Tudou is looking for a part-time social media intern for its Shanghai office. We are looking for a native English speaker with a good knowledge of written and spoken Chinese. A proven track record in English language social media (SNS, blog, video etc.) is a must. You should be a good writer and be available for about 2.5 days per week for at least 6 months. Starting date: asap

The internship gives you the opportunity to be active in a very dynamic working environment and to be one of the first people to learn about internal and external developments at Tudou. You will be reporting to Tudou’s VP of Marketing & BD and work closely together with our PR people in the US (and probably also with me sometimes).

Interested? You can get in touch with Ms. Anita Huang at ahuang (at) tudou (dot) com for more information about this position. You can also directly send her your resume. Make sure to include links to some of your online presences.

Next month Tudou’s first made-for-Internet original production “That Love Comes” (欢迎爱光临) will launch on our site. It’s the first production that comes out of our Orange Box initiative, our plan to produce several series based on what our Chinese audiences like to see and made with only the Internet in mind.

The Orange Box idea came from the fact that the kind of shows that you see on Chinese TV are not very interesting for a younger audience. That’s why many of our viewers go online and watch shows they like on video sites, and many of these shows are Korean, Japanese or Taiwanese. We have observed this while we were growing Tudou.com over the past years and now decided that if nobody produces these shows in China we will do it ourselves. Of course in this way we also can further differentiate ourselves from the competition, with strong, relevant and unique content.

As mentioned the shows are made for the Web, but now already several TV stations (both in China and abroad) contacted us to license the shows for non-web usage as well. The first run will be only online but after that the shows may run on TV as well. It’s turning the world around, so far TV shows would air at a later stage on the Internet (in China actually some shows air at the same time on TV stations and on video sites), but now Web shows might move to the TV screen.

Although producing shows ourselves is more expensive than licensing shows we feel it is worth it. Not only does this offer us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves once again from the competition, but also we have more ways to recoup our costs. Instead of having pre-loaders and other advertising as main revenue drivers for our content, we are now able to also use product placement and script placement in the series. Being able to integrate brands into the story line is of course very attractive to brands focusing on a young, urban audience with a high disposable income (Tudou’s core audience).

Although doing our own productions is new, we are quite confident that this will be a success. There are no other video sites in China (nor in the West) that are getting into original content production on the scale and level of dedication that we’re working on. There are some variations of  “original production” initiatives out there, but mainly in the form of joint funding or a production investment by the video sites who in return will own some or exclusive rights in broadcasting and licensing deals. We are taking it to the next level, working on a content production business that generates our own IP next to our two other areas of strenght: video distribution and the Tudou Film Festival.

More detailed information & trailers of the series:

• You will soon be able to watch That Love Comes @Tudou, check out our special page for the show here.
• For more information about That Loves Comes and the Orange Box idea, see this interview in English on TudouChina.com.
• During the shooting of the show (starring among others Joseph Cheng and Li Fei’er) we took some pictures and put them on the Tudou Flickr page, you can see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tudoudotcom/sets/72157624418284735/
• Trailers of That Loves Comes you can see here (from the female perspective) or here (from the male perspective). The voice-over is roughly saying something like “There is someone in the world, waiting. If you start believing in love at this very second, That Love Comes”.

While driving commuting between home and the office I always work in my car through a 3G connection. The connection is normally fine, but what gets on my nerves are the ads that China Unicom keeps on serving. No full screen China Telecom ads anymore like a year ago, but some still cover half the screen. At least they go away after a few seconds – so quickly that you can’t even take a screenshot.

Yesterday I was driving home when I checked Spil Games’ Arabic site DailyGame.com. I opened the site and noticed a big pop-up on the lower right side. Knowing that Spil Games does not sell pop ups on its sites I knew right away that this was once again an illegal China Unicom action. To make things worse the pop-up did not disappear automatically and even caused my browser to crash (Chrome, not Firefox). At least it gave me the opportunity to take a screen shot.

This just reminded me of a picture that one of my blog readers sent me: http://www.startinchina.com/components/com_jd-wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/china_telecom_ads.jpg

So at least the pop-ups are smaller now…

On the day of the final of the football world cup a lot of people in The Netherlands were overjoyed that the Dutch team made it to the finals. But some went a bit (too) far: in the YouTube video above a Dutch priest turns the Sunday mass into some sort of football party. At first I thought it was a practical joke, but it seems to have been a real event. What I read in the Dutch press is that the Catholic church authorities were not amused and suspended the priest.

