TEDxShanghai 520 Event

I attended the TEDxShanghai event today (May 20, 2012) at the Shanghai Concert Hall.

TED means Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It was started in mid-1980s, and kept the vision of “Ideas worth spreading”. The famous TED main conference in California charges 7500 USD for each participants, and is sold out soon.

TEDx is independently organized TED event. It is brand licensing model, like franchise. It is non-profit – all profit needs to go back to the TED organizing itself. There are strict rules of each TED event – the rules makes the TEDx events pretty consistent with the main TED theme.

Location

The location of the TEDxShanghai this year is a great one: the Shanghai Concert Hall – one of the best reserved old Shanghai time architect. The hall may have been destroyed when the Yan’an Elevated High Way was built. Some creative guys thought about the idea to move the building. They lifted the whole architect up, and moved 66 meters southward, and even lifted it 3.3 meters higher. It was an amazing project. The current Shanghai Concert Hall is just as new as a century go.

This is the outside facade of the building.

The inner roof of the building – magnificent.

TED

As the TED style, the VI was consistent (good). This is a ticketed event. People need to hold tickets, but I believe the tickets are free. Among the audience, the key sponsor Kraft held many seats.

This is the stage of the TEDxShanghai. A big screen with TED-red backdrop. The logo implies the theme of the event – an international gathering which happens to be in a city in China. During the event, English and Chinese are alternatively used.

It was a surprise how many people attend it. 950 seats were sold out, and there are people sitting on the stairs of the aisle.

During the event, it is pretty “TEDDY”. A good speaker with some simple slides.

There are even interactive events outside – on the square before the Concert Hall. The Taoism Taichi master taught participants to play Taichi.

In this event, the most presented topic is art, and music – the E in TED. There are some D elements, but I didn’t see too much T. Below is Jasmine Chen, Jazz artiest was singing Chinese folk songs with Jazz music.

The highlight of the event was Jimmy Choo’s presentation: The First Step of Making Shoes in Penang. Jimmy Choo was a famous shoe designer (known as Princess Diana’s shoemaker), and he was surprisingly supper humorous.  He demonstrated the steps to make a shoe on the stage with some funny flavor in it. I run upon him during the break and took a photo with him.  (P.S. I actually not feeling good to take a photo with celebrity like this. I would love to be introduce with someone by a mutual friends, and had some deep conversation, and we know each other for what we do and what we are good at, not just a wax-statue type of posture picture. I will take less of this kind of photo).

The biggest inspiration from Jimmy Choo’s presentation for me was, if you want to be good at something, you need to be really passionate about it. Jimmy Choo is famous, but he is so good at making shoes, and he still enjoy making shoes in public! Again and again!

The Speakers

The life line of an event like this is the quality of the speakers. I would say about 1/3 of the speakers are well above my expectation, and many aren’t. I am not saying they are not delivering good speech. They all did, but based on my knowledge of TED standard, they shy a little bit from that line. There are many things the organizing team can do to help. For example, the Taoism Taichi presentation – if the presentation was structured with a Taichi show, that is much more powerful than speech. A pity that they didn’t show their best. Looking forward to the next time.

TED Rules and Its Enforcement

 The surprising part of this TEDxShangahi event was its violation of TEDx rules (Lawrence knows I will write about it). There are three sessions directly related to sponsorship at least. One is the KRAFT’s session, the second from Shanghai NYU, and the third is the Peneng Philharmonic Performance, because KRAFT, Shanghai NYU, and Peneng Tourism Bureau are both sponsors of the event. It was clear stated in the TEDx rules that no sponsors can speak during the event, and more interestingly, no speakers can later spouse the event. The rule is well understandable to keep the distinct line between sponsorship and editorial, and to keep the integrity of the event. This is an obvious flaw of the event, but I am sure the TEDxChina, and TEDxShanghai team were aware of it and will fix it.

Good Event

In conclusion, it is still a fantastic event, and it offers great value to the audience. I’d like to thank the speakers to take the time to speak in the event, to share, and to inspire people like me. I am definitely interested to be involved in future events like this.

