Here are some photos of my drawing of what is inside a room.
It is a little bit better that the previous drawings.
Interior Drawing Practices
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7 Year Anniversary of Baixing
It is an exciting day. Looking back of the 7 years, I cannot imagine how I can be luckier to have a group of really talented, committed, and passionate friends to work on this. 7 years is not a short period of time. That is almost 1/7 of one’s entire working life. This group of people stayed with each other, hand in hand, and marching forward – to change the world.
Changzhou
I am in Changzhou.
So far, it seems amazing. The city is clean and nice – just as an extension of the whole Biyun or Liangyan Area of Shanghai. It is just amazing.
Planning Ahead Ended with Packed Days
I am planning ahead and started to put appointment one or two weeks ahead of time. Some of the meeting appointment is even a quarter away.
This practice ended up with very packed day. In the last few days, my schedule is like a meeting every two hours or one hour. I actually had 5 meetings today.
The upside of this type of scheduling is, it put the most important things on the calendar first, and you make sure you the important things done first, instead of urgent one.
Glad to share.
Connect with People We Know
Here is the challenge. Just as scaling the organization, as I grew, well, to 30-some, the relationship network I accumulate over the last 20 years started to reach a scale that is hard to manage the old way. Maybe that is the reason why time flies faster and faster. Think of Yifan – he only has about 10 person relationship he needs to manage right now (at the age of 4, parents, grandparents, teachers, and a girl-friend). I have at least 1000 people in my address book that I had once kept pretty close relationship along the way.
Stay with the Past
Although it is so nature that when we move on, the old relationships fade out from the horizon. High-school classmates, past colleges of old companies. There is actually not too many reasons to re-union, but the past is always what defines us today, and science research shows staying with the past makes us happier.
Communication
Communication won’t happen automatically, unless you design it to happen. I have friends who hang up photos of his friends. It is a good way to remind people of the persons they care about. Out of sight, out of mind. If there is a way to keep people in sight, it is easier to keep them in mind, and makes the connection easier.
Electronic Tools
There are Facebook or other tools, but they are not helpful if the person is out of mind. I have to say the most impressive offline event I saw was Carroll’s tree trimming party. There is friend who comes to the party in the last 43 years! A tradition like that will greatly help to keep people connected.
Big Surprise: How Much Apple Product I Bought
One of the biggest surprise in 2011 was how many Apple product I bought. I had never imagined that before. Here is a list:
1. iMac as the main desktop computer in our reading room.
2. MacBook Air 13′ as my main laptop.
3. MacBook Air 11′ as Wendy’s main laptop
4. iPhone 4 for my main phone
5. iPhone 4 for Wendy’s main phone
6. iPad first generation for me
7. iPad 2 for Wendy
8. Time Capsule as main wireless router, and main NAS
Apple has a much higher revenue / employee in IT industry.
P.S. Corrected my typo – should be MacBook Air, not Pro.
P.S.2 Another surprise. I now have Apple friends, and have many friends joining Apple, in Beijing and Shanghai.
Scaling An Organization
I love technology, and enjoy scaling a system. You build the right architecture to allow scale out – using more computers to provide more processing power.
Talking about a company, we have to scale it as well. It is an art of scaling a human organization. To make a scalable system work for the people is much more complicated than in technical world.
When an organization grows, easy things started to become difficult. In technical world, insert a record into a database, serving a page view – any newly-graduate computer major can do the job. Inserting 1 million record per minute into the database, or serving 1 billion page views per day? Not easy. For the organization, it is the same. Communication within 1 0 person team is very different from 100 person team.
Communication needs to pay basically no attention when the team is small. Everyone knows everything – just like the husband/wife relationship. There will be no meetings, or PPTs – everyone just know.
It adds a lot of overhead as the organization gets bigger. This process seems to be irreversible, but need to be as slow as possible.
The key is communication. I just learnt it is exactly like the seat table. I paid great attention about who seats near whom, but not as closely as to the organization. We change seats every quarter to allow optimization communication. The same should happen to organization design.
To organize the team around functions or business are the key questions. We need to switch and alternate it every quarter to get the least of evils from any organization design.
The communication needs to be well planned, and enforced. We need to do it all the time, and that is the over head. We need to add a communication bus for the company to allow messages to flow within the company.
Network Infrastructure in My Home – After 10 Years
I wrote an article about 10 years ago (on September 13, 2002) named:
Time flies. So many things changed since I wrote that blog ten years ago.
