Monthly Archives: May 2010

Back from Beijing

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The Beijing trip is very intensive. I met with many people:

CHINICT guys, GOAP, Christine Lu…

Li Min

Yumin

Chedong, Ada

Liang Gongjun

Chenjun

Rick

Zheng Yun

Bsun

XLVector

Hongbo

Dongqing

Boyu

Liu Yuan (Kevin)

Wanghua

Kaifu

Cuijin

Dai Zhikang

Peter Zheng

…

Beijing is a media center, I confirm that.

Beijing is the center of Internet in China. Positive confirmation for that.

Travel is life intensified

The new spring of Internet in China is coming, either at the second half of this year or 2011. I am very sure about it after attending the China Webmaster Conference.

Gary Wang’s Speech

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Just read Gary’s speech on GroupM Asia. Very inspirational, and well written. You should read it.

Like all explorers before, there are plenty of things in the world to concern us and tie us down: money, relationships, families, values, customs, rules and regulations, but since we are here in this pale world to paint some colorful colors, to explore, to create new things, to inevitably break up things, to push the boundaries, and since surely we will get old and get mature and settled down, become one day the establishment to be broken up by the newer generation, and become the dead old man, I know the boundaries will eventually catch up and get me. But when they do get me, I hope to have traveled more distances, and have had a lot of fun.

More is here: http://blog.tudou.com/?p=97042

USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo

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I was at the USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo. Surprisingly, it is much better than a tent (as people joked about it when the funding problem was not solved).

They have a nice opening area outside the 1776 Suite (VIP area) on the second floor)

Pay attention to the “hard” word in the posting. Funny. A good way to cure a minor design mistake.

As expected, there are many people visiting the expo this morning:

Similarity among Opposite Opinions

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I found out an interesting fact: there are more similarity among the two opposite opinions than those who share more similarity.

Here are example:

If Tom and John are arguing Linux is better or Windows is better, they share more in common than another guy who thinks both Linux and Windows are good, depending on where to use.

Another example: Tom loves Facebook, and John hates Facebook, but they share much more in common than another guy who has never heard of Facebook, or yet another guy who does not care.

Long Line in Expo as a Biased Filter

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In a meeting this afternoon, heard someone from one Expo pavilion. They have one of the longest lines in the expo site. The interesting finding they have was, the long line has acted as a biased filter. Most of the visitors coming to the pavilion are either labor workers, or old people – people who are less sensitive in time. They also want to attract people with higher education, or at least between 20-40, but they are just big fans of waiting in the line for hours.

I am Hiring an Assistant

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I tend to separate my professional life (as CEO of one of the largest classified sites in China), and my blogging life separate. You typically see a person behind this blog, not a CEO. This entry is a rare exception, because I do need some help from my readers.

Simply put it, I am hiring an executive assistant. The job posting is here on Baixing.com. Obviously, you need to be able to read Chinese to apply for this position, so I didn’t provide translation. General introduction about Baixing is here, with other opening positions.

Besides the formal job description I posted (I wrote that myself), here are some personal notes about this job.

First of all, this person is my personal assistant, with the goal to help me to get organized, and save time. When I routinely need to interview job candidates, travel in China and in the States, and prepare all type of documents for journalists, government, board meetings, I need someone to help me take care of it. I am a person with strong passion for happiness, vision, inspiration, but not good at keeping myself organized, and feel bored about routines, and details. I know myself, and now is the point that I need a personal assistant on this.

Second, this role is critical for the success of the company. To run a company is a fine art, and we need to make every details right. The office setting, the culture, the outing, meetings, gifts, and celebration events all add up to the final result. This role help to create a great company. There is a nice office with splendid view (and a small garden on the 18th floor facing Xujiahui villa area) for you to exercise your creativity, and imagination. There are all kinds of events that you will organize (FYI, our next company outing are very likely to be in Japan). There are sports events every week that you may enjoy planning and participating yourself. We need this person to be a star of the company to energize people, and making people as productive as they can. It is exciting, and (well, I want you to be well prepared) very challenging.