 

Chinese Blogger Conference Changed Location

To hold a conference in China is not easy. Not surprisingly, although the venue was only announced 4 days before the actual event, the venue was canceled due to "well known" reasons. The organizers are still busy working to find another venue to make it possible for blogger flying, or taking train from across the country (some from worldwide) to gather the day after tomorrow. Exactly like the Hangzhou conference, the venue needs to be changed few times before the actual event happens. Good luck!

A technical and innovation conference was perceived in many years as a trouble maker conference, for so many years.

Chinese Blogger Conference Changed Location

To hold a conference in China is not easy. Not surprisingly, although the venue was only announced 4 days before the actual event, the venue was canceled due to "well known" reasons. The organizers are still busy working to find another venue to make it possible for blogger flying, or taking train from across the country (some from worldwide) to gather the day after tomorrow. Exactly like the Hangzhou conference, the venue needs to be changed few times before the actual event happens. Good luck!

Second Day of Fortune Brainstorm Tech

What a whole day. I already waked up enough but still didn’t catch up the first session, at 6:00 AM, the optional mountain trail hike.

I came from the Internet space, combined with the startup space. Today’s session is generally interesting and amazing. The most inspirational part of today’s session is, the people, the company, and the topics are not those I will touch on daily basis. I was dragged out of Internet a little bit, but not too far away – to the Tech world.

For example, the Writer, and Producer of ABC Series Lost talked about the role of technology in TV program, and the one year old ex-Googler CEO of AOL talking about the “turn” of the company. The CEO of Xerox talked about how they turned themselves from a copier company to a full document service company, and more importantly, turned from the bottom of the curve up.

When I was sitting at the middle section under the tent (yes! the conference is held under a big tent. Not very many people attending, just about 200-300 in total), I was wondering why I am here. It is not something directly related to my job. But I am convinced that I need to start to participate in this conference to keep my eyes open. The question I want to ask is, why all the other CEOs and presidents of famous companies participate. They must come for a reason. I have to say some of the topics like the trends of the whole industry does not interest me as much as topics directly related to my work, it does mean that I need more years to be appreciating the topics. The people are here to share, and to learn about the trends of the industry. It acts as some kind of orchestration of the movement of the industry. They want to make sure people from the government, from the tech, from media, and from investment are frequently put together, to reach some consensus about what to do in the next 18 to 3 years, so big and small companies like Google, Microsoft, Disney, AOL, IAC, Twitter can do something together toward the same direction, I mean, if they all feel the water the same way. The bottom line is, it is not waste of time.

I do have to comment a little bit about the beautiful Aspen. I really didn’t see too much about Aspen yet. The schedule was so full, and I don’t want to waste the opportunity to network with the great people there, but it is so beautiful. I especially like the creeks, and the water there. Tomorrow afternoon, there will be a bike session for the participants, and I expect to go out to see Aspen, and take some pictures. BTW, Aspen is 8200 feet in latitude. It is not very high compared to many places in west part of China, and there is no altitude sickness at all. There are some people who report the difference. Where is it for me?

For those who wonder why I didn’t post any picture of my US trip onto my blog yet. The answer is simple, I just left my USB cable home, and didn’t take a chance to buy one.

Fortune Brainstorm Tech #FortuneTech

Just finished the first day (well, half day to be more exact) of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference. As they stated in the description,

Fortune Brainstorm: TECH is a marketplace of ideas that assembles the smartest people we know – the world’s top technology and media thinkers, operators, entrepreneurs, innovators, and influencers. These leaders inspire a conversation that informs Fortune’s editorial coverage throughout the year.

Brainstorm began in Aspen in 2001, and Fortune is delighted to be returning to our roots in 2010. We know from experience that Aspen is the ideal – and idyllic – setting to exchange ideas and build relationships, the hallmarks of the Brainstorm experience.

Real People in the Real World

There are many people I read about on news papers, and magazines (including Fortune Magazine). They become real in this conference.

At the small airport of Aspen, Hotel Jerome arranged nice complimentary pickup service. In the cool, beautiful dawn, the husband driver with a western style cowboy hat picked up three persons for that flight UA6118 from LAX. It was then I met my first buddy in this conference, Alex, CEO of WebTrends. Then I met with Susan who later introduced me to Eva Chan, founder and CEO of Trend Micro. We are maybe the few people in that conference who speak Chinese (at least I don’t know the third person so far yet). Of cause, I am so happy to meet with Maynard, who was the COO of eBay, and someone I respect a lot, and Adam Lashinsky, from Fortune Magazine, who was so kind to invite me to the conference as a speaker (so effectively saved me $3000 entrance fee for the conference).

People

Maybe I am more an entrepreneur from inside, the conference brings more “enterprise” favor to my world. Many people are senior in some of the most “senior” companies in the field. I didn’t see “founder and CEO” of the really big companies, but many SVP, or CXO from big companies like Microsoft, Google, and HP. Being senior in a senior company is a good thing, and they are doing the job I cannot do well, but I enjoy sitting in the same cubicle with other energetic people to build some junior company which will eventually senior, I hope.

Theme

The best part is the Startup Idol section (again, I am the startup type of guy). I enjoyed the Badgeville idea (to help companies to give incentive badges to visitors), and the Miso idea (I don’t think they have a website yet), about giving the second screen for people watching TV. The Flipboard demo by its founder and CEO Mike McCue is so cool. Hardware like iPad unlocked people’s imagination, and the application developers should follow very fast, and the applications will continue to inspire and push for better hardware. That is the circle of how innovation works.

Aspen?

Aspen is so beautiful. I would say, it may be second most beautiful place I have even been to after Daocheng in Sichuan. However, I am not so optimistic about the future of Daocheng without the local community’s protection effort after their first airport is built…

Aspen is also the name of the tree. I just collected some nice heart-shaped leaf and put it into my Moleskine notebook (as many book holders suggest others to do with travel and leaf). Even in summer, Aspen is great, not to mention the wonderful slop for ski in winter.

Palm

I cannot end without mentioning Palm. Palm’s CEO Jon was here sitting together with HP SVP to talk about the HP, Palm acquisition. I never used a Palm, and I even confused it with BlackBerry. (Well, it is purely my ignorance, not their problem). What Todd and Jon did today was to announce that they will give a free Palm Pre Plus to every attendance. I could imagine how crowded and maybe messy it is to handle the logistics, but it turned out that the process is very elegant. When I return to my hotel, a big box of gift sits on the bed with some warm light turned on to highlight the gift. So, I have a new Palm. The problem is, shall I open it and use it, and maybe switch to Apple iPhone 3GS, or 4G (depending whether I can get one), or just keep it new and share it with friend, or the best possible outcome is, after I use it for few days, I cancel my idea of buying an iPhone? Any suggestions?

Finished Talk in Hangzhou

Pretty late now (12:55 AM), and I am sitting at a budget hotel at Hupan Garden 湖畔花园. It is 160 RMB (discount of 20 RMB comes Jim Sang, who is their frequent guest). Jim said the advertisement of this residential area stated many years ago that this is the only villa area in Hangzhou that you can hear the song of birds.

This garden is more famous in Internet community because of its connection with Taobao, and Alibaba – all of them are born in one villa in this area. People believe in Fengshui a lot and said this area has good Fengshui.

The Talk

The Shanghai-Hangzhou Talk happened in Dafeudi 大夫第 (not sure if this is the right pronounciation of the name) near edushi office. The attendant list:

As the last time, it is very educational talk for me. I may need to take some time to write down what we talked during the night. Conclusion: it is good to visit another city from time to time and gather some CEO friends to talk about how to run a company.

P.S. Logistic side, we drive from Shanghai to Hangzhou, took about 2 hours.

Eighth YLF Meeting in November

YLF 2009 Time

Just got email from Jon that the eighth YLF (Young Leader’s Forum) meeting will happen in November 4-8, 2009, in China. The location is not confirmed yet. I am very expecting to join the meeting and see my old deep friends there.

WWW Conference Developer Track

Yesterday, just one day before the deadline, I managed to review the 11 papers assigned to me. I am pretty flattered that some of the paper sent to me are actually pretty important persons, like Matt, the architect of YUI… Hope the conference go on well in Spain – I don’t have plan to attend in person though.

