Barcamp Shanghai 2009 Coverage Overview

CNR’s here at Barcamp Shanghai 2009, hosted by The NetCircle at their nifty renovated factory office tucked away in a secluded cul-de-sac on the Suzhou River riverfront. We were hoping to live-blog some of the great mini-presentations going on today from a bunch of cool people but wifi connection was spotty, perhaps partly due to the sheer number of attendees today. Therefore, we had to settle with jotting down notes and our thoughts first, and will be cleaning them up and assembling them into a logical series of posts to be published starting tonight.

Barcamp Overview

So what is Barcamp?

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees should give a demo, a session, or help with one. All presentations are scheduled starting around 11:20 AM the day of the event. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

As you can see, it is basically a big pseudo-impromptu mash-up (I know, “mash-up” is overused). Think of it as an adult, more business-oriented version of an elementary school culture fair, where everyone is sharing something or another about themselves and what they’re doing. There is, at least with this event, a strong internet and tech focus however.

Our Coverage

A complete schedule of the presentations, submitted at the beginning of the event and then organized on the fly over lunch, is here. With three presentations running concurrently and unable to be at all three at the same time, CNR opted to attend the following presentations that suggested a strong focus and relevance to China:

1. Joining US/China Markets aka Casual Cross Border Bumping
   with Jenny Bai of The Red Connect.
2. Selling to China’s Youth Market
   with Renee Hartmann of eno/enoVate.
3. Social Games: Facebook, Xiaonei, Monetization
   with John Fan of Cardinal Blue.
4. Chinese Internet Memes
   with Lucas Englehardt of BloggerInsight
5. Payment In China: Payment Systems, Infrastructure, Habits
   with Toine Roojimans of Circle Pleasure (!)
6. The China Web
   with Gang Lu of OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup, OpenWebAsia Conference, and MOBINODE.com

We’re busy organizinig our notes, so stay tuned for more posts and updates coming up. In the meantime, if you’re on Twitter, you can capture bits and pieces of what’s going on through hashtags #BarcampShanghai, #bcsh, and the Geeks On A Plane #goap. CNR will also be covering tomorrow’s TEDxShanghai event and the Geeks and Glamour after-party, both to be held at M1NT.