2009-02-24T00:00:00Z

The order form may not be visible in your RSS reader, see the full post

The design has been finalized, here it is:

Available in S, M, L, XL, & XXL sizes at a price of $20.00 USD each. This is a high quality tee, the consensus was that we’d prefer pay a little more for a more comfortable shirt.

To get your very own shirt just ~~use the order form below~~ contact me.

Kiva - Loans That Change Lives, Again

2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

I'm a Kiva lender

The gift certificates are just special links you can follow that will give you $25.00 of credit in your new Kiva account to lend to the borrower of your choosing. The gift certificate is available to whomever claims it first.

Please don't claim the gift certificate if you're not new to Kiva, I'm hoping this will get someone new involved.

To claim the gift certificate

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<a href="http://www.kiva.org/redeem?purchaserEmail=public@johndbritton.com&giftCode=5242832482645">click this link</a>

and follow the instructions to open a new account. Once you’ve created your account make sure to lend the funds to an entrepreneur, otherwise the money will just sit there for a year before becoming a donation to cover Kiva’s operating costs.

Other Uses of "Open Everything"

2009-02-11T00:00:00Z

I just came across this post by Kenneth Ronkowitz about the term “Open Everything”. It seems he’s been using the term on his blog since the beginning of 2008. He managed to find his way from the (now deleted) Wikipedia article, to the Open Everything Wiki, to the Open Everything Hong Kong website all the way back to my blog. The interesting part was that he was able to connect me with P2PU and some other topics he’d been blogging about recently. The internet is getting smaller, I swear.

Couch Surfing - "Got Couch" T-Shirt

2009-02-08T00:00:00Z

Back when I was in Beijing, Alain sent me a really cool design for a Couch Surfing T-Shirt. I’m not really sure who did the design, but I really love it. My plan was to print it and give them out to my surfers, but I just haven’t gotten around to that yet.

With Couch Crash NYC coming up in just a couple weeks, I thought it’d be a perfect time to get some made. If you’ll be at Couch Crash NYC and want a T-shirt, just leave a comment on this post with your shirt size. Also please fill in your real email address on the comment form (it won’t be published) so I can get in touch with you if necessary.

I don’t know what the cost of the shirts will be yet, but there will be NO PRICE MARKUP, you just pay the cost of the printed shirt.

Also, please feel free to download, modify the design and to print your own shirts and share them with others.

I’m planning to print them on a light brown “ringer” tee, with dark brown trim.

Here’s a link to the Photoshop file.

Kiva - Loans That Change Lives

2009-02-06T00:00:00Z

According to the Wikipedia Article:

A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies.

Similar subterranean rooms are found among the ancient peoples of the American southwest, including the Ancient Pueblo Peoples , the Mogollon and the Hohokam. Those used by the ancient Pueblos of the Pueblo I Era and following, designated by the Pecos Classification system developed by archaeologists, were usually round, and generally believed to have been used for religious and other communal purposes.

Wait a second, that’s not what I was looking for. The organization website has a better description:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

I'm a Kiva lenderPlease don't claim the gift certificate if you're not new to Kiva, I'm hoping this will get someone new involved.

To claim the gift certificate

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<a href="http://www.kiva.org/redeem?purchaserEmail=public@johndbritton.com&giftCode=8354562245479">click this link</a>

The next Kiva gift certificate link will be posted on

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<a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&day=13&year=2009&hour=12&min=0&sec=0&p1=179">Friday, 13 February 2009 between 12:00-13:00 EST</a>

. I’m telling you this now to give you an advantage over the other internet dwellers, come back later to claim your gift certificate too!

Open Education 2008: Celebrating Ten Years of Open Content

2009-02-04T00:00:00Z

This post is long overdue (September 2008); I just found it sitting in my blog's queue. I had been trying to polish it off and must have forgotten about it, sorry for the delay.

Thanks to the generous support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation I was able to travel from Hong Kong to Logan, UT for the Open Education 2008 conference.

I started off the trip with a layover in Seoul that I extended for a couple of days. While I was there I saw a Korea vs. Japan football match, went to the Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival, and ate a live octopus. Suffice it to say that South Korea was an adventure of it’s own.

I flew into Salt Lake City, UT where I was met by my amazing Couch Surfing host Anthony. He chauffeured me from SLC airport to his place in Logan. For the next three days I sat in on a ton of sessions, met great people, and shared my ideas for what I was calling “uOpenEd”.

