Philippine Commons

ADVISORY NO. 1
REGISTRATION AND ACCOMODATION INFORMATION

1. Registration is now open and on-going for the 2009 CC Conference for Asia and the Pacific on 5-6 February 2009 in Manila, Philippines.

2. The deadline for registration is on 23 December 2008 for foreign participants and 15 January 2009 for local participants.

3. Registration fees:

a. Waived for foreign participants who are officially affiliated with CC jurisdictions and the international offices of CC and CCi.

b. US$200 for foreign participants who are non-CC or non-CCi affiliated.

c. PhP2,500 for local participants.

d. Inclusions: participation in the two-day event, lunch and snacks, free entrance at the CC Asia-Pacific Manila Concert, and conference kits, materials, pins and other amenities. It also includes transportation to and from event venues and the airport for foreign participants. Costs of hotel accommodation (see below for options) and the organized optional tours for the whole day of 7 February 2009 (details to be announced as part of the program advisory) are excluded.

4. To pre-register now, visit and provide your information on-line now live at www.cc-asiapacific.net. Please note that we have limited the participation to the conference to a maximum of 200 persons only. To register or complete your pre-registration, registration fees and/or a deposit equivalent to your one day hotel accommodation, whatever is applicable, must be paid and deposited or wire transferred not later than the registration deadline in the designated bank account.

Upon completing your registration fee and/or hotel accommodation downpayment, or should you need to make an alternative payment arrangement, please send an email to our Finance Committee Head at mymails AT marsdecastro DOT com. Please note that no refund of registration fees and/or hotel downpayments will be made after 15 January 2009.

5. Wire transfers or bank remittance for registration fees and hotel accommodation may be made at the following bank accounts:

For International Payments:

Bank: Banco de Oro (Branch/Address: Taft Avenue, Vito Cruz, Manila, Philippines)
Account Name: Florentino S. Cayco III/Vicente Canoneo
US Dollar Account No.: 4580111381
Swift Code: BNORPHMM

For Local Payments:

Bank: Banco de Oro (Branch/Address: Taft Avenue, Vito Cruz, Manila, Philippines)
Account Name: Arellano Law Foundation Inc.
Peso Account No.: 4580003872

6. While in Manila to attend the conference, you may either arrange for your own hotel accommodation or avail of the hotel services that the Organizing Committee has pre-arranged for you at special rates, as follows:

Waterfront Manila Pavilion Hotel: (Conference Site)

It is the first international hotel chain in the Philippines when it opened in 1968. Located at the heart of Manila and accessible via major transportation, the hotel is near the country’s national park, Luneta (also known as Rizal Park), the Spanish walled-city of Intramuros and the nightspots of Ermita and Malate. It has hosted international luminaries like Muhammad Ali and 1969 Miss Universe Gloria Diaz, among others.

Room Type	Single Occupancy	Twin Occupancy
Superior Rooms	USD$75.00 net/day	USD$80.00 net/day
De Luxe Rooms	USD$78.00 net/day	USD$85.00 net/day

The hotel rates include: buffet breakfast, free entrance at the Casino, free use of swimming pool, complimentary coffee tea/coffee/water, 20% discount on business center facilities and government taxes and service charge. WiFi services are available for free at the conference venues, the lobby, all function rooms and public areas of the hotel. WiFi services inside hotel rooms are available at very affordable rates.

Corporate Inn Hotel – Manila

Situated just across the Manila Pavilion Hotel with their so-called Mabuhay Rooms – Single Occupancy (USD$32.00 net/day), De Luxe Rooms – Double Occupancy (USD$45.00 net/day), Triple Sharing Rooms (USD$66.00 net/day) and Quadruple Sharing Rooms (USD$74.00 net/day) based on our contracted rates in Philippine peso equivalent. Hotel rates include breakfast. WiFi access is available for free only in the hotel lobby.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please be informed that the Organizing Committee cannot guarantee the aforequoted hotel rates for the participants if they make hotel reservations after the registration deadline.

