Sunday night I arrived in Holland with CIC’s Sam Flemming for a short visit. My second visit to Holland in a week actually, so I am glad that I don’t suffer too much from jet lags. Sunday night started off with a dinner with friends of mine in restaurant De Belhamel on the corner of the Brouwersgracht and de Heerengracht. I took Sam along as well, and we had a nice dinner with several bottles of good Australian wine. During the dinner I realized that all of my friends had either worked abroad or are currently working outside the Netherlands (One just got back from an expat assignment for a Dutch bank in Beijing, one works for a private equity firm in London, another for an insurance company in London and the last one just returned from a stint at JP Morgan in Frankfurt). Holland is quite international!

Around 11 PM we walked back to our hotel, and we noticed lots of cars all around us blowing their horns, cars with people screaming while holding Turkish flags and people dancing in the street. I did not think much of it, but later I saw on the news that some parts of Amsterdam were completely blocked for traffic because of Turkish fans celebrating that their team made it to the quarter finals. Another proof that Holland, and especially Amsterdam, is very international!

The next morning I woke up with a bit of a hangover, due to the combination of a long dehydrating flight followed by a dinner with a bit too much alcohol. A nice English breakfast with lots of orange juice solved that and I went refreshed into my first meeting of the day. Sam had two meetings during the morning, before we went for a quick working lunch at VC firm Van den Ende & Deitmers. After lunch Dorrit Gruijters (the main organizer of the Chinareis2008.nl trip) picked us up for the China New Media Conference where we had to speak in the afternoon. Before the conference started I did two TV interviews with a Dutch news program (NOVA) and then I mingled with many of the particpants of the Chinareis that were present at the event. I was wearing a microphone from a TV program that was following me during the day, but totally forgot about it after a few minutes already – and also forgot to inform others. This led to a bit of an awkward situation with a person from a large US media company with whom I discussed a business deal that should have stayed confidential, but that was of course recorded as well.

The conference itself was quite a success. About 170 Dutch business people with an interest in China and New Media showed up, and the speakers gave interesting talks. The first to present was Tan Tze Kiat, GM of BBDO China, who talked about the trends in advertising in Asia. Next on stage was Sam Flemming with a presentation about the importance of Internet Word of Mouth, with among others some fascinating examples about for example the role of the internet during the Sichuan earthquake. After a short break I talked about online gaming in China and my expectations for the future (casual games will outperform growth rates of MMO’s, and mobile gaming will be huge), followed by Richard de Booij of Wannahaves who talked about his experiences of doing business in China (among others about his cooperation with Tudou.com).

Part 1 of the presentation that I gave on Monday, other parts see below this message

After the presentations Dorrit Gruijters presented the book that the Chinareis participants wrote about New Media and trends in China (in Dutch). I wrote the chapter about online games, but had not seen the book yet. I was quite impressed by the quality of most of the articles (I just read the book on the plane), and the great pictures in it. Not sure if the book is for sale, but if you’re interested to obtain a copy send a mail to info (at) interimic (dot) com.

The conference was followed by a drinks, finger food and a buffet, and I talked to many different people (I collected quite a stack of business cards). My dad was also at the conference, so I also managed to have a glass of wine with him. Always nice! Around 8 PM most of the participants went home, and the speakers and organization committee went for dinner at Singel 101 in Amsterdam. A very nice restaurant as well! Vincent Everts showed us his latest gadgets and Tze’s 16 month daughter managed to get our attention by first throwing Tze’s Blackberry on the ground (that disintegrated into several pieces that spread all over the restaurant – Vincent filmed it, so it might be online already) and later threw her iPhone in the risotto…

Around 11 PM Sam and I decided to go for some drinks. We ended up at one of Amsterdam’s nicest bars, ‘t Spui-tje in the Spuistraat, and had some drinks there. Around 1 AM we got back to our hotel room and I fell asleep almost right away.