If you read my application to OpenEd 2008 (linked below), you’ll see my reasons for attending and my goals for “uOpenEd”. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had these kinds of thoughts and on the final day of the conference, I sat in on a session entitled “The Peer 2 Peer University: Moving Forward”. This session was different from all the rest. Rather than someone delivering a lecture, we had a brief intro and broke off into groups to discuss and solve problems. That was the icing on the cake, it was exactly what I was looking for, a team to work with to turn the idea into a reality.

The P2PU session was lead by Philipp Schmidt & Stian Haklev. Coincidentally, I had been emailing back and fourth with Philipp about Open Everything before the conference, and had no idea that we’d bump into each other (and end up working on the P2PU project together).

As per Stian’s suggestion, I’ve posted my OpenEd 2008 Scholarship Application along with the Conference Proceedings, 86MB (zip).

See You at Drupalcon DC 2009

2008-12-15T00:00:00Z

I’m going to Drupalcon DC 2009! I managed to get my ticket at the early-bird price of $125, tickets are now $250 each.

I’m really looking forward to the trip. I’ve been to the capital of at least twenty other countries, but I’ve never actually seen Washington, DC. This will be a great opportunity for me to see my nation’s capital city.

I’m planning to co-host a BoF session entitled ”Guilt in Open Source Projects” with Dave from Advomatic. The session is a spin-off of a session I led at Open Everything Hong Kong, ”Guilt in Open Organizations”.

What Happened at Open Everything Hong Kong

2008-12-14T00:00:00Z

I’ve spent the last week decompressing my brain from organizing this year’s Open Everything Hong Kong, so I apologize for the delay in posting this recap story.

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First of all, the event was a huge success! Thank you all for your support and for making the day worthwhile. We had a great turnout, around 45 people came by with just over 30 in attendance at any given time. In the week leading up to the event the number of registered attendees almost tripled (to 62 registered attendees)! The speedy increase in numbers had me worried about space, but in the end the venue was just the right size.

I kicked off the event at 10AM with a short history of Open Everything and a quick look at the agenda (slides [PDF]). We then proceeded with short introductions by attendees and a talk by Haggen So from Creative Commons Hong Kong.

The rest of the day was left in the hands of attendees who organized some great Open Sessions.

Open Sessions:

Creative Commons Hong Kong
Flickr
Guilt in Open Organizations
HK Drupal User Group
How to Encourage Open Organizations (and Society)
Open Feedback and Retrospectives
Open Government
Open Hardware (AKA - How We May Build Our Own Toys)
Open House: Internet Mediated Hospitality Exchange
Open Public Information
Openness and Mental Health
Peer2Peer University

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We wrapped up the official event with an excellent presentation by John Bacon-Shone from Hong Kong University entitled

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<em>Open Access to Research Publications & Data</em>

followed by a video handover to Open Everything Berlin.

After cleaning up the venue a number of us made our way to Lan Kwai Fong for some dinner and drinks at Whiskey Priest.

Enrolled in David Wiley's Introduction to Open Education 2009 Course

2008-12-02T00:00:00Z

I’ve just signed up for David Wiley’s Introduction to Open Education 2009 course that is being offered at Brigham Young University during the upcoming term. I’m not a student at BYU, but “the course will be open again this year, meaning anyone, anywhere is welcome to participate. And yes, David will print and mail completion certificates again for those who earn and want them.”

The experience will help me get a feel for online learning environments and hopefully give some inspiration for my work on the Peer2Peer University (P2PU).

Announcing Open Everything Hong Kong 2008

2008-11-25T00:00:00Z

Date: 6 December 2008
Time: Registration 9:00AM - 10:00AM, Main Event 10:00AM - 5:00PM; Social Mixer immedately following the main event
Venue: SOHO Life Office - Guangdong Investment Tower 1/F - 148 Connaught Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Full Details: http://openeverything.hk/2008/

Over the past month and a half I’ve been organizing Open Everything Hong Kong 2008. Thanks to some help from Nick Wang and the Hong Kong Drupal User Group, I’ve finally secured a venue and everything looks like it’s in order. The guest list is growing fast, hope to see you there!

Open Everything (global site: http://openeverything.net) is a collection of events scattered all over the world, organized by ordinary people just like you. The purpose of the event is to explore and discuss ‘open’. The interpretation of the idea is in the hands of attendees, and each event differs from the next.

Let there be no confusion, Open Everything is not a tech conference. There is much more to ‘open’ than technology, part of the goal of the event is to bring the less known aspects of ‘open’ to the attention of the general public.