I don’t really have an opinion on this. For me religion, and the Catholic church in particular, is one big act already and at least this is a play that many people can relate to. But I can also understand the church authorities who feel their power over the church (and over the few remaining people who are still going to church) slipping through their fingers. As an outsider it’s funny to observe and I had a good laugh watching the semi-serious church goers in the clip. Maybe I should put the video on Tudou, I wonder what the Chinese would say about it.

For the third time this year a staff member at Spil Games Asia resigned because he/she could not afford the cost of living in Shanghai anymore. Our salary level is not low compared to many other companies, but it turns out that the cost of living in Shanghai is so high that for some people it just does not make sense to stay anymore.

Housing prices are the main culprit. If you bought a house a few years ago things are fine, prices have doubled or tripled over the past years so you are safe. But if you rent in order to save some money to pay the down payment for a future mortgage you are out of luck. Housing prices in the city are so high now that people with normal salaries can hardly afford them anymore.

So what we are seeing now is that people are moving to other cities. The first person that resigned this year for financial reasons received an offer from a good Internet company in a smaller city on the East coast. With a similar salary he could get himself decent housing there, but in Shanghai he would never be able to afford that. The second one decided to become a civil servant in his hometown. The pay would be a lot less, but in the end he would have more spending power (and probably an easier life). Yesterday a third person resigned to move back to her hometown with her husband. Again housing prices in Shanghai were the main reason.

People who are originally from Shanghai normally won’t leave because they have their roots here, but people who come from cities in inland China are now starting to go back. It always happens after they have stayed in Shanghai for some time and realize they basically have no future here. If you can’t even afford a house how can you start a family here? It’s the same trend as the one for migrant workers 2 years ago, they also left the coastal regions to go back home. There are more opportunities in inland China now and you only need a fraction of your Shanghai income to have the same quality of life.

This means a brain drain for cities like Shanghai, but it’s probably good for China as a whole. The distribution of knowledge will be more even and this will help the development of the non-coastal areas. It may cause some problems for companies because it puts an upward pressure on salaries for experienced staff. You are still able to find (or keep) people as long as you are willing to pay, but for top people salaries now already come close to those in Europe.  And finding entry level staff is luckily not a problem at all: every year there are way too many fresh graduates looking for jobs, and a lot of smart ones can still easily be recruited and trained.

My colleague Richard Yu wrote a good article on TechCrunch about future of the mobile market in China. His prediction is that Android will win the mobile wars in China and become the biggest platform by far. I fully agree with him, see for example the last paragraph of this blog post that I wrote a few days ago.

The fears that because Android was originally developed by Google it can never win here are unfounded:

(…) officially sanctioned versions of Android are flourishing, starting with last year’s Ophone OS from state-owned China Mobile. With the help of Lenovo, China’s tech darling, Ophone devices are moving full steam ahead with more Chinese integrated services like an app store, where China Mobile takes 50% of sales revenue. Meanwhile, Motorola is developing a line of Chinese flavors for Android with Baidu as its default search engine in cooperation with the other state-owned mobile operator, China Unicom.

A probably even more important reason is the decision by Mediatek (MTK) to produce cheap Android chip sets, allwoing for Android 2.2. phones for less than USD 100. Taking into account the fact that MTK powers 85% of China’s phones it’ a no-brainer what may happpen.

The iPhone will stay a niche phone, a phone to show off with (at least for now) but not a phone for the masses like in many other countries. Why? Richard compares the prices of the iPhone and some shanzai (=fake) models powered by MTK chips:

- Cost of an iPhone 4 in China: $1,285
- Cost of a Bootleg iPhone 4 “HiPhone”: $100
- Cost of a Bootleg Nokia E71 with internet connectivity: $14

Interesting times in China’s mobile space are ahead for sure. It will be a price war that Apple won’t be able (and be willing) to fight. Nokia may still have a chance to compete, but not with their current models and their operating system. If I would run Nokia I would focus on good smartphone handsets, forget about MeeGo and switch to Android as soon as possible (or as a compromise run both on their phones).

I look forward to a lot of Android innovations from China over the next couple of years.

See the full TechCrunch article here http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/18/android-china/

Update: See also this excellent comment by BloggerInsights.com’s Kai Lukoff on China’s mobile future.

Two days ago I blogged about Elaine starting to walk and put a picture of her taking her first steps online. My wife just told me that she actually filmed Elaine and me in the supermarket and she put the video on Tudou.