Other Hotels

There are a lot of other hotels situated within the vicinity of the conference site. Should you want to explore other options on your own, you may visit:

http://directrooms.com/philippines/hotels/manila-hotels/ermita-malate-price1.htm

Should you wish to avail of the hotel accommodation which the Organizing Committee has arranged for you at special rates, please include your downpayment good for at least one day on or before the registration deadlines so we could properly book your reservations.

7. Hotel reservation is on a first-come first-served basis due to the limited rooms available during that season. In making a decision for your hotel reservation, the Organizing Committee would like to inform you that it has organized a cocktails on the evening of 4 February 2008 and a whole day optional tour (in Metro Manila or a beach resort south of Manila) on 7 February 2008. You may wish to consider these activities in making your room reservations and flight arrangements.

The next advisory to be released would be on program, activities and events.

Thank you for your usual interest in, and support of, Creative Commons.

We look forward to welcoming you all in Manila, Philippines in February 2009!

JIMMY N. SORIANO
Executive Director, e-Law and IT Centers, Arellano University School of Law
CC-PH Project Lead, Convenor, 2009 CC Asia-Pacific Conference
Landline: +632-4043090; Facsimile: +632-5214690; Mobile: +63915-2036295
Email: jimmy AT soriano-ph DOT com

AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

You are cordially invited to attend and participate in the regional conference of Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific in the Philippines on 5-6 February 2009 to be hosted by the Arellano University School of Law, Lead Public Institution of Creative Commons – Philippines. The principal venue for the event will be at the Coral Ballroom of the Manila Pavillon Hotel situated at the heart of the City of Manila.

The conference aims (a) to showcase the various initiatives of Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific and (b) for the stakeholders to get together in a forum to define the roadmap of Creative Commons in the region following the 2008 iCommons Summit in Sapporo, Japan.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the creative reuse of intellectual and artistic works – whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach.

Currently, at least 20 country jurisdictions belong to Asia and the Pacific Region, namely: Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Mainland China, Georgia, Hongkong, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

For further details about registration, accommodation, program of activities and other information, send an email to the Convenor at this address: jimmy AT soriano-ph DOT com.

Image: © 2008. Lairaja. Some Rights Reserved. Except when otherwise noted , this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Philippines license.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN HEALTHCARE (INCOSSH2008)
hosted by the ADVANCED MEDICAL AND DENTAL INSTITUTE
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Penang, Malaysia
November 22-25, 2008

http://bpio.amdi.usm.edu.my/incossh2008

Call released by International Open Source Network ASEAN+3 (www.iosn.net)

The International Open Source Network for Southeast Asia with support from InWEnt - Capacity Building International, Germany (www.inwent.org, www.it-inwent.org) and cooperation from AMDI-Universiti Sains Malaysia, is co-organizing an Open Source for Health conference in Penang, Malaysia this November 22 to 25, 2008.

The objective of the conference is to bring together stakeholders in the Southeast Asian region and raise the awareness and appreciation for the benefits of the open source methodology as applied in health.

This is a call for expressions of interest from developers/implementers in Europe who have vast experience in the development and implementation of open source health applications. The developers/implementers will be given speaking slots in the conference as well as the opportunity to guide participant-developers in the code sprint.

Applicants must have good grounding on HL7 and other international health informatics standards and must be willing to serve as resource persons in the CODE SPRINT (where developers are challenged to exchange HL7 messages between their FOSS applications using the Clinical Document architecture (CDA).

This grant will cover roundtrip economy airfare, conference registration fees, and allowance for meals outside of conference.

Interested parties can email asean3[AT]iosn[DOT]net (cc: francis[DOT]sarmiento3[AT]gmail[DOT]com) until September 30th, 2008 with the following information:

1. Name of open source application/s
2. Name CV of speaker
3. License of the application (from options available at opensource.org)
4. URL of project
5. Proposed title of lecture and short description

Thank you very much.

Cory Doctorow’s “PrintCrime” was recently translated in Tagalog (Filipino) and in Hiligaynon (Ilonggo) by Mr. Paul Pajo and his wife Mrs. Lorna Belviz-Pajo, respectively.

