Joi Ito was in Bulgaria in the last few days, and gave a number of speeches – one at the Sofia University, and two with the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham).
On the breakfast with the AmCham Board we had the pleasure of meeting the US Ambassador to Bulgaria, H.E. John Beyrle. At the lunch with broader AmCham member community, we were listening to Joi’s visionary thoughts, which he expressed in a very unique way. His speech was so interesting, and inspiring, that it wen way beyond the time specified. This hardly left any time for him to have his lunch. By chance, the day he had his speech, was also the birthday of H.E. Koichiro Fukui, the Ambassador of Japan to Bulgaria. What better present could AmCham organize for him?!
Conclusions of all metings: copyright could and should be improved. Bloggers are becoming more and more important for the society. Businesses should be based on real working models, not on bubbles. Web 2.0 leads to Bubble 2.0.
I’ve already blogged about the influence Joi’s visit had upon Bulgarians. Here are some of the links that can show you where we are:
my blog entry | Boingboing | Joi Ito | James Seng | Peio Popov | Grigor Gatchev | Yovko Lambrev | Elenko Elenkov | Larry Lessig | CreativeCommons – Bulgaria | Capital weekly (with mp3 recording of Joi’s lecture at the Sofia University)
Many interviews are being published in the Bulgarian media about Joi’s lectures and visions.
Hundred of thousands of people have found out about Bulgaria in the last few days – now, that’s a good thing! Here is what happened as a result of this visit: Bulgarian Foreign Ministry licenses all of its content under CreativeCommons (CC). Next week the blog of Capital Weekly will be licensed under CC, as well! Capital weekly is a major newspaper in Bulgaria!
We had a meeting with the deputy prime minister Ivailo Kalfin, who started his own blog. Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President/CEO met with minister of ITC Plamen Vatchkov, and we all are scheduled to meet him again today.
Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev called to send greetings to the ICANN Board, and he has been quite supportive to the development of Information Society in Bulgaria.
President Parvanov has committed for quite a while now with his President’s IT Advisory Committee.
But more important than politicians’ participation, is the fact that users are thinking on how to bring Bulgaria on the IT-map of the world. Bloggers understand that before being advanced users, they are citizens. That is changing Bulgaria, as we speak.
I see lots of good things about Bulgaria in the next few years