Joi Ito's Web

For the last three years, I've been teaching a course at The Keio Graduate School of Media Design (KMD) on Digital Journalism. Each year, I've tried to iterate on the format and see how I could manage my own interaction more effectively and make it impact more people.

This year I met Philipp from P2P University (P2PU). P2PU's mission is:

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. P2PU - learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything.

The online courses are more like communities of self-learners supported by a facilitator. The content is all licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license that allows anyone to reuse the content as long as they share it back. The courses build on the work of the past.

After some conversations with Philipp, I decided to try to do a mashup of the informal not-for-credit learning of P2PU and the formal for-credit course at KMD. I got a bit of resistance from the university at first about making the material available under a Creative Commons license and the idea of peer-to-peer learning, but we successfully navigated the committee meetings at KMD and were able to pull it off. (Thanks to everyone at KMD for this!)

We used P2PU's website and the forums as the central hub of communications augmented with a mailing list, UStream, Twitter (#kmdp2puDJ) and an IRC channel that was also accessible via a web interface on the P2PU website. Each week, we had assignments and a real-time seminar. The physical space was the Keio Hiyoshi campus, but I would video conference in via H.323 when I was out of town and we had guest speakers and remote students video in via Skype. We then streamed this and recorded it on UStream, using the IRC channel as the discussion and question area. We would tweet the UStream sessions and would gather an tag-along participants in real-time. The video of the seminars recorded in Tokyo in high definition and were uploaded later. (html/rss)

I think the complexity of the technology threw some of the participants off and there is a lot to be improved, but considering the complexity and the figuring-it-out-as-we-went-along aspect of it, it went amazingly well. We typically had dozens of people joining via UStream and a dozen or so people on the IRC channel.

The ad-libbing was really fun and worked well. For example, we were able to convince Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times, who at first was a viewer and retweeter of the UStream, to come and give a presentation in class the next week. I was then able to get Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan, Jun Hoshikawa to Skype in and talk to Hiroko and the class about the failure of the Japanese media in tracking the Greenpeace Japan trial.

In addition to the assignments, forum discussions and the real-time discussions, participants were asked to create or join projects. A number of interesting projects were launched. Hala started a blog about Muslims in Tokyo; Gueorgui, Alan and Richard started a project to work on non-GDP/market assessments; Gilmar and Gustavo started a blog about new abilities for modern journalists; Lena and Nadhir are working on a report about the course; and Richard and Rick started a blog about digital journalism in Tokyo.

The downside was that the participation from the Keio students was fairly limited. I think it was a combination of the English, the Monday morning scheduling and the amount of work that threw them off. However, the few students who survived made some great contributions.

I think that for the people participating from all over the world, the issue of the sessions happening at the same time in the Japanese time zone made it nearly impossible for some of them to participate in the real-time conversations.

Finally, I think that having so many modes of communications made it difficult to keep track of the threads.

However, I was really excited by the effectiveness and the quality of the discourse. Also, I realized that in many ways, the less planned serendipitous stuff worked the best. Cruising down my IM buddy list to find someone to pull into the class via Skype seemed to work very well.

We're going to try to see if we can keep some sort of persistent community going via the mailing list to try to iterate on both this mode of interaction as well as how best to learn about online journalism.

Update: Andria wrote a good post about the course.

When I was on the ICANN board, we were dealing with the issue of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), an initiative to allow non-latin characters in domain names. Technically, it was difficult and even more difficult was the consensus process to decide exactly how to do it. Many communities like the Chinese and Arabic regions were anxious to get started and were getting very frustrated with the ICANN process around IDNs. At times, it seemed like the Arab Internet and the Chinese Internet were ready to either fork away and make their own Internet to solve the problem or were ready to introduce local technical "hacks" to deal with the issue which would have broken many applications that depended the standard behavior of the Domain Name System.

Luckily, in the end, we were able to come up with some basic understandings around IDNs after a lot of work. The Internet held together in one piece, almost impossibly so.

When I joined the Open Source Initiative board of directors, we were also struggling with a similar, but slightly different problem. We called it "License Proliferation". License proliferation was the problem of companies and projects creating their own "vanity" Free and Open Source licenses rather than using existing, established licenses. Because these vanity licenses were tailored (at times even just very slightly from an existing licenses) to address the particular steward's needs, they added to the complexity of the source, causing users to become confused and creating legally incompatible bodies of code.

Copy-left licenses such as the Free Software Foundation's GNU Public License require derivative works be licensed under the same license. This feature - and to many coders this is a feature, not a bug - however, makes it challenging to combine code from projects with different licenses because of the requirement on how derivatives must be licensed. These islands of code looked a lot like a forked Internet, existing IM networks and email before the Internet connected them together.

Two great features of the Internet are the low cost of transaction and the standards and protocols that allow interoperability fueling the massive network effect that drives innovation.

At Creative Commons we have the benefit of hindsight as the "new layer" of the stack and are working hard to keep transaction costs low and interoperability high by trying to prevent license proliferation and "forking".

For instance, Wikipedia was established before Creative Commons licenses were available. Wikipedia, until last year, was licensed under the Free Software Foundation's GNU Free Document License (GFDL). The GFDL is copy-left license, very similar to the Creative Commons share-alike license which allows people to use the content as long as the derivatives are licensed under the same license. However, since the GFDL was primarily designed for documentation for free software, there were a number of attributes that made it sub-optimal for massive online collaborations like Wikipedia.

Also, as more and more content was being created under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license, it created two oceans of content that were not remixable or compatible because of the two different licenses. It was like having two Internets.

After years of discussion with the Free Software Foundation, the Wikipedia and Wikimedia board and community and the Creative Commons community, last year we were finally able to convert Wikipedia to a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. This brought together two communities and two bodies of content so that they could share and collaborate freely.

The moment felt a lot like the early days of email when finally you could send email to anyone instead of only those people on your network.

As the idea of sharing and free culture begins to become more and more accepted and governments, Internet services and even broadcasters begin to implement the idea of sharing, the specter of license proliferation has begun to present a real risk.

Companies and governments are beginning to create vanity licenses either for purely branding and egotistical reason or because there are certain features that they would like to "tweak". What many of these communities don't understand is that tweaking a free content license is a lot like tweaking character codes or the Internet protocol. While you may have some satisfaction of a minor feature or a feeling of ownership, you will introduce the friction of yet another license that we all have to understand and in many cases, fundamental incompatibility and lack of interoperability.

Creative Commons is not just a single license "option". We are a global conversation among lawyers, judges, academics, users and companies in over a hundred countries with extremely rigorous compatible license ports in more than 50 jurisdictions. We are focused on taking into consideration the needs of all of the stake holders in this new ecosystem and updating and modifying our licenses to try to provide as many options as possible while trying to keep things as simple as possible to achieve maximum interoperability and ease of use.

Some would argue that our six core licenses provide too many choices. Some of our critics point -- perhaps rightly -- to the fact that our own licenses are not all compatible with one another. Others would argue that they do not provide enough choices. But we believe, 350,000,000 licensed works later, that we are successfully navigating the sweet spot between simplicity and choice.

As sharing and the adoption of new, free licenses begins to accelerate, I believe we are in danger of creating sloppy licenses or incompatible licenses backed by torrents of content funded by well-meaning governments, non-profits, users and even commercial entities. Poorly drafted licenses, licenses that are not adequately stewarded or supported by a dedicated team of legal experts, content encumbered by onerous neighboring rights and isolated and restrictive licenses can create mountains of unusable content which we might call "free" but which for all practical purposes become puddles of unusable content and what we would call "failed sharing".

I would like to urge all of those people who have seen the benefit of sharing and free licensing to really consider the value of focusing on a single set of licenses and to resist the urge to create vanity or lets-just-add-this-one-feature-for-our-users licenses. We are trying to create a open global dialog and encourage people to join the conversation and present their cases for how our licenses might be improved and listen to the reason why each of the clauses in our license have been written the way they have.

For the future users of our content and participants in the architecture that we are creating, we really MUST try to hold this network together and try to proactively stamp out license proliferation and fragmentation. If the ICANN and OSI experiences provide any guidance and learnings -- and if we are to avoid the challenges and risks those organizations and communities confronted -- we all must be vigilant and uncompromising on this point.

Video of, Zach Coelius, CEO of Triggit talking about Demand-Side Platforms and Real-Time Bidding. An increasing number of ad networks and exchanges have begun making their inventory available for real-time bidding, most notably Google. This allows companies like Triggit to look at lots of inventory across a number of networks and do real-time bidding based on sophisticated analytics.

This is an interesting trend that I think will change the ad landscape pretty dramatically and could help content providers by dramatically increasing the value of their ads. It also allows a level of control that might give ad agencies a new role to make more creative campaigns than just bulk targeting.

Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Triggit.

