2013年10月31日木曜日

How we started Hack for Japan #hack4jp

I was asked to write in English about how we started Hack for Japan back in 2011, so will be translating the blog post I wrote in Japanese here.

Hack for Japan is a developer community that we started immediately after the Magnitude 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant accident hit Japan in March, 2011.  Many developers wanted to utilize their technical skills to contribute to responding and recovering from the disaster that hit our country.

This is a group photo from our first Hack for Japan hackathon in March 21, 2011, 10 days after the earthquake. We organized hackathons in 4 venues on that day, and continued them in May with 6 venues, July with 5 venues, and so on.

Hack For Japan


==How we started==

Big earthquake of Magnitude 9.0 struck northern Japan on March 11th, 2011. Right after this happened, we had many email threads here and there about running a hackathon to tackle this disaster. We wanted to consolidate those threads. We also wanted to talk with Amazon Japan and Yahoo Japan and other tech industries to make it a larger movement, but at the point of March 17th, we just had decided that we will run the hackathon on 3/19-21 and we were deciding everything as we move. The project itself was in a "launch and iterate" situation :)

I was in Austin for SXSW when the earthquake happened, was communicating with everyone in Japan online till I got back to Japan on the evening of 3/17. In fact it was my birthday, but I completely forgot about it due to all the disaster situation. My colleague +Takuya Oikawa was in Fukuoka then, I talked with him over the phone from the airport and decided that we are going to host the ideathon / hackathon on 3/19-21, and I went to our office in Roppongi directly from the airport and started working on planning the event over night. We hadn't decided anything at that point- what technology we will use for the online ideathon 2 days after, we hadn't gotten any of the venues for hackathon.

At 3/18 2:10 AM, I sent an email to our Google Developers Experts (GDE) mailing list - a group of developers I worked very closely with, and started getting feedback and advice about the Crisis Response hackathon we were planning to host. Back then, Google Wave existed, and so I wrote that "I am thinking of using Google Wave as a tool for ideathon". +Atusi Nakamura, who was then Google Wave API Expert replied "I think Google Wave is an excellent tool to expand on ideas, but hard to consolidate, select and concentrate. You should probably use it together with Google Moderator." His advice was exactly right, and  it would have been really hard to run the ideathon if we only used Google Wave.

Another GDE +Yukio Andoh started creating a slide right on that day entitled "Crisis Response UI - what UI+UX designers can contribute to crisis response services" and made it public. 
The email threads I had with the GDEs during these several days went over 100 posts. I won't be able to introduce everything here, but it was a crazy amount of emails. I would like to thank all of the GDEs for your advice and support- without your help, we could not have made this happen!



==Finding physical venue==

It was impossible to host hackathons in Tokyo during that time, due to after shakes that were still hitting Japan, and companies were refraining from hosting events, so we needed to find somewhere in Western Japan. However, me and my staffs were all based in Tokyo and we have never run events in Western Japan. Furthermore, as you can imagine, everyone in Japan was busy coping with the disaster in one way or another - and I was there trying to ask "someone" to provide "somewhere" as venue for our hackathon, 2 days away from now. It is impossible for any company - whether it is Google, Yahoo or Rakuten - to make it happen. The only reason why it was possible, was because of the help of the local developer community that we work with - Google Technology User Group (GTUG) and its organizers. (Google Technology User Group has changed its name to Google Developers Group as of now)

On 3/18 5:22 PM, I sent an email to +Daisuke Yamashita who was then manager of Kyoto GTUG whether we can use Kyoto Research Park (KRP) as venue. He made a phone call to KRP immediately- and set up a meeting from 6:00 PM with them, and we had the green light to use the venue. Crazy speed, and his email to me said:
"Count on me- I will run the whole event in Kyoto. My organizational experience of Hackathon is highest among anyone in Kansai (Western) region in Japan."
+Takashi Yokoyama manager of GTUG Chugoku saw my email saying that I wanted to run this crisis response hackathon, and 4 hours later he had already negotiated and nailed the venue and made it available to announce to public. He was in fact joining another developer event on that day, so started to announce the hackathon and called for attendance right on the spot.

I sent an email to Kyushu GTUG at 3/18 8:56 PM, and one of their members +Shinjiro Watanabe replied to me at 9:29 PM (only 30 minutes later!) that he has already reserved the venue and ready to run the event.

