About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

Last week, Christine Lu and I had the pleasure of meeting with some great people involved with CNBloggerCon. This was related to our concept of bringing a small group of Western bloggers and social media people to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou immediately prior to CNBloggerCon on November 15-16.

We want to do our best to support the committee’s goals and to support the Chinese blogosphere. Our own objective is to create a forum for Western bloggers and Chinese bloggers to build greater mutual understanding and relationships. We were encouraged by the discussions to feel like we had shared and compatible objectives!  UPDATE: Clarification…just in case this is not crystal clear…Christine and I are NOT part of the CNBloggerCon committee, we were MEETING with members of the CNBloggerCon committee!
Here are some pictures from the meetups. I’ll blog more about the feedback later!

Beijing

Isaac Mao and Shizhao, both CNBloggerCon committee members. Also Thalia Kwok of ChinaOnTV.com

CNBloggerCon member Tangos Chan of China Web 2.0 Review. Also Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital Watch.

Christine Lu and myself

Shanghai

Bruce Wang, Yuan Zi, and Ying Xue, all of the Shanghai CNBloggerCon committee. Also Min Guo of CNReviews.

Another picture of Ying, this time smiling!

In early May, Christine Lu and I met up to develop our idea of bringing a group of U.S. bloggers and social media people to have in-depth and direct dialogue with Chinese bloggers.

We brought our half-baked ideas to China to discuss with some of the English “bridge” bloggers I follow and respect the most, such as Paul Denlinger, Andrew Lih, Kaiser Kuo, William Moss, Jianshuo Wang and Tom Melcher. We also spoke with CNBloggerCon committee members like Isaac Mao, Tangos Chan, Herock, Shizhao (on wikipedia), Ying Xue, Bruce Wang, and Yuanzi. From these meetings, we felt “not alone” in our observations about the growing misperceptions of Chinese and Western attitudes toward each other that was best described by Davesgonechina on Mutant Palm as the SchizOlympics. We received profound advice, and heartfelt encouragement, and for that we are grateful.

At this point of beginning, I feel I should share some of my motivation for this effort (much of which I’m sure is shared by Christine).

In 2008, it is more important than ever before to build bridges of understanding between the people of China and the people of the United States and other Western countries.

Situation

Globalization increasingly brings the people of the world into contact. We enrich each other through global trade, but that trade also makes us increasingly dependent on each other within this economic system.

In theory, enlightened self-interest should keep the system running along. But in reality, not everyone benefits equally, and not everyone sees the system as fair.

Problem

The economic interconnection caused by globalization has outstripped our current level of truly understanding each other on a social or cultural level. Within the English-speaking world and the Chinese-speaking world, only a small fraction of readers can read or understand the other language (maybe more on the Chinese side). And between English- and Chinese-speaking worlds, differences in outlook may exist. These differences come from what our parents told us, what our schools taught us, and what our news media reported. On the Chinese-side, there has been a history of government controlled education and media. On the English-side, there is a tradition of free press and free speech, but a media industry influenced by economic self-interest and popular opinion.

The result of this is that mainstream media cannot be solely relied upon to help the people of China and the West get the information and opinions they need.

Without this understanding, popular opinion could increasingly become protectionist in the West, and nationalistic in China. A spark over oil, food, scarce resources, trade, or monetary policy could ignite national passions that would dramatically reduce the policy flexibility of even enlightened national leaders seeking to do what is best for their country and the world.

We’re already seeing signs of these sparks. The reporting on the Tib3t4n crackdown, the torch relay protests, the (L) China movement, and the misinterpretation of the three-day entertainment ban after the earthquake as censorship-are all examples of how different people see events differently, and are largely uninterested in hearing the other sides point of view.

What we believe

We believe in the power of networks and social media. We believe that bloggers and social media participants can play a big role in spreading ideas and information, around the editorial or censorship filter of mainstream media. In China, we feel that bloggers are the pioneers of free press and are pushing the limits of freedom of speech and expression in a way that will ultimately be good for the Chinese people and its government. In the West, bloggers are also playing an important role as citizen media, in insuring free press in the face of economic pressure faced by mainstream media.

We believe in the power of small numbers. We believe a small number of people can make a large difference. That’s because we believe that the right ideas can spread like wildfire, and it doesn’t take many people to create the right idea. But it does take the right people and the right environment to foster the ideas.

