Event Report | AmCham China: Under the digital influence

Last week the AmCham organized an afternoon of discussions around the Internet scene in China, with a panel covering general views on Internet and another on the topic of blogging.

Inviting bloggers should be part of the PR strategy of any conference, as they do great reporting: the fastest ones usually sticking to the facts and the following ones summarizing and commenting.

Invited bloggers were China Law Blog, Imagethief, China Briefing, and Danwei.

Reporting: China Law Blog, Silicon Hutong, China Hearsay
A very pleasant and well attended event overall with agile moderating by knowledgeable folks, and putting faces on renowned bloggers is also interesting after hearing their online ‘voice’.

Our take on the discussion is that:

• Coming as a second or third mover does give a strong advantage, and ‘ideas’ are even cheaper today than labor cost, so we see a lot of copy-to-china models for now.

• However, China is likely to follow a different path than the West for Internet as most business models simply do not work (online advertising is concentrated on first tier Internet properties so Chinese companies have to explore new models).

• For the bloggers panel, it was mostly revolving about the usefulness of operating a blog on a personal level, and the benefits it brings to a business. We could call that “online karma” as it creates goodwill and a general good impression around yourself and your business (at least for those who agree with what you write or appreciate the effort).

What we found equally interesting was:

• Questions asked by the audience. The first panel ended with over 15 minutes of questions revolving about censorship. Probably impossible to avoid but as another participant said “[with a more expert audience], we would have probably asked a very different set of questions” and got more interesting factoids or ideas from the panelists instead of an ideological debate.

• What was NOT said on the panels. Notably, there was no Chinese panelist! It took a while to notice, but hey, China already organized a couple of blogging conferences in 2005, 2006 and preparing for 2007 on November 3-4.

• The Western bias on blogging. The blogging panel revolved mostly about ‘intellectual blogging’, and nobody represented the ‘emotional blogging’ side, which is by far the most important for bloggers below 25.

It is clear that putting together an event with 8 articulate experts is quite some work, and we hope other chambers or organizations will raise the bar even higher!
Last, we provided an almost complete transcript in previous posts (first panel: Internet in China | second panel: blogging) if you need more details.