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Elaine’s story on front page of today’s China Daily

My daughter Elaine's story is on the front page of the China Daily today!

Interesting to see how social media can push a simple story into mainstream news: after blogging (here post #1 and post #2) and tweeting about what happened to Elaine’s picture, the China Daily picked up the story. A journalist did some further research this week and to my big surprise the story appeared on today’s front page of the China Daily!

The full article in China’s leading nationwide English paper is here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/china/2011-10/29/content_14000038.htm

Interesting is that the research results are different from what we expected. The company hired a freelancer who illegally used Elaine’s picture (he assumed she would be living thousands of miles away). He said he found the picture on a designers website, a website we had never used and certainly had never uploaded pictures to. The freelancer did not have permission to take pictures from the site, but did it anyway.

When we checked this website we found tens of professional pictures of Scott and Elaine, likely uploaded by the photo studio where we took the pictures. This part of the story was not included in the article, but it shows that you have to watch out with photo studios in China. We used one of the best studios and still it looks like they cheated us by uploading the pictures to a website used by designers. Let that be a warning to others using photo studios here.

To be continued? Not sure, if I had nothing else to do I might go after the photo studio, but I guess I have more important things to do. It’s certainly nice to see some justice done by this front page article.

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Elaine’s picture removed from Halloween products – the Chinese way!

A Chinese company used Elaine's picture on their product without permission

Two weeks ago Grace was shocked when she found that a big Chinese manufacturer had used Elaine’s picture on the packaging of one of its Halloween costumes. We discussed what to do and decided to contact the company and ask them to change the packaging, otherwise we would start a court case.

The company at first tried to brush Grace off by asking for proof that Elaine was our daughter. But when she explained who she is and sent them a link to her verified Weibo account (where the case had already been discussed in detail) their tone changed immediately. They promised to change all the packaging in China before October 21.

So when we went to the opening night of the Carrefour Wine Fair yesterday we also checked out the Halloween customes there. Indeed the manufacturer had changed the packaging, but in a typical Chinese way: Instead of inserting a new cover, they had taken out all covers and cut out Elaine’s face!

Elaine's picture was cut out after our complaints to the company

I had to laugh when I saw it. For me it’s fine, but I seriously wonder if anybody would still buy a product where part of the packaging had been cut out. Only in China…

We’ll check a few more stores over the next days. If the products there all have the same ‘solution’ we are okay. If not we have a lawyer lined up to sue the company. We told the law firm that they can keep all the money they get in compensation. We don’t want it and it will be a good motivation for them to win this case!

Elaine's picture was cut out after our complaints to the company

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JP Morgan Corporate Challenge 2011 in Shanghai

JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

Last night the inaugural JP Morgan Corporate Challenge race took place in Shanghai, a 5.6 km race along the bank of the Huangpu river in Xuhui district. Spil Games Asia is a sportive company, so we participated with a team of 10 people in the run.

The event was a bit bigger than I had imagined, in total over 3000 runners showed up at the start! I am in pretty good shape right now because of the New York Marathon that I will run in 2 weeks, but I did not train for fast shorter distances, so I had no real expectations about running a good race.

Start of JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

My dad also ran the race and both of us managed to get to the very front of the pack at the starting grid. In China even the slow runners try to start from the front, so it’s important to fight for your position, otherwise you’ll lose valuable time right at the start already. Judging from their looks we were surrounded by other potentially fast runners but also by a lot of guys who had clearly never participated in a short race before (drinking cans of Red Bull right before the start is not a very smart strategy).

After the obligatory speeches the start was 4 minutes earlier than planned, not a bad thing if you’re in the middle of a crowd. As usual most people started running very fast right from the start, but because the first 300 meter were uphill (up a bridge) many of them were already exhausted by the time they reached the top. My dad and I took it easy and let quite some people pass on the first few hundred meters. I felt great and sped up when we reached the top of the bridge, but then I noticed that my dad was not following. So I slowed down to see where he was, and even ran backwards for a short while to see if something had happened. It turned out he was fine but my speed was just too fast for him right from the start.

Marc on the final stretch to the finish line at the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge - Wearing my Vibram FiveFingers

He told me to just run my own race, and after thinking about if for a few seconds I decided to go for it. I immediately started passing a lot of people and started to get closer to the front of the pack. One guy was much faster than the rest and there was a big gap between him and the others after the first kilometer already. I felt good and settled at a speed of about 15 km/h, continuously passing people.