What we aim to do

In partnership with the CNBloggerCon organizing committee, we seek to bring a U.S. delegation of 10 bloggers and social media activities to the 2008 CNBloggerCon on November 15-16 in Guangzhou, China. Prior to the conference, we want to bring this group of bloggers to Beijing and Shanghai to meet up with a small number of Chinese bloggers and social media entrepreneurs, perhaps departing Sun November 9 and arriving Mon evening November 10, for a total of seven nights in three cities in China.

What we don’t want to do

We don’t want to spoil the party. We respect the needs of Chinese bloggers to have a focused conference addressing their needs for dialogue and relationship building. We don’t want the lack of Chinese language fluency of the international bloggers, or lack of understanding of the Chinese social media scene, to slow down or distract from the goals of the conference. To that end, we are soliciting input from both the CNBloggerCon committee and numerous Chinese and Anglophone bloggers to make sure we don’t spoil the party. I’ll share more about the feedback that we received, but it includes feedback from Isaac Mao, Tangos Chan, Shizhao, Herock, Kaiser Kuo, William Moss, Tom Melcher, Bruce Wang, Yuan Zi, Ying Xue, and Jianshuo Wang (who expressed some valid concerns for us to consider).

What’s next?
Christine Lu and I will start blogging about our concept in an open fashion to gather feedback and ideas, and sharpen our own thinking about what we want to do. Then, we will will post it to the official CNBloggerCon blog to share it more broadly. In the meantime, we’ll be in dialogue with people to figure out who to invite and how we are going to pay for this. This is a completely non-profit endeavor for both Christine and me, but we want to make sure that “scholarships” are available for any bloggers who can’t pay their own way to the tour and the conference (which may be a lot of them since bloggers are not by nature a wealthy bunch!)

How you can get involved

Please share you ideas. We have at the core of this effort the idea of a very small group of maybe 20 people total who engage in dialogue in an intimate setting. There may be other related events or initiatives that are open. So please get in touch with me or Christine to begin the discussion.

Also, please share your concerns. We absolutely do not want to trample on the grassroots nature of the conference. We want to support the development of the Chinese blogosphere and don’t want to spoil it for anyone. So tell us how we can add to things.

UPDATE:

Paul Denlinger of China Vortex adds his voice to both the idea that more dialogue is needed and “I hope that this event is not turned into a spectacle. The way to do that is to start talking to each other, through our blogs, NOW.”  Agreed with both of his points.

CNbloggerCon finally announced the conference location for 2008 in a very short notice on May 6 2008 without publishing the poll result:

中国广州市举办 (Guangzhou, China)

时间： 2008年11月15日-16日 (Nov. 15- 16)

It is a fair and nice choice. Guangzhou is the “South Gate” of China, the biggest city in south China. It is also known as “Flower City” (花城) and famous for its food culture. And it is also the only city that report TV/radio news in a dialet Cantonese.

See you there!

During the past few months, Christine Lu and I discovered we shared many of the same interests in bridging and connecting the world with China. So I’m pleased to share (h/t to Christine who already broke the CN Reviews sponsorship story) that CNReviews will be co-sponsoring Christine’s vlogging tour to Beijing and Shanghai from May 21 to May 30.

We will also be co-sponsoring a cocktail party for friends of CN Reviews, China Business Network, and attending the CHINICT conference on May 22 and 23. Aside from the conference, I will plan on carrying Christine’s bags and equipment as a China Business Network fanboy.

China Business Network aims to smash the one-way mirror

I was inspired to start CN Reviews because I observed the one-way mirror effect between America and the world. Chinese people know a lot more about the US than US people know about China. And according to Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online, its not because the voices of China and the world are not there. Its because the developed world is not interested. China Business Network is doing its part to smash the one-way mirror to make China visible to the World.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be planning our specific objectives for the trip. One goal is to reach out the China bloggers and the grassroots organizers of the CNBloggerCon to create a shared vision for bringing a select group of international bloggers to meet up with bloggers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Bringing together bloggers and young leaders could solve for global peace and understanding (crazy thinking, but yes I mean it!)

