Be an environmentalist

WWF it is an organization the goal of which is to build a future where people live in harmony with nature. I have joined WWF and become a WWF passport holder. It is now my obligation to constantly take actions to make people aware of the damages people are making to the nature.

Below is the second email that I sent to help keep a natural treasure located in Bulgaria, when someone is giong to make it a holiday complex ILLEGALLY. This email is said to be deliverable to Bulgarian Prime Minister, Sergey Stanshev, and Bulgaria Prosecutor general, Boris Velchev.

Protect Bulgaria's natural treasures

Bulgaria has some of Europe's most valuable natural areas, but these treasures are being steadily destroyed.

Holiday homes, hotels, villas and ski resorts are being built illegally in many of Bulgaria's national and nature parks despite contrary to national laws and regulations.

For example a holiday complex is being illegally constructed on the Black Sea coast in Strandzha Nature Park, not far from the village of Varvara. But despite a court decision to stop construction, work still continues and units of the complex have already been sold to foreign investors.

Elsewhere the official protected status of Kamchiiski pyasytsi - the largest sand beach in Bulgaria - has been effectively removed to pave the way for development of a sea resort.

These are areas of European importance and the Bulgarian government is obliged to ensure their protection not only for its people, but for the wider international community.

As a Chinese with exceptionally fast-paced development which caused imbalance of the environment, I am sad to know such imbalance takes place across the globe, especially those activities that are against laws.

I therefore urge you to implement existing laws and regulations and take the necessary steps to ensure real protection for the country's natural riches.

Yours sincerely,
Benny

The first email was sent to help Peruvian mahogany and animal habitats that used to be biologically rich.

Let's do something together for the mother earth.

Just say "Hi"

Hi everyone there. It's been a week that I haven't get my blog updated. One week can be a good gap to update a blog -- neither shorter nor longer works. There is a mess in my mind and nowadays I wasn't able to refresh myself but catching up workload left thanks to the Spring Festival. Maybe it's time to pay for it.

But one thing now: there will be some changes to this blog. Because of some inconvenience constantly caused by the blog server, the blog in China Business News (第一财经) will be the place where I post some ideas on the society, human being, life, religion, me, and so on (sounds a social scholar?), basically no business at all. At this blog will be business-only blog about marketing, IT, financial or any other thing alike.

The reason to have two blogs is I really have something to say but it will be better to have different things in different places.

If you are interested, please refer to the blog in CBN. Thank you so much for your support, although I am not an Internet celebrity =).

Videos of iPhone and Google

Say no more today. Just to enjoy the two videos below about Google as a nice company to work for and iPhone as another innovate iconic weapon of Apple that aims to shake up the mobile phone industry. They explained clearly why the two companies has received rave comments.

Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007, presenting iPhone

NBC on Google, commenting on its working environment

Another thought on music

About 3 days ago I first read the article written by Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs. It is named Thoughts on Music (A Chinese translated version is here) with which Steve Jobs expressed why he believes those ideas of, thinking Apple's iTunes + iPod model is monopolistic and dominating the market inappropriately, is actually inappropriate.

Many know that some European countries, such as Noway, have been lashing out at the model of iTunes online store + iPod, buffing that it caused unfair competitiveness. To fight back, Steve Jobs explained that the tie between iTunes and iPod is not something that Apple imposed. Instead, it is what the the world's top record labels ask Apple to do.

According to Steve, the reason is that:

Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the "big four" music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader's computer or portable music device.

Steve Jobs argued that Sony and Microsoft are doing the same thing, making musics brought from their online stores, i.e. Sony's content Store and Microsoft Zune Store, to be playable only on their own devices.

He also listed out some solutions to change the status quo:

1. Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability
2. To abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats.

He believes that abolishing the barrier completely is "clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat".

I reckon that Sony and Microsoft used to think about that too. But probably Apple's Steve Jobs is the only one who mused about how to convince the record labels to break down the normative DRM rules, even if they thought that guy is flat-out silly. I guess Steve will continue working diligently on this further with inherent passion.

It might be a great timing for Microsoft and Sony to join Apple to take on record labels?

Crazy and brave Jobs

FTChinese published an article by Joshua Chaffin about Steve Jobs' new crazy "innovative" idea. According to FT, Warner Music's chief executive yesterday denied "the suggestion by Steve Jobs that record companies do away with copyright protections for digital music to spur market growth."

This is another great example of proving Steve Jobs is really different and is thinking out of the box. When YouTube and its counterparts are worried about the music copyright issues, he is trying to make a historical moment for the internet and music industries.

He really "Think Different".

British Council Annual Dinner

周六晚在威海路的四季酒店参加了留英同学网和British Council组织的Annual Dinner。在四楼，容纳了300多号人和37桌的大厅让人不禁回忆起在国内当海归前，在诺丁汉参加的Postgraduate Ball的氛围。不同的是大家手里都揣着当初没有的，厚厚的一打名片。

整个活动给人感觉非常不错。除了来自BC和诺丁汉上海同学会的主持人游刃有余的主持外，还有火辣的肚皮舞，Virgin Altantic赞助的往返上海和伦敦的头等舱机票，各个热门行业的职场的新生代和前辈，各式各样的女式晚装和闪光的相机。

说来邪门，整个晚会差不多可以算作女性的胜利之夜。除了赢得几次男女直接交锋之外，晚会最后压轴的12次抽奖机会当中，竟只有2位男同胞被抽中。看来，不论运气和实力，女性们都在上海这个女性的舞台更上一层楼了。

这次的Annual Dinner也迎来了诺丁汉大学宁波校区新上任的CEO, Peter和他的太太，和宁波诺丁汉大学国际金融研究中心的主任Sue，以及英国总领事馆文化教育处的文化教育领事, Jeff，等等一些重镑人物，以及一群不干寂寞，被我一直视为榜样的创业人士。

回国两年，知道国内海归多，但是不知道到底多到什么程度。虽然这是我第一次参加Annual Dinner，但是据说，今年的Annual Dinner继续了以前的火爆——近400人参加，但在举行的前一天仍然还有100多人在waiting list当中等候着那张请贴。去年，在上海的诺丁汉海归就至少有300人。光是这样数字，我们就可以想象上海的海归真的是一股势力了。

今年，诺丁汉上海校友会(NAAS)的首要任务就是举办一次大型的Reception以及获得诺丁汉校方的官方支持，以在此后逐步壮大，并与其他英国校友会团体互相取经。

真是要感谢BC和Educationuk的精心安排，真是一群可爱的人。

The internet comes back to life

After 32 days without stable access to some key sites and tools that I regularly used, such as MSN Messenger, Site Meter and Blogger.com, the Internet got recovered yesterday with surprise (to me). I know its time to catch up everything.

The month-long disconnection caused dramatic decreased number of subscribers to my blog at CBN, slow transfering of my blog data to Blogger.com, unstable work of Gmail and Google Reader, and completely disability of MSN messenger and webmessenger. It took ages to read some foreign bloggers' ideas. Now all the troubles are gone well before Chinese Lunar New Year, except for the increase of subscribers to my weblog =).

Let me find out what I have done during the disconnection with the cyber world:

• finished 3 books
• continued posting new entries, especially comments to FT Chinese
• moved to and decorated a new apartment
• Shen Li, the chairmen of NAAS was out from Winner100 and had a gathering with committees
• waiting, waiting and waiting for the reconnection. How sad!

Top 150 marketing blogs

Blogging is about writing and reading. Writing a blog is to publish and share ideas and information, and reading is for learning. 2 Minute Commute published an article introducing the existing top 150 marketing blogs in the world recommended by Todd And. The article briefly introduced that the 150 blogs are selected based on PageRank of Google, Technorati, Blogline subscription and the viewpoints from Todd And himself.

To me, and everyone who has interest, this is a convincing and powerful list of marketing blogs that share great ideas. Among the top 10 blogs, Duct Marketing blog is the only one I have subscribed to and have no idea how good it is. Thanks to Todd and 2 Minute Commute, these blogs are well organized and compared to one another.