At Open Everything Hong Kong 2008 there will be two invited guest speakers and four open sessions left in the hands of attendees. Feel free to come prepared with a topic to share, discuss, or present. Also feel free to act spontaneously and lead a group discussion with no preparation at all. The magic of the event is that it is open and we’re all free to contribute as we desire.

The event is free and open to the public, we do kindly ask that you

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so we can give you a fancy name badge and maybe even a T-shirt. We’d also like to know how many people to expect so that we’re prepared.

Sister events will be held in Berlin, Germany and Madison, WI, USA on the same day. We’re expecting to have some sort of video link to hand over between timezones. Wish your city had an event? Join the discussion and we’ll be happy to help you organize an Open Everything of your very own ;).

Questions/Comments/Concerns about the Hong Kong Event? shout@openeverything.hk

Backstage Shadow

2008-10-04T00:00:00Z

Barcamp Hong Kong 2008

2008-09-11T00:00:00Z

This past Saturday was Barcamp Hong Kong (photos). If you’ve never heard of Barcamp you should check out the Wikipedia article. The event was organized by technologists from the area and was hosted by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. at their location in Quarry Bay.

There were five rooms available during each of six time slots for a total of 30 possible sessions. I attended six:

Online Marketing for Consumer Acquisition
Technology Yesterday, Relevance
Making iPhone Apps
Open Culture
Just What the ____ is SPAM?
Theming Drupal

I organized the session on Open Culture, and was very happy at the amount of discussion and participation we had. Most of the other sessions were more like lectures but still quite good. The interactivity was mostly thanks to Conrad Benham’s idea to make the session an “open space” discussion, it seemed to fit perfectly with the topic. We placed five “hot seats” at the front of the room. To control conversation, only people seated in the designated seats were allowed to talk. Anyone could join the conversation by bumping another person off the floor. The discussion mostly focused on open education and it’s practical application, but we hit a few other topics as well.

There were more than 25 Drupalistas at Barcamp HK. It was quite funny to bump into Dave Hansen-Lange from Advomatic again, I met him earlier this year on the other side of the planet at Drupalcon Boston. I took the first few minutes of the “Theming Drupal” session to talk about the Knight Drupal Initiative and answer questions related to the grant process before the other talk begain. There was quite a bit of interest in KDI; let’s see those proposals!

After the conference ThoughtWorks and others sponsored a gathering at the East End Brewery.

Many thanks to everyone for such an enlightening day.

Mr. Flatland Wins RPI Game Jam, "Best Game Overall" and "Most Fun"

2008-09-10T00:00:00Z

Just before the end of the 2008 Spring semester the RPI Game Development Club hosted a Game Jam. Brian McDonald, Peter Mueller and I formed a team to develop a fully functional themed game in eight hours.

The announced theme was “digging”; our answer was Mr. Flatland, a Tetris-esque arcade style game. Mr. Flatland is a digging creature who longs to keep the ground above his head… you guessed it, flat. The game speed (difficulty) increases logarithmically as the player’s score increases. Falling bricks, which are “undiggable” at first disrupt the flat horizon. The user gains points and “undiggable” bricks become “diggable” whenever a flat horizon is achieved.

Brian and I spent the first half hour talking about ideas and then another hour fleshing out the details for Mr. Flatland. We developed the game using PyGame, and we started from the example source code from Chimp Line By Line slowly transforming it into our game. When we started developing we used solid color bitmaps as sprites. Four or five hours before the end of the competition Peter (our team artist) arrived and started making real sprites. We used every last minute of the allotted time for development and testing, and I must say it was quite a fun experience. While Peter was drawing, Brian and I chipped away at individual tasks. I found that we frequently used the pair programming technique.

At the end of the competition all the games were judged by a panel comprised of industry professionals. I can’t remember individual names but I do remember that representatives from 1st Playable and Vicarious Visions were judging (among others).

I’m happy to share that Mr. Flatland was selected as the winner in the category “Most Fun” and was selected as the “Best Game Overall”.

Check out the gameplay demonstration video, and feel free to download and modify the game as you wish… we released it as open source!

"Hong Kong Riding High", Pay it Forward: Winners

2008-08-06T00:00:00Z

About a week ago I announced an Olympic Ticket Giveaway. The time has come to announce the winners and runners-up. Although there is no way for me to verify you’ve done your good deed, I hope that you will follow through even if you didn’t win the tickets.