I got up at 6 AM to do some work, pack my suitcase and have breakfast. At 8:30 I met with the producers of a Dutch TV program and after that I did an interview with a Dutch magazine. Then I worked on mails a bit before heading to Spill Group headquarters in Hilversum. After a couple of meetings there I went off to the airport, had a few drinks in the lounge and boarded the plane to Shanghai together with Sam around 6 PM. It was a short but very good trip. But after 8 intercontinental flights in less than 8 weeks I have seen enough airplanes. One more trip to the AdTech conference in Singapore next week and then I can hopefully stay in Shanghai for a while.

My presentation during the China New Media event on YouTube:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

It’s been a while since I last wrote about my little baby boy Scott. He is growing up fast: even though he is not even 6 months old, he is about 70 cm tall and has a weight of 9 kilogram. And he is such a sweet boy, he hardly ever cries and smiles at us all the time. He makes me happy each time I see him, and I miss him every time I am going on a business trip (I am writing this while in the business lounge at Pudong airport on my way to Holland, and I miss him now already!). He is almost starting to crawl now, he easily turns around from his tummy to his back and the other way around and he can also use his arms to move himself around like the arms of a clock. Just moving forward is something he did not figure out yet.

He is also making more and more sounds, but no real words yet (or is ababa a word?). Likely he will start talking later than other babies, because we are trying to raise him tri-lingual (Chinese, English and Dutch). At least according to the books it then takes a bit longer before the baby will form meaningful words, we’ll see. One thing is certain, having a baby is the best thing that ever happened to me. This is something I could not have imagined a year ago, but it is absolutely fantastic to have a little baby. And as people tell me, it will only get better!

Since a couple of weeks Scott has his own page on Flickr with all his pictures, so if you want to see him growing up go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottvanderchijs/

During the week we spent in Tanzania I was surprised to see how big this countries potential is. Among others there are huge natural resources and also tourism has only just started. I saw numerous business opportunities, without even really thinking about it. But the strange thing is that when you walk on the streets of Moshi you just see young men sitting around doing nothing. Occasionally they get up to try to sell you something you don’t need or want, or just to ask you for money, but for the rest they just seem to do nothing. From early morning until late at night. Women seem to do most of the work, they carry goods (on their heads) or kids (on their back), do the house work and even work the fields. And the men are just sitting in the shade talking to each other, and they seem to be happy doing so. It surprised me, not only because they let the women do the work, but especially that they do not see the potential to make money.

It looks like the only people that see the opportunity and also seize it, are the Chinese. By coincidence we got to meet a young entrepreneurial Chinese lady while in Moshi. During lunch on our first day we decided to head out to a different restaurant. Not knowing what kind of restaurants would be good, we asked a taxi driver. He told us that there was a good Indian restaurant in Moshi, and he would take us there. Fine with us, as long as we would not get Chinese food we did not really mind. So he drives off with us and 10 minutes later we drive into…. The Panda Chinese restaurant! The taxi driver did not understand that there was a difference, and we decided to just go ahead. As long as they had a cold beer we were fine. The place was not bad actually: a small villa with a nice garden and a terrace, in the Shanty Town part of Moshi. We ordered some dishes and when they arrived we were pleasantly surprised by the taste, it was authentic Chinese! So we asked the African waitress whether the cook was from China, and whether we could talk to him/her.

A minute later a Chinese lady around 30 years old turns up, Ms. Feng Yu. She is not only the cook but also the owner of the restaurant. Originally she hails from Chengdu and has been in Tanzania for several years already. Despite her young age she not only owns this restaurant but is also co-owner of a small chicken farm. We asked her how she ended up in Moshi, which is not the most logical place in the world to start a business, and she just answered “I guess I just took the wrong bus”. We did not feel she was very happy here, but at least she seemed to be successful. She told us that for a while she was the only Chinese person in Moshi, but now there were several more. Some had started a factory, and soon her brother would join to set up a massage place (with masseuses from China). Smart idea, after our Kilimanjaro trip I would have loved to have a good leg massage, and with Kili tourism on the rise there certainly will be a market for this.

Seeing entrepreneurial Chinese here confirms what you read in the foreign media, the Chinese are slowly taking over the economy in several African countries. They are smart, willing to work hard and take risks – some of the reasons why I like to work in China. I just wonder what the reaction of unemployed inhabitants of Moshi will be once the Chinese start to make serious money.

