Just finished a fabulous “Museum” day in London. We started at morning to meet the speakers of the evening debated with a rough topic on “The New China: What does the First Emperor’s legacy mean in a globalised world?”. We met some really interesting guys to exchange some interesting ideas(including a recent eco-protestor who put mask on a warrior’s face, which could be seen as an emergency if it’s in China), actually I just feel the debate would be more like a panel discussion without flame wars.

We were taken by Jane Portal, curator of this over-half-year-long exhibition of “The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army“, to make a short touring. I was exited that it’s the first time I see clearly real Terracotta Warrior. Its simply amazing not only because of the whole exhibition format navigated in a creative logic, but also the works themselves. Actually, its very hard to imagine how people keep the craft skills in such a media-less age and mass produce so many warriors like modern factory. As a trained engineer, I was too much impressed by the process of engineering. Unfortunately, those techniques wasn’t respected and reserved to keep China a innovative country in the later centuries.

Our debate, as one of the parallel program with the exhibition, attracted about 300 people. My blogger friend Cathy Ma was lucky to get a seat because of my speaker advantage. It’s very hard talk for the speakers including Me. Jon Snow from BBC Channel 4 moderated the panel after Neil MacGregor (Director of the British Museum) gave a warm-up speech. Then four speakers including Jonathan Fenby (auhtor a the book Jiang Kai-shi) , Sun Shuyun (documentary producer ), Steve Tsang, and me started our talks over “legacy” based on the understanding from different background. I mentioned the “Great Firewall” behind China Internet users is just the legacy mindset of “control” by communist rulers. And the most wise choice for the ruling party is to remove it to prove their over-propagandaed harmonious society and peaceful rising. The collective intelligence from counting Internet users won’t just wait for the non-progressive democratic regime if they don’t like to change their mindset. Unfortunately, we didn’t see such change even after the passing 17th Party Congress.

China Ambassador, Ms. Fu Ying, also joined tonight’s event. She commented that the best way to understand legacy is to forget it. It’s somewhat a quite safe comment for her role. I was told she is very nice and smart lady though Steve remind me to be cautious after I return China. I noted but somewhat feel easy with that. It’s not the first time I speak publicly about Great Firewall in China. It’s truth that everyone should knows and change it together. I’m happy to see there are more and more Chinese Internet users(especially those millions of bloggers) started to talk about it explicitly and try to find constructive solutions to persuade government to rethink about this stupid mindset. In a modern globalized China, we don’t need such legacy, instead, we need inherit the blood of creativity in Terracotta Warriors.

I enjoyed the talks from other speakers too. They are all China experts rather insightful than me about the history of China. I didn’t see the flame wars in the debate though. Some friends told me after the debate that I’m somewhat too optimistic to the future of China. I think I should be because the paradigm of the whole world is changing from 1.0(top-down) to 2.0(bottom-up) even the Great Wall mindset unchanged today in China.

The Guardian, cooperator of the debate, will have podcasts published online soon to get the full script and audio of the debate. Stay tuned. (update: The guardian podcasting has been published here and Jonathan’s long review of the debate, “Continuity and change“)

I was in Beijing in the passing three weeks joining a series of conferences: The 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference, Orange Labs Web 2.0 conference and China Foo(Foo Camp China). Now I’m in London preparing a non-technical talk at The British Museum, just as a relaxation.

As one of the organizer(we call volunteers) of Chinese Blogger Conference, I can’t make very objective telling to the conference on whether its successful or not, but we did make some sparkling because people including the audiences made it together. The collaborations and collective intelligence are dramatic like the post-conference wiki-style report on Memedia.cn. We tried hard to make the conference a platform to demo some new ideas and technologies, including SNS, micro-blogging, tagging, personal portal and other mashups. Jiwai.de, a young copycat of Twitter.com, shined a lot at the conference because they provided a big screen to link people inside/outside the conference hall to publish their any ideas about the conference and sessions. We collected over 100 bloggers resonations and over thousand photos on either Flickr or Yupoo(no wonder we were very optimistic about the future of social media in China). Thus the cnbloggercon was very 2.0, though the conference hall we selected is very 1.0. So I rate the Chinese Blogger Conference is 1.8.