- I was at age of 25 at that time, and now I am 35
- At that time, I was an engineer at Microsoft who likes and good at writing technical articles like Knowledge Base Articles. Now, I am an entrepreneur who only cares about the network to be working than anything else.
- At that time, Dial-up was still an option (Just dial 8163 for Internet?) and now it is not.
- At that time, The Great Wall Broad Network was still an option, and now it consolidates to just China Telecom, and few similar.
- At that time, broadband just started. The first paragraph of my old article reads: “For friends in Shanghai, they are curious about the broadband, which is new to the city.”
- At that time, I only have one client device – a desktop PC – connecting to the Internet. Now, I have a dozen. (While, that PC is famous because it is in my reading room, and accessible from the Internet via https://home.wangjianshuo.com, the domain I later migrated to hosting companies).
So, let me take time to examine the current network infrastructure of my current home – Wendy complained for Internet access many times, and I finally get it to a level that is stable enough to Wendy’s satisfaction.
Broadband Provider － Fiber To The Home (FTTH)
In the recent upgrade, the China Telecom Shanghai changed ADSL in my home to the current FTTB. There is a optical fiber cable at the door of my home, connected with a fiber modem. I pay 150 RMB per month for the 10M speed.
Here is the IP information from APNIC
% APNIC found the following authoritative answer from: whois.apnic.net
% [whois.apnic.net node-5]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html
inetnum: 101.224.0.0 – 101.231.255.255
netname: CHINANET-SH
descr: CHINANET SHANGHAI PROVINCE NETWORK
descr: China Telecom
descr: No.31,jingrong street
descr: Beijing 100032
country: CN
admin-c: WWQ4-AP
tech-c: WWQ4-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
notify: ip-admin@mail.online.sh.cn
remarks: service provider
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-CHINANET-SH
mnt-routes: MAINT-CHINANET-SH
mnt-irt: IRT-CHINANET-CN
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20110103
source: APNIC
It seems the IP address is a stable number since it is always connected there. (I started to miss the time when we were using 202.120.xxx.xxx IP address in universities.)
The Shanghai Bell equipment of RG201O-CA is a very simple modem plus a gateway to the outside world of my entire home.
Three Routers
To cover the entire home, I needed three routers. Due to being stupid and too optimistic about the performance of WIFI, I only have limited ethernet cable on the two floors of the home. So I setup it this way:
Router 1: 192.168.2.1 TP-Link WR320R to provides wireless to the first floor.
Router 2: 192.168.1.103 Apple Time Capsule 2T to provide wireless for the reading room
Router 3: 192.168.1.253 TP-Link WR700R to act as a repeater to extend the wireless network of Apple Time Capsule to provide additional coverage for other areas of the house.
WIFI/Ethernet Clients
Obviously, we have much more clients than before to connects to all these wireless and wired networks. Here is an incomplete list:
- iPhone of Wendy(0C-74-C2-A5-C0-A5)
- iPhone (18-E7-F4-F6-4A-45)
- iPad 2 (40-30-04-9A-C3-80)
- iPad 1 (D8-A2-5E-3D-96-29)
- iMac (e4-ce-8f-5f-6d-89)
- MacBook Air (04-0C-CE-D4-0F-52)
- Sonos Hi-Fi System (00-0E-58-72-39-AE)
- TCL TV
- …
Obviously, there are much more clients than before, and the count is going up every month.
It is a much more fancy network than many years ago with NAS (Network Area Storage) and other equipments connected to it.
What is CEO’s Job
What a CEO should do? I have to recommend an article from Ben Horowitz again (the second time in a week): How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs.
Here is some note I took away from the reading. You should definitely read it too, by yourself.
According to Ben, he thinks the CEOs should do two things:
- Does the CEO know what to do?
- Can the CEO get the company do what he knows?
This is very broad and “empty” statement at the first glance, but Ben explained it in a very good way.
First one
About the first one, “Does the CEO knows what to do?”, Ben suggested “One should interpret this question as broadly as possible”. Basically, it is like: CEO needs to know everything. Don’t laugh. It is actually very true. The CEO has to have insights of many things, from the office arrangement, to hiring, to marketing, to technology, to finance. Knowing what to do is about consistently keeping thinking about what’s behind the surface. It is tough, but … exciting.
In particular, the story – the question “Why”…
The other interesting part about know what to do is to make decisions. What Ben contributed in this idea is to clearly point out that CEO needs to make decisions with very limited information, always! The expectation to understand more about it is just not realistic. That actually gave me great relief about the situation I am in.