Our current vision is to bring international bloggers (and other young leaders) to meetups in Beijing and Shanghai, then culminating in an event to be held at a time and location very close to the CNBloggerCon, perhaps 1 day before or after. We don’t think bringing non-fluent international bloggers to CNBloggerCon, which is mostly in Chinese, is the right model. But by collocating with CNBloggerCon, we hope to create the opportunity for people to make connections with China bloggers.

Why am I spending my time trying to make this happen? My theory of change is as follows:

• People adept at the use of social media (like bloggers) have a disproportionate share of voice.
• Grassroots media is less subject to the economic and political pressures of mainstream media.
• Only a small number of American/European bloggers have strong connections with Chinese bloggers.
• Bringing bloggers and young leaders together will help then gain shared understanding and equip them to teach their audience and readers to become true “world citizens”

CN Reviews and China Business Network invite you to partner with us!

This is not a money-making or fame-generating exercise, so we would love to find other fellow travelers who share this vision and will work to make it happen. Our dream team would be Danwei, Global Voices Online, and other people who have been bridging the East and West for quite some time.

What do you think? A little too wide-eyed and optimistic for you?

UPDATE 5/5:  CNBloggerCon 2008 Location and date has been decided!

Fellow CN Reviews blogger Min Guo (@grigo) tweeted me the poll for 2008’s CNBloggerCon location via @webleon (webleon.org) and @shizhao (talk.blogbus.com).

The tinyurl just goes to a Google Docs form:

What you see after you press the Submit button:

As you many know, I would love to attend part of the CNBloggerCon 2008. That’s why I blogged about CNBlogger 2007 here, here, and here.

The form also asks “Whom do you want to see on 4th CNBloggerCon?” I felt I needed to put something down so I wouldn’t be dismissed as a ‘bot. So I listed:

• Aether
• Isaac Mao
• Keso
• Carol: @thecarol
• Tangos and Luyi Chen
• Awflasher (covered in our post about the new generation of tech bloggers)
• Bruce Wang
• Wangjianshuo (the first commenter on this blog!)
• Rebecca MacKinnon
• Oiwen Lam
• Jeremy Goldkorn
• David Feng
• Christine Lu
• Livid (CN reviews Livid interview, and about the V23X shutdown)
• Xu Jinglei (why not?)
• Acosta
• Andrew, founder of 1kg.
• Feng37 (and his incredible liveblogging translation which I will rely on)

After all, Min had blogged about the top China bloggers (probably) and also who’s who in the CNBloggerCon-connected blogosphere. And Robert Scoble had also expressed interest in China. So I am already prepared with my list of who I want to see.

I know the intent is to rotate around all the major cities in China. That’s probably the right thing to do. But Shanghai and Beijing are always the most convenient for foreigners like me, even though I have a nice, available family apartment in Guangzhou should the CNBloggerCon be in GZ.

I went ahead and voted even though I’m not really part of the CNBloggerCon club! But its a pretty grassroots even so I hope they will be laid back about a foreigner crashing the party!

Who wants to go to CNBloggerCon? Who would you want to meet and talk with? Where should the conference be?

Here’s an inspiring slide show to get you excited:

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It was my great honor to meet Robert Scoble on BIL conference in Monterey California early Mar. 2008. We remembered that Robert blogged that he wished he was in the Chinese Blogger Conference last year, so we took the opportunity to bring up CnbloggerCon 2008 to him in Monterey. Later I contacted Isaac Mao and learned the timing might not be good for Robert to synch up with his plans to go to the World Economic Forum in China. What a pity!

But if you are interested in coming to the China blogger conference this year in China, who would you want to meet up with?

This is a graph I got from Aether’s (in the middle) Facebook album. I met Aether in Hangzhou in 2006 where he was an very active volunteer. It is a great start point to know who you should meet and talk to:

• Isaac Mao: Co-founder and organizer of CnBloggerCon.
• Keso: A pioneer of Chinese bloggers, an IT reviewer with sharp insights.
• Carol: The Twitter Queen of Taiwan, she has 1,306 followers on Mar. 26, 2008.
• Tangos and Luyi : Key contributors of China Web 2.0 Review.
• Awflasher: Guo is running a blog network called IfGoGo - an English blog written by Chinese.
• Bruce Wang (a.k.a Number5 or #5): Bruce is passionated about SNS and now is developing a SNS product for Linkist.com.
• Herock: Herock is an typical example of great blogger who then became an entrepreneur. He has been mentioned in many “top 10 bloggers” list, now in Feedsky, an RSS feed syndication service.
• Vista: One of the first few Taiwanese bloggers to CnbloggerCon. IT blogger.
• Zola: Independent news/media blogger reporter; he first reported the famous “Dingzi Hu”(nail household, 钉子户) news. (Note: “dingzi hu” refers to the residents who defy the local government’s order of moving out of their homes for settlement. These households are usually dislocated by some commercial projects and are compensated by the developers (or government) but in many cases the compensation is hardly enough to start a new home. Therefore they refuse to move, even when construction is proceeding around (literally) their homes.)

Of course, there are many more great bloggers to meet, in art, music, education or even NGO areas, such as as Jianshuo Wang (Wangjianshuo) and Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei.

BTW, don’t forget to eat some authentic Chinese food when you are in China!

Cnbloggercon also held a panel discussion about China social applications. Moderated by Luyi Chen of the excellent China Web 2.0 Review blog, the panelists were from: Wealink (About in EN), Linkist (at CWRblog), Geni (at TechCrunch, at CWRblog), Haokanbu (Ignite2007 CEO presentation), and Aggua.

From the coverage that is out there, I found it hard to extract the key insights on the potential of social applications in China. Four posts can provide a starting point: David Feng’s Blognation Cnbloggercon day one post, John Kennedy’s live Cnbloggercon blog account, and Luyi Chen’s description of goals and summary of the day. If there are other insightful posts in Chinese or English about this panel let me know so I can add to this post. My key takeaways from the coverage and other blog commentary:

1. social networks and social applications will evolve differently because Chinese netizens are more mobile and more IM/chat oriented, and hence more focused on immediacy and in a mobile format.
2. social network applications may have a role in facilitating “first life” (aka real world) relationships, but to date what has been most widely adopted are social applications (such as BBS) that enable users to maintain anonymity and privacy.
3. there are some differences attitudes toward trust. For example, business social networks (e.g. like Wealink or LinkedIn) rely on an underlying willingness to trust strangers (or more accurately, acquaintances of acquantances) but this doesn’t reflect how Chinese business relationships work. There may be similar differences in social relationships–where people may have a smaller, more intimate real-world network of friends and a larger, more anonymous online network of Internet acquaintances with similar interests/passions but no need or desire to tie their online persona to their real world identity. The sweet spot of Facebook and LinkedIn is around online “friends” and “connections” who like to share an online persona tied to their real world identity…this might not be what most Chinese netizens want.
4. Everything is China is more complicated than it initially appears! Caveat emptor.

Luyi reports that according to Ian Chin, president of Wealink, “Chinese social networks [are] still in a disappointing winless season. If it was not the success story of Facebook, the topic we covered on the stage would have been totally different one.” According to David Feng: “In the panel was an English-speaking panelist, who stated that China copying SNS sites such a Facebook was not the way to go. The panelist also went over SNS demographics, noting that SNS users in China tend to be older, and that the Chinese tend to be more conservative. However, while the Western world trusts strangers, the Chinese, though not confident of trusting others, do have the tendency to meddle with others.” Who was this?

John Kennedy’s live blogging highlights a couple interesting points. First of all, the CNbloggercon attendees were totally unrepresentative of the overall Chinese internet consumer population, with 90% usage of social networks, 75% usage of Facebook, and 35% of LinkedIn. However, no one from Myspace.cn, QQ, or Baidu Spaces was present at the conference. Secondly, the issue of privacy was brought up. Ian Chin, probably in reference to Geni, reflected on the difference between ‘the West’ and China. In the West, children begin drawing family trees in kindergarten vs. ancestral relationships being a heavily guarded secret here in China. (is this still true? I can see why it was true during the Cultural Revolution but if it is still true today, why?) From John: “Classic Chinese behavior, Ian says, is doing certain things in a certain degree of privacy, in such a matter that specific parties will now know for specific reasons (ie. buying flowers for a girlfriend, buying them at a previously unknown flower shop as opposed to the one your classmate or aunt runs).”