When we passed the second bridge I had about 15 people still ahead of me, but it was a bit hard to count them exactly because the field was now spread out. I decided not to speed up anymore, mainly because I didn’t wear my GPS watch and didn’t know how far we still had to run (I didn’t find kilometer markers either, maybe I missed them?). I kept on passing a few people and running still felt great. I thought I still had another 1.5 km ahead of me when I suddenly saw the 5 km sign. I couldn’t believe it, only 600 meters to the finish, I thought it was still much farther!

Marc passing the finish line

So I immediately started sprinting and passed another 2 people before finishing in 22:44 (according to the clock above the finish line). I thought I was within the top 10, but this morning I received the official results and saw that I was only number 11. Strangely my official finishing time was 22:51, different from the picture above taken right after I passed the finish line. Coincidentally, the number 9 of the race had an official time of 22:45, so I wonder if anything went wrong there. But whatever happened, I am happy with this result.

At the finish of the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

My dad also ran a great race, he passed the finish line in 24:23, only 1:30 behind me. He was 41st overall, an amazing result considering that he was the oldest runner! He also did not seem too tired, he saw it more as a training and did not overdo it.

My family at JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

My family had not expected us to be so quick, and Grace almost missed taking a picture of me. She was trying to take a picture of a boat when she suddenly saw me running in the final stretch to the finish already. Also the kids probably did not see me, but for them the whole atmosphere was interesting enough already.

With Spil Games Asia runners after JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

After the run we picked up our goodie bags (t-shirt, Gatorade, banana) and then waited for the Spil Games Asia colleagues to come in. We found a nice bench in the hospitality area where we had pizza and beers with the colleagues and talked about the run.

With Spil Games Asia runners after JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

Scott and Elaine enjoyed all the attention they got, they had a very nice time. When it got dark it got a bit cooler as well, so we took a group picture and then we went our separate ways. It was a cool event, maybe I’ll join again next year!

Spil Games Asia team at JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

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Lost and found: my keynote for the opening of Academic Year 2009-2010

In September 2009 I had the opportunity to give the keynote speech for the opening of the Academic Year at my Alma Mater Maastricht University. At the beginning of this speech I talk about the fact that I still remembered the keynote during the opening of the Academic Year 18 years earlier when I started my studies (given by prime minister Ruud Lubbers), but the the text was not available anywhere online. I then said that I expected that if someone would try to find the text of my speech 18 years later, they would probably find it online. Well, until a few days ago that was not the case, but I just saw that Maastricht University uploaded part of their archive onto YouTube, including my talk.

Although the speech is a bit dated, I was surprised to see how many of the points that I mentioned are still the same today. The topic is New Leadership, where I put a lot of emphasis on using social media as a leader. Even the services that I mentioned 2 years ago are still the main ones that I think a (business) leader should use today: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I had never seen this footage, so it’s nice to find it back online.

If the embedded video above should not work or if you want to watch it in a larger window, here is the link to the original on YouTube.

The Opening of the Academic Year is a very traditional event, if you have never seen it is also nice to watch the arrival of the cortege (all the professors in traditional robes) before the official Opening here on YouTube (this one is from 2011).

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Mary Meeker’s latest slides: global, mobile & audio

KPCB Internet Trends 2011

Yesterday KPCB partner Mary Meeker once again gave one of her famous talks at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I always look forward to her slides, she has access to amazing data and manages to find great angles to explain her vision of the future. Just reading her slides inspires me to think about where the world – and especially my own businesses – are heading. I embed her presentation above, in case you can’t open it you can also find the presentation here.

Yesterday’s talk focused for a large part on mobile. Mary Meeker is extremely bullish about mobile and I fully agree with her. In my opinion every company has to work on mobile sites and apps in order to stay relevant, not only for the future but now already. Should you make iPad apps or Android? Well, you may hear a lot about Apple iPhone & iPad apps, but Android phones are bigger than the iPhone already (152 million vs. 129 million sold). Of course iOS users are generally more wealthy (Android also offers cheaper handsets), so you should not ignore them, but the real growth will take place with Android. Having an HTML5 solution would be even better of course, something Spil Games has been evangelizing for over a year already.