Second One
The second one is about getting the company do what he knows.
It turned out to be organizational capacity, get things done culture, quality of hiring, and the work environment. It is not surprising that Ben mentioned the Netflix culture building slides.
For Baixing, as a company with 50+ full time employees, we tried very hard to build a great company, and with great result. We are trying so hard to make sure the people are the core of the organization, and build the culture to help people to perform within it. It takes years of experience to get it…
Shanghai New Traditional Industry Gather
New Year Gather
The interesting part of life is to set traditions. We now have a new tradition: to meet quarterly within the community of Internet entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Here is the first gather:
They are the CEO of dianping.com, , 61.com, 51.com, pptv.com, jjdd.com, some of the most important internet websites in China.
Beautiful Life
Alan de Botton is really my favorite writer. I am re-reading his “Consolation of Philosophy”, and it inspired me a lot. On Consolation of Lack of Money, he wisely quoted Epicure about the natural and necessary needs of human. It turned out that those does not cost a lot of money, like running, is natural and necessary, while expensive houses and fame are not. We really need to switch the paradigm of this world.
Mileage of Running
I tend of enjoy accumulating mileage of many interesting programs – United Mileage Plus, or HHonors… But nothing is comparable to the feeling of accumulating calorie burns. I started to run about 3-5 km per day or walk the same distance. It turned out to be very exciting experience. Thanks to Nike Plus that help me to record that, and accumulate.
Other Learning
Controlling the scope of a project, or a meeting is one of the most critical part of success. We continued to recall some of the most important principles in project management.
Time to sleep.
Pudong IKEA is 500 Calorie Away
I just got Nike+ and started to test run with my iPhone. The first experiment is to understand how much calorie a typical running route cost. So I picked southbound of my home.
It turned out that the Pudong IKEA store is exactly 500 calories away from my home. That means, if I want to increase 33% calorie burn, or get rid of what I got from a dinner, I should just decide to visit IKEA.
A Joke
I finally understood why a typical dinner in Shanghai cost 20 RMB and a taxi ride for 6 km also cost 20 RMB – because it takes 20 RMB worth of calorie to walk over 6 km, or you can choose to take taxi – the cost and the result are the same.
I also understand why IKEA sells ice-cream at as low as 1 RMB – because it takes 90 calories to walk through the IKEA store, and that is basically what the ice-cream compensate for – 90 cal for a typical ice-cream.
Highly Recommend Ben Horowitz’s Blog
Here is a list of articles on the left side of Ben’s Blog. I found out all of them – every single article of them worth reading. You should, if you also run a company.
- Why We Prefer Founding CEOs
- When Smart People are Bad Employees
- Microsoft Buys Skype
- How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs
- How to Minimize Politics in Your Company
- Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO
- Nobody Cares
- What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology
- Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company
- Four Things Some VCs Do That I Don't Like
- Why Startups Should Train Their People
Thanks Richard Lim for sharing the first article with us.
P.S. John Morgidge, CEO cisco, once said
If you can’t see your car from your hotel room, then you are paying too much.
I just felt backed by one of the best CEOs on the important matter – cost saving.
Pretotype – Inspired by Alberto Savoia
Yutong sent me the prototype book by Alberto Savoia. In the first page I saw this quote:
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn once said: “If you are not embar- rassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
Very nicely said. Thanks Yutong.
Obviously, anything that sounds right must be put into context, and the tough part is, the author often ignore that part, and only tell you the conclusion. Just as the “Little Horse Crossing the River” story, the Ox, and the squirrel told completely different idea but they forgot to tell the horse that the depth of the river was relative to THEIR heights.
Let me put a little context to what Reid Hoffman said.
That means, it has to be 1) very easy to release. 2) very easy to change, 3) free to try out.
You cannot use the philosophy on hardware product (Well, I am still thinking about the iPhone 1.0 case), and you cannot use it on something too expensive to try. Image you asked your user to buy a $1000 product that is really not ready, and you expect the customers to buy it again few months later. (Well, iPhone 1.0 case?)
I am still thinking about the other context Reid Hoffman didn’t tell in the simple sentence.
Here is the link:
Video Like: http://vimeo.com/19443634
Slide: http://www.slideshare.net/LuisFelipeFernandes/innovation-at-google
Epicureanism
There is a section in the book The Consolations of Phylosiphy covering the topic of Epicureanism. May spend some time to understand it.
We setup Sonos system at home. Good speaker with an iPhone type of system in it.
And Wendy fell in love with the new Kindle.
Hmmm.
Long Long Road Ahead – G40
G40 is the code for Shanghai – Shaanxi National Expressway. It starts from Shanghai and run about 1500 km and goes from about 31.23°N, 121.5°E to 34.27°N, 108.9°E. That is almost one time zone difference (15 degree).
It is pretty handy to get back to Wendy’s home town Nanyang from Shanghai. Along the way, we started from G42 and went across G15 and G2 in Shanghai, G25 and G3 in Nanjing, G35 in the middle of no where and G45 near east of Xinyang, G4 at Xinyang and finally G55 in Nanyang. That is basically the traverse of the China National Highway System.
This shows the benefit of consistent naming convention. You just need to follow on route to get to somewhere far away. Just keep driving and driving.
It also replace the original G312, just as I-40 replaced US66, the story Cars was telling. We have the same feeling. The exit to G313 was everywhere along the road. G312 goes right across the towns while G40 just bypass them.
Why We Like Hotels
We finally arrived at hotel at Nanjing, after 7 hours of driving. “We love hotels” Wendy and I agreed, not to mention our little hotel lover, Yifan. He just started to run around and play with all kinds of things.
Here is the question: why we love hotels?
It is empty. There are drawers but nothing in it. There are enumertable number of items even in the washroom: soap, shampoo, lotion, tooth brush. There are desks, but basically nothing is readable on it. There are TV – yes. If they remove the TV, it can bring more sense of emptiness.
Emptiness brings peace in mind. There are so little options and you put all the pressure above a solid umbrella: I am travelling and I cannot do things. I am at hotel!
The emptiness, to an extend of boredom and loneliness is a perfect emotional status for our busy life.
Besides emptiness, it also provide cleanness. Even the most picky full time housewife cannot create the cleanness comparable to hotels. The towels are always folded as a flower and the cups are always covered with a nice while paper cover. Everything is in order – at least at the moment when you step into the room.
Understanding the reason, we actually have the hope to recreate the experience somewhere and some time in the other part of our lives.
PS: one problem – a mobile or iPad will completely destroy the wonderful status.
Visiting Bay Area in Mid January
Travel news! I am visiting the bay area from January 13 to January 19, 2012.
I want my readers to know the news, and if you want a meet up, please drop an email to me at jianshuo at hotmail.com
Drove to Hangzhou and Back, in a Day
To have a travel companion is very important to long distance driving. I drove to Hangzhou, 2 hours, this morning from 9:30 to 11:30 am (well, in Hangzhou, it took another 30 minute in traffic), and back in two hours (7:00 to 9:00 pm) with Jim, Jack, and Jiangfeng. The trip was nice with a car full of interesting people. :-)
P.S. It is OK not to speak Cantonese…. :)
Jian Shuo, Yifeng, and Keso in Same Photo
Finally, one of the three very similar Chinese IT bloggers got into the same photo, for the first time. It is also my first time to meet Yifeng in person.
Culture Shock in my Own Country
When foreigners enter a difference country, they feel the culture shock. However, I found out that even in China, I sometimes feel the culture shock myself, from time to time.
Regional Culture Shock
China is large, and China differs a lot from region to region. The recent trip to Xi’an is pretty shocking in some ways – how people see entrepreneurs, and how people value their fixed income jobs – very different from Shanghai.
China is as big as an Europe, and the diversity is maybe at least as big as the european countries. There is no such a thing called China. It consists of so many provinces. The place I grew up – Luoyang, is very different with, even the neighboring cities, no to mention the cross province contrast.
System Culture Shock
What system means? It is the government and the party system. It is a very strong system with a very strong culture. I was completely shocked from time to time when I deal with the system. Something we care, they don’t. Something we don’t care, they care a lot.
For example, I was consistently educated by the government guys when we meet. They told me I should bring a notebook, and the book I brought the second time is too small to show respect. They complained the table to host the government guys were too small, and claimed that we should have the budget to buy bigger tables. Things like this.
Culture Shock is Normal
The more I see this world, the more I understand that culture shock is just part of this universe. Even in the relatively more melted culture like Silicon Valley, the culture shock between relatively very similar companies in the same industry is big enough – look at current Yahoo! v.s. Google v.s. Facebook v.s. Twitter – they are so different and I assume people transiting from one company can find it hard to fit into the other.
The nature of culture shock is really about finding people in another company/society/system/group sing highly of something that you hate, and try to kill many things you value…
This can be universal, and long lasting.