Shanghai is Rainy

Many people complained on twitter about the rainy Shanghai, and look forward to the arrival of Spring. I am the same – it keeps raining, and raining. Shanghai is not in rainy seasons yet. How come?

Hangzhou Trip

I am leaving for Hangzhou in few minutes. I am expect to meet with Xiaowei from edushi.com, and other friends there – a traditional Shanghai-Hangzhou gather. When the Shanghai-Hangzhou train is built, the trip will be 38 minutes from Hong Qiao Airport to Hangzhou. I am sure that will impact the development of the two cities a lot.

WWW2009 DevTrack Call For Papers

As one of the Program Committee member who is trying to be responsible, I am posting the WWW2009 Developers Track – Call For Papers and Proposals here. I know many of my friends (obviously  not everyone is in technical field) are in the Internet industry. If you are interested, please feel free to submit your paper to the conference. Here you go:

WWW2009 Developers Track – Call For Papers and Proposals

http://www2009.org/calls/devtrack.html

=== ABOUT ===

The Developers Track at the WWW conference focuses on the
general WWW development community. Participants are invited
to present new trends and interesting ideas, code and APIs
of applications, platforms and emerging standards.
Demonstrations of technical “nitty-gritty” are strongly
encouraged. It is an ideal venue for short reports of both
industry and academic technical works.

Starting this year, the proceedings of the Developers Track
will be published online, where the authors of the accepted
works will have the option to publish a 3-page report.

Focus areas include, but are not limited to:
+ Browsers and Plugins
+ Web Metrics
+ Health, Science and Education
+ Web Social Impact
+ Information Integration and Mash-ups
+ Web Software and Tools
+ Information Mining and Reporting
+ Mobile Web Applications
+ Monetization
+ Multimedia
+ Scalable System and Cloud Computing
+ Search Applications
+ Security
+ Semantic Web
+ Social Network
+ Standards and Protocols
+ User Interface.

=== Submission ===

Submission deadline: February 2nd , 2009
Notification date: March 13th, 2009

Presentations can be submitted in one of the following two
formats (we will enforce page limit this time):
  * Paper: should not exceed 2 pages when formatted
    according to the general submission guideline at
    http://www2009.org/submission.html, with 1 optional
    page for screen-shots.
  * Slides: should not exceed 15 slides, including
    screen-shots, if any.

Authors are encouraged to provide links to video and/or
URLs for the code/demo within their submission. Both HTML
and PDF formats are accepted.

For more details: http://www2009.org/calls/devtrack.html
Inquiries can be sent to: developers-www2009 at dit.upm.es.

=== Program Committee ===

Program Co-Chairs:
  Raoul-Sam Daruwala, Google (USA)
  Cong Yu, Yahoo! Research (USA)

Program Committee:
  Gustavo Alonso, ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
  Srikanta Bedathur, Max-Plank (Germany)
  Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang, UIUC (USA)
  Isabel Drost, Apache/Neofonie GmbH (Germany)
  Ariel Fuxman, Microsoft Search Labs (USA)
  Lee Giles, Penn State (USA)
  Sharad Goel, Yahoo! Research New York (USA)
  Richard Hankins, NEC Research (USA)
  Jeff Korn, Google (USA)
  Chris Mattmann, JPL (USA)
  Charles McCathieNevile, Opera (Spain)
  Peter Mika, Yahoo! Research Barcelona (Spain)
  Stelios Paparizos, Microsoft Search Labs (USA)
  Eugene Shekita, IBM Almaden (USA)
  Jimeng Sun, IBM Watson (USA)
  Jian Shuo Wang, Kijiji (China)
  Aoying Zhou, Fudan University, East China Normal University (China)
  Ding Zhou, Facebook (USA)

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.

CnBloggerCon in Guangzhou

This time, the China Blogger Conference is held in Guangzhou. Unlike the previous few conferences, i didn’t participate. One reason is Guangzhou is a little bit too far for me to get there, and to put it into my business schedule (especially weekends), the other reason is, it is not as attractive as it appeared to be.

The two factor combined, I am not going. Hope bloggers there have a nice party there.

Whole Day in Nanjing

There are some bulletin of ideas for today.

