Event Report | OpenWebAsia’08 | The Digital Silk Road

Before a more complete post on the OpenWebAsia’08 conference in Seoul, here is our presentation on the “Digital Silk Road“: how Asia is inventing new things and can bring innovation again to the West, as it has done so many times in the past. Our examples aside from movable type, compass, gunpowder and paper are: new business models for games, social networks as well as some still largely unknown concepts such as enhanced search and knowledge service. Of course there was much more to say but hey, we had only 10 minutes!

Additionally, you can find the first webcam videos of the session here on Asiajin thanks to Shunichi Arai. Ours is Session 3: Collaboration.

The little fellow on the cover is a Chinese Tang Dynasty (7th century) statue of a foreign merchant, coming to find new things to bring back to his country. Let’s rediscover this spirit, otherwise we will stay stuck in a 21st century middle-age that could have been avoided if we had known about China’s printed press before Gutemberg re-created it…