| Jianshuo, I really appreciated your advice in our meetup, especially your analogy about the intricate patterns in the sand at the beach as compared to the Jinmao Tower. Although as I shared, my normal behavior is to build the Jinmao Tower, I want to think about how to allow the emergent things to come to pass in a way that is true to the nature of the blogosphere itself. Thanks for helping us with that insight! I feel you are a bit quick to judge our efforts based on your previous concerns about the lack of focus, the Web 2.0 expansion of the conference, and the commercial pitches. First of all, we don't represent the core of what the CNBloggerCon committee is doing, we are just a small "add-on" for an international delegation. We want to have a very small "footprint" on the beach so as not to take away from the general feel of the conference for the China bloggers. At the same time, we have a mission to bridge the gap of understanding between the East and the West and you obviously share that mission with us. I blogged about our motivations and ideas here: http://cnreviews.com/cnbloggercon/the_seed_of_an_idea_for_a_us-china_blogger_meetup_in_november_20080602.html Given that you already have decided to be a skeptic on CNBloggerCon and by extension our US/China blogger meetup, you can be a valuable sounding board to me by criticizing our plan so that we can improve it and have the most positive effect (and the least negative effect) on the CNBloggerCon conference and the China blogosphere itself. Your sensibilities around the Chinese blogosphere, and your experience with other East-West events like YLF make you an important source of wisdom even if you want to have no involvement in the event. Just like the blind man and the elephant story, you see an overcommercialized, unfocused conference that has lost its way as evidenced by a couple Americans wandering into your office with half-baked ideas about how to get involved. :) However, I see an opportunity to build valuable bridges of understanding and relationships between a small number of Western bloggers and Chinese bloggers in order to be a positive force toward global peace and stability, all starting with a small number of people locked in at some rural restaurant. I look forward to our dialogue and your continued critique of what we are doing! |
I May Not Attend the CNBloggerCon 2008 in Guangzhou