Red Herring Asia in Hong Kong

I am a blogger. To have a blogger in a conference is really dangerous for most of organizer. Here I am coming.

The conference started with some problems – not a surprise from the first impression. I am maybe the only person who don’t wear suite and tie – I am very serious. I am. I wear the green shirt – the only one who is not pure in black.

The session should start at 8:30 AM, but we started pretty late. The host, CEO of Red Herring was not able to come due to visa problems (I really don’t know why a US citizen has visa problem for a short trip to Hong Kong – I heard they don’t need a visa for stay less than 90 days). Then all the speakers for the keynote panel didn’t appear. So our poor hosts stood on the stage in a awkward position, explaining what happened. Then asked if there is any volunteer who want to go to the stage and say something. It seems if anybody can speak something on the stage help them a lot.

The short embarrassing pause was filled by Red Herring editor by talking about the recession – with all due respect, he did pretty good job to tell something without preparation, but it is obvious that no one is really interested. Within just few minutes, they realized that talk recession is not the right thing to do, so they started to invite Red Herring nominated companies to put their presentation ahead of schedule.

I managed to put mine about baixing.com to the third slot between 9:20 – 9:30, before everyone spread out to different breakout sessions. But, everyone doesn’t mean too many people. It is just barely half of the room.

The organization was pretty massy. The previous two day schedule was pushed to one day, and with the dinner cancelled in the morning – just got the announcement. If I had known it earlier, I could book the night flight back to Shanghai without staying in Hong Kong for additional night, and waste my valuable time in office – there are so many things to do. Then the next problem will be, where to go tonight. Hotel is not a good choice.

BTW, I am in Hong Kong. Anyone want to have a cup of coffee?

The sessions? Some are pretty boring, but as always, you can have a bad conference organization, but the entrepreneurs are always the highlights of any gathering. I have already talked with some nice people from India, Beijing and Hong Zhou. I would expect more…

Updated More Changes

At the morning session, I learnt that the Award dinner was also canceled. If I had known it earlier, I will definitely book a flight ticket back to Shanghai the same day, then I was stuck in Hong Kong. In the afternoon, when they announced the reward, the final list didn’t come yet. They said they will complete the list the second day.

6 thoughts on “Red Herring Asia in Hong Kong

  1. I love green. I truly feel for you in your a bit boring trip, what a poor guy! If I were you, I would go to find some interesting places to visit and take some photos, also enjoy some yummies. Wish you could find someone to enjoy a cup of coffee! ^-^ +U

  2. Hi, Thomas, I am back to Shanghai already. Sorry that we missed each other this time – I know it was really last-minute notification. I am reading your blog, and hope to see you the next time I am in Hong Kong.

  3. Jian Shuo, I can’t believe I missed you too in HK. Hope I will get a chance to meet you some day.

    I can’t believe what I am hearing about the Red Herring conference, although I did expect a less than perfect event, I did not expect the number of problems you reported. I covered the event last year on my blog and that went rather smoothly. I didn’t have plans to cover this years when I heard from couple others that there were problems with RH.

    I also read a comment from Mobinode (http://www.mobinode.com/archives/752) that they are in some serious trouble. I guess they must true.

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