A video says a lot more than a picture: Elaine is not a steady walker yet, she almost falls a few times and also her walking speed changes constantly (fast-slow-fast etc.). A nice memory, within a few weeks she’ll be running around without allowing me to hold her hand. The video is embedded below, if you can’t see it you can also watch it here on Tudou.

Today CNNIC (China Network Information Center) published its half yearly Internet statistics (pdf, in Chinese). As expected the total number of Internet users kept on growing and there are now 420 million Chinese online. Almost everybody has access to broadband, the penetration rate is over 98%.

But what’s actually even more interesting is the number of people that go online on a mobile device. At the end of June 2010 there were almost 277 million mobile Internet users in China. That is more than the total number of people that are online in the US. Amazing how this number is growing (44 million new users over the past 6 months), and I think it’s just the beginning. Phones with wifi only now start to appear on the Chinese market (for a long time phones were not allowed to have wifi here) and also 3G is taking off after it was launched in 2009.

CNNIC also published what people are actually doing on a mobile device. So far it’s still mainly low bandwidth usage, such as instant messaging and search. But Internet applications that need a higher connection speed are growing fast. According to the report 20% of all mobile Internet users now already watches online video on a mobile (Tudou has an exclusive deal with China Mobile where people can watch and upload unlimited videos for just RMB 6 per month) and 21% now play mobile online games.

I expect these figures to grow very quickly over the next year. Especially the announcement of MTK to start producing cheap Android chips for China’s ubiquitous shanzai phones means that very soon inexpensive Android smart phones will appear on the Chinese market. This likely means that Android will become the standard mobile operating system in China, and it will also help to further boost the mobile internet. Exciting opportunities ahead for entrepreneurs!

About 10 days ago Elaine took her first steps without any help. Just 2 steps, after that someone had to catch her. But she is learning very quickly, because today I took the kids to the City Supermarket after work and Elaine walked around everywhere. I still had to hold her hand in case she would lose her balance, something that happened every couple of steps, but most of the time she was basically walking without my help. I love my little girl!

Scott was not so happy that Elaine was suddenly getting all attention. To protest he decided to sit in Elaine’s stroller and he refused to get out. I tried to carry him but he was stubborn and completely ignored me. Luckily I figured out a trick for this: after I told him that the stroller was now a race car (making fast turns and race car sounds) he was a happy boy right away again and forgot all about the fact that he was supposed to be unhappy with us. Scott is a great little boy, I am so happy to have him around every day.

Another interesting thing that I happened this week had to do with Elaine’s vocabulary. She knows about 100 words I think, mainly Chinese ones but also a couple of Dutch ones. But yesterday she surprised me when I came home an she said something like “papa eye bat”. At first I did not realize what she was trying to tell me, until I noticed that she was pointing at my iPad. She is just 13 months old and now already asks for my iPad, she is a real Apple fan girl! When I give it to her she knows which button to push to turn it on, how to swipe to go the home screen and how to launch her favorite app. To me it proves that the Apple UI (=user interface) is the most intuitive in the world and that the iPad is the perfect toy for all ages.

Holland has a ‘tradition’ that when the national football team wins a European or World Championship, they  get a boat ride through the Amsterdam canals. The last time this happened was in 1988. After Holland won the semi-finals last week Tuesday the plans for the winner’s boat ride were announced, and the boat trip was supposed to take place tomorrow. People started already planning to take a day off for the parade last week when I was in Amsterdam. Maybe a bit early, because Holland first had to win the World Cup. And as you probably saw or heard they did not manage to do that last night.

So the boat ride will not take place, right? Wrong: the government now decided that the Dutch team was so good that they deserve a boat ride anyway… Seriously, a team that lost gets a winner’s boat ride through the canals with up to a million fans cheering them? I first thought it was a practical joke on Twitter, but it turned out to be really true. If I would be a player I would be ashamed to join the boat ride, but according to the official press release the decision for the ride to take place was taken after discussions with the football players…

Do the soccer fans realize that the 2nd place in such a tournament doesn’t necessarily mean that the team is the 2nd best? For some reason most fans don’t understand that had the Dutch faced Spain in the 1/8th finals they would have ended between place 9-16 instead of place number 2. It all depends on which teams you meet in the 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 finals. Only the winner is the real winner, with luck you can become number 2 even though you may not even belong to the real top 8. Anyway, enough theory, for me it shows that mediocrity starts to rule a country when they put a losing team on a winning team boat.