Please click the link to see the full list.

YouTube to share revenue with uploaders

YouTube to share revenues

Today's FTChinese online reported that the leading video-sharing website, YouTube, is to share advertising revenues with its video uploaders, like what competitors are doing. This actually is what some experts have been arguing about, i.e., instead of merely making use of netizens, it should share interests and benefits with content contributors.

SEE I SEE

I didn't know that An internet-based research company, CIC Data, has already started its own blog named SEE I SEE, which talks about netizen insights, consumer loyalty and market watches discoverd through its professional research into weblogs and Chinese BBS. The big boss Sam Flemining attended the 2nd Blog Conference last year convened in Hangzhou and the Client Service Director gave a very nice and fluent presentation about its businesses. The CEO Sam and the company are well know for his newly coined term IWOM (The Internet Word of Mouth). I think it is actually Word of Net. The blog is new and I think there will be something more useful coming up.

The business is interesting. According to the book BRANDChild, the Chinese young generation spend a lot of their time online and the Internet has a very strong influence over their purchase decisions. It's a smart move for CIC Data to start such a business in China.

新年所见并不美好 First entry in 2007

Haven't posted any article in English for long, I decided to leave this entry to the new year. Below is about what I have seen and done for the past few days in 2007:

1. Rain for two days in Shanghai
2. 4 beggers in average per day, on street or underground trains, some with children, some are young girls. That hurts my heart.
3. Internet connection which is still not working well.
4. Metro train line 2 has been extended. Zhongshan Park is not anymore a terminal station.
5. Bought a new book named "Ogilvy & Mather's Viewpoint IV", a good guide for marketing and advertising.
6. Want to buy a book named "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". A book mentioned in the one above, for people to know more about ladies.
7. Won more contacts from douban.com.
8. The first thing I know is that: doing business, advertising, marketing, management...basically everything, is all about psychlogy, this is what books have guided me about.

Wish everything could be better, although there is no many good news so far. Hope I can see less beggers, smarter metro line arrangement, etc. Maybe that's why people need new year resolutions.

Where the Internet Videos heading?

In my previous post Rundown of the past week, i disagreed with what Ji Qi said there were no opportunities in the Internet sector. Here is the evidence again.

Danwei has compiled a good list of Chinese Video Sharing websites. 20-odd companies, such as Tudou and Rox, are in the list and most of them are for entertainment.

The Internet research firm, iResearch, posted a report on Corporate TV Station instead, complimenting it is a fairy tale for companies to build up their own "TV stations" at a price as little as RMB860. The Corporate TV station started less than month ago (probably on 31st Oct), run by a Shenzhen-based company named Asian Commercial Harbour by Fu Dekun who is an experienced channel distribution expert and is known as a "marketing shark".

There are four corporate-level stations, namely Corporate, Channel, Marketing and Partnership. Only few days ago, I just couldn't understand can't tolerate the site's slow loading speed but now the cheap price has attracted many corporate clients and a number of agencies in partnership from, e.g., Shanxi and Chongqing.

I think it is a good signal for Chinese Internet companies to evolve. You conceive it of a new B2B business model, taking the "traditional" web2.0 video sharing concepts into account. It's a simple move towards a blue ocean (I really don't want to use it when everyone else does) market with tremendous size.

The sector is to be further developed as there are not many websites running similar business. Oyoo is another one serving small shopping stores and restaurants.

"That is RIDICULOUS!"

A foreign middle-level young manager said with anger and blush face to a Chinese female sales employee (my friend):"That's ridiculous!", when she refused to work in funny American hours from 3pm-11pm, to sell products to US-based "potential" clients with consideration of not being time-worthy. This is a 3rd time that he imposed such a requirement. And that, the requirement itself, is ridiculous.

What makes it more ridiculous is that, as a manager, he is very inexperienced and has less than one-year experience but manages a 2-year experienced sales with good track record, not knowing what is Huawei and even some top-tiered global bank (I don't want to name it) that have truly huge presence in Shanghai. Moreover, as a businessman in China, he does NOT know how to speak Chinese.

