CNReviews Interview: Elliott Ng on CNbloggercon

Elliott Ng of CNReviews.com

Elliott Ng of CNReviews.com  examines the CNbloggercon event and his hopes in bridging the gap between Chinese and English-speaking blogospheres to avoid miscommunication and increase cultural awareness.

Interview Transcript:

Give us an idea what the whole experience has been like so far?

We’ve had a great time meeting with a number of people that we’ve been interacting with over the blogosphere, a significant number of Chinese bloggers as well as English-language bloggers in China. This community of people really has the heart to bridge the gap of understanding between the West and China, which we believe in the coming months have been increasing rather than decreasing.

What’s the reception been like when you’ve been approached by each person? Have you had to explain the concept a bit?

There’s a lot of energy and passion for this area because the people that have visibility into the Chinese blogosphere and Western/English language blogosphere really have a great deal of frustration because they see that gap and yet can’t figure out a mechanism to bridge it. The most recent situation was with Chinese edict to shutdown entertainment right around the week after the Sichuan earthquake, and it was immediately interpreted by major bloggers Robert Scoble and other China interest bloggers as censorship by the government to not talk about the earthquake. Ironically, the intent of the edict was completely opposite; it was to focus people on the victims and to be sensitive to the people that were suffering in the earthquake. I think the people that we spoke to were very accepting to this idea of a small group of bloggers, social media influencers, who may not have as much as awareness as they would like and connect them to the elite bloggers who are really driving the grassroots media here in China and create these sets of relationships we think will compliment the ways people get used today. We really think the press in the West, the mainstream media, and the media here in China are not capable of sharing a diverse set of viewpoints and information to allow people in each country to be educated and informed about what’s going on in the world.

When November comes around, we got around twenty international influencers meeting up with the Who’s Who in Beijing and Shanghai, leading up to the CNbloggercon in Guangzhou, what are your key takeaway points you want these twenty influencers and the people they meet up with to take away?

First and foremost, having a number of key relationships they can count on and reach out to when there’s an event, news, and getting a different viewpoint than what they might be getting from the official media in China and mainstream media in the West. Second is the awareness of areas in which they may have had misconceptions, so they are open to question their original point of view. Third, more of a desire to share about this global world, we are focusing on China, but clearly, we are in a much more globalizing world than we are prepared to deal with. The theory behind this tour is that a small number of people can make a huge difference, especially when these few people have readership, have followers, and are connected through the blogosphere.

For those interested, where can they go to learn more information about this tour in the upcoming months?

We are going to be blogging on the official CNbloggercon.org blog, and on my personal blog CNReviews.com (YAY BABY!), also the Chinabusinessnetwork.com, will all have a number of different areas where people can start learning about the tour. In the next coming weeks, we are going to develop an invite list and start a small but effective group of people to have dialogue about U.S., China, and how social media can improve relationships and understanding.