You can even make good money on mobile devices now, because mobile advertising is taking off and showing huge growth. According to Mary Meeker’s data 250 companies out of the Forbes 1000 launched mobile ad campaigns already! Combine that with the fact that doing micro-payments on a phone is not that difficult and that many people are more willing to pay for mobile content than for PC content (how many apps did you buy on your laptop recently vs. apps on your mobile phone?), and you will see the huge opportunity mobile presents.

Several Internet companies now already see more than half of their traffic coming from mobile devices. Music service Pandora for example, but also Twitter gets more than 50% of its traffic from mobile. Facebook ‘only’ gets 33% of its page views from mobile, but if you realize that this was just 1% 3 years ago you can see the shift that is happening in the market. Did you know that now already more phones and tablets are shipped every year than laptops and desktops?

When you don’t live in the US it is clear that there is a lot of activity happening in the Internet space outside China. But many US companies don’t seem to realize that. It happened so often to me already that I wanted to book a ticket or a hotel room, but that I could not do that without a US address or credit card… Lost opportunities, because I am sure I am not the only one. Luckily Mary Meeker also points this out by sharing with the audience that 81% of users of the top global Internet companies are outside the US. She also pointed out that China added more Internet users in the past 3 years than there are in the whole US of A.

Another interesting part of her presentation is about interfaces. These have transformed from text only in the early 1980s to graphical user interfaces in the 1990s and 2000s. And now touch screens are taking over. My kids already don’t understand why my laptop has no touch screen like their iPads, but very soon they will also not understand why my laptop does not answer when they talk to it. Because according to the presentation online audio might be the next big thing. Apple timed the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S well it seems, and also Spotify’s integration in Facebook was also at the right moment!

Mary Meeker also talks about some global trends that she sees. One slide has stayed on top of my mind since I read the presentation a couple of hours ago: More people now have access to a wireless signal (85%) than to electricity (80%)! That’s how fast the world is changing. The global information flow is truly global now, and it’s extremely fast (check out her chart on Tweets from Japan 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after the earthquake).

Another great slide is about privacy, a concept that I feel is outdated. I don’t believe in hiding who you are, just like you can’t do that when you live in a small village – and because of the Internet and social networks the world is becoming a big village. More and more you can’t even hide anymore, even if you want to(ever been tagged in a picture on Facebook?).

I want to end this post with what Mary Meeker wrote about this (emphasis added by me), I fully agree with her:

It’s hard to hide. The ‘truth’ is often just a photo/click–send away.

‘Clean, well-lighted place to do business?’ ‘People are basically good?’

In a world with tremendous uncertainty – owing to the rapid ramp in always-on, connected citizens of the world, perhaps, the world is on the cusp of being safer than ever?

There are lots of sacrifices. This is new terrain.
Only time will tell how all this plays out.

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Overview of China social media equivalents

Ogilvy's China social media equivalents (Oct. 2011)

Ogilvy China updated its infographic showing China’s social media equivalents – or copycats, as Western media loves to call them. Of course many of these started out as copycats, but most evolved into much more than the original Western website, either by adding additional functionalities or by localization of functions.

Interesting is that they now partially merged the SNS and microblogging categories. Services like Sina Weibo are so much more than Twitter is, that they come close to what Facebook offers the Western world.

One of the categories that Ogilvy added was light blogging service Tumbler, for which they suggested China copycats DianDian and Qing. It’s an interesting category that I still don’t really get. Setting up and posting to a blog is so simple, why use Tumbler for that?

Another new category is Purchase Sharing. I believe this might be a major one, especially in China where people love to show off everything they buy or want to buy. Western fashion diaries/blogs like lookbook.nu are a good example of this from the fashion industry, other sectors will probably follow.

I don’t agree with all equivalents (where is Lashou in the Groupon copycat section?), but it gives a nice overview of what’s happening on the Chinese Internet. It’s also a good way for Western companies to check out what their Chinese equivalents are up to, they may be able to learn a thing or two from them.

Click on the picture for a bigger version of the social media infographic, or see the original here

 

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Run along the Mao River outside Shanghai

The Mao river at Sun Island

This morning my dad and I drove over to the Mao River, between Tianmashan and Dianshan Lake, about 35 minutes from my home in Shanghai. After running for two weekends around Sheshan and Tianmashan we were looking for a place to run with less traffic and people. On Google Maps I found a small road next to a river close to Sun Island, and it turned out to be a good place to run.