There was a great response, with even better ideas:

Pray for peace on Earth
Organize a Couch Surfing gathering
Give art lessons to friends and family
Give up metro seats
Make people smile
Give English lessons to Japanese speakers
Organize a fundraiser for the Join Together Society
Sponsor a Sichuan child
Help economically depressed municipalities start businesses
Give technical help
Spread happiness
Volunteer at Chinese orphanages
Be extra nice to the boyfriend
Organize kids sporting events
Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lower carbon footprint by using mass transit more
Do the right thing

I'd like to give a special thank you to everyone who helped spread the word about this giveaway, especially the following:

And without further adieu…

Winners:

Joseph (good deed)
Imran (good deed)
Saurabh (good deed)

Runners-up

A. Yellis (good deed)
Anonymous (good deed)
TKC (good deed)

Winners have 24 hours to contact me to claim their tickets, unclaimed tickets will be awarded to runners-up.

Pay it Forward: Free Olympic Tickets

2008-07-29T00:00:00Z

UPDATE: This giveaway has ended, see the results.

I have a surplus of tickets to the Olympics; rather than scalp them for crazy prices I’ve decided to give them away free of charge. There are three pairs of tickets available (six tickets total).

The tickets are for Equestrian Events in Hong Kong (A Class) to take place on August 9, 2008. The events will be held at the Sha Tin Racecourse (accessible via KCR).

You don’t have to pay me back, but there is a slight catch. I expect you to ”pay it forward” by doing a good deed, any good deed.

The tickets are available to anyone, really, anyone… that means you! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post describing the good deed you will do. Be creative, have fun and make sure the good deed is not directed toward me (that would defeat the idea of this pseudo-contest).

I will select three winners and three runners-up on August 6, 2008 and notify them via email. In the event that any of the winners is unable to attend or is unreachable by August 7, 2008 the tickets will be passed down to the runners-up.

Also, please be sure to give a valid email address (it won’t be published) so I can contact you if you win.

If you’re short on ideas for good deeds here are a few suggestions:

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<li>Make a micro-loan on <a href="http://www.kiva.org">Kiva</a></li>
<li>Host a foreign traveler from <a href="http://www.couchsurfing.com">CouchSurfing</a></li>
<li>Help an old lady cross the street</li>
<li>Give some <a href="http://www.freehugscampaign.org">free hugs</a></li>
<li><a href="https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/GD/GDM/subscribe4.jsp?cds_page_id=40928&cds_mag_code=GDM&id=1217354830589&lsid=82111306349036732&vid=3&__utmz=1.1217353938.5.5.utmccn%3D(organic)|utmcsr%3Dgoogle|utmctr%3Dgood%2Bmagizine|utmcmd%3Dorganic&__utmx=-&__utmv=-&__utmk=48542759&__utmc=1&__utmb=1&__utma=1.1236583185.1216112116.1216831067.1217353938.5&cds_mag_code=GDM">Subscribe</a> to <a href="http://www.goodmagazine.com/">Good Magazine</a>, or better yet <a href="https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/GD/GDM/donee.jsp?cds_page_id=41271&cds_mag_code=GDM&id=1217354837788&lsid=82111306349036732&vid=4&__utmz=1.1217354630.1.3.utmccn%3D(referral)|utmcsr%3Dgoodmagazine.com|utmcct%3D%2Fuser%2Ffaosto%2Factivity%2Fthis_is_impossible|utmcmd%3Dreferral&__utmx=-&__utmv=-&__utmk=167812130&__utmc=1&__utmb=1&__utma=1.1312973402.1217354630.1217354630.1217354630.1&cds_mag_code=GDM">buy a friend a subscription</a></li>
<li>Practice other <a href="http://www.actsofkindness.org/">random acts of kindness</a></li>

Rules:

Each entrant can win at most one pair of tickets
Winners have 24 hours to claim tickets
Runners-up have 24 additional hours to claim tickets
All decisions are final

Mai Po Wetlands

2008-07-27T00:00:00Z

ThoughtWorks Presents: Agile Hong Kong - Continuous Integration with Chris Stevenson

2008-07-16T00:00:00Z

This past Tuesday evening Chris Stevenson gave a talk on Continuous Integration at the ThoughtWorks Hong Kong

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as part of the Agile Hong Kong series.

The event started off with a short explanation of what Continuous Integration is, citing Martin Fowler’s authoritative article. He has written a number of software development books focused on design and has held the title of ‘Chief Scientist’ at ThoughtWorks since 2000.