Actually, while twittering about this I was reminded of a similar experience at the Beijing Olympics. One night I had invited two good Chinese friends to the Holland Heineken House. When we were there, there was a huge celebration going on for some Dutch sports people that had won a medal. Princess Maxima was on stage with them and the crowd went wild singing and cheering. My friend asked what sport they had won, and I told him that they had won the bronze medal in an event (I forgot which one). He looked at me in disbelief, asking me if I was serious that the Dutch were cheering for people who lost? It was the first time I thought about it, but of course he was right. Either you are a winner or you are loser, you should not get a huge celebration for a 2nd place (or for a bronze medal 3rd place for that matter). Sure it’s great that people manage to become 2nd or 3rd, but only the real winners should get the winner’s perks.

In my opinion the Dutch government is making a mistake by allowing tomorrow’s boat ride to take place. It sets a precedent and it gives the message that you don’t need to win in order to be treated like a winner. I am always a fan of a good party, but the party for winners and losers should not be the same.

When I do sports in Shanghai I normally only run on my treadmill or occasionally do a spinning work-out. I felt something was missing in my exercise regime and so I decided to invest some money in a good rowing machine. After a bit of research I found that the best rowing machine on the market is probably the Concept 2, so I decided to order their latest model.

I have the machine for about 2 weeks now and I am very happy with it. It makes a lot less noise than the Concept 2 rowing machines that I used while in university (I did a bit of rowing there, but to be honest I spent more time in the bar of the rowing association than in a boat). Furthermore, on the Model E that I bought you sit much higher than on a conventional rower, so it feels much better. The computer display that is part of the machine is quite sophisticated, it does a lot more than measuring your time, speed and distance. There are some games on it for example and you can save your work-outs to a computer. Pretty cool stuff.

Scott also likes the machine. When I use it he laughs really loud, like I am a clown (I probably am in his eyes, sliding up and down on a seat while pulling a chain). But after 2 minutes he gets bored and tells me in Dutch that I should stop. If I don’t do that he tries to stop me by grabbing the rowing chain, which is quite dangerous. So from now on I only row with the door to the gym closed and him on the other side of the door. When I am not rowing he likes to slide the seat from the back to the front, for him the machine is just a big toy – like most things around him!

If you live in Shanghai and want to buy a Concept 2 machine as well you can buy it from http://www.concept2china.com/en/how-buy. Mine was delivered within a day and for a small fee (RMB 200) they also installed the machine for me.

Yesterday I came back from a trip to Europe, so last night we decided to have a family dinner. We couldn’t decide where to go (too much choice in the Hongmei Lu area & some of the best places had no tables available), but when I walked back from a visit to the wine shop on Saturday afternoon I got a flyer from a Japanese sushi/sashimi & BBQ place. I had been there once before and I remembered it was pretty good, so after a phone call to check if they would have 2 kids chairs available we decided to go.

The food was excellent indeed, esp. the barbecued beef, but what was even more remarkable was their menu: they used the iPad as a menu for their restaurant! A great idea, because the pictures they took of their food looked much better on the iPad screen than in a regular menu. I had seen the iPod Touch in hotels as a directory before (e.g. in the Upper House in Hong Kong), but of course the iPad is a much better device for this.

The app was quite basic, mainly pictures and prices, but of course it gave me a business idea right away. It should be fairly simple to develop an app that makes the user experience even better, for example by being able to choose the food in the app (we still needed a waiter) and show an overiew of everything you ordered.

Or go even one step further and let clients log in with Facebook Connect, Twitter or a Chinese non-blocked service, so they can see what they ordered last time. Show stats of the most popular food today, this week and this month, and give people the chance to log in at home to leave a review that appears in the iPad app. I am sure many restaurants would love an app like this, and I am convinced that 10 years from now something like this will be quite standard.

During the dinner I realized that it was no coincidence that this restaurant had an iPad, because they were quite innovative with the presentation of their dishes as well. See for example the picture below of the way the sashimi was presented. It looked very cool and the kids loved it as well!

Someone asked for the name & address of the restaurant in the comments, I found their website: http://www.gudumami.cn/en/shop/cs08127/index.html Address: 3211 Hongmei Road, 3/F

For the past couple of years Gary and I have tried to do at least one physical challenge per year. Over the past years that led us to ride a mountain bike through the Himalaya and to the top of Kilimanjaro. Because we are both too busy these days to train a lot the physical challenge for this year was a relatively easy one: climb Japan’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji.

