Under the theme "Around the world in 50 hours", during this year's JOTA, the Chairman of the World Scout Committee and the Secretary-General addressed the world from Japan as they were both present at the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference in Tokyo.

The Amateur Radio Club of the Japanse Scout Headquarters had arranged for a JOTA demonstration station at the Conference. In a live contact with the HQ station in Australia and in front of the main Conference room, radio station 8J100S transmitted the messages of both Scout leaders to the world. In Australia, the messages were transmitted live over a special short-wave transmitter that covered the entire country. Several other countries were directly connected over Echolink.

While making new friends online in different parts of the world, a keen topic of interest for many participating in the JOTI was the new partnership between World Scouting and World Community Grid. World Community Grid's mission is to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity and during this year's JOTI, Scouts were encouraged to become part of this initiative. Even while a computer is in use, you can make an important contribution to Creating a Better World through more efficient use of your computer's processing power.

Also new to this year's event was the feature that Scout groups were able to select the location of their JOTA/JOTI station from an online map and display the location of all stations they have been in contact with.