Slept early last night and really well. In fact, I sleep for 10 hours which is amazing considering I usually sleep 6 to 7 hours. Anyway, wake up early and finally went to the Onsen for an early bath, and an early breakfast. Very refreshing start…

Today, we are split into 3 group: Energy, Security and Infocomm. Obviously, I am the Infocomm group. Our group is chaired by Shintaro Ishijima, President of Tokyo Metropolitian Institute of Technology.

The first presentation is by Yang Shaoli, Director of P&R in Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of P.R.China. She gave an overview of the Infocomm sector in China (btw, it is huge) and also some of the things they are doing to open up China market for competition to fullfill their committment to WTO. (Note I say ‘open up’, not ‘deregulation’)

I did the second presentation on the Trends of Infocomm, talking about numerous things including the Digital Generation, Peer-to-peer, Voice over IP (like Skype and Vonage) and of course Blogging. The folks was quite confused over Blog (even though I show them Joi’s blog) but they are impressed with the growth rate of Blog.The third presentation is by Hideyuki Oku, Director of International Cooperation for MPHPT. He continues to explained the Japan ICT policies and e-Japan strategic. Things like Asia Broadband Program, Japan activities in IPv6, Wireless Lan and 3G and RFID. Yes, IPv6…I mean Jun Murai could get the former Japan Prime Minister to talk about IPv6 so what’s MPHPT?

The fourth presentation is by Tohru Asami, the President and CEO of KDDI R&D Laboratories. Asami-san talks about his APEC Project to bridge digital divide in rural area. It is really incredible. They using various ISM band technologies like 802.11 (and in one case 18Mbps over 6.4km!) and AX.25, TCP/IP over Ham Radio. Yes, Ham Radio! And they could get 56kbps < 70km and 300bps intercontinental! (Now, you don't want to download redhat CDs over this obviously...) The most surprising thing is they did all these on very cheap equipments (Creative Commons. He gave a reply which sound very much like most software industry said about Open Source back in the 90s. I guess it takes a while for people to see the Creative Commons movement. We need a Linux equivalent I suppose before people will take Creative Commons seriously. (So anyone for Creative Commons e-Learning?)

The wrap-up discussion was also interesting. Quite a few commentors make references to my presentation which is a good sign. I hope I brought across the message.

Phew, and that ends up a day. (I will post my speech and slide another day)

Reminder to self: Must skype Asami-san. Yes, he is using Skype :-)

ps: Oh yea, I have to cancelled my appointment with Toru…I feel quite bad about it. But hey, he invites me to his house the next time. Would be interesting ;-)