To make things a bit more difficult we decided to climb outside the main season (that starts next week), when it’s still a bit more difficult and dangerous to climb the mountain. Furthermore we decided to do the climb at once, without staying overnight in one of the huts on the mountain before the final climb to the summit. Originally we had planned to climb last year November already, but when I mentioned that on Twitter I quickly learned that that climbing Fuji can be extremely dangerous outside the main season. Even though it’s just a small mountain (the summit is at 3776 meters), the weather at the top can be similar to that at 8000 meter mountains in the Himalaya, with hurricane-like winds and temperatures of -30 degrees. Also avalanches are a regular thing on the mountain. Even in the summer months some people still die (last year July for example it happened to some climbers), so we decided to postpone the trip to June this year.

About 2 weeks ago we finalized our plans to go up the mountain, even though we were told by Japanese friends that the mountain was still closed and it was considered dangerous to climb. A quick search online learned me that there was still a lot of snow but that it was doable to reach the top if you were well prepared. Well, we weren’t that well prepared, when I met Gary last Monday he realized that his mountain gear was still in his apartment in Beijing! But we were quite confident that we could do it based on our will power and the fact that each year thousands of others also reach the top.

So on Friday morning at 4 AM we set off from Tokyo to the mountain together with Suzuki-san of JAFCO, the Japanese VC firm that invested in Tudou. The night before we had had a big dinner at a top crab restaurant in Shinjuku with a couple of beers and some wine. That combined with just 3 hours of sleep meant that we were not really in top shape… During the drive over we listened to the live radio commentary of the football world cup match between Japan and Denmark (in Japanese, I didn’t understand a thing but still knew when Japan had or missed a chance or made goal) and we watched the final minutes of the game at a highway restaurant.

At 6:30 we had parked our car at the so-called 5th station and started the ascent. All shops and restaurants for the tourists and climbers were still closed, it felt a bit strange to be climbing this mountain almost alone. The first part was easy and we reached the 6th station within 30 minutes or so. The stations are normally just huts on the mountain where you can stay overnight or a first aid station. After passing the 6th station we came above the treeline and the ascent became more steep. Following what we learned from our Kilimanjaro guide we used the ‘polle polle’ strategy: walk very slowly but without stopping.

It worked well and we arrived at the 7th station without too many problems. I drank some energy drink and took some pictures before going up to the 8th station. Around us there were patches of snow, but the path was still clear of snow. Just below the 8th station we had to climb the first few hundred meters through the snow. Suzuki-san had a bit of a problem there because he was wearing basketball shoes instead of mountain shoes, which is not the best choice for the top of a snow covered mountain.

But we all made it to the 8th station at 3100 meters, and took a short break here. I ate two cold pancakes, drank some Japanese energy drink (called Pocari Sweat, the sports drink that helped me a lot during the Hong Kong Traiwalker as well) and read a couple of pages in The Facebook Effect on my iPad (yes, I carry my iPad everywhere!). There was still a phone connection, so I called my wife and kids in Shanghai to tell them things were going well. The temperature was still quite nice but the air was becoming a bit thinner. I noticed that while climbing I had to breathe harder and my heart was beating a lot faster now.

Above the 8th station the path was getting more and more difficult, but still easier than I had expected. I met 2 other climbers, one guy from Switzerland and another from the US, who I chatted with a bit. They climbed faster than we did (they were a bit younger and seemed in much better shape), so I decided to be wise and keep the Tanzanian polle polle strategy. There were hardly any other climbers on the mountain on our climbing day, I think we saw in total about 20-30 different people during the whole day. We had been very lucky with the date that we had chosen, because not only was it extremely quiet, the weather was also very nice. For most of the day it was sunny and we had great views over Japan while climbing. I had brought my rain gear (well, only my coat, I found out halfway the mountain that I left my rain trousers in China), but luckily we didn’t need it. Most important, there was not too much wind for most of the climb. Wind is supposedly one of the most dangerous factors on Mt. Fuji (others are avalanches, falling rocks and thunderstorms). I just climbed in my jeans, a long sleeve sports shirt and on some stretches my coat until the 9th station.

At the 9th station at about 3400 meter the wind started to blow a bit harder and it really started to get colder. Because we had to climb through snow and over rocks most of the time (the official path was hidden below meters of snow) I put on my gloves as well. The last few hundred vertical meters were the hardest. I started to get a bit of a headache because of the altitude, I always have this when going up to a high altitude quickly. But I know it’s nothing serious yet, so I don’t pay much attention to it. Especially the last stretch to the top seemed almost vertical and we had to really climb. People were cutting out a path through the snow for when the season would start, but we were a few days too early for that and had to find our own way.

