www.johndbritton.com

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.

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

Note: Audio & Video recordings along with summaries and reactions are available on the Event Wiki.

We wrapped up the official event with an excellent presentation by John Bacon-Shone from Hong Kong University entitled Open Access to Research Publications & Data 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.

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 register 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

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.

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:

• Kirsty from NerdyNomad
• Jason from GOOD Magazine
• Christine from Almost Fearless
• Julie from Matador Pulse

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.

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:

• Make a micro-loan on Kiva
• Host a foreign traveler from CouchSurfing
• Help an old lady cross the street
• Give some free hugs
• Subscribe to Good Magazine, or better yet buy a friend a subscription
• Practice other random acts of kindness

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