The web 2.0 conference by Orange Labs Beijing chose their office space as venue. It’s very creative space with two-righ-angled areas(Like “L”) between the aisle. However, the content and format are somewhat boring though I myself was one of the keynote speakers the first day. It’s not easy for a tradition business to advance itself to web 2.0 pace, actually Orange Labs made a lot effort to ensure the success of the conference. I’m sure that most of the audience are very 1.0. I only saw few blog posts after the conference, neither from Orange Labs people themselves. Benjamin’s post is quite good though I wish there were more. The conference is somewhat 1.0 with a 2.0 venue. Overall, I rate it 1.2 .

For China Foo, based on a very popular event in US, is also well known in Chinese geeks and entrepreneurs community. Plus O’Reily’s brand name, many people told me they wanted to join the first Foo Camp China event. Unfortunately, many of them can’t make it because of the time lag between Chinese Blogger Conference and China Foo(5 days gap between the two events). So I guess only those in Beijing can particitipate easily. And unluckily they chose a bad hotel without high quality Wifi installation. I can’t make the full day participation because my flight was reschedule by London host to one day advance. But we don’t need worry about people’s passion on it, there were also many pictures posted online about this event. And whether As overall, I rate it 1.5 .

So we can see the conference world is pacing its way to 2.0 age, however, there are still many resistances attached to them in different context. Just like Rebbecca said, in those one close to 2.0, you will feel being spoiled, by contrast, you feel annoyed in those conferences still 1.0. I yet to study the differences of output in a accurate way, but the feeling is there. The next meeting I attend will be expected very 1.0, what’s the feeling I will be?

几家创业公司不约而同地遇到一个问题，那就是用户增长缓慢，却还要花费一大堆时间去做一种奇怪的事情，那就是“自我阉割”，以便适应中国的所谓河蟹政策。 不用说，要耗费人力财力，也完全得不到用户的支持，更不可能讨好任何官员。对他们来说，自我阉割的服务只是商业机构一厢情愿，总不能算作他们的功绩，因为 并没有这条光明正大的理由来邀功。如果你不阉割一点点，他们也许会哇哇叫，但是即使你阉割成为废人，他们也绝对不会给你颁奖。

所以对创业公司，就面临一个选择：要么进步，要么退步。进步就是努力寻求改变现状的方法，让忠诚的用户继续支持自己。退步就是妥协，做一大堆无用功，耗费掉宝贵的时间和金钱，进入一个失去忠诚用户的轨道。古话“逆水行舟，不进则退”，说得还中肯，因为不积极去寻找进步的方法，本身也是相对的退步。但是如果主动退步，那就难以挽救了，连进步的机会都可能没有了。一个公司，做好一件事情被人称道很不容易，也必然会有累积的用户效应。中国无法有原始的创新，是因为人们背负很多压力和阻碍。但是如果能够在如此的压力下找到另类的创新，就会不断地找到机会，获得本土甚至全球的用户尊重和价值。走错了，就会前功尽弃，事倍功半。

大到那个挣扎的谷歌太监，小到创业公司，都是如此。

爱因斯坦曾经说有两种对待生活的方法。一是把什么都不看成奇迹，一是把什么都看成奇迹。There are only two ways to live your life. One is though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. 我属于后者，而且相信奇迹会越来越多，因为我们有了社会性大脑的远景。其实老爱说的奇迹是一种生命感受，你或者当真，或者不以为然。

在北京的晴朗下午，在圆明园内外和朋友闲逛，和左右咖啡的小猫们一起瞎聊，路过“非常建筑”，谈到张永和与另一个很久没有谋面的朋友。突然间那位远方的朋友打电话进来，令我们惊奇不已。这是一种无法解释的奇迹，无法解释它也就一笑而过。

另一种则是“使能”的奇迹，新的微内容(micro-content)工具让人们可以释放被脑壳封闭的大脑思想，所以透过Meme发现谁和你在同时想一件事情正在成为可能。

当我正在伦敦这里想Norman Mailer的书也许在今天的书店中热卖的时候，Undersound冒出来他的想法，在秒的尺度上几乎同时发生。两个人的并发还不是奇迹，其实也许有千万的人在同时想一件事情，需要更多的连接神经就能够发生“社会性雪崩”了，这种思维的雪崩放大到社会尺度，可以想象发生任何奇迹。

CNBloggerCon，开幕在即。