When we arrived in Tanzania we decided to stay one day in Moshi before starting our hike up Kilimanjaro. We used the day to check out Moshi itself and then found out that the town actually has a golf course. The course is part of the Moshi Club, an old colonial-style club that was set up in the 1920’s. You can still feel the former atmosphere, but due to mismanagement the club had gone down the drain over the past couple of years. There are some tennis courts as well, but judging from how overgrown they are I think they have not been used for many years.

Because we did not bring our own set of golf clubs we had to rent them from the manager. In his office we saw that membership had decreased from about 150 paying members 3 years ago to just 43 members this year. Not enough to run a golf course, even in Tanzania. The club house was dilapidated and only served drinks and no food anymore. But the course itself was still quite nice, although some of the greens looked more like an average fairway, and the fairways at some place were more like the rough. And the rough was like a real jungle! Despite all this we played a nice round of golf. Because we did not expect to play golf on the slopes of Kilimanjaro we did not bring any golf clothes, and therefore we were wearing our hiking boots on the course. Nobody said anything of course.
We used one caddy, whose main function was to carry our clubs and look for our balls (even on the fairway you often could not locate them without searching). The caddy tried to give advice, but that was often counterproductive, so we sort of ignored him. And I was still carrying my laptop, the first (and probably last) time that I ever play a round of golf with a laptop in my backpack!

During our round several other people approached us with advice and some with golf balls. First we thought they wanted to give us the golf balls, but then it turned out they wanted USD 1 per used ball. A bit steep. We asked if we could keep them with us during our round and only pay if we would need them. But they did not like it, and they told us they were hungry so wanted to have the money now. A bit of a weird experience.
But there were more strange things: our caddy also hit a couple of balls every now and then (never seen that before), some guys were watching us from the green that we were aiming for (and were surprised to almost get a golf ball on their heads), it seemed the whole 9 holes had to be mowed with one hand mower (at least it was gas-powered, but it took 5 people 10 minutes just to start it – while we were putting on the green a few meters from the machine), and when we mentioned that we would need a taxi back to Moshi our caddy suddenly ran off to a road close by to charter a friend’s car!

It was a nice and relaxed afternoon though, but we certainly did not manage to play our handicap. And it was very cheap, we paid something like USD 30 for three people, a caddy and a set of clubs. Not bad for the only golf course with a view of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Gary, my dad and I made it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro earlier this week. It took us exactly 4 days and 2 hours to get from the entrance of Kilimanjaro National Park to the top and back again to the entrance gate.

Especially the summit climb was quite hard. It was a freezing cold night climb in total darkness, and the higher we climbed the less oxygen there was. We left our camp 1200 meters below the top just after midnight to arrive at the crater rim at 5:30 AM, just in time for sunrise. After the sun came up it became a bit warmer (but still below zero), and we then hiked/climbed over the crater rim for 1.5 hours to Uhuru Peak where we arrived just after 7 AM.

We were the only ones climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro that night, so we had the whole mountain to ourselves. This is apparently quite unique, because climbing the mountain is becoming more and more popular.

After spending 10 minutes at the top we had to start descending. Although I felt pretty good getting to the top and could breathe quite normally, while going down I suddenly got headaches and felt extremely tired. I had to stop every few minutes to catch my breath. Very likely this was because of the high altitude, and indeed the symptoms got less the lower we got. Quite scary, especially when our guide told us every year 2 or 3 people die on top of Kilimanjaro because of altitude sickness.

I will post some more about our trip to Tanzania and the climb here over the next days, and will also upload more pictures to my Flickr account.

I am sitting in an internet cafe in the town of Moshi (Tanzania), about 40 km from the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Internet is pretty bad here, but at least we found a place to go online. No way to use my own laptop though, and the word wifi does not seem to exist yet in Swahili!

So far everything went pretty smooth. We arrived in Arusha last night after an uneventful flight, and took a small van to Moshi. Here we are staying at a basic (not even airconditioning) but clean hotel, even with its own swimming pool. I woke up at 4:30 AM from the call to prayers at the local mosque, but luckily managed to get back to sleep afterwards.

