Brasil was the right place to get this drumbeat started. It’s a place where the remixable culture that is the internet runs deep. It’s also a place where getting people other than developers doing things to improve and protect freedom on the web seems to come naturally. Which is the idea behind Drumbeat.

Our first ever dedicated Drumbeat events took place in Brasil over the last few days. The first was organized by Bruno Magrani in Rio at FGV Brasil. The second was organized by Pedro Markun and Daniela Silva at Case da Cultura Digital in Sao Paulo. Amazing people all three of them.

While there is much to learn and improve in the agenda format (see my next post), these first events did exactly what we wanted them to: bring together people who want to help make the interent better in ways that go beyond software. We had teachers, cybercafe owners, lawyers, designers, filmmakers, web developers, artists and many others — people passionate about the cause of the open internet, and looking for ways to lend their skills and creativity.

Many good threads got started at these events. A few examples: organizing a Brasilan Web Made Movie design camp for filmmakers and web hackers; bringing collaborative open source music into Drumbeat; getting electronic artists to use the new processing.js framework; moving a major Brasilian video platform to open formats; planting seeds for P2PU open web courses in Brasil. Certainly, a ton of follow up — and more events — will be needed to turn these ideas into reality. I have alot of faith that the people who attended and organized these events can make it happen.

More on Brasil in coming weeks. But I wanted to get this up quickly to express my gratitude to the people attended and organized these first events. It really was very cool and inspiring. Thanks.

PS. Also some good media coverage, including MTV Brasil and the two biggest newspapers in the country. Pretty cool how well versed in internet and free software issues the journalists were.