Yesterday it was race day again in Shanghai, and also this year I was present at the Shanghai F1 racing circuit. Spill Group’s Reinout te Brake and Peter Driessen joined me for what turned out to be one of the best races of the year. Because I was not able to secure a parking ticket (you need to buy at least 4 F1-tickets for that), we decided to take a shuttle bus at the Shanghai Stadium. But there were such long waiting lines there, that we changed plans and took a cab. The cab driver was a potential Schumacher: he literally raced us to the stadium even using the parking lane on the highway to pass cars. I liked it though, and I guess it was a good experience in Chinese driving for my colleagues.

After arriving at the race track it suddenly started to pour down heavily, and we were very lucky to find a big Coca-Cola umbrella to stay dry. The heavy rain luckily only lasted a few minutes, after which we walked to our seats. It turned out that my assistant had booked us excellent seats: at the end of the pit lane, just before the first curve! From there we overlooked the first three curves, and could also see the start and finish. Although last year I had Grand Stand seats right at the finish line (that were twice as expensive), this year’s seats were actually much better. In case you plan to go next year, try to get seats at the B1 area.

Food and drinks at the track were so-so. The hot dogs were edible, but there was only ketchup and no mustard. The beer was Foster’s, which is drinkable, but not when it’s not very cold (and this was not the case). It should not be too difficult to improve this a bit for next year’s race. But at least prices were reasonable, with about EUR 3 for 0.5 liter of beer.

The race itself was great. Right after the start the track was still wet, and that made for some exciting scenes. We were all fan of Schumacher (just as most of the Chinese around us), but he did not manage to pass anyone at the start (he started from position 6). But he was driving a great race and with some great maneuvers and a well-timed first pit-stop he managed to get into third place. The next rounds were amazing, for some reason Alonso was loosing 3 seconds per round during two consecutive rounds (without live comments you are left guessing what happened), and not much later Michael managed to pass him. Right in front of us! The whole stand was jumping up and down in excitement, and for a moment I was actually afraid the thing would break down. When he later also passed Fischichella (again right in front of us!) the crowd got crazy, and it was fantastic to be part of that. On the screens we noted that on the other side of the track it started raining about 4 rounds before the end, and we were a bit worried that this might cause Schumacher some trouble. But it did not rain hard enough to force him to come in to change tires (on our side it actually stayed dry), and he managed to win just before Alonso (who was allowed to pass his team mate – causing a thumbs down at him from many people when he passed us). All in all a great race, much better than the first two editions in Shanghai.

Today was an important day for all of us at Spill Group Asia, because we took a majority share in one of China’s leading game developers, Zlong Games. This is the first major investment that Spill Group Asia made in China. Spill Group just sent out the following press release about this take over:

SPILL GROUP buys majority share in well known Chinese game developer

Shanghai – September 29, 2006 – SPILL GROUP, leading developer and operator of online gaming portals, today signed a deal with the well known Chinese game developer Zlong Games Ltd. which makes SPILL GROUP Asia majority share holder of the company.

Zlong Games was founded in 2005 and already is a profitable company that focuses on online casual games, massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), PC games and mobile games. Furthermore, the company does the outsourcing for the design of 2D and 3D game characters. Currently Zlong Games develops online games for leading US, European and Chinese game companies, such as Real.

The acquisition of the majority share in Zlong Games will help SPILL GROUP achieve their goal of becoming the world’s biggest source of the best online web games and games for mobile devices. Online games will be developed for the Asian market, but also for external parties as well as for SPILL GROUP internally. The games enhance game advertising possibilities and will increase the quality of SPILL GROUP’s own game content for its game portals to an even higher level.

One of the online game portals of SPILL GROUP ASIA is www.game.com.cn. This website is one of the fastest growing game portals in China. Due to this success SPILL GROUP is looking for further acquisitions worldwide. More information on these future acquisitions will follow soon.

For more information on SPILL GROUP visit www.spillgroup.com

For more information on SPILL GROUP Asia:
Marc van der Chijs (CEO)
Phone: +86 21 5155 6358
Mobile: +86 1381 781 0517
www.spillgroupasia.com

Shanghai has developed so fast, but when dealing with state-owned companies it’s still like the old days: frustration, frustration, frustration. A nice (or actually not-so-nice) example happened this week, when on Wednesday a note from the Shanghai Power company arrived that our electricity would be cut off for a while on Friday. My first reaction was: nice, at least they inform us. But when reading the whole thing I got upset, because the power would be cut from 5 AM to 2 PM! During a normal working day, right before a one-week National Holiday. And as you can imagine, an online gaming company does not work very well without power.

We made some phone calls and found out that the reason is that they are building a new subway line next to our office. That’s nice to know, but why can they not cut the power from 9 PM to 6 AM, or during the weekend? They probably did not even consider that, because why should you be customer oriented when you have a monopoly? Our office building has about 70 internet companies, and none of them can do any work this morning. So I had to give the staff half a day off, and I now hope that the electricity will be turned back on by 2 PM.