  • Whole day in Nanjing, half day in Nanjing Dongjiao State Guest House, and half day on Mouchou Lake.
  • Full day off-the-record. So as a blogger, I still cannot blog too much about it. OK. Let me talk about my personal stuff.
  • Nanjing is quite cold these days, especially in the mountains.
  • People were surprised by the fact that I never lived in other countries but can speak English. :-)
  • Met many great peoples, and many of them I have known for sometime by name (just read the newspaper or watch TV!)
  • Very late today. Need to go to bed today.

P.S. Anyone like the photos I posted about the amazing train from Shanghai to Nanjing?

Report from Search Engine Strategies

The one day conference at SES (Search Engine Conference) went on well. Many

friends gathered there. As far as I know, 25 employees from Google, 6 from

Microsoft, 6 from eBay attended. There are tremendous other Internet companies

attended. There was no appearance of Baidu. I am impressed by the Google local

team. Clearly, they face the same challenge every international company faces in

China. The localization process is as painful as others, but the spirit is good.

I met…

International Events in Shanghai

Today, I visited Ad:Tech briefly in the morning and attended the keynote panel. It was obvious Ad:Tech this year is an international event. Many people from outside China arrived in the Shanghai International Convention Center. There were not many people attending the conference. The conference hall was about 30% full.

The session was conducted in English at the beginning. COO of Sina and Director of MSN attended the panel. The language barrier was obvious. In which language a conference is presented now is an important decision. English seems to be the usual choice, but it really breaks down the communication this morning. It presents the same problem if the session is completely in Chinese. It is especially hard if English is not the native language for the panelists. I don’t know what about native English speakers; at least I tried very hard to understand.

Chinese-Speaking American

Last week on the China Blogger Conference, Rebecca, former CNN reporter, used Chinese to host the panel of some bloggers from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Her Chinese was amazingly good. It also presented a good solution, a perfect solution actually, since most audience comes from China. Chinese has now been more and more used in some international conference in Shanghai. It is a good trend, from my point of view (obvious it is not for many others).

Translate to English?

Some bloggers in China started the effort to translate the best blog post to English so the outside world can see what common bloggers are discussing about everyday. This provides much more information than media reports. The sad fact seems to be, if something is not in English, it does not exist. One of the organizers admitted his confusion though. He was not 100% confident about the effectiveness of his effort. The problem is, if more effort like translating to English happens, English will become a much stronger language. He wondered why people in Asia still needs to use western media to know the world. For example, to know what is happening in Korea, most information sources are U.S. or Europe media. That is not always a complete view of the world.

I share the some confusion with the organizer of Dongxinanbei. That is the reason I asked: Is English Skill That Important?

Going to Ad-Tech Tomorrow

I didn’t think ad-tech is a big deal. I even didn’t notice that the conference is not far from my home. Recently, I got some emails asking about hotel or transportation informaiton. They started the mail like “I am going to the ad-tech…”

I realize it may not be a small event. To me, only COMDEX, or recent etech is big thing.

I happen to get the ticket for the ad-tech. So I decided to visit there with enough name card to see opportunities there. Starting from IT, now I can proudly announce that I am also in the advertisement industry – the classified advertisement. :-)

P.S. University Webstes

Ken echoed my post on Fudan v.s. Tongji post and wrote a blog to claim all the three universities have really bad home page designs. I totally agree.

Update: When I took taxi back from Metro station home, I found Ken’s face at the back of the seat of the taxi. It is an advertisement from Kaien English school. :-) Interesting.

Bird Flu?

I didn’t see too much difference in my life due to bird flu besides the repeated news on TV. Today, I did feel the difference. I saw a girl with mask in book store – the first one with face mask I saw so far.

China Blogger Conference

Attended the China Blogger Conference this morning. I met many interesting famous bloggers. I am fortunate to witness the three years of blogging history in China. Now, many people came from Beijing, Guangzhou and Wuhan to the place – in China, it is not common for people to pay by themselves to attend a conference.

