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PICNIC07 in Amsterdam

The past week I mainly spent in Amsterdam at the PICNIC07 conference. It was a very interesting week, not only because of all the presentations and discussions that I attended, but also because I finally got to meet a lot of my online ‘friends’ in real life. A few months ago I actively started Twittering, and through Twitter I got to know a lot of people quite well, without ever meeting several of them in real life. Among many others I finally got to meet Erwin Blom, Holland’s most active Twitterer, who immediately interviewed me with his Nokia E61. The interview (in Dutch):Audioreport Picnic07 #21 – Big in China! (Erwin Blom)

Another Twitterer who I had never met before, but who was visible and audible in many of the discussions during the week was Vincent Everts from PCzapper. I had been following him for a while already on Twitter, and it was good to meet him in person. And trying out his Segway was a cool experience. I liked riding it, and wonder why this personal transporter does not manage to break through. Maybe the step from walking to a Segway is just a bit too big? I could imagine riding one, but I am not sure if it would be safe to do this in China.

Tuesday was my first day at PICNIC, although it officially opened on Wednesday afternoon. I only spent the morning at the Westergasfabriek (the location of PICNIC), where Spill Group’s Reinout te Brake moderated a panel discussion about Games meet TV. Very interesting to listen to the panelist’ discussion and ideas about the future of gaming. Wednesday I mainly spent working in my hotel room, followed by lunch and meetings with VC funds. I also visited Skoeps, a Dutch online user generated video news site. They sell the films to news organizations and share revenue with the uploaders. In China this won’t work for obvious reasons, but it’s a good idea and the site claims to break even.

On Thursday I was back at PICNIC, where Vincent pulled me into a panel discussion about the whether the future will be zapping or surfing (the answer: surfing). They had been talking among others about Tudou, and I was asked to share our experiences in China with TV and online video. The discussion was broadcasted on Salto TV and (very interesting) also in Second Life. Right after the panel discussion was over Salto did a live interview with me about Tudou and China. Too bad Gary was not there, it would have been even more interesting if he could have also joined the discussion.

Friday was the China day, and that started with Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy), Jeremy Goldkorn (Danwei.org) and Gary Wang (Tudou.com) gaving presentations and doing a Q&A session. Bill Kung, one of Tudou’s VC’s, was there as well and he could answer the question that Gary got about why VC’s invested in us. After that I was part of a panel about Dutch entrepreneurs in China (together with Jacco Bouw, the CEO of Webpower and Jan Beekwilder, CEO of Tribal), where we shared our experiences about doing business in China.

During lunch Gary and Bill also had the opportunity to test Vincent’s Segway, who wanted a video interview in return (which he of course got). Gary even managed to ‘crash’ the Segway, but luckily did not hurt himself. We also met serial entrepreneur Raymond Spanjar, who is co-founder and Chief Hyving Officer at Holland biggest social networking site Hyves.nl. Quite impressive what he managed to pull off with Hyves, they completely beat all the foreign competitors like MySpace and Facebook in Holland. As someone else remarked, quite similar to what Tudou did with YouTube in China 🙂

I am now at my parents house, trying to catch up on sleep and relaxing a bit. It was quite a busy week, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Most of my pictures (all taken on my Nokia E61i) are on Flickr already, the ones from Picnic07 in this set, the ones from Amsterdam (mainly touristic pictures, that I had never taken before) are here.

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Yoga

The whole week I had planned to work on an investment proposal. To do that I need a couple of hours without any interruption, but it’s almost impossible to work longer than 10-15 minutes in my office without any disturbances. Therefore I decided to do it on Saturday. However, when I woke up yesterday after 10 hours of sleep (a new record I think, I guess I needed it) I was still too tired to really be productive. Work at Spill Group Asia has been busy from the day I set up the company, but it’s getting more busy and stressful lately as the company grows. The recent problems do not really help either. No complaints from my side, I don’t mind to be busy, but I also know that there are limits to what you can do.