Here's a video walkthrough of our Chiba home taken on the last day of my recent short trip there. I'm still getting used to the Flip Video and it tends to be a bit shakey and I'm pointing it a bit too downward. Also, Mizuka is trying to silently guide me through this shoot and sometimes grabs my shoulder which made it even shakier.

Anyway, hopefully my videos will improve through iteration. In the mean time, you can see what my Chiba home looks like during the beginning of summer in Japan.

Yesterday I attended a meeting called "The Future of Fundraising" organized by Jennifer McCrea with the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. It was at the Harvard Club in New York.

It was a small group with a bunch of heavy hitters including some of the best fund raisers in the world. I learned a tremendous amount and was very energized after the meeting.

Some notes from the meeting.

Good executive directors (ED) were also the main fund raisers and they generally loved fund raising. In fact, there was a strong opinion of many that any ED who wasn't excited about fund raising, shouldn't be the ED.

Fund raising is about relationships and building relationships and is very different from sales and marketing in normal for-profits.

In a non-profit, you're not selling some good or service to a customer. What you're doing is helping the donor fulfill or pursue a dream or a cause. In order to be successful you have to understand the donor and become part of their world view.

Many non-profits think of donors as a funding source to pay for programs that execute on their mission. In fact, donors should be part of the mission. Good non-profits integrate the funding model directly into the mission. Churches are usually MUCH better at raising money than the natural history museum because "giving" is an integral part of the church-going experience whereas the natural history museum usually tries to collect money from the outside to allow them to run their mission internally.

When trying to understand a world view of someone, it is useful to try to categorize their world view and there may be seven basic world views.

The following "Seven Philanthropic World Views" were presented by Gunther M. Weil.

World View	Philanthropic Values & Motive
Alien/Threatened	Survival & Security
Family/Social	family tradition, care/nurture, status/image
Organizational/Transactional	financial metrics & accountability, productivity, efficiency
Self-Actualization/Service	self-discovery, empathy, altruism, service
Collaborative	social justice, innovation, collaboration
Symbiotic	society transformation, prophetic vision, wisdom & spirituality
Global Transformation	global transformational human rights, global ecology, macroeconomics

Once you understand someone's world view, it's much easier to try to understand why they would give and whether there is something in what we do that helps them advance their world view.

Another key point in all of the stories about successful fund raising was that good fund raisers loved their work. Their work was to get to know people. How are their kids? What's their dogs name? Do they have extra tickets to the ballgame? Do they need extra tickets to the ball game? The feelings have to be genuine, respectful and they have to care. You need people who LIKE people. You shouldn't ask for money when you first meet, but you should never leave a meeting without asking for SOMETHING. Also, you should offer something too. Always have a followup action. But most importantly, walk away knowing the world view of the person and begin developing trust. The partnership with donors is a long term relationship involving lots of dialog and exchange where the giving to the organization is only one piece.

All of the top fund raisers took two vacations. One with their families and another with their families and their donors. Working with donors means becoming part of their private lives. It's not just a day job.

One organization sent a message to all of their donors during the Haiti crisis asking them to give to an NGO that they had vetted. They didn't ask for any money for themselves. This had a hugely positive effect and the donors trust in the group increased. Wallets aren't zero sum.

Long term donors and their relationship with the organization is a partnership. This is true of individuals, government program officers and foundation program officers.

One thing to keep in mind is that the world view of the organization that they're in (or family) and the person themselves can sometimes be different and teasing all of this out and helping them solve for this is also key. It's important not to try to force our story and lead with what we need, but rather to understand what the donor needs and see how we fit into the solution.

A key term that kept coming up was "tribe". We're trying to make a tribe of donors and supporters and they all need to feel like they're participants, not just funders for some group of people who go off and do stuff.

Having said that, there is also a lot of analysis. One non-profit would somehow get all of the names and annual incomes of targeted high-net-worth individuals and do a 3 hour call with the board to figure out who would approach who and strategize the approach to each person.

In most cases, board members developed relationships directly with the donors and rarely did the development person successfully email "on behalf" of the board member. A good development staff member usually provided support, analytics and tracking.

The message is very important. It's important to evoke an emotional and visual idea of what we do, rather than the detailed explanation of what we do. The metaphor that resonated was "what is in the frame" no what is written on the plaque below the picture.

My apologies for the rambling style of these notes, but I thought I'd get them out while they were fresh on my mind. I wanted to share because fundraising is a key component to success for non-profits and it is one of the things I get asked about the most.