Wang Pei

Yezi

Christina

Mei

Renyang

11:18 AM

Topku

Yu Li

Chedong

Jack Gu

Pang Sheng Dong

Wang Jian Shuo

Paul Denlinge

Yuan Zi

15:33

Xiong Jie

Edward Wang

Fang Gang

Heng Ge

Isaac Mao

6e

Lv Xin Xin

The Conference

More pictures: Flickr.com

Back from Donews Shanghai Meeting

I am back from Donews Shanghai Meeting. It is a successful event. Recently, I have to give up some very good habbit, including “camera-on-hand all-the-time”. I don’t have a photo of the event to share, because I spent the whole afternoon talk with all great people and got around 100 name cards.

Donews is an IT community with many active users in IT industry and IT related media. Around 600 people attended the event – a very big one.

Shanghai is lack of this kind of peer to peer gather. There are no such big event in my memory. Shanghai has transformed into a great platform for IT startups.

There is a long list of people I want to document the meeting but I guess to go to bed is a better choice for me. :-)

Update:

shanghai-donews-meeting.jpg

Credit: Donews

China Internet Conference

I found one picture of the China Internet Conference in my camera. This picture was taken on Sept 1, 2005, in Beijing.

beijing-internet.conference.jpg

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Let’s remember this hot season again – as many speaker repeated, the warmth felt in this conference is exactly like that in 2000 – the year before the big bubble bursted.

Chinese Blogger Conference

Chinese Blogger Conference will be held in Shanghai on Nov 5 – 6, 2005 in Shanghai. It is a weekend.

screen-blogcon.jpg

Image in courtesy of Blogger Conference Organizer

I don’t know why, but I just have the mixed feeling of this event. I didn’t got any notification/invitation of this event yet. I am worrying about this event. I met Isaac and discussed my concerns: it is more like a conference of only some people, instead of the blogging world. BSPs like blogbus, bokee, blogcn, anyp.cn seem not involved yet, and many bloggers like me are not involved yet. The speakers are great persons but seem to be only in a small circle. Although many bloggers are encouraged to participate, but there is not good way to organize the participation. There are many pannel discussions, but I worry how to organize it if there are so many people – I don’t know what the pannel discussion will look like if it is 100 people conference…

screen-I.report.blogcn.JPG

Image in courtesy of yining

I will be a reporter, suppoter, and participant, but… I still worry a lot. Let’s wait and see what happens than.

BTW, Barak, CEO of Six Apart will participant in this blogcon.

Attended FT Charity Dinner

I had the honor to be invited to the FT Charity Gala Dinner named the Art of Living at Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It gives me the feeling that Shanghai is definitely under the spot light of the world these days. The CEOs of the top luxury brand like Broini, Gucci, Richmon,、Bulgari,Valentino, Prada gathered in Shanghai to hold the meeting. It was something like the Oscar in U.S, and issued some awards to the talented new comer.

It was quite an amazing event for me. I was in IT industry for too long time and had almost no idea about fashion. The event I attended are the gathering of young people. The dress code was always T-Shirt. :-) Although people call the attendants “white collar”, I believe the better title should be “round collar”. :-)

The dress code for this event was, to my surprise, “black tie”. I was familiar with dress code like casual, business casual, business formal… It is the first event I have ever attended with dress code “black tie”. It was rare for me. I dressed up with black suites with a tie – it was the most fomal suite I had, but still found I am among the minority. Most gentleman wear “black bow tie”, and ladies wear evening dress. I was a little bit embarrased, but I comfort myself that “I have wear formal enough for an IT guy. At least I didn’t apear with T-Shirt.”

I know most of them are super famous in the luxury world, but the only person I know were Jin Yuxi 靳羽西, the “most famous woman in China” by People magazine. Her sharp red dress was wonderful. I also enjoyed the performance of the 12 Girl Band (女子十二乐坊). The interesting detail was, there are 13 girls in red on the T-Stage. It was interesting.

Thanks for Judi to invite me to the event. It was eye opening for me. Meanwhile, I feel Shanghai, as a city, is more close to the spot light of the world, and is much closer to the world. At least, it has become a choice for desitination of many world-class event, just like London, New York and Paris. Although there may be many years for Shanghait to catch up in many areas, especially in art, and people area, it is becoming better and better.