In the past I went running almost daily to clear my mind, but since bike riding in Tibet I have a knee injury that does not want to go away. Each time I start running the pain comes back, so I have cut back a lot on sports. But I have now started with something completely new (to me at least): yoga. I always thought that would be nothing for me, but it is a completely different experience from what I expected. I actually thought it was just relaxing and it would not take much effort. But after one hour I am totally exhausted and the next day all my muscles are sore. But I am also very relaxed, and during the class I manage to switch my mind completely off work. I love it!

I have a private teacher, and she was surprised to have a beginner student (people normally start in group classes when they do yoga). For me groups don’t work because of my work schedule. They start at 7 or 7:30 PM, and I often cannot make it on time. If I do it, I want to do it right and not miss half the classes. Also, progress is much faster with a private teacher. The basic postures and breathing techniques are quite important, and getting these right is easier when one person constantly observes and corrects you.

I just started two weeks ago, so these are just my first impressions. Let’s see how I feel about it in a couple of months. I think it would be perfect to combine this with long distance running, after my knee allows me to do that again. Right now it looks like a good way to reduce stress, and get more out of your day – both work wise and in terms of quality time.

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Off to Amsterdam

In a few hours I am leaving to the airport for a week-long trip to Holland. I will be in Hilversum at Spill Group and in Amsterdam for PICNIC 07. Gary Wang & Yang Lei will also be there on their honeymoon, and Tudou VC Bill Kung will also join us on Friday. It promises to be a busy but interesting week.

I just noted that the weather in Amsterdam is going to deteriorate a lot starting on Monday (rain and only 14 degrees C, brrr…). I am therefore going to repack my suitcase and add some sweaters and a coat. The first time in many, many months that I have to wear one.

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Overcharging taxi driver


A few weeks ago I had lunch with some Indian business partners. During the lunch they told us that upon arrival from Mumbai, they had paid RMB 626 for a 19 minute taxi drive from the Longyang Road Maglev Station to a hotel in the Pudong financial center. They knew the amount was too much, but the driver had used the meter, and the figure was indeed RMB 626.

I asked them for the receipt, that they had luckily kept. It turned out that the driver had added RMB 600 in toll fees to the actual amount of RMB 26. Because the receipt is only in Chinese they could not read that of course, and they had paid up.

One of our people then called the taxi company, to complain about what had happened. We faxed them the receipt (the fax number is still written on the receipt), but they later replied that the taxi driver’s identification number is not correct. This means he probably changed his ID number in the taxi meter software.

I hate it when these things happen, it gives Shanghai a bad name. You read about cheating cabbies in the local paper sometimes, but normally only when there is a crackdown. I assume the reports are just some isolated cases, and this happens much more frequently – especially at Longyang Road station where lots of foreigners arrive and there is no supervision like on the airport. Too bad we could not nab this taxi driver.

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Typhoon Wipha update

So far Typhoon Wipha did not have much impact yet on the weather. It’s now Wednesday lunchtime, and the typhoon has hit the coast at Wenzhou in Zheijiang province earlier this morning. According to the latest forecasts it won’t reach Shanghai until tonight, and the weather today is actually better than yesterday. Although there is a lot more wind, the rain has stopped. I think this will change over the next couple of hours, but for now it actually is quite pleasant outside. I just went for a walk to buy a Starbucks coffee, and I enjoyed the warm wind that was blowing.

Last night I was interviewed by Dutch radio about the typhoon, but at that time I did not have too much news to give them. A few minutes ago I did another live interview, but I still could not give them the ‘exciting’ news of being in the middle of a typhoon. They might do another interview tonight.

Update (Thursday evening): In the end Wipha missed Shanghai, and we just had a lot of wind and rain. Nothing special. But as the Shanghai Daily pointed out today, the evacuations and other typhoon-related measures were still useful: “It was a test for the public services system”.

