International Chinese: my speech at CNBloggerCon 2008

It’s probably a bit odd for me to be writing about my own speech, as I somehow tend to see this as shameless self-promotion. Nevertheless, I’m doing my bit in telling those who want to be in the know the reason I did my International Chinese 2.0 speech.

We go back to April 2008. China was hit pretty badly time and again — Tibetan protests, coupled with a massive PR problem while the Olympic Flame was making its way across the world — got quite a number of Chinese united and going, quite simply, ENOUGH. “Love China” icons were all the rage, and it was at this time I started an article on this very site about whether or not we were ready for the “international Chinese”.

When I met @isaac, @Tangos and the rest of the Chinese Blogger Conference team, I wanted to tell those folks that I’d like do a speech this year. This was, even to me, a bit on the quick side. Last year, I was just a totally silent near-no-one at the conference, madly tweeting away with blognation China. This year, things were a tad different.

Isaac got my email and OKed my idea of a speech. The content of the speech was next thing we had to tackle. Isaac and Co knew me as the Subway guy with an affinity for Zhongguolish (our version of Chinglish), but I wanted the audience to be informed miles beyond the Beijing Subway. So I threw an idea: instead of making huge ad campaigns for either the Subway or my projects, how about if I told them a bit about me and what I think — as in someone who’s been to 17 countries in 26 years and lived out there in the West; how about I did something about the international Chinese…

David Feng - International Chinese

These guys are great to work with. I say that because Isaac gave the green light virtually on the spot. Off I went next with Tangos to set the idea afloat — and to get the speech there for real. Tangos was really in the spirit, too, and wanted to feature me as a speaker as soon as possible. The enthusiasm, and the potential audience, was there — and it started to take shape and form. Including the speech itself.

At first, I wanted the speech to be a display of “just” what locals and foreigners think, as well what sets us together and what unites us, plus a bit about my views of the year 2008 as an International Chinese. However, the first day of the Chinese Blogger Conference was quite enough for me to go right back to the drawing board and spend much of Day 2 redoing the entire presentation. (That was why you saw Zoe and Elliott, not me, at the blog helm on Day 2 here at CN Reviews.)

The redone version started on a much more personal touch: I’d describe a bit of me, my education in Switzerland, what I do, as well as a few of those classical @DavidFeng tweets before diving into what makes the Chinese or the foreigners tick (a la the original presentation). This was a good start as people would first get to know me before they got to know what I did or what I believed in.

For much more about the speech, I’ll let the rest of you take a drive around the presentation itself as I posted a (rather condensed) version of the speech on the Web.

Immediately after the speech, I felt quite a bit confused — even down at times. This was my first-ever speech at the Chinese Blogger Conference. Last year was my first-ever attendance at the event: did I jump the gun too soon? How could this near-silent guy last year become a “someone” this year? Are 14,000+ tweets your “admission ticket”? (I doubted that the moment I thought about that.)

As with everything in life, not every last soul could be satisfied, but the way the speech went down with the crowd was both uplifting and even more than I had imagine. Very encouraging were the votes of confidence by virtually the entire Taiwanese delegation and Isaac Mao himself. More and more folks followed me on Twitter or befriended me on Facebook — and mentioned my speech.

I never wanted this speech to be something like a self-ad: I just wanted to make the audience aware that there are quite a number of people, Chinese by ancestry, who are doing their best to bridge the gap, however big or small, between China and the West. (This was pretty much what China 2.0 was all about.) And now that I’ve succeeded (somewhat) in doing this, I feel at least I’ve gotten something done.

Of course, there were also the constructive commentary on how the whole thing could have been better — more humor and more graphics were amongst the suggestions. These folks can rest assured that I’ve taken good note of their ideas and will be doing my best at improving future presentations.

I kind of felt bad myself that some people slept through the speech (as I wanted my bit to entertain people, not put them to sleep, although I had no problems with people actually dozing off), but hey, to all are granted the rights to listen, tune off, or even to doze off. The fact that Carol Lin really tuned in for this one, though, plus the added support I got after the speech, made it all the more worthwhile. Provided the audience and the organizers are OK with this, I’d love to do this again (of course, with a different title and a much-improved presentation) next year!