Mr. Pajo works closely, as technical consultant, with the Philippine trip hop group DRIP, the first Philippine band which launched a full-length album (”Identity Theft”) under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 PH). DRIP recently performed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Ubuntu Philippines Local Community Team (Ubuntu-PH), in cooperation with the University of the Philippines Department of Computer Science and Engineering, invite you to a day of sharing experiences, learning, and meeting fellow enthusiasts involved in the hottest GNU/Linux distribution that hit mainstream computing - Ubuntu!

Ubuntu Love Day Manila 2008 is a grassroots effort to spread the spirit of Ubuntu. On August 23, 2008, learn and interact with fellow Ubuntu enthusiasts on how you use Ubuntu in your everyday computing needs. We invited 6 resource persons to share their experiences with Ubuntu in different areas of interest:

1. The Ubuntu 30 day challenge - Aileen Apolo (Google)
2. Ubuntu on virtualization and integrating to a Windows Network - Wallen Tan
3. Ubuntu: Saving lives (and then some) - Charo Nuguid
4. Choice is Good! Welcome to the Exciting, Productive and Wacky World
   of Ubuntu Derivatives - members of UP Linux Users’ Group (UnPLUG)
5. Ubuntu and the OLPC XO-1 - Rowen Remis Iral (OLPCPH)
6. Kubuntu & KDE: Contributing to an International Software Project -
   Juan Carlos Torres (KDE Project)

And the best part? Admission is free! But due to space restrictions, we are limiting this event to 50 participants. Please make sure to reserve a ticket and follow the instructions given to you upon reservation If you have reserved a ticket and for some unforeseen event you are not able to attend, please let us know so we can free up the ticket and give a chance to others who would like to attend.

Limit 2 tickets per participant, first come, first served. Tickets have no cash value as this is a free event. If someone tries to sell you one, let us know.

Register now at http://ubuntuloveday2008.eventbrite.com/

E-turo, a play on the words ‘electronic’ and ‘turo’ (meaning teach), is a network of free and open educational resources. It is a resource developed by Vibal Foundation, in collaboration with the Philippine e-Learning Society and the Department of Education of the Republic of the Philippines, among others. The resources contained in the e-Turo website are licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Philippines

The resource was launched on 12 June 2008, Philippine Independence Day.¹

E-turo is a free e-learning portal where Filipino teachers and learners can interact for effective teaching and learning. E-turo contains a library of educational materials which users can download, share, modify and print. It addresses basic, alternative, and continuing education.²

To know more about e-Turo.org, see the site’s Frequently Asked Questions.

1. http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=121529 [↩]
2. http://www.vibalfoundation.org/cybersmart.html [↩]

The ASEAN+3 node of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) invites you to the Philippine Open Source Summit to be held on 23-24 June 2008 in Cebu City, Philippines with the theme, “Understanding the Business Value of Open Source.”

We welcome you to visit the official summit website at http://www.oss.ph for more information.

Registration details at http://www.oss.ph/registration.php

We look forward to see you all in the summit.

MABUHAY (Long live) from the Philippines!

Note Verbale: Open education empowers
by Jaime N. Soriano, CPA, MNSA

With the age of information technology at the center stage of human interaction, there is an emerging global consensus for collaboration in providing access to learning and knowledge and developing a wide range of educatinal resources in cyberspace that are free and open for everyone to use outside of the traditional models. It is referred to as “open education.”

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration in September 2007 and now signed by over 1,500 individuals and more than 150 organizations all over the world urges educators and learners participation in the open education movement, and the promotion of open education resources and open education policies (see www.capetowndeclaration.org).

Open education operates on different frameworks, such as Open University, e-learning, open content to wikis, e-books, legal commons or open coursewares. And these methods are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Sir John Daniel, president and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), in a speech before the William Flora Hewlett Foundation Grantees Meeting in a symposium on Open Learning Interplay at the Carnegie Mellon University on March 12, 2008, said:

“Open education broke open the iron triangle of access, cost and quality that had constrained education throughout history and had created the insidious assumption, still prevalent today, that in education you cannot have quality without exclusivity.”

“Open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods, and open as to ideas. That is a good framework to think about open education.” quoting and paraphrasing a 1969 address of The Economist editor, Geoffrey Crowther, an early advocate of open education whose speech was still probably written in a typewriter.

