Geeks on a Plane: Shanghai

Geeks on a Plane is a trip that seeks to bridge cultural differences by focussing around the common interests of technology and entrepreneurship. There are about fifty of us, from all over the world, gathered in Shanghai to meet the local technologists and Investors and compare notes. We. Leave Shanghai tomorrow for Beijing, Seoul and Singapore. In each place there’s a conference, a dinner, and meetings. The contacts are invaluable: I’ve already connected/been connected to amazing global resources.
The logistics of this would be mind-boggling if it weren’t for Christine Lu, a powerful woman with the global reach of somebody with one foot in Los Angeles and the other foot in China. She and Dave McClure, outspoken Silicon Valley VC, can make anything happen.

So: with that background, let’s talk preliminary observations about tech in Shanghai:
1) it is everywhere. Programmable toilets in the airport lounge, automated parking that locks up your car if you don’t feed the meter ( no tickets, no metermaids), security everywhere (Rapiscan, video at immigration, metal detectors outside posh hotels) and quite a bit of Internet blocking.
2) undependable wi-fi and difficulty with varying interfaces
3) ubiquitous cell phones
4) equally ubiquitous, characterless new construction that looks like New York housing projects of the 1950s
5) young,ambitious creative classmates converging from everywhere to start businesses that capitalize on large local markets and American companies who want visibility in China.
6) Incredible Infrastructure investment (subways, Maglev trains)
7) energy

In general, if you haven’t been to China in the past five years, you haven’t been. The tradeoffs are the same as in any rapidly developing culture — the destruction of history in the name of progress, the carelessness about human rights, the rigors of central planning. China is a massive planned community designed by engineers, who can always solve problems and rarely give you a delightful user experience.

More detail coming, and photos at Http://www.Flickr.com/Hardaway. The set is called “geeksonaplane.”

Francine Hardaway, Ph D
GV: 816.WRITTEN

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode