This week we have some big announcements and a really big reminder:

Announcing Dell, Inc. as the exclusive sponsor
We are super excited to announce that Dell, Inc. global manufacture, designer and distributor of computer systems for the home and business is the exclusive sponsor of IxDA’s Student Competition. Dell’s contributions will allow for IxDA to offer full scholarships to our finalists to Savannah for the conference and to continue to compete for the grand prize which Dell will also be contributing (see below).

Grand Prizes for IxDA Student Competition
Because of the generous support by Dell, Inc. IxDA is proud to announce that not only will there be a grand prize for the winner of the student competition, but also a prize for the second place competitor as well. The grand prize winner will receive a Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet Laptop. There will also be a 2nd place prize to be determined closer to the event, also provided by Dell.

Submit now!
The deadline for submitting your entry is just around the corner. December 31, 2009 at 11:59p PST will not just be the end of a decade, but also your last chance to submit to the competition. Individuals and groups can submit process books to win a full scholarship to come to Savannah, GA, USA and a chance to compete further to win the grand prize of a Dell Latitude Tablet Laptop or a Dell Mini Netbook.

To submit please go to http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition

While India was, for the eighth consecutive year, the leading country of origin for international students — sending 103,260 students, a 9 percent increase over the previous year — China is rapidly catching up, sending 98,510 last year, a 21 percent increase.

“I think we’re going to be seeing 100,000 students from each for years to come, with an increasing share of them being undergraduates,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, which publishes the report with support from the US State Department.

via China Is Sending More Students to U.S. – NYTimes.com.

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Jeff Dachis’ leadership and vision helped establish the digital services industry more than a decade ago when he co-founded Razorfish, Inc. out of a one-bedroom New York apartment as its CEO, President, and Chairman. He led its $55 million IPO, and grew it into one of the the world’s largest digital solutions providers with 2,500 employees in 15 offices across 9 countries, and over $280 million in annual revenue. Razorfish ultimately was sold to Microsoft as part of aQuantive for $6 billion. He is Co-Chair of the Producer’s Guild of America New Media Council East, and a frequent lecturer and speaker, with appearances on CNBC, CNN, 20/20 and 60 Minutes among others. His honors include Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000, among many others.

via IDEA 2009 — Day 1 — Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design.

The design software company published recently the results of its own program to reduce its environmental footprint. It also open-sourced its methodology, called Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-Stabilizing Targets C-FACT.

Although many companies do track their greenhouse gas emissions GHGs, there is not a standardized way for setting targets or reporting that data in the U.S.

Autodesk’s methodology is based on the the long-term target of reducing global emissions by 85 percent by 2050, set by United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, companies can set targets based on their relative contribution to global gross domestic product.

“Corporate GHG target setting has become a little like the Wild West, with few laws, little scrutiny, and quite a bit of aimless shooting,” said Emma Stewart, senior program lead for Autodesk’s sustainability initiative, in a statement. Autodesk is encouraging others to use the method because the targets will be proportional to a company’s economic contribution.

The company has committed to using the C-FACT method through 2020. From 2008 to 2009, its greenhouse gas footprint increased by 1 percent. But its revenue grew during that period, so the “carbon intensity per unit of added value” dropped. Carbon intensity by square foot and per employee also dropped in the period.

To further its understanding of indirect emissions upstream and downstream, Autodesk’s Sustainability Initiative recently undertook the first-ever carbon footprint of AutoCAD software. The study examined different phases of the product’s life in the US, including raw material extraction, transportation, product manufacturing, distribution and end of life. The study identified the most carbon-intensive activities in the traditional physical delivery method, and demonstrated that software download is nearly five times more carbon efficient than the distribution of a fully packaged product.

Autodesk is using the results of the study to educate its customers about the carbon benefits of software download, as well as to further investigate viability of alternate distribution methods.

via Autodesk open-sources carbon accounting method | Green Tech – CNET News.

A group of children from a mountain village of Chongqing municipality carry makeshift braziers to fight the cold last month. (Liu Yang)

Located 1,200 m above sea level, the school of 44 students is located at the highest peak in Yunyang county.

“Snow fell a couple of times this November already. The weather is getting even colder,” said 23-year-old Chen Bo, the only teacher at the school, in an interview with China Daily. Chen regularly sees pupils too cold to hold their pens, whose feet are shivering.