In the first forum dubbed as “Open Education: Are we ready and where are we?” held on April 23, 2008, the Philippine Commons and the e-Law Center of the Arellano University School of Law advanced the idea that “open education” should refer to any scholarly, academic or guided initiative that promotes access to learning and knowledge in a free, open and collaborative environment using the tools and infrastructure of information technology.

Open education is an initiative whose time has come.

In the words of Kristine Mandigma, editor in chief of Vibal Foundation: “In leading economies, technology and knowledge are the critical factors of economic growth.” She emphasized though that innovation is the key.

Greg Moreno of Bayanihan Books believes that open education would eventually fill the gaps in the educational system as technology attempts to address the issue of content quality and commercial viability.

Lawyer Michael Vernon Guerrero of Philippine Commons submits that open education empowers people. He thinks that open content is the first step toward collaboration as international endeavors in this respect continue to grow, develop and mature.

Miriam Coprado of the Department of Education shares the view that while government continues to pursue the integration of information technology in the educational system, the contribution of the private sector remains a most important element.

But the societal significance of open education was best expressed by Siegfried Herzog, resident representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the Philippines, during the forum when he said:

“Remember, knowledge is power. Whenever access to knowledge is restricted, there is an issue of power behind it—a ruling elite will control knowledge in order to maintain power. If we truly believe that power should be vested in people, not in elites, anything that increases access to knowledge and deepening of knowledge is welcome. Open education is thus not just a nifty tool to enhance skills. It is a way to build a freer society.”

Certainly, open education empowers because it is built upon a platform of collaboration, equal opportunities, and open access to knowledge that could shift the paradigm of conventional educational systems that are perceived to be discriminating.

• This article appeared on print at the Manila Times, and alternatively available at the website of the said newspaper. Atty. Jimmy N. Soriano’s website is available at www.soriano-ph.com
• An article, entitled Philippine Commons Holds Conference on Open Education, and the speech delivered by Herr Sigfried Herzog are available at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation website.

23 April 2008

830-900 :: Registration

900-915 :: Invocation

915-1000 :: Introduction to Open Education
Speaker/org: Creative Commons Philippines
Atty. Jaime “Jimmy” Soriano
1000-1015 Q&A

1015-1030 :: Break

1030-1115 :: Creative empowerment and liberal education
Speaker/org: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung fur die Freiheit
Mr. Sigfried Herzog
1115-1030 Q&A

1130-1215 :: The public direction of Philippine education (primary and secondary)
Speaker/org: Department of Education
Atty. Geronimo “Indy” Sy
1215-1230 Q&A

1230-130 :: Lunch Break

130-215 :: Private initiatives towards open education: International/Local
Speaker/org: Creative Commons Philippines
Atty. Michael Vernon “Berne” Guerrero
215-230 Q&A

230-315 :: Private initiatives towards free and open books
Speaker/org: Bayanihan Books
Mr. Greg Moreno
315-330 Q&A

330-345 :: Break

345-430 :: commercial/business reaction to open content
Speaker/org: Vibal Foundation
Ms. Kristine Mandigma
430-445 Q&A

445-500 :: Closing remarks

Event Info
Name: Philippine Open Education forum
Tagline: Are we ready and where are we?
Sponsor: Philippine Commons
Host: e-Law Center, Arellano University School of Law
Type: Meetings - Club/Group Meeting

Time and Place
Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Time: 8:30am - 5:00pm
Location: Arellano University School of Law
Street: Taft Avenue corner Menlo street
City/Town: Pasay City, Philippines

Contact Info
Phone: 639215173631
Email: guerrero +AT mydestiny +DOT net

Description

The mini-conference aims to inquire upon the feasibility and development of private initiatives to contribute in the Philippine educational or learning system, as alternative else collaborating actors in this matter.

This is pursued especially in light of the developments on Open Education in the international stage (see http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration ; among others).

Considerations on the development of such initiatives locally would necessarily include the reception (either reactions and plans) of the government and the corporate providers regarding the matter, and thus would necessitate their participation in the mix.

Guests are allowed to bring friends to this event. Please inform us whether you or your friends are coming so that we can make the necessary headcount. No registration fees, by the way. Thank you.