Finally, Just in case you are wondering, we pay very well. The number of people we serve divided by number of our 20 people means, everyone single of us is serving millions of users daily. This role is backing everyone in the team, and we know the value, and we pay for that value.

If you are interested in this position, please send your resume to shhr@baixing.com. Please include wangjianshuo in your title, so it can get my personal attention. We will send written test (don’t worry, just two questions) to selected candidates, and arrange interview if you pass the written test. Don’t hesitate to contact us. Although we hold a high bar for this job, the reason I am still posting this blog is, we still haven’t find the right person yet. Maybe you are exactly who we are looking for.

Looking forward to hearing you, and I hope I have the honor to work with you.

MeiGuoGuan at Twitter

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Two comment:

  1. The best way to get attention is to give attention. (MeiGuoGuan did, and I talked back).
  2. Twitter Blackbird Pie is nice – a simple to dead tool, but solve a big problem. Are people in twitter intentionally want to embarrass people in the Internet field by introducing really simple, but popular tools?

we are following @jianshuo after reading his blog post http://bit.ly/9nlhnDless than a minute ago via dabr美国馆 / USA Pavilion
MeiGuoGuan

New Media from the State Department

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I got an email from Philippe Reines, about the upcoming visit of Sectary Clinton to the Shanghai Expo site. Obviously I was just one of the many people he sent our his email to – bloggers, and other “new media” persons in Shanghai, and in China.

I was amazed by the message it sends – the State Department is engaging new media (bloggers like me) about the activities from the US government. Although I doubt the effectiveness of pinging each individual bloggers/new media about an update, it is a great move, at least a great attempt.

The effectiveness question I have in my mind is about the way they engage new media. Unlike traditional media, there are just few of them (well, I admit hundreds of them) that matter, and to briefing them is about 90% of the communication. Now, it is not only the increase influence of new media that attracts people’s attention, it is also the number of individual bloggers or participants of any SNS site. Is getting hold of individual like myself really matters? Shall we run programs (not just individual) to engage them?

P.S. I followed @StateDept on twitter.

OOB for Few Days

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Recently, I am busy working on recruiting – getting the best people possible for the Baixing team. Chinese Job Posting is here. It takes quite some time, so, I am going to be OOB (Out of Blogging) for few days to concentrate to the most important job I have. If you happen to be willing to work at Baixing (formally Kijiji China), you are very welcome to send your resume this way. We have exciting positions for Software Engineer, Architect, Marketing Manager, and PR Manager here. The quicker I can fill these positions, I sooner I can get back to normal posting schedule on this blog. :-) We are open to talents across the whole China, and will also be interested in people from other part of this world.

Competence Level

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If we use “I understand” and “I don’t understand” as one axis, and “get things done” and “cannot get things done” as another axis, we draw an interesting competence chart with four quadrants.

I don’t understand why you cannot get things done

This is lowest level. If I know how we can do it, but don’t understand why you cannot get things done, that is a series problem.

I can understand why you cannot get things done, or why you can get things done

These two are relative the same level – the two persons are of the same level – both can or cannot solve the problem.

I cannot understand why you get things done

This is the perfect situation. The other person is impressive. He/she can archive much more than what you can.

Don’t Use Hate to Stop Spread of Hate

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Recently, there are astonishing news about killing in kindergarten. In 40 days, 5 incidents in 5 different cities across China, more than 60 children will killed or badly hurt. Look at the killed children, as a father, I am completely frightened, and deeply concerned.

There are many things in common with the Virginia Tech accidents many years ago in US. The desperate killer (also victim of this society in bigger scope out of the case itself) turned to express their hate to this society by killing people – in the recent months, killing of children.

