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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?

Labels: China Foo, cnbloggercon, Conference, Orange