Breakfast was pretty good (pancakes, eggs, fruit and coffee) and after breakfast we decided to walk to town (a few kilometers). The hotel staff warned us that we had to watch our bags and camera’s (“the people here are bad”), but we did not feel threatened at all. Very friendly people who all greet us with “Jambo”. Just smile back and say Jambo as well!

We decided to walk over the railroad tracks to town (When in Rome…), together with all the locals. It’s not only the quickest way to walk (no potholes and trucks trying to hit you), but you also have the best view as the railroad is slightly elevated. We felt at home right away, because everybody here rides on Phoenix bicycles – Made in Shanghai! Pretty cool.

Tomorrow morning we are off to the foot of the mountain and we should be back by next week Wednesday. Gary, my dad and I look very much forward to the climb. It will be difficult, especially the last two days, but we do this because we like a challenge. Until we’re back I will not have any email or internet access (even GPRS is not working, so I cannot even Twitter), so the next blog post and my pictures will have to wait for at least one week.

This weekend Grace and I went to France for her 5-year INSEAD MBA reunion. Time flies, it seems like a much shorter time ago that she spent a year on the INSEAD campuses in Fontainebleau and Singapore. But it’s really 5 years, I did not even blog yet at that time (I made a first attempt during SARS, which happened while she was in France). I visited her many times during that year, so I knew quite a lot of her classmates. And of course many of them now work in Asia, so we regularly meet with some of them. We decided to take Scott with us, at 5-month old it was his first intercontinental trip. Not sure if that was really such a good idea, the flight was certainly not as relaxed as the average flight to Europe, and we’ll probably wait a few months before we take him with us on another long flight.

The 5-year reunion was held at the Fontainebleau campus (less than one hour south of Paris) and was organized in the same weekend as the yearly INSEAD Summer Ball. It was a 3-day event (Fri-Sun), but we only joined around 9 PM on Friday night. Because we were quite tired due to traveling and jet lag we just had a glass of champagne at the cocktail party and joined part of the dinner (with among others an unlimited supply of my favorite food: foie gras!). The next morning we had breakfast at the INSEAD residence (where we were staying) with Scott and some former classmates, and then went to see a lecture on campus. We missed the first one (on Blue Ocean Strategy, which was developed at INSEAD) but joined the one about “INSEAD now and then”, comparing how INSEAD has developed over the years. The class was given by several students together with INSEAD dean Frank Brown.

Some interesting statistics: 25% of all INSEAD MBA graduates end up working in Asia, for example, and there are more than 25 countries with alumni networks with more than 100 members each. This really makes INSEAD the Business School of the World (INSEAD’s official slogan). Harvard and other US top schools are much more local, with most people still ending up working in the US. I think in an international world it could give INSEAD an advantage. And not only for students. Harvard professors have to live within 50 miles of Boston. INSEAD professors can live in either France, Singapore or Abu Dhabi (executive education campus), and some even live in the US and fly in for courses. Considering how difficult it is to get and retain top faculty, this may be another advantage of INSEAD over other schools. I know a couple of Harvard grads that read my blog, so just to clarify, I think Harvard is still a great education with excellent students and staff, but I think they may be too focused on the US. Feel free to let me know in the comments if I am wrong.

During the class a student from Zimbabwe who is at INSEAD on a scholarship gave a very moving speech. Basically the scholarship was the only way for him to go to INSEAD, and it also gives him the possibility to go back to Zimbabwe later on to help build up the country (he does not have to stay in Europe to get a high-paying position to pay back his loans). I thought about this for quite a while, and think there may be a business idea in here. In Europe paying EUR 50,000 to study for a year is not cheap, but for many people from third world countries it is totally impossible. If these people are very good (and they must be in order to enter a top B-school), why is there no mechanism for them to obtain funding? I think there could be some very creative solutions for this. I don’t have time to work on this idea, but maybe it can give one of my readers some inspiration for a new venture?