Thomas Crampton also touches on this issue of privacy: “Unlike the US and much of Europe, where blogs dominate, a good deal of China’s conversations - on brands and other topics - take place in bulletin board services that allow a slightly higher level of anonymity than blogs.” As I mentioned in my previous post on China microblogging, this issue of privacy is more complex than a direct causal result of fear of government “harmonization” and the oversight of the Net Nanny. He also makes some points about heavy internet usage continuing to be from internet cafes, but even this point requires more detail (see below).

Via Kaiser Kuo at Ogilvy Digital Watch, I found a super insightful article in the Dec. 24 issue of Newsweek Magazine entitled “These Surfers Do It Their Own Way.” Quoting from the article:

In many ways the big difference in China can be summed up in three words: instant mobile messaging. The low proportion of home PCs has made the mobile phone the preferred Internet-access device. And Chinese clearly prefer instant messaging-chatty, real-time communications that takes place via PC or cell phone-as opposed to ordinary e-mail, in which you never know when your correspondent might respond.

Kaiser adds: “instant messaging and SMS are effectively soaking up much of the demand in China for social networking.” Unlike the US which seems to be heading toward a Facebook social network singularity (the Kango Palo Alto office is about 50 meters from the Facebook cafeteria, so hard not to think that), the China market may be much more fragmented between BBS, IM/chat based communities, social applications based on SMS, collegiate social networks like Xiaonei, Zhanzuo, Hainei, and many other flavors of social applications.

Sources: photos from Avenger, 94Smart

I got the best insight from three posts: David Feng’s posts on the (now defunct) Blognation, John Kennedy’s live blog post on this panel, and Thomas Crampton’s follow on speculations on whether China will Twitter. Actually, I think David Feng’s coverage is the best starting place for the entire conference.

The panel included discussion of Twitter, Jiwai.de, FanFou, and Buboo.tw. Not mentioned were other microblogging players iLaodao and TaoTao (h/t to a Crampton commenter. Any others of note?). In another great post about Jiwai.de vs. Twitter, Feng asks, “How big is microblogging? Maybe not that big in China — remember, most of us here are a bit more reserved than the laowai lost in foreign lands. Views about microblogging are more on the side of ‘this invades my privacy’, ‘I’m not the kind of guy to tell the World I just had cucumber for lunch’ or ‘I’m so bored that I started microblogging!’” Frankly, I think these sentiments are valid in the US market as well and am not (currently) a big fan of microblogging, except for Facebook Status! Thomas Crampton weighs the positives of high mobile penetration, the lack of home computer access, and a preference for chat/IM over email, vs the negatives of different attitudes toward privacy. Crampton: “Chinese generally prefer semi-anonymous platforms like bulletin boards over blogs. This is due both to concerns about the government keeping tabs on who is saying what, but also due to a preference for staying a below the radar when making comments.”

I don’t think its a foregone conclusion that Twitter will be a mainstream standalone success even in the US. Microblogging can be a nice add on feature to your social network, like Facebook’s Status feature. Success will be driven by the need for people to have microblogging cut across multiple social networks and not be trapped inside of one. But I think that people will in general invest in only 1-2 general purpose social networking platforms (e.g. Facebook) and few will engage in massively parallel SNS participation like Scoble (who I think has some special powers of some sort…I subscribed to two people’s Twitterstreams–David Feng and Robert Scoble–and already feel overwhelmed).

The China specific issues that layer on top of this is really in the area of privacy. On the one hand, Chinese society expects much less personal privacy from vendors and the government. For example, in 2006 I talked to a co-founder of one major online marketplace in China who collaborated with the government to do real-time identity checks against the national (identification) database upon account setup! This allowed the marketplace to use National ID data as data enhancement on top of the profile data provided by the customer. The government was motivated to do so because of their desire to fight against online fraud and fake identities. In talking to some other companies in China, I discovered that the transfer of data from one entity (say a mobile provider) to another (say a bank) was much less regulated and required little consumer notification or permission. Another Chinese entrepreneur said “Chinese people will sell their personal data for one kuai!” since that data is already being sold by both reputable corporations and grey-market data vendors alike. But after reading the Microblogging coverage, I realize that there are more subtle differences between US and Chinese attitudes toward privacy. I want to understand this better.

