Chinese Blogger Conference 2006

On Oct 28 and 29, the long anticipated 2nd Chinese Blogger Conference took place in Hangzhou. Due to un-controllable reasons, the venue changed again and again, finally settled down in Xinyuzhixin hotel.

Since this is the 2nd year of the conference, everyone would like to know what’s difference from the first year. Unfortunately I didn’t participate in the first year, so I cannot answer this question. I hope other reporters could give the answer.

According to my impression, this conference is very grassroots. Half of the attendees sat on the ground. Topics and panelists are all decided by panel moderators themselves.

Day 1

The conference was kicked off by Keso’s keynote speech, titled Blog-initiated Changes. Being the most popular IT blogger in China, and probably the one who spend the most time in reading blogs, Keso is the right person to answer the question. It would be even better to be answered by more bloggers from various angles. There’s a blog entry contest during the last week before the conference. Keso himself is the judge of this activity.

The second session, moderated by Rebecca Machinnon, is composed with guests who have participated in Global Voice Online project. What they are doing is to translate notable posts from all kinds of languages into English. Originally worked in traditional media, Rebecca believes blog is a better communication tool to fulfill the task of cultural transmission. Isaac Mao and Undersound are within the panelists.

Speaking of blog as a new media, Isaac Mao, the initiator of the conference, said the goal of the 2nd Cnbloggercon is to discover media value of blogs. And different from other conferences, Cnbloggercon is mainly spread by blogs.

Several panels in the day discussed this topic in various angles. A presentation from CIC data discussed the importance of tracking buzz about your company and product from blogs. Pew Internet’s blog survey gives you a sense of real data from blogosphere.

SayOnly moderated a panel about blog, PR and marketing. SayOnly has published a book based on his blog posts on blog marketing. Zhanbin, one of the panelists are currently writing a PR blog for Chinese web startups. One point they concluded is that blog is a cheap and effective marketing tool.

Monetization of blog was discussed too. The following panel moderated by Zhanbin was composed with professional BSP and blog media network. Advertisement is a basic way to generate revenue from blog. Someone including Keso strongly against it. But advertisement has supporters too, Jeremy of Danwei.org is one of them.

CHENG Lehua talked about trust in network. This is an interesting talk. He gave some analysis of factors that will affect trust between people online. And blog is an effective way to generate personal reputation. Cheng is a scholar in Zhongshan University with psychology background.

My Favorite of the day

The last panel of the day is an online interaction with Regine Debatty, founder of we-make-money-not-art.com, a blog about cultural and art. Video streaming technology has broken geographic barrier. This panel has a good constitution of panelists. Zhang Qing featured himself as one of the only Artistic Directors who blog in China. Gino Yu brought a short speech during the panel titled blogging for a purpose. This short talk discussed blog-initiated changes in another angle. Aaajiao is maintaining a blog similar to Regine Debatty’s WMMNA in Chinese version with a little change in the title reflecting realistic in China.

Day 2

Keynote speech given by Jeremy of Danwei.org is one of the best speeches during the conference. He mainly talked about characteristics of a popular blog should have. Of course Danwei.org itself is a good example. I have just started reading Danwei recently, so the history he introduced is instructive. It’s not my first time watching the video in the end of his speech, but it’s interesting to watch again.

The conference featured lots of projects. A group of education project based on blogs has been introduced. One gives the most impression is a blog community for geographic teachers. Edudig is Digg like website for education resources.

Hat tip to NGO panelists. One good point made by them is that NGO also has competitors. To a certain extent, NGO has no difference from a startup. Blog is basically the best way to spread your ideas.

I am more interested in panels in the afternoon, since they are more 2.0 related.

Fang Xindong is one of the earliest adopters of blog in China. He even invented Boke, Chinese translation of blog. BlogChina, founded by Fang, goes a different way from other BSP. Basically it’s more commercial. But till now BlogChina can not be treated as successful. He has a summary on his blog.

The mashup panel tries to answer the questions of what mashup is and what value it can bring. Panelists all gave their own view of mashup. What they didn’t talk about is the commercial aspect. Mashup for playing and mashup for business is totally different. For business, it can be treated as outsourcing of feature and data. The question follows up is how to distribute revenue between service and client, if there’s any revenue. Most of the mashup application today is just for playing purpose. Wang Jianshuo made a point that lots of mashup ideas are interesting but not important to core business.

Podcasting panel seems didn’t answer the question if podcasting will exceed the influence of blog. My answer is no. Firstly, to write a blog post is much easier than to record an episode of podcast. Secondly, podcasting is more real time. That means less time to think carefully. Only few people has great presentation skill. Listening to low quality podcast is really painful.

The last panel is Isaac’s web2.0 startup and venture. I had made some guess of the constitution of the panel, but it’s far from the actual panelists. The panelists are three startups, Yododo, Feedsky and Wealink, two VCs and two Neutral participants, Xuer Chen of Incubator2 and Jason Yin of In-stat China. My first impression of this panel is a bit weak, but with above division, it looks great again.

The interesting thing is that one of the two VCs actually invested in Feedsky. And Isaac himself is one of the investors of Wealink. So one of the topics are why they chose to invest these two companies not others. Also the two startups were asked their feelings after they are invested. One point they made is that 2.0 means a lot, but usefulness is the most important. One of the VC panelists said Chinese web2.0 companies should make big effort. That’s true.

I didn’t mention all panels. Some of them are great too. Rebecca also posted a summary of the conference.

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