But we made it of course and at 12:30 we reached the summit of Mount Fuji. It was pretty cold here and the wind was blowing hard. We stayed on the top for about 10 minutes enjoying the views into the crater. The crater was still completely snow-covered, a beautiful sight. We took some pictures and a short video and then decided to head back.

The descent was even more difficult than the ascent, especially because we were tired and a bit cold as well. After a couple of minutes we decided to take a different strategy and slide down the mountain! We sat down on the snow and just let ourselves glide down. It worked fantastic and we managed to slide all the way over the snow to the 8th station. At first it was a bit scary (the mountain is quite steep), but we quickly learned how to brake and had a great time sliding down Fuji. I am sure it’s not allowed what we did and it’s probably also not without danger, but I would advise everybody to give it a try (of course most of the snow will likely be gone in the next 2 weeks or so because of higher temperatures).

From the 8th station we had to take the path again, at some points there were rocks coming out of the snow and you don’t want to hit those at 3100 meters altitude far away from any hospital. We walked down pretty fast over a soft sandy (or volcanic ashes?) road, it felt a bit like walking on a beach. The ascent and descent routes are different and I would have actually preferred to take the original route – it’s a lot shorter and once you have reached the top you just want to go down as soon as possible.

Also my headache had gotten a lot worse, to the point that I did not really want to walk anymore. But I had no choice of course, so I just continued. It took us about 3 hours to get back to the car. My headache was still very bad, so it likely was not because of the altitude (that normally goes away quickly if you descend a few hundred meters). I took a Red Bull, an aspirin and a salty soup and laid down for a few minutes and suddenly I felt great again. Very weird, maybe it was just dehydration?

Anyway, the three of use drove back to Tokyo and then went to a traditional hot spring bath house to let let our tired legs and feet relax in the warm water. The hot springs were followed by an excellent sashimi dinner with lots of beer. My wife had flown into Tokyo that night as well, so she and Suziki’s wife also joined us. Gary still had a 9:30 PM meeting and left early, but we also did not make it too late. The day on the mountain combined with the good food and drinks suddenly make me very sleepy. We took an expensive taxi back to the hotel (it was quite a long taxi ride) and when I was in the hotel I was asleep within 10 seconds after hitting my bed. I don’t think I have often been this tired!

But it was totally worth it. Mount Fuji is a fun mountain to climb and it’s not too hard, especially if you do it in the official season. Just make sure you bring enough food and drinks (or buy them in the huts, they are probably all open in the season) and take it easy going up. Most people should be able to do this climb without too much trouble, it’s not technically difficult, you just need to be able to keep on walking uphill or climbing for about 6 hours. And if you stay overnight in one of the huts it’s just a walk in the park. Don’t believe the stories on the Internet that you have to be in good shape or that it’s dangerous (well, you should not slip of course, but that’s normal on a mountain). I think it’s often more psychological than physical, giving up is always easy right? All in all I enjoyed the climb and it was fun to do it with Gary and Suzuki-san. And I am now already thinking about what next year’s challenge should be!

Some more pictures of the climb are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157624366957724/

And some pictures of the weekend in Tokyo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157624367079994/

In 1996 I spent 12 months as an international management trainee in the Mercedes-Benz “Nachwuchsgruppe”. We were a group of 12 ambitious young men and women who during the course of one year were allowed to do 3-4 months projects at Mercedes-Benz/Daimler plants and offices all over the world. Even though we did not see each other much (most were not at headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany) we became pretty good friends during the year. We used a predecessor to regular email to keep in touch when we were abroad and every 3 months we all had a one week management training session in Germany.

After the one year program all of us started the rat race within Daimler to get to a good management position as soon as possible. We kept in touch through lunches (making lunch appointments was a very important task at Daimler, without planning them days in advance you had to go to lunch alone – but that’s another story) and sometimes because our work fields overlapped in projects. After I left headquarters in Germany at the end of 1999 to move to Beijing contact reduced a lot, except for some emails. And when I left Daimler in 2002 I only kept in touch with a few people.

One of the people that still sent regular updates was Markus Keiper, among others about the non-profit ChildrensFriends.org that he set up in his spare time with his wife Dinoshi. He had left Germany (and Daimler) not long after me, and his career for MTU led him to Australia, India and now Singapore. A few days ago he sent me a mail saying that he would be in town this week, so we decided to meet up.

It was great to see him again after all these years. I think we had not seen each other in person for maybe 12 years, but he hadn’t changed much. Quite amazing. We talked for a few hours about what life had brought us over the past years, about our interests and of course about our families and kids.

Markus is still in direct contact with several of our former colleagues, and it struck me that the ones who had always said that they wanted an international career were still in headquarters in Stuttgart. But most of them had great careers within the company (several are at the vice-president level or higher by now) and that’s also worth a lot of course.

I am glad we’re back in touch and I will certainly visit Markus and Dinoshi on my next trip to Singapore, so we can catch up in more detail.

Yesterday my parents picked me up from the office together with Scott and Elaine. We then took the kids for a stroll along the Bund. Scott loved it, he pointed out all the different boats to me and he was happily running and jumping on the newly opened river promenade.

Many people took pictures of him, but Elaine was even more popular: because of the Expo there were a lot of local tourists who have likely never seen a blonde baby girl before. So quite a few tried to take a picture with her, preferably with themselves in it as well. Elaine wasn’t scared at all, she just looked curiously at all the photographers around her. And of course I took a picture of her with the photographers!

With the football World Cup kicking off tonight in South Africa lots of World Cup related films are being uploaded to Tudou. One of them is especially good and is made by a sand artist.

Sand art is a pioneering performance art among the Chinese internet video population. Tudou is one of the biggest platforms for sand art performances as renowned artists regularly show their projects here.

The video begins under the drum beat with animals lying on the South African horizon. Then all of a sudden giving way to a football and a proud football player stepping on it. He cruises, shoots, and stops the football confidently and yet gracefully in the hands of our sand artist, and as the crowd cheers, he scores!

If the frame above doesn’t work you can also watch the short film here on Tudou.

Tomorrow another edition of BarCamp will take place in Shanghai, at the NetCircle offices starting at 9:30 AM. I don’t know why they chose this date, because this weekend will be a working weekend in China, but it seems many people will attend anyway (97 registrations so far on Friday afternoon).

If you don’t know BarCamp, it is an unconference where everybody can give short talks on certain topics and where everybody participates. You have to show up in the morning to get your name on the schedule and then you can give your talk or show off your ideas or product to others. For a list of some of the topics that were proposed for tomorrow see here.

Normally these events are a lot of fun, you get to know many people and you will likely learn a lot as well. I won’t be able to join because I’ll be in meetings most of the day in my office, but if you have no other plans I can highly recommend you to check it out. You can sign up here.

At night there will be a rooftop party sponsored by Wieden + Kennedy at their office on 1035 Changle Lu (5/F), with beer, wine and music. The party will start at 8 pm, see here for more details.

Not only did I have a company outing this weekend, but we also moved to a new house. While going through boxes of old papers in my study I found two newspaper pictures from May 2000 in which I appeared next to Arnold Schwarzenegger. At that time he was still the Terminator instead of the Governator, and I was still just a mid-level manager at Daimler.

The story behind the pictures (The top one appeared in the Beijing Youth Daily, the one at the end of the article in the China Daily) is that DaimlerChrysler was a sponsor of the Special Olympics. Arnold Schwarzenegger was their ambassador and there was a torch run on the Great Wall for media and sponsors.

For some reason none of the Daimler vice-presidents wanted to participate in the run with Arnold (maybe they were afraid they couldn’t handle the uphill run with him?). Because I was a runner someone then asked if I wanted to represent Daimler there. Of course I said yes, and of course I made sure to run up front next to Arnold. So I made it onto CNN for the first time that day and onto these pictures that appeared in several Chinese media. I can’t believe it’s 10 years ago already, time flies…

I am not a big fan of management books, I believe more in following my gut feeling when running a company than in reading and implementing all kinds of theories. Does that make me a good CEO? Difficult to say, because how do you evaluate a CEO? Based on his behavior? Or based on his results? Probably more the latter than the former, but then the next question is against what to measure the results: what were the objectives and were they the correct objectives?

Today I saw a link on Twitter (forgot who sent it, I clicked on it but did not read the article until after I finished my working day) to an article by Ben Horowitz on how his VC fund evaluates CEOs. Even though I normally don’t read too much about management theories, I found the subject interesting and decided to read the article anyway. I was quite impressed and I recognized a lot of what I see in day-to-day business life. If you’re a CEO (or plan to be one) it’s an excellent read. You don’t often come across VCs that blog openly on how they measure a CEO’s performance.

Ben asks himself 3 questions:

1. Does the CEO know what to do?
2. Can the CEO get the company to do what she knows?
3. Did the CEO achieve the desired results against an appropriate set of objectives?