After the lectures a class picture was taken (with Scott and his proud mother on the front row), followed by an excellent lunch (buffet style to ensure I would gain some additional weight). In the afternoon there was a French market and a wine tasting, but after buying Scott some INSEAD baby clothes we decided to make a walk through Fontainebleau. It’s a beautiful old town that of course has not changed much over the past 5 years. Our lives are completely different from 5 years ago, but here there were still the same shops and restaurants as when Grace lived here. In a way that’s nice actually. My life always changes, and I have no idea what I will be doing in 5 years, but some parts of the world will remain basically the same.

At night we had dinner in a restaurant along the Seine river with my parents (who came along to baby-sit Scott. If you read this, thanks a lot for that!), and around 11 PM we went to the Chateau de Fontainebleau for the INSEAD Summer Ball. This ball is the biggest party of the year at INSEAD and a strictly black-tie affair. Most of the people at the ball are current students, and I suddenly realized how young they all seemed to be. Well, I suppose that was the same 5 years ago, but I am just getting older. The ball was a great party, and of course the location in one of the nicest castles in France made it even nicer. There were three separate parties going on: a big one in a transparent tent in the courtyard overlooking the pond, a smaller one with a jazz/lounge band in a big room on the second floor and one with a (at least) 2 live acts (one with oldies hits and a salsa band). At midnight there was a big fireworks spectacle combined with loud classical music, the combination made quite an impression on me actually. This was one of the highlights of the night for me. We came home around 3 AM, completely exhausted because of the party (and still a bit the jet lag).

Sunday morning we had breakfast and went back to the campus with Scott to takes some pictures. The weather was sunny and not too warm, and lots of former and current students were enjoying the sunshine on campus. Scott also enjoyed it and if we did not had to drive back to Holland we probably would have stayed longer (there was a big barbecue planned at 12). But because of our busy schedules we had to go back. It was a short but very nice weekend, and we’re thinking about coming back in 5 years for the 10-year reunion.

Because of the three-day mourning period all entertainment sites in China were asked to shut down from Monday until Wednesday. Gary woke us up with a phone call very early on Monday morning to inform us about the new rules (Tudou was probably among the first sites to be notified), and I called the Spill Group Asia technical and marketing people to discuss what to do. We did not receive a notice yet, and were therefore not sure if our sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com would also have to follow it. I checked the internet (it was around 1 AM on Monday) and noticed that none of our gaming competitors had adjusted their sites yet. I also could not find any information about the ban online yet, so I put it on Twitter to see if other people had more information. Incidentally I broke the news on Twitter by writing about it (see for example this article) and Scobleizer picked it up right away after Fuzheado retweeted my message to him. Then things went fast and within minutes I had 30 new followers on Twitter.

Tudou was already working on a new temporary site, but I was still not sure what to do. If you shut down your site, but the competition does not do it you might lose a lot of regular players. Spill Group still had not received an official notice, and therefore we decided to wait a few hours to see what would happen. The next morning at 10 AM none of the flash game sites in China had changed anything yet, but most of the video sites had implemented the changes already (except for QQ video). From a business point of view it’s not easy to make a decision to close down your site temporarily, but at that moment I decided that it was not appropriate to keep the site up when the whole of China is mourning and especially not when you are specifically asked to close it down. So even though the competition kept their sites online we put a specially created memorial page online.

The competition was probably looking at us, because not much later they also took their sites offline. Traffic wise Spill Group Asia’s sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com are no. 2 in China among all flash games sites with about 20 million unique IP’s per month (4399.com is no. 1), but it was nice to see that they are looking at us to decide what to do. But not just that, they probably liked our design and copied it to their server. First 4399.com and later also 7k7k.com. It seems our designers did an excellent job! Strange enough shortly after that our stats went up a lot. We had no clue why, we had gotten a lot of traffic during the day from search engines and sites like hao123.com, but it was quite steady until our competitors copied our site. And then we realized what happened: they not only copied the design, but also our site measurement code that was embedded in the site. Thanks for giving us some insightful information on your traffic compared to ours, dear competitors!

After the others copied our design we decided to redesign our mourning page and add the possibility for people to leave a comment. Right now we get one new comment every 2 seconds! Of course it did not take long for 7k7k.com to also add the comment function, but 4399.com still only has the static page. I don’t mind them copying everything we do, it’s always better to be a leader than a follower. And in this way our message and wishes for the victims will be spread out even further.