Talked At PK Night 2 in Fukuoka

PK Nights were first devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

– PK Fukuoka

I talked about my passion in PK Night 2 in Fukuoka. My passion is “I want to support Fukuoka which changes into the art and technology city”. Here is my slides, and I wanted to speak like this subscripts.

My name is Masanori Hashimoto, you know? Maybe you know me, because I am very famous in Fukuoka! (It is a joke.)

 I went to NYC about 2 years ago. I got lots of ideas and energy from the city. this is the first overseas trip in my life. NYC is really fun!

This is a pizza shop in NYC. I ate lots of juicy and delicious pizza here.

My second overseas trip is Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I felt there is a clear blue sky, and good climate. And I went to Google, Apple and local startup-companies here.

I ate an apple.

I think NYC, Silicon Valley and San Francisco are good city and I want to go them again.

But, Fukuoka is Good city, too.

Fukuoka has a beautiful nature and good climate like Silicon Valley, I think.

And Nakasu looks like a NYC. Please see with your mind’s eyes, please.

I want to support Fukuoka which changes into the art and technology city, because my family and many my friands lives in Fukuoka and I love Fukuoka very much.

This is my company called Nulab which runs some web services in Fukuoka.

This is Aratana Laboratory. Aratana is very famous company in e-commerce of Japan. Their head office is in Miyazaki. And they opened their laboratory in Fukuoka, too.

This is Bulanco which is designer’s company. Fukuoka has a many designer’s small company.

This is AIP cafe, you know? There is like a open-space. You can hold a meetup here.

I am feeling a chance that Fukuoka changes to art and technology city, but there are not enough yet.

I think that we have possibility to change! But, I guess we need 5 elements!

One is English. We need to communicate with people who use an English more than now.

Two is the industrial-government-academic complex. We need to collaborate with the government and academia.

Three is powerful medias in Fukuoka. We need bring powerful media from outside and inside of Japan, and introduce our actions to outside and inside of Japan.

Four is non-profit community. We need to be continued the movement. For example; Community of Fukuoka-IT, Fukuoka Geeks and many other non-profit communities.

Five is most important in them, it is a groove. The groove will grow the other 4 elements.

Have a nice groove.
Thank you for the listening.

Energy Informatic 4th “GOLD RUSH”

On April 22nd, 2011, we held a club party which called “Energy Informatic 4th” at Gold in Fukuoka. We got into a groove that was made by DJs, VJs, and live actors.

I made ​​a live performance with Nippei about 30 minutes, I played a sampler and he played a guitar. I think it was huge success.

And our live performance had VJs that named “PicoPicoHammer”. Their name is cute and funny but they have good VJ techniques. So there were many collaborations in the live.

This live performance was started with too heavily effected Breakbeats. The main sound was Nippei’s guitar. The following tune was a Dabstep that I tried for the first time.

Next, I played funny Drum ‘n’ Basses which was sampling comedian’s voice. We made grooves!

I want to play a live performance in the next Energy Informatic again.

Last tune was a normal techno music, I think it sounds good! Mixed with the sound of Nippei’s guitar beautifully.

Other VJs made great experiences. VJ Yaivj was using a iPad and VJ Seisuke was using Kinect, they were very interesting! If you want to get the experiences, please join us.

And Tabaturbo tried a VJ first time here.

And other some DJs span good musics!

Main DJ was Nomata, he played for one hour.

Energy Informatics concept is “Party”, I had felt “Party” from the party. And I felt the party was a last of party of Energy Informatic, before holding this party. But, now, we want to be continue the party by Energy Informatic Crew and you!

(Photo: shigeoka)

The largest ever WordCamp in Japan

On the Feb 19th, WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 was held at Kyushu Sangyo University. There were about 400 participants and I guess it was the largest WordCamp in Japan.