During his talk Chris stressed that “Continuous Integration is not a tool, it is a software development process.” He hit four major points: revision control, automated testing, automated building, and automated deployment. The idea is integrate as often as possible and check in after completing the smallest testable functionality. Automated builds and tests ensure successful integrations and detect problems while they are still manageable, enabling the product to be automatically deployed.

The talk was followed by a short demo of Cruise, ThoughtWorks’ management software to be released next week. It is based upon the open and freely available Cruise Control.

Here’s an excerpt from the Cruise website

Cruise is a continuous integration and release management system that enables teams to quickly and confidently release their code from development to production. It provides visibility into the deployment pipeline, allowing new builds to be tested in automated or manual steps in staging environments. The result is lower risk when deploying, fewer production defects, faster release cycles, and empowered teams.

Here are a few photos from the event.

Thanks to Chris and Conrad from ThoughtWorks for hosting the session, I’m looking forward to future events.

Sha Tin Hoi (æ²ç°æµ·)

2008-07-14T00:00:00Z

International Couch Surfing Day 2008 - Beijing China

2008-06-21T00:00:00Z

Last week Couch Surfers (from around the world) gathered in Beijing, China at Beihai Park (北海公园) to celebrate International Couch Surfing Day. Although the weather was sub-optimal at first, we had a pretty strong turnout. We met at noon for a potluck picnic in the Long Corridor. We spent the afternoon chatting about travel, life, philosophy, trust, Couch Surfing, Beijing, and more. After the picnic we made a "Got Couch?" poster and took some photos around the park. My favorite group shot was taken by Alain at the White Pagoda. We spend the rest of our time in the park tossing around a football and playing Jianzi (毽子). After the park we went to a Mexican restaurant in Sanlitun (三里屯) for dinner. People came and went throughout the day, all in all we had 18 people attend.

If you have any photos from this event, please

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Check out my photos and the photos by others.

Attendees (in no particular order):

Pete Paul Sara Nicole John Trevor Chao Alain Mel Motegi Sunflower Katrina & Daniel Ines Marc Nick Colvin Jenny

Simatai Rice Terrace

2008-06-11T00:00:00Z

An Apathetic Crabmonger

2008-06-01T00:00:00Z

Electronics Shopping in Beijing

2008-05-26T00:00:00Z

I’ve been in Beijing for about a week. I’ve had plenty of adventures so far, and I’m sure there are many more to come. The trip here wasn’t too bad; it was a nice to relax after the stress of packing and moving. My flight left JFK at 6AM on May 18 with a short layover in SFO. I slept a good portion of the trip, and managed to avoid jet lag. A somewhat positive side effect of the time change is that I’ve been waking up without an alarm between 6:00 and 8:00 AM every day.

I’m going to get the negatives out of the way early so that I can focus on the overwhelmingly awesome experiences I’ve had so far. The first downer of the trip was that my one and only checked bag didn’t make it to Beijing (although it was delivered to me a few days after arrival). The second, and only other negative experience I’ve had is that I’ve been a bit sick. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, the flight, the smog, or just bad luck. I was very sick for a few days, but now I’m feeling much better.

I don’t know much Chinese, although I’ve been learning the essentials. I expected that many people would speak English, but the truth is the only English speakers I’ve found have been university students. People in the service industry generally don’t speak English, those who do only know a few phrases. I’ve managed to get by using body language and about 15 Chinese words. Miming my needs and desires has become the norm.

Last Friday I discovered how crazy and difficult buying a digital camera is. Bartering is par when shopping in China, or so I’m told. Electronics shopping is no exception and is drastically different from in the US. I’d compare it to buying a car because of the way the salespeople act and the negotiable prices. On Friday we visited e-world, one of the many multi-storied consumer electronics stores in Beijing’s Hai Dian District. I was looking around to get a general idea of prices for a digital video camera and Pete was looking to buy a digital still camera. Being a smart consumer, Pete looked up reasonable prices for the camera he set out to buy before we started shopping.