The vague potential of government control may also enhance these differences in attitudes toward privacy. Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online, blogs about a Michael Anti (Zhao Jing) presentation at Harvard where Anti concludes “the Chinese internet has gone “back to the old years” and “we’re making social change using web 1.0, not using web 2.0″ with the emphasis on mailing lists, email, and chat rooms. Many Americans may see things in black and white, with a government intent on repressing freedom of speech and a population struggling to gain this freedom. But in fact, my sense as an outsider to China is that the free-speech activists are viewed by many Chinese as outside the mainstream, and government “harmonization” (I hate this term) and censorship is treated mixed feelings and some degree of reluctant acceptance as people proxy server their way to Wikipedia.

There are probably not direct implications on microblogging but the indirect implications is that all social media will evolve in a bit of a different way, with perhaps people taking on online personas that are not 100% linked to their real life persona, and therefore SNS and microblogging that is explicitly tied to your identity will be less popular or at least need to share the stage with other media that is more in control, more distributed, and more private, such as email, SMS, and mailing lists.

Perhaps there is a role for microblogging as an alternative to RSS feeds in a feedreader, and better for a mobile form factor. A few examples for people to check out on Jiwai.de is CWRblog, or on Twitter CWRblog, DavidFeng, or Scobleizer. Anyway I am a microblogging newbie and would be surprised if this becomes a habit for me.

Here is a cool slideshow with pictures from the Cnbloggercon event. Unfortunately it seems to break my template!

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Source:
Cnbloggercon Blog

Back in November, I had the same sentiment that Robert Scoble and Wang JianShuo had: I wish I was at Chinese Bloggercon. Fortunately, Min was able to go, shot some photos on the way there, and wrote up a summary (in English and Chinese) on what was most interesting at the conference. This is first part of a multi post series. (Yes, I know the event was two months ago!) On a separate post (because it is breaking my template for some reason) is a nice slideshare I found on the Cnbloggercon blog itself.

Getting Oriented
Four posts helped me get oriented, including Min’s Cnbloggercon summary. Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei provides a great overview of the event, characterizing the conference of 400+ as “an eclectic gathering of geeks, Internet entrepreneurs, bloggers, social activists and NGO bloggers, teachers and educators, medium people and free speech advocates.” The collaborative and open attitude of the attendees is also complemented by “a continually-updated series of messages sent by mobile phone and IM via the servers of local Twitter clone Jiwai. This screen soon started resembling the comments section of a particularly anarchic blog…” Another journalist, Joshua Chin, decried this community aspect contributing to a attention deficit disorder conference, “I feel so 2.0, my attention so divided I’m incapable of sustaining a single thought for longer than it takes to say ‘wireless’.”Isaac Mao, one of the organizers, also reflects back to his goals of creating a highly participatory conference reflective of his ideas of Sharism and the emergent Social Brain. I’m not sure how I would feel about the twitterstream (or more correctly, the jiwaidestream).Rebecca MacKinnon expresses well her excitement for this “egalitarian” and completely volunteer run conference:

“The best conferences naturally have interesting speakers and panels, but they also serve as catalyst and focal point for community…Cnbloggercon is definitely that kind of conference.”

Photos from Min (aka Grigo) and the Flickr Cnbloggercon group tag also helped me get a better sense of the event.

Rebecca’s follow on coverage also contrasted two other conferences, the Orange Labs sponsored Web 2.0 conference and China Foo Camp. Despite the valiant efforts of the sponsors, Foo Camp was less well run than the volunteer driven CNBloggerCon and she “was surprised by the 1.0-ness of the main Saturday conference.” Tim O’Reilly’s own post entitled “On the Outside, Looking In” was insightful both in highlighting the difficulty of bridging between the Western blogosphere and Chinese blogosphere, as well as his own feelings of not being the consummate connector that he is in the US. But despite the difficulties, more efforts like this are needed. Rebecca: “But with the Chinese-language Internet soon to become the largest part of the global Internet, we badly need more bridges, more collaboration, more dialogue, and better understanding.”

There are so many interesting themes here. First, there is a lot of discussion about what it means to be “2.0″ vs. “1.0″. Second, there is also the sense of a community that is egalitarian, diverse, and grassroots. Third, that established multinationals like IBM and US kingmakers like O’Reilly can’t just expect to replicate their model and leverage their US contacts to be successful in China. I’ll summarize the rest of the conference in more parts. I hope this is a useful resource but more than anything else its helpful for me to get my head around what is going on in the Chinese blogosphere.