This week two Spill Group colleagues from Holland are visiting, causing a total lack of postings on this blog. But apart from not having time to blog, the trip is going well. We are having lots of discussions with other IT and gaming companies, and I have a ton of new ideas on how to further develop and monetize our Chinese websites and on gaming and game development in general. Some of these ideas will probably be turned into real businesses as part of Spill Group, in cooperation with other Chinese companies or with external investors. Sorry, no details yet, but I am sure over the next months I will blog about some of them here. And if you really want to know more you can always buy me a couple of beers!

Saturday night Grace and I held a party at our apartment, a combination of our one-year wedding anniversary and a long overdue housewarming party. In total over 60 guests showed up at the party, from all kinds of companies that we worked at or with over the past years in Shanghai (Spill Group, Tudou, SVP, Bertelsmann, Roland Berger) and of course lost of friends and business partners.

We had hired a catering service for finger food (Dragon Party), and they did a great job – good value for money and an excellent service. Among the snacks they prepared in our kitchen were small tuna sandwiches, salmon rolls, tart with duck breast, and even fresh brownies. Check them out if you plan to organize a party in Shanghai (andy@dragon-party.com, mobile: 13917016179).

We had lots of wines and beer, but the main drink during the night turned out to be champagne. The 20 bottles of Moet that we ordered were barely enough! Interesting is that during parties in China the Chinese guests normally are the first to arrive, and also the first to leave. Around 11 the first Chinese guests went home already, when some laowai were still arriving. Maybe we should start our parties a bit earlier next time, 9 PM is more the starting time for a European party than a Chinese one.

It was great to have so many of our friends together here, and also to intoduce many of them to eachother. A bit of networking is always part of parties of course, and I like to bring people together that have businesses with potential synergies. And of course singles looking for partners – there were a lot of them last night. But the main thing is of course relaxing and catching up with old friends, and that’s what we did as well. And when around 2 AM the last guests left we looked back on a fantastic night. A bit too fantastic maybe, because I had a pretty heavy hangover when I got up late this morning…

That did not matter too much though, because when I entered the living room everything had been cleaned up already. It turned out that our ayi had decided to come in around 7:30 AM on her day off to clean the whole house before we would wake up. She won’t read this (she is illiterate) but this was a great surprise!

This weekend BarCamp Shanghai takes place, the first time a BarCamp takes place in China. In case you are not familiar with the concept, the organizer’s website gives the following description:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

It is good to see that this kind of events are now also organized in China, although I was a bit surprised that the majority of the attendees will be foreigners. Maybe Chinese are not too familiar yet with the concept of an unconference? Or was the publicity for this event mainly in the English blogosphere?

Tudou is among the sponsors of BarCamp and the 24-hour event will take place in our offices on 1305 South Suzhou Road. I will also join the event on Sunday. But not too early, because I am hosting a party at my home tonight!

Lots of bloggable things happened this week, but no time to blog so far… Some things I wanted to write about, but did not find the time for yet:
– Ho-Pin Tung’s Formula 3 championship (in a car with game.com.cn on it)
– Gary Wang (Tudou‘s CEO) who is sudddenly becoming a famous Chinese writer
– A cool big band jazz concert with Rolf Becker in the Grand Hyatt last night
– Several anecdotes about a large group of Dutch tourists (members of Dutch broadcasting station the Tros) who are on a so-called ‘members tour’ in China with Dutch singer Jantje Smit. This whole thrip will be broadcasted in December.

At lunch today (a 5-minute break for a hamburger at McDonalds – shame on me) I was sitting in front of the window of the fast-food outlet in Xujiahui, and noticed several men in front of a bakery store that were approached by people with pieces of paper and who then exchanged the paper for money. I found it a bit strange, so decided to check it out after finishing the greasy meal.

Turns out that the bakery is a mooncake outlet, and people can go there to exchange a coupon for mooncakes. Before the moon festival (in 2 weeks) companies often give these coupons to employees as a token of appreciation. The thing is, many people either do not like mooncakes (like me) or prefer to get some money instead. And because Chinese are all business people, a trade automatically developed. In front of these stores you can now exchange the coupons for hard Chinese renminbi’s, and the traders then re-sell the coupons to clients entering the store. This entrepreneurial spirit is why I love to live and work in the The Middle Kingdom.

As I mentioned before on this blog, I do not like it very much when people use personalized “ringtones”. This means that you are forced to listen to the favourite song of the person you are calling, instead of the traditional beeps. More and more people are using this service, because China Mobile is actively pushing the product.

But things seem to be getting worse according to Pacific Epoch. According to them, a Chinese WAP site recently launched a service that allows users to select a tone or song that will play in the background of their mobile phone conversations. This means that when you call this person, both the subscriber to the service and the person they are talking to will hear the song… I have not experienced this yet, but I can only imagine that it is extremely annoying to have a song playing when you are trying to have a serious conversation. It may become popular among high school students, but I hope that the general population will stay away from it. Does such a service exist outside China already?