Do I like expats in Shanghai? Yes, except some of those who do and say things that make no sense at all. I personally read a lot of blogs foreigner who are: Danwei who produces videos and podcasts, Shanghaiist, SeekAlpha China Stock that has a great deal of company and stock info, China Law Blog by Harris&Moure, The China Venture done by a venture capitalist, China Businesscast with podcasts containing professional viewpoints, and China Business services et cetera. Those sites contains informative values circulating quickly. Plus, they become a tight society that share things. I like the facts that some expats get well organized with incentive for business, information, social events, and fun. I have to acknowledge that lot of my knowledge about my own country are from them. I am not and will never try/trying to hide it because this is what it is! A friend of mine who came from South Africa and is currently studying in Fudan University is a very active boy in attending various events and getting to know professionals. I can tell he is definitely learning-driven, ambitious and friendly.

As I said in my previous entries here and here, I believe foreigners in Shanghai bring new business philosophies, diverse cultures, and consumptions in China. They manage and invest...... But unfortunately, there are inevitably small part of them who are not as knowledgeable and serious as we suppose. It is evident that they have little business sense, do not speak Chinese, have no idea of Chinese culture, are not skilled in talking and negotiating with Chinese and able to bring as much profit as local Chinese can to the company, but unfairly get western pay which is 10 times more than Chinese in similar posts. Actually they insist on their ideas, don't want to change, pay a lip service to localization (see here for What does "localization" really mean?), and refuse to speak Chinese. Even worse, some pay little respect to Chinese and always keep eyes on them.

Consequentially, they are causing and have already caused a high level of instability in management. Chinese employees are very hard to be motivated and maybe eventually lose trust in foreigner leaders, although I don't personally hope so. I have to say there are some local persons who are not capable, but if an expat wants to come to China for whatever things, he/she should get himself/herself ready for it. And this is actually what a lot of them are good at.
UPDATE: Erik Nilsson in (China Daily) posted an article discussing the quality and quantity of expatriate men in China, especially in Beijing. In the article titled Foreign women label Beijing a dating wasteland posted on 11 Nov, some expatriate ladies said that:

For China's lonely "laowai" ladies, it seems the problem is a matter of not only the quantity of [expatriate] men, but also the quality... "Beijing seems to attract only certain types of guys: English-teacher types straight out of college who just want to have fun, ladder-climbing executive types and a bunch of weirdoes," said Emily Patterson, 23, of Cleveland, Ohio, who works as a reporter for a Chinese magazine in Beijing. "You don't want a college guy. Maybe the executive type is already married, busy or boring. And of course, you don't want to date a weirdo

"At home, maybe you meet a hundred nice, normal, single, socially, capable guys, and you have feelings for one or two. Here you meet five normal guys, and there's such a small chance that one of them is the one you want."

Like many expatriate women in China, Hartman believes that while "a few" laowai guys in China are worthwhile men, capable of establishing solid relationships, many come here to get a badly needed ego boost.

"The majority of men come here because they have issues back home ... or they just can't get a woman back home for a number of reasons," she said. "They come here because they become a big fish in a little pond; they become very important and sought after."

I-WOM

I-WOM, you might think it's a new term that was come out by some expert. Yes exactly. It is short for the Internet Word of Mouth (互联网口碑), which is initiated by Sam Flamming, the boss of CIC Data. In his podcast done by Danwei, he outlined that Chinese WoM has larger effects in BBS than blogs, because in BBS, there are groups of specific and focused topics that people are welcomed and gathered to discuss. There are some 1.5 to 2 million new messages every month, which is amazing and much more than the West. He also mentioned that because the Chinese traditional media are largely controlled by the government, people place less trust on them and, when something or a big issue happened, most of people prefer to approach their friends or relatives who close to the situation for truth.

I wonder if I can further simplified iWoM to WoN, that is, Word of Net (网碑), or WiN, i.e., Word of the InterNet. They can be pronounced as "win" or "won". Would they sound better?
Enjoy the podcast here.