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Typhoon Wipha approaching Shanghai


Outside my window it’s raining hard, the reason is that a typhoon is approaching China’s East coast. Chances are that it will hit Shanghai tomorrow, and the current rainfall is the beginning of the typhoon. Today a total of 200 mm is expected, meaning that likely the city will be flooded (not unusual for Shanghai).

The office management started to warn us yesterday already when typhoon Wipha was still a regular one. Overnight it changed from a normal tropical storm into a severe storm, and Bloomberg now started calling it a super typhoon. It is expected to land as a Category 4 storm, with winds up to 250 km/h, the fiercest one to hit Shanghai in 10 years. This morning the management in our apartment building also started to issue warnings, saying that we had to make sure to keep doors and windows closed, and make sure that nothing was outside on any of the balconies.

At the moment 200,000 people are being evacuated in lower parts of Shanghai, and put into temporary typhoon shelters. I don’t think this happened during the last typhoon that I witnessed in Shanghai. I also wonder whether I should park my car in our parking garage tonight: during the last typhoon that parking garage was flooded, and many cars were totally damaged. I did not live in my current compound yet, but remember it because it was reported on many TV stations due to the fact that the majority of the cars were Mercedes, BMW or Porsche.

I hope the typhoon will change it course over the next hours, but if it doesn’t I plan to Twitter live about it. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/marcvanderchijs

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Outward Bound weekend with Spill Group Asia

This weekend Spill Group Asia and our game development company Zlong Games went on a company outing in the mountains of Zhejiang. We left early Saturday morning (6:45 AM at the office!) by bus, and arrived around 11 AM close to the outward bound base. During the bus ride (in two buses, the company has become too big for one bus) I had planned to get some extra sleep, but that did not work out. Most of the ride was used to introduce oneself, and to introduce the people in front of you. The persons in the back had a hard time remembering all the names and information.

Upon arrival we started with a lunch in a local restaurant: without enough food at regular times a Chinese outing can never be a success! Lunch was followed by a short introduction by our ‘drill sergeant’, a former member of the Chinese Special Forces. We all had to stand in lines, and the 4 people who were too late got a punishment. The tone for the weekend was set! Then we did some group exercises, and after that 3 groups were formed. These had to come up with among others a leader, a name, a song and a flag within a few minutes, and had to present that. Laughing during the presentation was punished by 20 push-ups, as the leader of the second team found out quickly.

Then we set off on foot to our base camp on top of a mountain. The slopes were slippery, and sometimes it was quite dangerous. At some points you had to climb over wet, slippery rocks with hardly any grip and if you would fall you would end up 10 meters lower. I had the feeling most people did not see the danger, because many are not used to the outdoors. I am, however, and did not feel all that comfortable. Later I asked people if they had not been afraid, and although some had been a bit scared the general answer was: “The coaches guided us, so there was no problem”. Luckily there was no problem, but I doubted the professionalism of the organizing company a bit. Indeed I slipped once, but not at a dangerous location, and hurt my back pretty badly. I was not able to participate in most other activities because of this, which was a pity.
After a 2-3 hours uphill hike we arrived at our base camp, where we did several more group exercises and set up our tents for the night. They were not completely water proof (the guide: “If it starts to rain hard it’s best to sleep inside one of the buildings.”), but luckily there was not much rain overnight. The evening was spent with games at the camp fire and a barbecue, and we were all so exhausted that by 10 PM most people retired to their tents.
At 5:30 it got light and we got up. We had to clean the tents and get ready for some morning exercises – only after that we were allowed to have breakfast. After some more activities the group went on a cave tour – crawling through water and climbing inside the caves. Because of my back injury I could not join, which I really regretted. Around 3 PM we descended the mountain again and by 4 PM we were back at the buses. All in all a weekend where people got to know each other a lot better, with some elements of a boot camp, but mainly lots of fun. Except for the hike on the first day I would recommend this to every company that wants to improve its team spirit.