The security measure is tightened everywhere. In Yifan’s kindergarten, the door of the kindergarten is completely locked after 9:00 until parents pick their children in the afternoon. In the middle, no one in, and no one out. This is maybe the general practice across China. We already see observation like this in my comment section.

Work on the Root!

It is not just some crazy criminal in these cases. There are more than that. With the tension in society, more people feel hopeless. When their house is taken away via violation, or they cannot get the salary for the whole year of hard work, or they are simply humiliated by this society, and there is no way out, they go crazy. To restore justice, and legal system and give them helping hands are the most important thing we need to do these days, besides the tighten the security.

I am more concerned with the hate and mistrust spreading out throughout the society. In the banner people handout in Taixing (where 31 children were injured), they wrote: “If you kill corrupted officials, you are hero; if you kill children, you suck!”. This does not necessaries the right way to think about it.

The biggest problem of injustice is, it justify killing!

Security Tightened at SJTU

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SJTU = Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

From May 1, the security level of SJTU has been raised to a level I had never saw, heard of, or even imagined in the last 15 years (since I first stepped in the campus in 1995). I saw the different today.

The campus was completely closed with the big automatic fence about the height of my shoulder closed all the time.

For cars, they will check the specially issued permit and an IC card before they open the gate. They have to make sure that your car is of resident on the campus.

For people, they check carefully for student, faculty ID or other working permit one by one. They opened a very narrow entrance just allowing one person to pass, and there are many security guards jamming the entrance.

For others who don’t have a campus car permit, or don’t have a student/faculty ID, sorry, no entrance.

The problem for us now is, the package delivery people has to call the receiption from outside the campus (like UPS, Fedex, or EMS), and the person needs to go out of the campus himself to pick it.

What is all this for?

The Devil Wears Prada

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I watched the movie on the United Airlines flight to US, so I watched it two and a half times on flight. I love it.

One year later, I started to read the book. Combined with my current thinking of great leader, I started to turn my perspective, and look at the world from the eyes of Andrew Sachs (the assistant)’s boss, Miranda Priestly.

From the eyes of Andrew, Miranda is the devil.

But when you watch carefully enough, you will find Miranda is a good leader – she sets high standard, sets clear goals (not how to do it), pays close attention to details (of the final results, not the process).

Some typical Miranda style announcement:

I don’t understand why it is so impossible to confirm an appointment…

Your incompetence does not interest me…

It is YOUR responsibility, YOUR job. Ge….t me h…ome!

She is a devil, in a sense similar with Steve Jobs. They are another great type of leader, not my type, but definitely not the wrong type.

P.S. Corrected some spelling errors.

Back from Jinshan Beach

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Shanghai is near sea, but Shanghai never has a good beach. Shanghai is one of the most richest cities with one of the highest travel demand – so people in Shanghai love to hang around in Sanya, and spent huge amount of dollars on air tickets.

Is there a way to build a beach with sand in Shanghai?

People in Jinshan gave it a try.


查看大图

That is a big area of beach, with nice sand. It is said they shipped the sand from somewhere – Dalian? The water is at least clean, and you can identify the color of blue in the water. There are people sailing in the sea.

This is the beach I saw most like beach in Shanghai, although it is still far from real beach.

I didn’t bring a camera. Sorry that I didn’t take photos.

Direction

It is easy to get there by car. Just get to S4. When you intersect with G15, you are almost there. Look at the map above.

It is about 70 km away from where I live. It took about one hour to get there. Bandenger is bigger than Goudaner. Although it is not as easy to manage in downtown Shanghai as Goudaner, it did take care of us better. I didn’t feel tired after the two hour trip. It seems we can go to surrounding areas more often in the future.

Shanghai Expo Opens

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Expo finally opens.

The opening ceremony is exteremely disappointing. I didn’t have any exception for it, but I was still surprised. It is really boring.

The fireworks is outside my window. The CCTV broadcast is on my TV. There IS several seconds of delay from what I see outside my window and what I see on TV.