www.johndbritton.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should be an excellent day, see you there.

Questions/Comments/Concerns: Please contact me.

Full Schedule

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

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 register 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.