At first we were in a group of eight, but quickly became overwhelmed by groupthink and shouting salespeople. Pete and I broke off from the group and started visiting the many sales booths in the building. At each booth, we showed the salespeople the model number he wanted, and they hurried us to the sales room a few floors above. Even during the walk to the sales room, other vendors shouted and tugged on our arms to try and get us to buy from them instead. The sales rooms were lined with display cases, and in the center of each there were a number of negotiation tables. In the middle of each table was a large screened calculator to be used for bargaining. We had starting prices offered as high as 3,200RMB (~$460USD) but never lower than 2,000RMB (~$290USD). As we bargained and walked out on a number of different stores there were a few funny things that happened. Once we accidentally went back to a store we had already visited. When we arrived in the upstairs sales office the workers laughed at us (we ended up buying from them on a third or fourth visit). Another vendor assured us that they had the camera Pete wanted, but when we got to their sales office they told us it was a bad camera and that we should buy a different one (they didn’t have the model we asked for). Finally, when we asked about international warranty coverage (which we knew didn’t exist) one vendor told us that for an additional 100RMB (~$15USD) we could purchase international coverage. He also claimed that he wasn’t allowed to sell us the camera without any coverage so we humored him. After bargaining him down to 1,500RMB + 100RMB (~$230USD) for the international warranty Pete decided to purchase the camera. We opened up the box and tested it out, everything worked and we were happy. Upon inspection of the so called “international warranty card” I spotted a clause that said it was only valid in China, and immediately demanded a refund for the warranty fee. The vendor refused to refund the warranty fee, but instead refunded the whole price of the camera. The refund was more on principle than anything else, he had blatantly lied to us about the warranty. After about 6 hours of bartering Pete finally purchased the camera for 1,575RMB ($227USD).

The whole experience was quite fun, we had tons of laughs and enjoyed the crazy atmosphere of the electronics mall. There were some opportunities to learn new Chinese phrases and we also learned what to watch out for when shopping.

GPS Flight Log Animation

2008-04-30T00:00:00Z

I created a Google Earth animation from my GPS tracklogs of our flight above Albany and Troy. I logged the flight using my WBT-201, configured the data collection settings on my mac using gtk-g-rays-2, and exported the data to Google’s KML using GPSBabel+. I used the screencasting software iShowU to create the video, converted it to FLV using ffmpegx, and finally delivered it for your viewing pleasure using Gallery2 and Drupal. Enjoy.

A Shot in the Dark

2008-04-29T00:00:00Z

Burn Your Drupal 6 RSS Feeds with FeedBurner & Apache mod_rewrite

2008-04-25T00:00:00Z

As it stands the Drupal FeedBurner module is not yet ready for the 6.x series. A simple workaround is to redirect Drupal feed requests (default: /rss.xml) to FeedBurner based on the useragent using Apache’s mod_rewrite. The trick is to redirect all requests for the feed, with the exception of those made by the FeedBurner bot, to the Burned feed. You can repeat this for as many feeds as is necessary. Thanks to ckdake for the tip.

Example .htaccess snippet:


# Rewrite feed URL to FeedBurner
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner [NC]
RewriteRule rss\.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/johndbritton [L]

GMC Front Page

2008-04-23T00:00:00Z

The Gallery team has announced the selected students for the 2008 Summer of Code on GMC (gallery.menalto.com). I am one of two lucky students to be selected. The other student, Paul Hinze, will be working on Facebook/Flickr Style Image Region Based Tagging.

Implementing a Web Based Translation Interface for Gallery2

2008-04-21T00:00:00Z

My application to Google’s 2008 Summer of Code program has been accepted, see below:

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HDR - Canon G9 Auto-Bracketing, First Attempt

2008-04-09T09:26:58Z

I recently purchased a Canon PowerShot G9 digital camera. It has quite a few more features than my previous camera (Canon SD300) at the cost of a somewhat larger size. Features worth mentioning: RAW support, jog dial interface, quick startup time, 12.1MP, RAW+JPG shooting mode, and auto-bracketing. So far I’ve only come across one minor drawback, you can’t save RAW images in AUTO mode.

Over the weekend Olivia and I took a walk up to Prospect Park to enjoy the beautiful weather and take a first stab at High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. I’m not a digital photography expert, but after some research I had an idea of what to do.

Using the auto-bracketing feature on my shiny new G9 I took three shots in succession at different shutter speeds:

After a little Photoshop magic:

Overall I’m satisfied with the outcome of my attempt. If you view the high-res version you will notice that the photo is quite blurry. This is most definitely because I shot it without a tripod.

Website Update:

2008-04-09T05:11:44Z

Not too long ago I attended Drupalcon Boston. While I was there I realized that as an internet professional I needed to revamp my online image. My meek homepage has remained fairly unchanged since 2005, serving only as a contact reference. I’ve been working on quite a few projects that may be of interest to some of you, so keep an eye out here. I make no promise as to the frequency of updates but I will be sure to produce quality content when I do decide to share.