In Shikoku, it was hard to find the venue in Takamatsu and we almost gave up. But one of the members of Shikoku GTUG, +Yoshimasa Kawano wrote us an email at 3/20 3:33 PM "I know it's already last minute but can't we run a hackathon in Shikoku on 3/21? I can work on getting a venue in Tokushima. If there is minimum 3 people willing to attend, it's worth trying." This was awesome call, and Shikoku venue came to reality.

I would like to thank all of the GTUG managers and members. Without your help, Hack for Japan hackathon did not exist.


==Go West!==

So we announced the event on 3/19, and the ideathon started on that day, and hackathon was going to be held on 3/21 which was only 2 days later, and it was a national holiday, Monday after the weekend which most people would naturally have had holiday plans. So it was very hard to attract developers to come to the hackathon.

"Would any of you please come to Kyoto to join the hackathon?" I sent an email to the GDEs at the last minute- on 3/20 12:46 PM. Heroicly, many of the GDEs +Shumpei Shiraishi +Makoto Anjo +KOMATSU Kensaku and +Atusi Nakamura all replied "I can go!" "I can go!" and got on the bullet train to come to Kyoto.

Those GDEs were leading many of the projects at Hack for Japan, from suggesting the project ideas to leading the actual development. 

I would like to thank all of the GDEs. Without your help, Hack for Japan hackathon would not have been successful.


==Why We Were Able to Organize So Quickly==

We organized the event solely by using existing technology. If we were to build something new, we were unable to organize in such a speedy schedule.

* We used Google Form for registration. Great thing about Google Form is that if you are creating a simple form, you can do that in 2 minutes. If you get the participants fill in their names and venue they intend to attend etc, data will be collected automatically. Very convenient.


* We used Google Wave to discuss project ideas (Ideathon). It only takes 3 minutes to start a Wave. Once we had the thread, many people started to post their ideas and responses, and the thread got richer and richer- in fact we had 1,273 comments. Immediately after I wrote an email that I was "thinking of using Google Wave", Atsushi  (GDE) replied "OK I started Google Wave for you!" it was super super super fast.



* We used Google Moderator to vote on ideas and consolidate the discussions. You can make one in 1 minute. Anyone can post ideas and if you find an idea that you agree with, you can vote "I agree!" with one click. We had 537 participants post 237 ideas and 5,269 votes.


* After ideas were getting consolidated, we used Google Spreadsheet so that we can get the ideas in one place as a project list, easy to view. You can make a spreadsheet in 1 minute. We got the project leaders to fill in their project names, abstracts, name of the leaders etc, and members who wanted to join the projects could add their names under those projects.


* After a while we had a lot of information about various things, so created the official website using Google Sites. You can make a website in just 3 minutes.


* In order to share the code, we used Google Project hosting as the repository. Before I even thought about preparing the repository, Daisuke (GDE) emailed me "I made Hack4jp repository so let's use this!" That was super fast.


* For live streaming, we used Ustream. Some people were afraid we shouldn't use a lot of bandwidth during crisis, but I talked with someone from telecom (I used to work in the telecom industry...) and got assurance that it will not be a problem, so we livestreamed the event.


* For announcement and PR, we just used our blogs. We didn't issue any press release, but many people saw the blog post that we put together on Google Developer Relations Japan blog, Yahoo Japan Tech blog, Recruit Media Technology blog, etc and helped to promote the event. Thanks everyone!

This is the screenshot of my post on Google Developer Relations Japan Blog:
"Announcement of Hack For Japan”



==Many Many People Helped to Make This Happen==

When Atsushi (GDE) saw my email asking for them to come to Kyoto, he immediately got on the bullet train, and on that train, he created a logo and sent me an email from inside the train "I made the logo of Hack For Japan in the train!" Nobody would think this logo was created on the day before the event, inside a bullet train! This logo is still used everywhere as the symbol of Hack For Japan.

+Kazunori Sato who is ex-GDE and currently a Googler saw the logo and replied "Hey I can do livestream for you" and brought his livestreaming equipments and set up livestreaming account on 3/20 7:42PM- the night before the hackahton, and when I saw the account setting, the brand new logo was already embedded there. They are super super fast in getting things done.



When we started the ideathon, the amount of ideas posted on Google Wave and Google Moderator increased exponentially, and summarizing the contents was crucially needed. Honestly, I was juggling the whole thing and did not have any time to summarize the content- then +Dai MIKURUBE a Googler who was in U.S. then, took advantage of the time difference and while it was night time in Japan, he quickly created a summary of ideas posted on Wave. It was like a magic- thank you Mikurube-san!



Also +KaZuhiro FuRuhata one of the GDEs created a summary of comments on Google Moderator. Another magician! Thank you Furuhata-san!



