Enter NOW to win a FREE trip to blog from China! (or read below if you are interested in the back story)
During a trip to China in May, Christine Lu of The China Business Network and I developed a seed of an idea to bring Western bloggers to China to create more dialogue and mutual understanding between the West and China. We wanted to build bridges and fight homophily (and read more about xenophilia on GVO co-founder Ethan Zuckerman’s blog). Turns out this idea (especially inviting non-Chinese speaking foreigners to CNBloggerCon (zh)) was more controversial than I would have expected, at least among you commenters on CNReviews.
This seed has now come to fruition as The China 2.0 Tour, which is hosted by The China Business Network, Web2Asia, and CNReviews, and sponsored by Edelman Digital Media PRC. More info on joining the tour here.
Mashable just announced that VisualCV is sponsoring one blogger to join us on this tour.
WHO IS GOING:
The tour already includes some amazing people, including:
- Shel Israel, invited international speaker at CNBloggerCon. Please read his post on why he’s excited to go to China. (Global Neighborhoods blog, Twitter: @shelisrael)
- Sam Lawrence (GoBigAlways blog, Jive Software, Twitter: @samlawrence)
- myself (CN Reviews, Elliott Ng on Visual CV, UpTake, Twitter: @elliottng)
- David Feng, speaker at CNBloggerCon (CN Reviews, TechBlog86, Beijingology, Twitter: @DavidFeng)
- Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (Bomega Blog, The Next Web blog, Twitter: @bomega) woops, sorry
- Ernst-Jan Pfauth (The Next Web blog, DutchProBlogger blog, Twitter: @dutchproblogger)
- Also, Robert Scoble will try to join us for part of the tour as he will be touring China around the same time! We wanted him to join but he is juggling other commitments.
WHAT IS HAPPENING:
We’re going to meet with a variety of companies, entrepreneurs, and bloggers and get a deeper look at China that you can’t get just by reading Western media and Chinese media. More specifics will be posted on CN Reviews and the official China 2.0 Blog. We’ll be going to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
WHEN IS THE CONTEST DUE:
According to Mashable, the contest to win the trip: October 16th to 27th, 2008.
WHEN IS THE TRIP:
The actual trip dates are: Arrive Beijing Sunday November 9th, Depart Beijing Monday November 17th, 2008. From the US, you would have to fly out Saturday November 8th.
HOW TO APPLY:
you can see more details on the Mashable site. You have to create a free VisualCV and then notify them at china2.0@visualcv.com and they will review and announce the winner on October 28th. Here’s my Visual CV. Click this link to enter now.
I’ll blog more about the tour in the coming month. I’m leaving for China November 4th and will be in Beijing before the tour.
-
Melissa Sconyers was just announced as the winner of the contest to join the blogger tour to China and blog for Mashable! The contest was sponsored by VisualCV...
-
I just met Bart Lapers for the first time on this trip. He is a Dutch photographer who seems to have some familiarity with Beijing, and I had previously seen some...
-
Were we ready for our arrival at the inaugural @china20 tour? Ready or not, we dived head first into Day One with @wolfgroupasia hosting the show. David Wolf, here...
China Blogger Tour Update: Melissa Sconyers wins VisualCV contest! 
What a great idea. I love that China 2.0, Mashable and Visual CV see the power and value of the blogging world.
Of course, I hope my VisualCV, http://www.visualcv.com/nancybrown, is selected and that I am able to accompany so many wonderful bloggers on this once-in-a-lifetime trip. And What a Trip it will be!
Good luck with the conference. If trends over the last two years are any indication, I suspect in a year or two you’ll have the A-list breaking down your door to get in.
Wish I could join you guys. Sounds like a fantastic trip – very much looking forward to reading about it and learning from you.