For the first question he looks at the strategy (‘the story of the company is the proper outcome of all the strategic works’). The CEO should ensure that the story of the company is clear and compelling.  The speed and quality of the CEO’s decision making is also important. As Ben says: ‘Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. (…) Great decisions come from CEOs who display an elite combination of intelligence, logic, and courage.’

For the second question (can the CEO get the company to do what he knows), it’s all about in how far the CEO can get the company to execute on his vision and decisions. Make sure you have the right talent in the right positions to execute the strategy, and make sure they are motivated and understand the context. Good communication is king.

The last question is about measuring results against objectives. If your objectives are too easily reached a CEO’s performance may look great on paper, but actually he may have underachieved. I have the tendency to put my companies targets very high (I know I am doing this, but I do this on purpose), which makes my life not always easy, but it also forces your staff to get the best out of themselves and out of the company. Maybe not smart in a big corporation with all kinds of political issues, but luckily I don’t have any political fights around me anymore that I need to worry about.

I think many companies try to set there targets too low. It’s natural for people to try to have a low target and then get credits when the target is overachieved. Therefore, Ben writes, ‘the first task in accurately measuring results is setting objectives correctly’. This is of course not possible in reality, especially for start-ups, but as a board you should at least try to set your targets as good as you can. Ben Horowitz gives a great example of how the stock market can suddenly change all your objectives, describing Robin Li’s miserable (!) day when Baidu went IPO and the stock went up from USD 27 to USD 122 on the opening day. I never thought about that, but a stock that goes up so much also makes the expectations on you so much higher. Read the article for all the details, it’s great stuff.

Note: I used ‘he’ when talking about CEOs, but some of the best CEOs that I met are actually women

Last weekend Spil Games Asia went on its annual outing. This year we went to Moganshan (a mountain in Zhejiang) and Nanxun (a water town) for our two day trip.

We had a bit of bad luck with the weather, because despite the forecast of sunshine it rained on Friday when we left Shanghai. The rain followed us to Moganshan where clouds and fog joined us as well. The result: none of our staff could enjoy the beautiful views of the bamboo forest covered mountains and some of the old European style villas on it.

But the trip was fun anyway. During the bus trip we all sang our company song, that our sound guy and some other staff had composed over the past days. We sang it so often that it’s still in my head now.

Upon arrival on the mountain we had a big lunch with some beers and then went for a hike. Because of the weather we cut the hike short and spent  some time in a coffee bar and some took a rest in the hotel.

At night the Spil Games Asia management team gave a presentation about the companies achievements this year and about the strategy and plans for the next couple of months. Also some of the Spil Games management joined us, and Peter Driessen and Peter Hofstede both gave presentations. Peter D. about the companies mission and vision and Peter H. about our game development strategy.

Then it was time for dinner, and dinner always means drinking! So we had quite some beers with all the staff, most of them ‘ganbei’ (bottoms up). Originally we had an outside party planned with fireworks, but because of the weather most people preferred to play cards inside, so we decided to skip the party and do something different.

With about 15 people we took taxis to The Lodge on the other side of the mountain. This bar is my favorite place in Moganshan and we had a good time there drinking beers, singing and dancing. Mark Kitto (the owner) was not in China over the weekend, but because I had informed him in advance that we would come he sent us some excellent whiskey (his favorite) to welcome us. Thanks Mark!

The Lodge closed around midnight and we all headed back to the hotel. Then the memory gets a bit fuzzy, but the next day I have seen some pictures of the Spil Games management team drinking a bottle of whiskey while all lying on Peter Driessen’s bed.

The next morning a sunrise walk was organized at 6 AM, but for some reason I missed that one. 7:30 seemed a better time to get up and after a good breakfast (croissants, eggs and coffee – thanks for organizing Lucy) I felt relatively good again. We then took a bus to Nanxun, a water town West of Shanghai. During the bus ride down the mountain (>200 curves) 10 of our colleagues did not feel too well and we had to stop the bus for them. Most blamed the driving style of the bus driver, but I think the beer the night before also played a role.

In Nanxun we had lunch at a restaurant overlooking a canal (of course once again with a couple of beers) before going on a gondola trip. I have seen quite some water towns over the years and this is a nice one to visit. It is not very big, but it’s also not very crowded. Despite it being a Saturday there were not many tourists. Very different from the water towns closer to Shanghai where it’s normally so busy that you don’t realize how laid back and relaxed these villages really are. A nice ending of an eventful trip!

For more pictures from the outing see here.