Due to so many people who helped in various ways, Hack For Japan came to existence. Many many thanks to everyone who helped!


==Difficulties==

The difficulty of this project did not come from technology, but the nature of the event itself- we anticipated that from before the event.

Daisuke (GDE):
Before you announce, you should probably clarify that this is not a single-shot event, and that the presentation at hackathon is not the end-goal. Usually at hackathons, it is inevitable that the final presentation becomes the end-goal, and many of the functions end up not fully developed.

Of course it is good to release the services that are finished, but we should make sure that we let the participants know that for this event, the goal is to "build a service that really is useful for people in Tohoku, and that we support Tohoku using technology. If needed, they need to continue developing and/or updating data in the long term."
Yukio (GDE):
"Normally at hackathons, we create things we want to create. This hackathon is different. The product does not have to be flashy. It is our mission to create products that we know for sure that it will be useful, and develop quickly. We shouldn't be trying to develop everything- we should focus our limited resource on things that matter, and get robust and quick results."
Me: 
"Maybe the word hackathon might bring prejudice. Let's use the event title - Hack For Japan - as icon. Hack for Japan should provide an environment where people in Tohoku can post their requests online, people can vote on requested ideas so that we can focus on higher priority problems, and engineers can focus on developing them. It's about that whole process- which does include ideathon and hackathon as a portion of that process, but one-day hackathon itself is not the goal. We want people to think about Hack for Japan projects in the long term."
Hackathons are just triggers, and the most important thing is to create something that is useful and needed by the users, quickly create them and launch, and even if we don't create something new - hack through using multiple existing technology to solve the problem. Don't wait till the next hackathon to happen, but to continue developing important services even if hackathons don't happen.

More than 2 years have passed since the disaster, and the stage of the issues has changed drastically. We are approaching the problems in a different way, but we have one commitment which is the slogan of Hack for Japan... we will continue hacking till Japan recovers.


Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki

2013年10月21日月曜日

Notes from Internet Governance Forum 2013 #igf2013 Citizen's Lab

High Level Leaders Meeting

Professor Ron Deibert of Citizen's Lab

I will talk about "E" which stands for Edward Snowden. This word will make governments and companies uncomfortable, but we need to discuss. Sharing user information without user consent is the issue. Getting behind the closed doors and doing such thing will end up in escalated arms race by the governments- not only at each other, but towards their own citizens.

Various surveillance will unrest civil society.

We have to ask "Security for whom?" "Security for what?"

There are law enforcements and governance, but wholesale surveillance is against human rights.

The term "multistakeholderism" is used so often by people who don't practice what they seem to preach, and became empty euphonism. It should be changed by IGF.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki

Notes from Internet Governance Forum 2013 #igf2013 ICANN

High Level Leaders Meeting

Comment by Fadi Chehade, President and CEO of ICANN

There is no cyber space, there is just one place we live in. The world we live in is the cyber world as well- there is no difference in online and offline world. It is not virtual world.

Internet brings forth various values such as economic value, freedom of expression, and peace - Internet brings people together. Internet is a "good force" and we need a safe guard for it.

We recently saw public mistrust towards the Internet. Public trust for internet is important, and doubt will take away important things. We need to safeguard trust.

We are all public trustees- governence people, technical organizations, civil society are all in civil service and equal stuarts to secure those safeguards.

We need to start finding a new way to keep the Internet open, transparent and equal- so that everyone has equal voice.

"Public trust of the Internet" should be the one goal we have.

We should be able to address all points of view, keep equality and cooperation.

"Multi-stakeholder" approach does not break existing approaches- it is going to enhance and support the existing approaches.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. - Fumi Yamazaki

2013年10月8日火曜日

Tutorials for Arduino

Tutorial 01 for Arduino: Getting Acquainted with Arduino

Post: Tutorial Series for Arduino: It begins

-Getting acquainted with the arduino uno

 

Tutorial 02 for Arduino: Buttons, PWM, and Functions

Post: Tutorial 2 for Arduino: Now with more Blinky Things!

-How to read a push button, debounce its input using software, how to create a function in the Arduino programming environment, and how to change LED brightness using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). 



Tutorial 03 for Arduino: Electrical Engineering Basics

Post: EE Basics in Tutorial 3 for Arduino

-Ohm’s Lawcurrent-limiting resistors,pull-down and pull-up resistorsvoltage dividerspotentiometersanalog inputs, and voltage regulators.




Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki

2013年10月7日月曜日

Silicon Chef Hardware Hackathon for Women #sichefhack

I joined Silicon Chef - Hardware Hackathon for women. Beginners were welcomed, so it was a great opportunity for women to get into hardware hacking! Each team received a box filled with tools such as Arduino, breadboard, LEDs, cables, servo, motor, wind sensor, etc and a booklet to learn about Arduino. They also could borrow Leap Motion devices.

You can see the list of the projects here:
http://www.hackathon.io/silicon3/projects

It was really awesome seeing the room filled with women eager to hack hardwares!
360 degree photo of the room can be seen here:

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Welcome from Shannon Spanhake, Deputy Innovation Officer, City of San Francisco in the Office of Mayor Edwin M. Lee

Silicon Chef

"From Makers to China" Welcome from Brady Forrest, Vice President, Highway1 

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Shenzhen is the Silicon Valley of hardware!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Suggested reading from Brady: “From concept to consumer” by Phil Baker and Bunnie's blog.

"Software Girl in a Hardware World" by Julia Grace, Head of Engineering, Tindie

Julia did a live demo of sending SMS via Arduino button. You can read the process and code here:
Learn how to send an SMS text message in Python by pushing a button on your Arduino!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

"Launch - How to get your idea to market" by Katherine Hague, CEO & Co-Founder, Shoplocket

She shared examples of various successful hardware startups such as Lockitron, LittleBits, Roominate, OtherMill, etc. You can read them here:
http://shoplocketblueprint.com/

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

"Beyond Hard Electronics: Empowering Soft Tech with Soft Circuits" by Kanjun Qiu

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

She talked about how LilyPad Arduino changed the way women perceives and got involved in hardware hacking movement.

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Arduino developer community: 86% male vs LilyPad is 65% female!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

They are running awesome workshops.

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Wow. Pre-workshop "I feel comfortable programming computers on my own" 27% > 82% after workshop. It makes you feel "I can do it!"

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

People will run into issues- so they made this troubleshooting flowchart. Awesome!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon


What's in the box?

Announcement of what the teams are getting in the box ;)

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Red Sparkfun Arduino, red breadboard, red display, red micro-USB cable, red LED, red pen... so many red stuff :D

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Unboxing, and many women starting hacking Arduino.... for many of them, for the first time!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon


Skittles Team

The "Skittles team" kindly welcomed me in for the day - thank you everyone!! (Since I cannot come on Sunday, I could not really join the teams...) We were using Leap Motion for one of the inputs, to wave and light the LEDs, and using wind sensor as the other input so that we can blow our breath towards it and operate the LEDs, like blowing on the birthday cake candle.

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

It was the first time trying Arduino for most women, so they were seriously reading the book together, and learning. Several male members who had Arduino experience helped out, and walked us through the code for us.

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Making the Arduino visible to everyone... yes, kitchen paper works!
As always, "Blinking LED is Hello World in hardware" so we let the LED blink as step one :)

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Next, input. Making Leap Motion work....

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Making the wind sensor work...

Silicon Chef

This is wind sensor.

Silicon Chef

Blowing into the wind sensor... we're getting data. Yay!

Silicon Chef

Other teams are making progress too!

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Many teams were huddling and hacking on the floor ;)
I think this is unique for hardware hacking.
And people looked really relaxed and enjoying!

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

 Lilypads!

Silicon Chef

Outdoor hacking! Indeed it was a lovely day...

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

One of the mentors showing her hacks. We had many mentors to help around.

Silicon Chef Women's Hardware hackathon

Some people were soldering.

Silicon Chef

"Evolution of Arduino" poster on the wall.

Silicon Chef

/dev/food

Silicon Chef

Silicon Chef

Since I needed to go to yet another hackathon on Sunday, I couldn't join... but here are some tweets by +Pamela Fox about the demos!












Thanks to organizers at Hackbright Academy, all of the staffs, volunteers, sponsors and mentors for making this awesome event happen. Talking with the attendees, I felt it really opened the doors for many women.

Loved the T-shirts too :D

Front:

Untitled

Back:

Untitled

By the way, we were not allowed to stay overnight, and had to leave the venue at 8PM. However we were given this "diplomatic passport" of HackerSpaces.

HackerSpace Passport

HackerSpace Passport

I need to visit many hackerspaces to fill in the visa stamps!

HackerSpace Passport

I always love this wonderful slogan "Be Excellent to Each Other" :D

This passport is CC licensed! Created by +mitch altman and Matthew Borgatti

HackerSpace Passport

Other articles:

Make: Silicon Chef Female-Focused Hardware Hackathon

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki