For those who don't follow me on Twitter, which has taken over my blogging over the last year and half or so (and not necessarily in a good way), I'm in Shanghai for a week of holiday visitng my Dad who's in town giving a talk. Figured there was no better excuse than that and combined with a relatively inexpensive flight, I went for it.
While the internet at the hotel is okay in the room, but only hard-wired, no wi-fi (WTF?) so iPhone blogging and photo uploading is buggy so I have to sneak down to lobby where there , the Great Firewall of China is alive and well. The violence in Western China has no doubt added to the extra restrictions on the internet so I don't know if Twitter and Facebook would normally be available or not, as Techmeme reported (yes, they're an aggregator but you know what I mean) reported that these two sites in particular had been targeted recently to help quell a potential uprising in the Urumqi province.
Here's the first post in a daily review each day of the trip.
--------------
Day 1 (first written on my iPhone and then expanded upon when I posted)
1- Films on the plane, 3 of 4 dealt with food as the major component of the plot.
The first was about a German chef who befriends a married woman. This movie shows what happens when you're a true artistic genius, independent of your medium (paint, drawing, sculpture, food, etc.) so dedicated to your passion, that to temporarily escape the isolation mandated by that type of life, the discovery of muse that you adore almost as much can both elevate your happiness while also destroying you.
the 2nd and 3rd movies aren't worth mentiong but have you ever heard of a Tea Off? The was the basic plot of the 3rd movie.
Imagine two guys fighting over a women and rather than fighting each other or doing something even more ridiculous like playing a game of chicken a la American Graffiti, imagine if they decided to have a tea off, who could brew the fiercer tea would get the girl. That was the plot of one of the movies, pretty intense actually, even with the subtitles.
2- Flight attendants had temperature gun that they pointed at the foreheads of a few of us, with the red, assaign-like red dot an everything.
3- synchronized exercise video on the plane as we were about 45min out of Shanghai. Complete with the flight atendants demonstrating the poses and excercises as the flight attendant in the video was doing it.
4- Haz-mat like teams in white labratory clean suits boarded the plane when landed in Shanghai checking every passengers temperature with the forehead laser scope gun. Took a few photos.
5- when the Swine Flu paperwork asks if you experienced any kind of sickness or health illness, don't be honest about even having a headache because they will flag you and take your temperature.
6-the Maglev train is warming up to 300kph and on the curves it probably reached a 30-45 degree angle.
7- Nobody queues like the British, which "Watching the English" thoroughly explains scientifically, so the Chinese lines at the subway were nonexistent and pushy. Also noticed as I walked in to the subway that people were crouched on their hams, which is something I noticed distinctly in India.
maglev_speed
Originally uploaded by cherbert.
8- timed the subway perfectly, guessing that it was probably five or six stops and it turned out to be less than five minute walk to hotel. Problem is that it's 80F and humid, not a good combo when carrying a duffel bag with a shoulder strap, which made my right shoulder completely sweat through my shirt. Decided I'd keep that duffel bag slung on shoulder when I checked in so that I didn't look too completely uncomposed.
You can get a more detailed list of the startsups that pitched and the eventual winners over at TechCrunch UK or on TechMeme I'm sure but here were my takeaways.
1- Sure times are tough but you can't kill the entreprenuerial spirit. People were looking for a reason to celebrate a little bit (Spotify was the big winner last night) and there's always comfort in a shared experience, whether it's a struggle or a success.
2- the Europe v. U.S. flared up ever so slightly when the panel of experts at the break between pitches and awards discussed how increasingly innovative startups are coming from other places. Sarah Lacy had a good thesis on this, stemming from her book research, that we should be looking to China or India. But the question that kicked it off was how European startups should attack the market rollout question, stay local or pan-European service at the beginnning?
Is harder to reach scale if you're only in one market like just the UK, France, or Germany, and that's because Europe is distinct countries and languages. But this is a ever present challenge so how can Europe move on from this question? You can keep using it as an excuse or crutch but you'll only fall father behind the longer you dwell on it.
3- question Malte (my colleague) and I discussed, per the scalability and market size question: could Twitter have started in Europe?
Lots of reasons yes and no but a valuable thought experiment. What do you think?
4- with the pitch part of the night, they were good to average. You gotta practice your pitch, have it down perfectly, and for God's sake don't read your bloody PowerPoint slides. And no music either, we want to hear you, not some frilly electro crap that distracts from understanding what the hell you and your company do.
5- Venue was goodfor networking but poor for the presentation side of the night. Not until halfway through did they get the doors closed off to the bar area. So it was noisy and hard to hear those speaking. That being said, per #4 above, speak loudly when you present to a room and audience like this...
6- that being said, kudos to Scoble for yelling at the crowd to shut up. He's obviously had some practice doing that.
7- Sarah Lacy almost had a wardrobe malfunction with her skirt and the akward stool setup for her and the panel but she deflected it gracefully and there was no Paris Hilton moment.
I'm sure there's more to say than that but it's time for work and them I'm off to Shanghai for a week tomorrow.
Mike Butcher and the rest of the TechCrunch Europe crew did a great job with the 2009 "Europas" Awards last night at the Delfina near Tower Bridge. Lively, packed crowd that was there to drink, be merry, and talk tech shop.
You can get a more detailed list of the startsups that pitched and the eventual winners over at TechCrunch UK or on TechMeme I'm sure but here were my takeaways.
1- Sure times are tough but you can't kill the entreprenuerial spirit. People were looking for a reason to celebrate a little bit (Spotify was the big winner last night) and there's always comfort in a shared experience, whether it's a struggle or a success.
2- the Europe v. U.S. flared up ever so slightly when the panel of experts at the break between pitches and awards discussed how increasingly innovative startups are coming from other places. Sarah Lacy had a good thesis on this, stemming from her book research, that we should be looking to China or India. But the question that kicked it off was how European startups should attack the market rollout question, stay local or pan-European service at the beginnning?
Is harder to reach scale if you're only in one market like just the UK, France, or Germany, and that's because Europe is distinct countries and languages. But this is a ever present challenge so how can Europe move on from this question? You can keep using it as an excuse or crutch but you'll only fall father behind the longer you dwell on it.
3- question Malte (my colleague) and I discussed, per the scalability and market size question: could Twitter have started in Europe?
Lots of reasons yes and no but a valuable thought experiment. What do you think?
4- with the pitch part of the night, they were good to average. You gotta practice your pitch, have it down perfectly, and for God's sake don't read your bloody PowerPoint slides. And no music either, we want to hear you, not some frilly electro crap that distracts from understanding what the hell you and your company do.
5- Venue was goodfor networking but poor for the presentation side of the night. Not until halfway through did they get the doors closed off to the bar area. So it was noisy and hard to hear those speaking. That being said, per #4 above, speak loudly when you present to a room and audience like this...
6- that being said, kudos to Scoble for yellig at the crowd to shut up. He's obviously had some practice doing that.
7- Sarah Lacy almost had a wardrobe malfunction with her skirt and the akward stool setup for her and the panel but she deflected it gracefully and there was no Paris Hilton moment.
I'm sure there's more to say than that but it's time for work and them I'm off to Shanghai for a week tomorrow.
I knew May was going to be a whirlwind between work trips and my Mom coming to visit London & Paris. Now that it's June, things have settled down a little bit.
The quick highlights, which include a lot of near disasters involving missing or late tickets for events:
1) I dropped my Mom and step-Dad at the Chelsea Flower Show on Saturday and its been a blur of sightseeing since. All of the events I bought tickets for, these were the earliest.
More coming soon, gotta run.
Although I remember the entire night, this photo sums up the span from
12:30 to 4:30am, and of course my then sleep-drenched Saturday
afternoon. Focused yet bright blurry flashes of brillance- the music,
not my dancing.
I wrote the following response to my brother who, as a 2nd year law
student, emailed me to gloat slightly about the Pirate Bay ruling.
I haven't blogged in awhile, Twitter has taken over my creative output
over last three months or so but this topic, copyright in the digital
age, got me fired up enough to write a meaningful response.
And it also got me thinking that I need to spend more time working of
things that fire me up. ------ Begin forwarded message: >
> Thanks for the link, been following this case, especially since
> having been to Sweden now. Read the Economist article, I think it's
> a little more even-handed than the NYT. >
> I was actually at the site last night, which underscores exactly why
> this a hollow victory. I agree that alwas penalities to breaking
> laws, they wouldn't be laws unless there were consequences. >
> But as we all know, the genie is out of the bottle and this is like
> a game of whack-a-mole, as soon as you knock one down another one
> pops up. So PB my have lost this battle (notice how NYT doesn't
> mention that this isn't the end if the case, the Economist points
> out how they're going to appeal), but the war is already over--
> technology won. >
> I'm not advocating the abolition of copyright, quite the contrary, I
> believe there is an important, critical role for copyright but when
> over 50 acclaimed economists (including Nobel lauretes) sign a
> petition againist the most recent U.S. Copyright extension because
> it flouts the Constitution and actually causes economic
> disincentives and astifles innovation (which flies in the face of
> the purpose of copyright), there is something wrong. >
> As the NYT article cited, copyright holders only real, long-term
> viable solution is to combat free with free and develop new business
> models. It happened with the telegraph, the phone, the TV, the VCR,
> and other major disruptive technology in our history. >
> Like the war on drugs or on alcohol, which have both gone rather
> poorly, when a society's mores dictate that a behaivor is reasonable
> they will continue doing so despite the law. And what makes this
> question all the more daunting than these examples is that it's
> technology-enabled and digital, you can't fight 1s and 0s with laws
> and courts. The economics of content in the digital age have changed
> because marginal costs are approaching zero on the production side,
> and this is turning all kinds of industries upside down (see Chris
> Anderson's WIRED article or upcoming book on free). That means that
> at the end of the day, the law of economics and technology will win. >
> Thanks for inspiring me to write, I haven't spent time on a serious
> topic in a couple of months. Let's keep this going. >
> Sent from my iPhone
