🌊 What is Facing the Ocean?

Facing the Ocean (FtO) is a civic tech community network based in East Asia. We have been organising an annual community hackathon since 2019.

By bringing together people across different political contexts, languages, and civic realities, FtO creates space for hackers to genuinely hear each other — to understand problems that rarely cross borders, and to find unexpected connections in the work already being done. That, alongside genuinely having a good time together, is how a regional network that actually means something gets built.

Our communities share a sea — and a history. Across East Asia, our challenges are not the same, but they are deeply entangled: through colonial legacies, geopolitical dependencies, and civic struggles that have more in common than is often acknowledged. Connecting these communities with openness and mutual trust is, in its way, a form of solidarity.

Projects

FtO events have produced collaborative civic tech projects including:

• Herstory of East Asia — documenting women's histories across the region
• Novel Coronavirus in East Asia (2019–2020) — open data and civic response tools
• Civic Hacking for Public Health — experience sharing across national communities

Our Values

• Openness — most - if not all - outputs are open source
• Collaboration over competition — no prizes, no rankings, just shared work
• Community-driven — projects are defined by participants, not organisers
• Diversity — we actively welcome people of all backgrounds, disciplines, and countries

Multilingual Community

FtO brings together participants from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. Events are conducted in English as the common language, with Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin support from the community.