Rundown of the past week

Book

If you have ever read the books The World Is Flat - A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, The World Is Flat - Lexus and Olive Tree, Saving Capitalism from Capitalist, and Freakonomics, I believe you must, after finishing reading, find your understanding about the world has snowballed, just like me. I finished them within a month, by reading bit by bit in parallel. Some people might argue this is too slow. I, however, has been able to connect different interesting points to one another, which almost enables me to write another book -- One guide for all.

The World Is Flat explains to me the importance of Capitalism system to the world's economy development. Mr. Thomas Friedman, the author and winner of 3 Pulitzer Prizes, believes that the globalization is able to promote a higher level of transparency of political and economic systems in countries expecting to thrive. And that relates unsurprisingly to Saving Capitalism from Capitalist that called for a free financial system which should not be controlled and misused by capitalist politician and protesters that are experiencing life hardship.

If you want, you can easily link theories in a book to another to come out myriad interesting points that belong to yourself. And that, I believe, is very helpful to structure your own mental capability and knowledge.

The shortlist of best business books in 2006 is done and I am ready to grab some of them. I can't wait!


Things that happen to China

China International Business discussed the China's new corporate bankruptcy law that will take effect from June 2007 onwards. The law
"applies to all legal persons for the first time, including not only SOEs, but also private companies, foriegn companies, limited liability companies and companies limited by shares. Creditors' interests will be better protected, which will reassure investors, domestic or foreign."

The pass of the law is a good signal to effectively re-allocate social resources, including both financial and human assets, as creditors are able to get what they have lended back, though not exactly the same as what they lended, to look for something else profitable to invest, while those who bankrupted are set free to muse on the odds to start another business, to become scrappy and tenacious, and to compete in another industries with their own experiences. This is a good way to set the social resources free to make sure they can be timely delivered to the place where they are much coveted. Another thing the law offers to the economy is that the transparency of commercial entites.

But it seems pretty common that business doers, both domestic and foreign, believe paying a lip service is what Chinese government always does. Hope it is not this time.


Innovation

There is a shortage of innovative mindsets in China. If you take a look at the education system and the top-down innovation machanism, you will find this true. Chinese students are taught to follow and obey, rather than fight and argue for truth. Chinese ex-founder of Ctrip, fair-price inn runner and Angel Investor, Ji Qi, said that 互联网已没有机会. I don't think Qi is still a man easy to obey now, but maybe Chinese businessmen are easy to give up at all?! I doubt if this was really from his mouth--as a very experienced entreprenuer, Qi should have faith and demand in innovation. One possible reason that he said so was the businesses he used to run and is running are all traditional ones and he was/is nearly always a mover in these industries. Which means, with good resources and talented partners, those money is easy to make without rivals. But as an immature business model, 互联网, the industry requiring time to demonstrate its gold mine truth and consuming large amount of investment, is less attractive to Qi. As something that emcompasses the power of people, money, media and information, the Internet does solicit innovation. If someone said there was no chance at all, it means he/she doesn’t want to innovate at all. Wanna prove it true? See Google, Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube.

As a virtual space, the Internet businesses should have intricate links with the real physical world. By doing this, it is able to generate values by taking advantages of the virtual world for the real one. If one day Qi connects his inn with the Internet to provide value-added services, he will show his gratitute.

More on the Halloween Party!

诺丁汉校友会组织的Halloween Party参加人数将要突破40!

Our party will commence at 20:00 at Country Bar Country Bar (汉吧), 南京西路205号(黄河路斜对面，Starbucks/琉璃工坊旁) Kindly note that RMB 50 for unlimited soft drinks or two bottles of beer are provided from 20:00 - 23:00. 85% discount will be given for all other drinks and hotdogs throughout the party. Dressing Tips: Hope you have prepared scary costume for our big party!! However, for those who have not any costumes available, here are some tips for inspiration:

Use your cap, necklace...any accessories that you fancy for Halloween;
Put on your shirt with ghost image;
Wear dramatic make-up...
Be Creative, Be Bold, Be Scary....
We Look Forward to Haunting You................