Today's half marathon run in Google Maps

Getting up was a bit difficult, even though I did not drink too much at Christine Lu’s Affinity party at CVRVE last night (thanks for the nice champagne and cocktails Christine!). But once we arrived at the river I was fully awake, especially because the circumstances to run were fantastic: a clear blue sky and mild temperatures (around 20 Celsius at 8:30 AM).

Marc running along the Mao river

The road along the river turned out to be even better than I had imagined. No holes, with nice trees and plants on both sides of the road. There was hardly any traffic on the road, because most entrances were closed off with oil drums. Just a few scooters, an occasional local car and a few peasants working in the fields, most of whom were very surprised when they saw 2 foreigners running by, especially when they were also greeted nicely.

Rice fields on the inside of the dike, with a village in the background

The river was more busy than the road, every few minutes a boat sailed by. It’s nice to see them pass by when you run, I enjoyed watching them. We also saw some smaller boats, but they mainly stayed on the small canals to the villages that lined the river.

Small boat coming from a village

The nature around the Mao river consists of a lot of lakes and canals, it reminds me a bit of an area in Holland not too far from my parents home (for Dutch people, the area around Giethoorn). Even the high bridges over the canals were similar.

End of Mao river in Dianshan Lake

My dad and I did a 21.1 km run (a half marathon distance) as preparation for the New York Marathon that takes place exactly 3 weeks from today. Although I used to find a half marathon distance quite long, it seems to be getting shorter and shorter when you get in better shape. We took it easy today and ran the distance in less than 2 hours, including some stops to take pictures and take in the scenery around us. We were both not tired at all, I felt like I could have run a bit longer without any problem. A good sign for the marathon, although I know from experience that the marathon only gets very hard after about 30 kilometers.

Lex running along the Mao river

If you are looking for a nice place to run in Shanghai for long distance practice, this might be a good place to check out. On weekdays it may be very busy on the highways, but on weekend mornings you should be there in about 35 minutes from Hongqiao and maybe another 10 minutes more from downtown. You’ll need your own car though, because finding a taxi there might be tricky.

The Mao river at Sun Island

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Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten Open Day

Scott and his classmates

On Friday the kids had their annual Open Day at Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten, where the parents can spend some time with the children in their class rooms. Last year it was fun to see Scott in this regular school environment, so this year I of course blocked the morning in my calendar so I could join.

View from Scott's classroom

As usual there were lots of moms and grandparents at the open day, but hardly any fathers. In Scott’s class with about 20 kids I think there were only one or two other fathers. I think it’s a pity for them that they can’t take time off to see their kids play in school. Most of them have their owns businesses or are top business people, so they don’t have to live other people’s agendas. It’s important for the kids to see their parents, but for me it’s also important to see what kind of things Scott and Elaine learn during class and who their teachers and classmates are.

Scott playing at school (SCL Open Day)

Two kids actually had no parents coming at all, I felt really sorry for them. If both Grace and me would not be able to come I would keep my kids home on a day like this. The two kids were now sitting with a teacher during the morning, while all others were happily playing with their parents.

Scott and Grace

We first went to Scott’s class, where the kids sang two songs for us (one in English and one in Chinese). Then they had to make a little man with paper, glue and some strings for the hair. The parents could help them, so most were done in about 10 minutes. Then it was free indoor playtime. The classroom has lots of games, books and a big collection of toys to play with. Scott first played with a train and with some cars and then picked 2 puzzles to make. He didn’t need my help, but he liked me being there.

Scott playing at school (SCL Open Day)

Grace had already gone to Elaine’s class (the times overlapped a bit), and I stayed with Scott until all parents were leaving. Then I also walked over to Elaine’s classroom, where she was playing happily with a puzzle.

Elaine playing at school (SCL Open Day)

When she finished she cleaned up the puzzle (they learn that well in school) before starting to play with a hitting game with a plastic hammer. She is such a sweet girl: when I told her to hit me on the head with her hammer, she said “no daddy, that hurts!”.

Elaine playing at school (SCL Open Day)

It’s nice to observer my kids in the classroom. They really seem to enjoy school. Every morning when I take them to school they are happy to be there and during the Open Day they were proud to show us their skills.

Elaine playing at school (SCL Open Day)

When it was time to go home Elaine actually did not want to leave. Only when she saw that all other kids were leaving as well she packed her toys away and went to change her indoor shoes for outdoor ones. I am happy to see that she is happy in school, and also that Scott is excited to go to school every day.

Elaine's classroom

Elaine putting on her shoes after school