The school has but one classroom with blue and yellow mold spreading like cracks over the inner walls because of the moisture. A quarter of its window frames have glass panes missing and those are covered with plastic film by Chen.

“The film should be strong enough to shield mountain winds,” Chen said.

Yi Ping and a dozen other students carry the homemade braziers to class and place them between their legs for heating.

Most of the braziers are simply empty food or paint containers, holding pieces of lit charcoal that burn slowly.

Yi has to blow air into the braziers at times to keep the coal burning. Between classes, elder students swing the braziers in a circle to keep the fires from extinguishing.

“Studying in the classroom, I don’t feel cold at all, and I’m not afraid of cold weather,” said Yi, a second-grade student in the primary school, though his swelling fingers are noticeably red.

The temperature in the village can drop to lower than -10 C in January, locals said.

Apart from the freezing air, all 44 students, aged 6 to 14, encounter other difficulties. Among them, the scarcity of teaching resources and poor education facilities stand out as the most problematic.

In the single classroom sits a mixture of students from grades one, two, four and six. Pupils of other grades must trek mountain roads to another school with better facilities and more classrooms, which is 30 minutes away from Yunfeng village by foot.

The children who study in Yunfeng sit at desks that are just two planks of wood on top of four sticks.

The classroom has no light fixtures in the classroom that smells of burning charcoal.

“On average, I can teach each one of the four grades no more than one hour per day. When several of them are listening to me, the rest of the pupils study by themselves or take exams,” Chen said.

A one-hour lecture is by no means enough, Chen said.

“I can’t provide proper lessons and a systematic education to them all by myself,” he said.

He once suggested to the headmaster of the Nongba township school, which sits at mountain foot and oversees the operation of the village affiliate schools, to mobilize other full-time teachers to assist him.

But he was turned down, possibly because the students from the remote village rarely rank admission to the higher key middle schools, Chen said.

“Forgotten by local education authorities, no teacher is willing to work in the village where telecommunication is shut down, and the living standard plummets – not to mention no entertainment activities,” Chen said.

Chen, who is from neighboring Jiangkou township, has been teaching for two and a half years at the school. He teaches downstairs in the classroom and eats and sleeps in a bedroom upstairs.

“It is the pupils' eagerness and resolve to learn against all hardships that keeps me staying here,” Chen said.

His docile students know very well that retaining a teacher is not easy, Chen said.

“Aspirations for a better life through education makes them hungry to learn.”

via Village students often ‘forgotten’ – People’s Daily Online.

The average price charged non-residential users has been lifted by 0.028 yuan (0.4 US cent) per kilowatt-hour starting, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement.

The last time China raised electricity rates for non-residential users was in July 2008 when they went up by about 5 percent to 0.494 yuan per kilowatt-hour. The tariff for residential use has not moved since July 2006 when it was raised by about 1 percent.

“The increase will help power grids cover rising costs,” said Peng Jizhong, an analyst at Guosen Securities Co. “It will also help them raise capital to boost investment in grid construction.”

China in 2005 introduced a cost pass-through mechanism that allows power companies to lift prices whenever coal rates rise by more than 5 percent over six months.

But the government refrained from increasing retail power rates amid the global economic downturn after raising on-grid power tariffs, charged by power producers to grids, by 5 percent in August 2008.

In comparison, the price of coal used for power production has risen nearly 4 percent this year after a 10 percent jump in 2008.

China’s two biggest power distributors, the State Grid Corporation of China and China Southern Power Grid Co, incurred a net loss of 16.1 billion yuan (nearly 2.3 billion US dollars) in the first eight months, according to the NDRC.

The country plans to introduce a new pricing structure for residential users as early as the first quarter of next year, the NDRC said. Households that use more electricity will face higher tariffs, it said, without giving details of the plan.

The pricing adjustment is aimed at boosting conservation, and any increase will be limited to keep inflation in check, the NDRC said.

China National Radio recently quoted Cao Changqing, an NDRC official, as saying that homes may face a higher tariff on monthly power consumption exceeding 87 kilowatt-hours, the average household use in China.

China’s electricity generation grew in October at the fastest pace in 19 months.

The country’s industrial output and investment continued their strong momentum in recent months, bolstering forecasts for the country’s economic growth to exceed the 8 percent target. However, concerns about overcapacity are also mounting.

In October, China promised to curb excess investment in its key industries as the government seeks to prevent a reckless investment spree from spoiling economic recovery.

The government said it would withhold approval for and curb lending to projects that don’t conform to state guidelines in industries such as steel, cement and wind power equipment.

“The rate hike will negatively affect producers of aluminum and cement,” said Luo Weiwei, a Bank of China analyst.

“Demand from the automobile and property industries may help in the near term, but challenges will come if these booming industries cool as inflation rises.”

via Electricity bills to jump for Chinese industries — Shanghai Daily

The Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau has put up a notice on its Website, stating that the policy has been in effect since October 10, 2009.

The move comes after repeated calls for expats to be eligible for medical insurance, pension and workplace-injury insurance.

The new policy covers foreigners, overseas Chinese and residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan who are working in the city.

“It is not compulsory,” said Sun Hande, the bureau’s director of the employment office for overseas workers. “Qualified people can choose to join the system or not. The new policy provides them with another choice to work under a more secure environment.”

According to the notice, foreigners and overseas Chinese can receive the same compensation as Shanghai natives if they fall ill in the city, but medical bills outside China’s mainland will not be covered.

In addition, people who have been paying into the city’s pension fund for a specific period of time before retirement age — 60 for men and 55 for women — can apply for pensions in the city when they retire.

The bureau's notice, however, didn’t specify how many years one must pay into the system to qualify.

Those who aren't eligible for a pension or who leave the country before retiring can claim the money back.

Industry-injury insurance, too, has been expanded to include foreign workers.

“The policy shows great equality for the expats,” Sun said. “They pay the same and get the same as their Shanghai-native counterparts.

“It should be an international routine for foreigners working in one country to enjoy the country’s citizens’ welfare and benefits.”

According to the bureau, Shanghai has about 68,000 expatriates from foreign countries and about 25,000 residents from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan working in the city.

Previously, they could be covered only by commercial insurance bought by themselves or employers, Sun said.

Since 2002, the city’s social-security system has been open to overseas returnees who still have Chinese citizenship and hold a Shanghai residence card.

Proposals regarding social security for expats have been hot topics at recent legislative and top government advisory-body meetings.

In 2008, social security authorities revealed the draft of this policy in a reply to a Shanghai People’s Congress delegate’s proposal on benefit equality.

And early this year, a member of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference proposed that foreigners holding residence cards be included in the social-insurance system.

Shanghai authorities submitted the policy draft to the city government last year.

via City expats receive security blanket — Shanghai Daily.

However, the regional concentration of these rich families can be obviously seen. More than half of these million dollar asset families are concentrated in 6 regions including Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Beijing, Jiangsu and Shandong.

The report also said that the U.S. had the most million dollar asset families at the end of 2008. It was follow by Japan, China, Germany and the UK.

Liang Guoquan, partner and manager director of the Greater China Region of BCG, said that strong economic growth, raising income level and high saving rates will quickly create sustainable fortunes.

via 4 mln Chinese families own million dollar assets – People’s Daily Online.

At some point in your career, you’ll be called upon to sell User Experience (UX) to someone in your organization. You’ve probably already done it. Perhaps you’ll need to justify what you do in an organization or industry that’s just beginning to adopt UX methods or sell UX to secure your position within an organization or get future projects. So, what do you need to know to help you sell UX? What challenges might you face? In this talk, Daniel Szuc will:

1. Examine what works and what does not work well when selling UX within an organization;
2. Identify barriers you might encounter to the adoption of UX methods in your organization;
3. Discuss how to package and present UX to stakeholders.

When?
December 11th, 2009 6:30PM

Where?
Autodesk
399, Pu Dian Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai, 200122, P.R. China
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Daniel Szuc | Apogee
Daniel Szuc is the UPA Vice President and a Principal Consultant at a Apogee Usability Asia Ltd, based in Hong Kong. He has spent ten years implementing usability for a range of companies, including the Asian Development Bank, PCCW, CSL, Hang Seng Bank, Marriott, Yahoo!, eBay, HSBC, CSL, Sunday, Netvigator, IBM GSA, and Telstra. Daniel is the co-author of Usability Kit, an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams, and author of several contributions to leading internet resources in UX.