Christopher Adams is a combination of hacker, designer, activist and publisher which makes him uniquely qualified to be leading this project, Freesouls. Freesouls is our book of my free portraits and essays and comments from my dear friends has been a great success thanks to Christopher. The book brings together many of the elements that I enjoy in life - friends, photography, freedom and the global network of ideas.

In the process of creating the book, we learned a lot about copyright, model releases, web services, open source, publishing, printing, distribution, editing and Python and Ruby. (Actually, Christopher did all of the work and got to do most of the learning too. ;-)

Christopher, being a perpetual learner and a glutton for hard work, has decided to embark on Freesouls 2.

This time we will be automating a lot of what we did by hand in Freesouls 1. We are automating the model release process using Echosign and their API. (If you have a portrait of yourself in my Flickr set slated for the new book, you could save us a lot of time and send us an email with the URL of the image and we'll shoot you the model release.) We'll also make the book dynamically generated into a perfectly designed, laid out and printable PDF using some mad code that Christopher has put together.

Finally, we still have a few copies left of Freesouls 1 so get them while they last. They're available on the freesouls.cc site. Also, thanks, as always, to Boris for the wonderful website production for freesouls.cc.

We launched our Catalyst Campaign to raise $100,000 by June 30th for our new Catalyst Grants program.

If you care about CC, and keeping the web open and accessible, please donate today. We need everyone's help!

CC Blog

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 Catalyst Grants 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.

But we can't do it without your help. Our goal is to raise $100,000 from CC supporters like you to fund the grants that will make all this possible. Donate today to help spread our mission of openness and innovation across all cultural and national boundaries.

Special thanks to the Milan Chamber of Commerce for recognizing the importance of funding this initiative by generously donating EUR 10,000! The Milan Chamber of Commerce and its Promos Network already work to promote international collaboration and innovation and we're honored they've stepped up to jumpstart the campaign.

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!

Twitter announced Promoted Tweets and also updated and added some guidelines in their API Terms of Service about third parties injecting advertisements and spam in the timelines.

There have been some articles in the Japanese press misinterpreting this announcement and generalizing it as some sort of ban on advertising by Twitter. There have been some allegations that this new policy change would cause problems with the Twitter related activities that Digital Garage engages in.

As the Terms of Service and the announcement say clearly, Twitter continues to encourage advertising around Twitter and is encouraging innovation. The key is that the advertising should not confuse or add friction to the experience of the user.

All of the current advertising that Twitter Japan/Digital Garage engage in is consistent with the guidelines presented in the announcement by Twitter. Digital Garage works closely with Twitter in developing innovative and new ideas for helping companies communicate with their fans without hurting the user experience.

Digital Garage has a very close and broad operating level relationship with the US Twitter team and Biz Stone recently joined the advisory board of Digital Garage to help Digital Garage continue to innovate with Twitter and in social media in general.

Japan has been a very interesting testing ground for new services and ideas around Twitter and advertising and this current announcement by Twitter reinforces Twitter's (and Digital Garage's) commitment to focusing on user value and is primarily intended to try to prevent product degradation by advertisers and service providers who fail to have this focus.

Disclaimer: I haven't spoken to Twitter management about this blog post and this is my interpretation based on reading the releases and talking to the team in Japan. I'll be speaking to them soon to update this post if they have anything to add, but I wanted to get this out there to correct some of the crazy assumptions in the main stream media in Japan.

"Tea with The Economist". A cute interview format from The Economist. Featuring yours truly rating about privacy, startups, Internet, Creative Commons and other random things.

Serkan Toto wrote a very thorough article about our new Open Network Labs (ONL) and you can read most of the detail there, but my team at DG together with Netprice and Kakaku.com launched a new venture accelerator last month.

The idea is to do monthly meetings where we will have guests come and speak and provide an opportunity for people with startup projects to meet. ONL will give grants up to $10,000 and provide mentoring, office space and other support in exchange for an opportunity to invest if the idea turns into a good startup investment. ONL will work close with my Singapore fund and mentor team - hopefully providing deals for the Singapore fund and possible partnerships for the startups and entrepreneurs we will be working with in Singapore and across the region.

While I won't be working day-to-day on ONL, we have a young and scrappy team of some of the next generation of Japanese entrepreneurs with the support of three of my favorite Internet companies.

I look forward to seeing what sorts of people and ideas ONL is able to attract and hope that we can launch some stuff with global reach help put Japanese startups on the map Internationally.