We decided the concept of  WordCamp should be “Publish” because WordPress is a web publishing tool. It’s a pretty simple and cool concept, don’t you think? We invited speakers who can talk about publishing e-books, podcasts, comics and other aspects of “Publishing” to the camp. They talked about their experiences related to WordPress and Publishing. The audience was able to learn from the speakers and came up some new ideas about how they can use WordPress for their own publishing.

WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 was made up of 4 parts. The 1st part was an unconference, the 2nd part was a keynote, the 3rd part was some presentations (20 speakers for 3 tracks and 1 workshop), and the last part was an informal get-together.

Unconference

The unconference was good. In the morning, at some places of the university, everyone talked their themes and about each other. And of course, me too.

I had joined a team who talks about “Collaboration between regional seminar”. It was an interesting and fun theme! So other themes were “How to make theme of WordPress?”, “What is the future of blogging?” and etc.

Keynote

The keynote presentation was done by Naoko McCracken with her smile. She is a happiness engineer of Automattic.

She talked about the popularity of WordPress and WordPress.com. And she said: “WordPress 3.1 is coming soon”. At the end of the keynote, a Japanese mascot character for WordPress was introduced. What a really cute character! Soon, the name of character will be determined by the WordPress Community in Japan.

How to become an editor/writer by a digital publishing!

Yusuke Nakamura talked about “How to become an editor/writer by a digital publishing”, I felt it was interesting theme and talks!

He said: “The book can be published by editors and writers. Publishers are unprofitable, it seems like their patrons. And writers are going to go independently.” I think we can publish more easily than before, so we can become a writer/editor on the internet. Yes we can! :-) I felt that his actions for e-book publishing resembles an open source model.

Since I was one of the operating staff I could not hear all of the presentations.

Get-together

We eat the WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 Cake and drank a lot of beer together!

WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 was fun and huge success I think. We will plan next year’s WordCamp at once.

JPNewTech

I’ve been join SVNewTech Monthly Meetup. It was a great experience for me. From that point on, I had thought I want to do a meetup as looks like SVNewTech or SFNewTech.

On the Jan 22nd, I’ve held a party style event called “JPNewTech” with my friends!

We had prepared a networking place for programmers and designers, but the goal of the party was not clearly saying. We made a chaos in the party, and we hope that something will happen from the chaos. For example: new web service, new community, new friends, wedding and some other really cool things. The party finished happily, I think.

Then we launched the website of JPNewTech and James posted a report of the party. They are all in English. Because, our collaborations are becoming a worldwide through the web and its official language is English, in my opinion. Is that right?

We have plan the next party on the April 1st. If you are in Tokyo and you have a new idea, please apply to demo.

If you want to go far, go together!

“Collaboration” is concept of my company.

My company organized a conference called Collaboration Conference 2010 in Fukuoka on Oct 30, 2010. The conference was different from other conferences in Japan because the goal was to think deeply about our collaboration.
In Japan, most of conferences only hear what presentation of famous people, but the conference was talking to each other.

We used a method called world cafe that is a good style for creative and collaborative meeting. I like that method because everyone will be able to attend for a discussion. If you are interested in a world cafe, please check it out here: http://www.theworldcafe.com/

That event was made from 3 sections. First was the keynote. Second was 5 exciting sessions (2 tracks). Last was the world cafe.

The keynote was done by Yasuhiro Yoshizawa and me, it was collaborative. I told about collaboration. We of made from some small ideas, collaboration is a chain of our small ideas, I said.

Murakami, Sakoda and Hosokawa did a session with me, that was about collaborative place of AIP cafe. And I enjoyed Momoko Koga’s session which is about Collaboration of NPO and government.

I have interested in a serious play from Hasunuma’s session. The serious play use Lego Blocks. Everyone talked to each other about those creative ideas through the Lego Blocks, I had really cool experience.

I participated in the world cafe. Everyone talked about “How do you make a collaborative team?”, it was exciting. I spoke and heard about “Leader” and “Sympathy” there.

I think we will hold the conference again in 2011, and I hope more attendees, include foreigner.

“There is an African proverb that says, ‘If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’, We need to go far, quickly.” – Al Gore