Web 2.0 in China: What’s Next? @ OrangeLabs
+8* Event reportsPublished November 11, 2007 at 12:39 pm 4 CommentsAfter attending so many conferences, roundtables and seminars, you too might have experienced conference fatigue: the 30-seconds pitch, the business cards, the paid-for speeches, the generic hotel buffet, the huge rooms, the standing time and poor WiFi.
And then…
And then the unexpected happens: very well prepared and expert speakers who don’t come to sell, but to inform and exchange, an attentive and savvy audience who steps in for sophisticated and challenging questions, exchange of views, contributing their ideas and knowledge (the complete agenda of this free event is here for you to feel sorry if you wish you were there). Kudos to Severine and the folks @ OrangeLabs for putting together such a quality event!
We go to many events and this was likely the best we’ve attended in China this year. The content was so dense that we won’t be reporting on it directly, but to mention a few of the topics: Web 2.0, trust, social theory of online/offline communities, sharism, (see blogger-entrepreneur-investor Isaac Mao‘s slides), case studies of Web 2.0 services, etc.
:: Our presentation on Slideshare ::
Speakers and panelists (including Tangos Chan from China Web 2.0 Review – whom we finally met offline after discussing in several occasions online – Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei.org and former CNN Asia Head Rebecca McKinnon, now neo-journalism leader and professor who wrote a great report about the event here) offered truly complementary visions of China’s Web 2.0 scenes, and ideas about global trends (some pics from the event on Isaac Mao’s Flickr here).
It’s quite impossible to provide a complete summary of the event, so we’ll end up with some noteworthy quotes:
- “I think democracy is similar to a business model”
- “In some cases you can work with mobile companies or hardware companies to extend the value of your service”
- “Is there one Social Graph to rule them all?”
- “My TiVo is collecting dust” (US users watch less and less TV as Internet becomes prevalent)
- “Some companies become Google, some become Bubble”
- “Views on China like you see on magazine covers: [High tech China] [China Price] [China Design] [Emerging giants] [Can China be fixed?] are like blind people touching an elephant.”
- “1900 is back: China has recovered the global share of GDP it enjoyed in the year 1900″
- “In China, 600 million people never used Internet. If I serve them, I am twice as big as Google.”
- “To develop the countryside we thought about encouraging students to donate unused PCs for village “sustainable computing power”. To create useful services we plan a database of agricultural information, and a dedicated browser for rural families (who don’t know Yahoo and MSN): they will only know this website.”
- “We need to find Chinese-values based business models to solve Chinese problems.”
- “Online games are today deemed as “Opium”. Families worry of kids dropping out of school, etc.”
- “There is an opportunity to combine and integrate education and “green online game”. Add social network to know eachother.”
- “People are more valuable than things – both online and offline. Serve people in a better way creates value.
China we have many people. To serve them both online and offline in innovative ways creates the China Value of Web 2.0. How to change the whole country with Web 2.0 is another research. Your task is to make poor people rich.” - “Web 2.0 is about building social capital”
- “Entertainment trend will continue, thanks to smaller cities and country side, and “Social Commerce” will pick up. Try to do shopping in a social way.”
- “We are recording extremely high levels of satisfaction in online transactions thanks to increasing social trust.”
If you took the time to read all this, we are happy to share with you a special geeky moment we had at the conference:
As we had WiFi coverage, courtesy of OrangeLabs, two of us connected with our laptops and started to chat on Skype about the event, we then connected via video call and could enjoy eachother’s reactions (we turned off the sound) as well as IM over Skype.
This already felt very geeky, but we also started chatting with a partner in Korea, telling him we were at a conference on Web 2.0 and that the talks were great. So he asked us if he could join: we started a video call with him, and while we kept our laptops silent, he could hear all the talks live on his side thanks to the great sound quality of the event. He then IM us as he wanted to ask a question during the Q&A. Due to time constraints, his question did not get through, but we had a very (and strangely) exciting time doing that.
The next day, another partner based in France listened to the live broadcast via Skype.
We will give our comments and thoughts about what was not said or felt strange in the conference in an upcoming post.
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Benjamin it was nice meeting you at the OrangeLabs conference last week. Unfortunately, I missed your talk. I tried accessing the slides via the link above but I think slideshare is blocked in China. Can you try sharing it via http://www.docin.com?
thanks!
Jon
[...] Web 2.0 in China: what’s next? | 5-6-7- November [...]
[...] While taking notes, I also started chatting with text and video with a colleague back in Beijing (what I called a “geeky moment” back in November’s Web 2.0 event). The coolness factor had eroded a bit and I started thinking again: how could this be more productive? I could not find a clear way. 300 people in the audience: they must have ideas and things to share that could be useful to me as a speaker and to the audience itself. [...]