Arrived at New York – the Big Apple

I just got to New York via a late flight DL2040 at JFK. I am at the 29th St. and 5th. Ave now with wonderful view from the window of my friend Sam.

Something big happened today. Jobs died. The inevitable moment finally arrived and no one is prepared. I will collect news paper tomorrow to keep the historical moment and show solute to this great entrepreneur.

The protest at Wall Street continues and I happen to be in the city. Will check it out.

Will also visit NASDAQ and the open ceremony under the kind arrangement of my friend and meanwhile have few meetings here.

Too late now. I will continue my observation tomorrow.

Wrapping Up my SV Trip in Oct 2011

I am sitting at the small lobby of Camino Inn and Suite (at 1984 El Camino Real in Mountain View). It is almost 12:00 PM. The 2-star hotel typically offer free in-room wifi, but for something, it does not work today. So I spent the last night of my Silicon Valley trip in this empty lobby. As Alan de Botton put it: “The beautiful loneliness of travel”.

Drawing of the hotel lobby by Jian Shuo Wang

In case you want to see more drawing of these days, here you are:

What I Did

The last week was very long. I was not able to find time to really sit down beside a desk and reply emails. Here is a brief idea about what I did.

  • SEP27: As always, slept on the first day to fight against the jet lag. Since the Asiana Airlines OZ214 was so empty that we can slept on the 3 seats, the jet lag is not that bad.
  • SEP28: Met my old friend from investment field, visited twitter (I have never been to the office), and Facebook (few meetings with some interesting guys, both business, and technical). Lunch at twitter, and dinner at Facebook. At the same time, took the time in the middle to participate in a panel rehearsal conference call for HYSTA Annual Conference.
  • SEP29: Met my old Google and AdChina friend Yi Wang in Mount View, met with some old friend at Sand Hill Road, met Tri, a analyst friend who knows a lot about public stocks, had another conference call on HYSTA, visited one of my existing investors, and finally end up with a nice dinner with the speakers of the China 2.0 conference on Stanford.
  • SEP30: This day is simple. Started the day with the China 2.0 Conference by SPRIE (Stanford Program on Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship) on Stanford campus. That was a very good one – with keynote of Joe Chen from Renren.com, and closing with Jack Ma from Alibaba, in which session he expressed interest in buying Yahoo!, and which in turn caused the huge increase of Yahoo! stock. My panel was in the afternoon. I simply talked about focus and cost, and was happily surprised by the dropping by of Stanford president during the panel. Dinner? Another 14 gather of Chinese entrepreneur and engineer community.
  • OCT1: This is the HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association) annual conference day, and at the same time, the SJTU (Shanghai Jiaotong University) North America Alumni Summit at close locations. I shuttled between the two conferences for many times. Happy with the few side meetings at HYSTA, and happy to be able to talk with President Zhang Jie of SJTU in a private meeting. Dinner? It was a hard choice. I finally chose the SJTU dinner although the food is much better at HYSTA.
  • OCT2: I spent the day in Pebble Beach. Regretted a lot that I didn’t signup for the Golf at the top golf course of the world. But I spent some time at the sea side. The Gala dinner was great with many interesting guys – the people I know a lot from news papers, and weibo, but not in real persons.
  • OCT3: The HYSTA CEO Summit is good – a conference almost match the quality of YLF Conference, my favorite. The topics of globalization and localization, social media, and mobile were very thought-provoking. I also love the intimacy environment with just 30 people, and no media. I spent the night with Vince, Yutong and Facebook friend.
  • OCT4: Finally, this is the last day with activities for this trip. It is a simple day with brunch with Vince, lunch with Richard (Did I told you I had late brunch already?), a meeting with old friend at Sand Hill, and finally an info session at Stanford University (I love the room 200 of Old Union – beautiful architect), followed with a dinner of Chinese Entrepreneur Organization of Stanford.

Well. That is the chronological record of the days. Pretty busy, isn’t it?

Photos

Got some interesting photos along the way. Here are some of them.

The beautiful Pebble Beach.

and the 17-miles drive.

Photo with Prof. Zhang Jie, SJTU president

and Alibaba president, Jack Ma.

Shall I be Back with Blog?

I tested to work on Weibo for some time, and it is good for instance publishing, and it did consumed much of my time. Now it is the time to do some reflection of the experiments, and understand what is the next thing to do.

Shall I return to blog after pausing for some time?

I think the answer is “YES”. You may be happy with my final decision. Here is why.

Distribution? Microblog wins

On the distribution of content, Microblog definitely wins. If you post something on Sina Weibo, it gets many comments immediately – 2 to 100 comments, which is hard to get from this blog, even at the peak time.

Time Used? Microblog wins

The time needed to publish a Weibo is much less than a blog, and if you just want to share some photos, like photos with Jack Ma, or other important people, it is nice tool. Share some scenery photos, Weibo wins.

Depths, and Help on Thoughts? Blog Wins

However, the reason I want to start a blog is not about the readership, and not about getting responses. To be honest, the response I got from Weibo is not as high-quality as I got here, and it is not easy to engage in in-depth discussion.

I am Back

After leaving blog for a while, I just realized I thought less than before, and didn’t take the chance to summarize what is happening around me, and reflect on what I did. Writing takes time, but so does thinking. No writing, no thinking (at least no in-depth thinking). That’s it.

I am back.