kenleewrites in 日本

So, it’s the time of the month again for another installment of CGM night! CGM is an abbreviation for Consumer Generated Media. Episode 4 this time.

Love the new poster. After all, CGM night, it’s all about people. And tonight, there were lots and lots of people. Including some big announcements from Eye-fi, NHK World and our lovable Poken (available at a bic camera near you… maybe).

NHK World announced the start of a new online tv streaming service, jibtv. It doesn’t stream to people in Japan. Don’t really get why, but that’s NHK for you. Be sure to check it out if you want to watch programs about Japan made by NHK.

“I’m in Japan, why can’t I see programs made in Japan about Japan?!”.

Someone recommends emailing in and asking the NHK executives why. ^^.

Do you have a habit of reading fine prints? *ahem* *cough* Bottom left *cough*. ^^.

Hector from kirainet.

Steve from thewesternworld.

Poison.

Nice girls behind the bar.

Tonight wasn’t free though. For a mere ¥2000, we get a food and drink coupon.

Yellow chicken Thai Carry… can’t put my finger on it, but something isn’t quite right here… ^^.

David from dshack.

Chris from nihongo notes.

Johnny Li.

Heather from rinkya.

Mirai-chan from dannychoo.

Maids from kotobukiya.

Lester from lesterho.

Frankie from gamersweb.

There was an idol in the house. Amano Ai chan! Check out more of her photos on dannychoo.com

Ai-chan took a shot of Frankie and I. She’s a photographer you know.

Ai-chan and Frankie were telling my about Arduino. Looking forward to playing around with it sometime soon.

If you didn’t already know,

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

I don’t know yet, but Tomo might become my lifelong iekei ramen partner. ^^.

Tokyo’s stormtrooper unmasked!

Love the dark eyes in this shot. This stormtrooper is pure evil. ^^.

Jerome.

Bodacious networking in progress.

The good folk from Appliya Inc., Yang Yang and Taisuke.

Pascal from descartes-search. It was great meeting him! He came up to me with my facebook profile photo in his iPhone and asked, “Is this you?”. Maybe I should start doing that too.

Rick from cnet and Shane from the Nihon Sun.

Michael from CScout.

Kevin, the one and only tokyocooney.

Danny getting the ball rolling. We had a few presentations tonight.

Andrew talked about his experience switching from windows to a mac (read about it here and ExtremeHanami.

If you don’t already know about Eye-fi, you should. It’s voodoo magic. ^^. CEO of Eye-fi gave us an intro to how Eye-fi will take Japan by storm. I do foresee 1 obstacle Eye-fi might face in Japan. The lack of wifi hotspots. He gave away an Eye-fi explore (geotags your photos) to 1 lucky janken winner. Wasn’t me… sigh…

It was a 3-way match for the free Eye-fi. The press guy walked away with it. ^^.

Hosts for the night, Danny and Andrew.

I arm wrestled Jerome for Kotobukiya’s Obi-wan Kenobi.

War cry and all, I held him back as long as I could. But ultimately, he beat me to it. sigh… next time Jerome, you won’t be so lucky. ^^.

Jerome beat me and walked away with this cool Obi-wan Kenobi.

There were also other giveaways. Steve battled long and hard but succumbed to his opponent. We both walked away with nothing this time too. ^^. We promised ourselves, next time.

Managed to have a chat with a representative from digicraft. A new development perhaps?

On the way home from an awesome night! Didn’t Poken as many people as I did at the last event though. Can’t forget to credit Steve with some of the photos here. I haven’t perfected my Kage Bunshin no Jutsu just yet. Till then, I have to leave it to him to take pictures of me. ^^. Check his flickr stream for more of his awesome photos.

It didn’t feel as crowded this time around. Must be due to the venue. It’s the fourth installment now. So, what have I taken away home from it except for photos and a poken? ^^. CGM is a great place to network and meet many comrades. If you’re working on something and need someone to work out something for you to use in your something, this is the place to find that someone. I’ve meet friends at CGM night which I would like to or already catch up with outside CGM night. I even found contract work in the form of iPhone dev for Appliya.

CGM night is all about people, so it’s an opportunity to meet people and work with them. Get creativity juices mixing. If I’m lucky, I might get approached by other bloggers and vloggers to work on a great idea, but I suppose, I should be the one taking initiative too. ^^. So, I’m going to actively pursue this avenue a little more and hopefully create awesomeness content with other bloggers and vloggers tomorrow… or in the near future. ^^.

Since it was the first time I met an actual Japanese idol in the flesh, I’ll leave you drooling with this photo. Not drooling over me I hope. ^^.

Related posts... maybe:

1. Tokyo CGM Night
2. Tokyo CGM 6: At Office COSPA
3. Tokyo Live Bloggers 2009 Dinner
4. Tokyo CGM 3: I poken-ed 64 people
5. Tokyo CGM 5: 5 shots

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