Archive for March, 2011

SXSW 2011

This year South by Southwest (SXSW) took place for the 25th time in Austin, TX. I had never been there but when I was invited to be a panelist I decided to visit the festival. Even though it's quite a trip from Shanghai (and especially from Phuket...) I recommend it to everybody. The panels and speakers are world-class and there are tons of networking opportunities. Not only are most US Internet start-ups there to promote their products, but also the VCs are all in town plus of course...
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Regards from Fukuoka

Flying is often a hassle, especially when you need to fly a lot and there are no direct flights between the places that you want to go to. During my current trip I already had my fair share of problems. On the way to Phuket my flight from Bangkok to Phuket was cancelled, meaning that I had to spend 3 hours in Bangkok at the airport and missed the beginning of Stream Asia. I was not the only one that had that problem, several Stream Asia participants had planned their arrival on Phuket with...
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Stream Asia 2011

I have been to a lot of conferences over the years, and the one I just got back from was among best of all of them: Stream Asia 2011. The event took place at the Club Med in Phuket (Thailand) and about 200 people were invited to join this 2-day unconference. Best of all, WPP paid for everything! They rented the whole beach resort, so there were no other tourists around to distract us from our sessions. Because it was an unconference you never know in advance what exactly will happen and...
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New offices

Both UnitedStyles and Spil Games Asia's game studio moved into new offices this week. A pure coincidence, but it was kind of interesting to have 2 new places to work from after I came back from San Francisco. UnitedStyles' move was not completely voluntary: the building where we had our office is going to be 'redeveloped', meaning that it will be demolished and something more valuable will be built there. Not a bad thing for us actually, because the new office is much brighter and we are...
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San Francisco / GDC 2011

I am writing this from a trans-Pacific flight back to Shanghai after an intense week in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference 2011. It's the only game conference that I have attended 3 years in a row, and I think it's the best game conference out there. Not only because of the sessions, but especially because everybody in the industry is there, from start-ups to giants like Disney and from game programmers to CEOs and VCs. I like the atmosphere where you can do a lot of business...
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