Buckman in Japan

I'm in Tokyo for a week, speaking at Joi Ito's conference "The New Context" http://www.garage.co.jp/ncc2006/speaker.html#buckman

Got some quality chatting time last night with Larry Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org

Magnatune is a frequently cited example of a Creative Commons business model, so it was nice to get to chat.

I met the overly modest David Isenberg, who failed to mention to me that he was the author of the seminal article "Rise of the Stupid Network" http://isen.com/stupid.html that had a huge impact on me when I read it in 1997. And, he's a big fan of Magnatune, which is always flattering.

Also met Heather Ford, who heads iCommons http://www.icommons.org/ and is based in South Africa - she had written to me years ago about Magnatune and African music, and it was wonderful to finally meet.

Joi has set up quite a bit of press for me here, including an interview with the main Japanese daily paper, Nikkei.

Here's a picture of the Claudio Prado, the coordinator of digital policy of the ministry of culture of Brazil and my buddy now.

Here's a picture of the stage area. Very fancy. Big. You can't see the audience, but there are lots of people here.

Pictures of my presentation:

and finally, the good-job-party was held at a German restaurant in Tokyo, which is just a touch surreal. The menu was in German, and except for the "macaroni and cheese" was actually fairly accurate German food (mostly sausages and pretzels)