In all the years that I have lived in Shanghai I had never been to Chongming Island. Especially since the tunnel and mega bridge from Pudong to the island had been finished in late 2009 there was no excuse anymore not to go there, so this weekend we decided to drive over. I got up at 8 AM to buy some food and drinks for a picnic on the island and just after 9 we left our house. Despite it being a Sunday morning it was quite busy on the outer ring road and it took us almost 1.5 hours just to get to Chongming.

The island is located in the mouth of Yangtze river, opposite Pudong. I had seen it tens of times already from the air, flights from Japan and the US often come in over Chongming, and I was actually quite curious to take a look on the ground.

Once you get off the bridge you can continue the toll road a few more kilometers until it stops (they are still extending it to Jiangsu province) and you end up on 4-lane roads that were packed. I was glad that I had asked my driver to drive us today, I hate traffic jams, and especially those in China where people keep on trying to cut in. The countryside was a bit like some of the Dutch northern provinces, very flat, not many trees and lots of canals and other waterways. The island is just above sea level and is likely one of the first to disappear when sea levels should start rising later this century (they do have dikes though, just like Holland).

After another 45 minutes or so we arrived at our first destination, the Dong Ping national park in the middle of the island. Like most Chinese parks it was very busy here, despite the steep entrance fee (RMB 70, or about USD 11 per person). But like everywhere in the world, if you move away more than 200 meters from the main roads you hardly see any people anymore. So we made a pleasant walk through the forest, accompanied by Chinese pop songs on hidden loudspeakers in trees (also a common thing in Chinese parks).

After a while we got hungry, so we decided to look for a place to have a picnic lunch. We found a picnic table at a quiet road and set up all our food there (among others French baguettes, croissants, Camembert, Emmentaler, jams, and hot dogs for the kids). Not long after we sat down some Chinese tourists walking by saw us and started taking pictures of us. As usual in this country quickly a small crowd developed, and some even came close to our table to take a look. Saying something to them in English (“Hello young man, do you like our food?”) normally scared them away quickly. Over the years I learned that speaking Chinese has the opposite effect, it only attracts more people. I didn’t mind though, I have gotten used to it over the years, especially since I have my kids.

We managed to have lunch without being disturbed too much, and after finishing our food and drinks we continued our walk. The park is nice, but very touristy. There are a lot of things to do for tourists, but we decided to walk back to the entrance and move on to our next destination. That was the Xiasha wetlands, on the Northern part of the island.

These wetlands are right outside the Chongming island dikes, and are either inundated or muddy depending on the tide. The wetland are a few hundred meters wide and wooden boardwalks make it possible to walk through the wetlands without getting wet feet. They are beautiful, but we had the bad luck that it started raining (not a very big deal, we had rain coats) and that there were tons of other tourists.

Generally I don’t have a problem with a lot of tourists, but it turned out that most of them were not interested in the beautiful nature of the wetlands, but only in catching small crabs. Almost every small group of tourists had bought sticks with a small iron loop on top with some meat on it to catch crabs. And while doing this they blocked the boardwalks and you had to avoid their sticks. Pretty annoying, especially when one guy even hit me and Elaine with his stick. Catching crabs is something I used to do as a young child, but it’s not something I would consider doing as a grown up (well, maybe catch one on a beach for fun, and then let it go).

But here everybody seemed to be obsessed to catch the tiny animals. They seemed too small to eat, and knowing how polluted the Yangtze river is here I don’t think eating them can be healthy anyway. But whole groups of adults were screaming when one of them caught a tiny crab. Some even jumped in the mud to catch a small one, getting mud all over their clothes… Funny to watch, but not my cup of tea for sure!

Luckily closest to the sea the tide came in, so there were no crabs, and therefore also not a lot of people anymore. The walk there was a lot more pleasant, but it was also quite windy and cool. So we decided to head back, especially because the kids were also getting tired.

The drive back went very smoothly. On the island we still had a bit of a traffic jam, but once we were on the highway to the bridge we could speed up and were back home in less than 45 minutes. Chongming is a nice day trip from Shanghai, you feel far away from the huge metropolis even though the city center is only about 25 kilometers from the island. But don’t go on weekends or national holidays, because the crowds spoil some of the pleasure. There are lots of bikers on Chongming as well, it may be a nice trip to bike out there (or take your bike on the ferry) and then drive partly around the island. Recommended!

Over the past days the Internet speed in Shanghai has been horrible again. At UnitedStyles rendering something that should take 30 seconds in a normal situation took up to 20 minutes yesterday, meaning that it is impossible to work. When I was in Europe a few days ago talking to Joop Dorresteijn (who was in Shanghai) I advised him at a certain point to just send the staff home. You can’t work at an Internet company without a decent Internet connection to the world outside the Great Firewall.

Over the years I had my share of negative experiences, but it seems to be getting worse. Connections time out and without a private VPN it’s almost impossible to jump out of the biggest LAN (local area network) in the world.

Tonight I was particularly frustrated when I was trying to test a website hosted on Amazon, and each time I was trying to check something the connection timed out. I got so upset that I even tweeted about it. Fellow entrepreneur Alex Duncan then replied with a blog post that he had written out of similar frustration 2 months ago.

In this post he calculated that at the US multinational he used to work for, the staff spent an average of 30-45 minutes extra per day because of the slow Internet. That means a full 3 weeks of lost productivity (plus added stress and frustration) per year! Can you imagine the macro impact of this in a country like China? Of course only a relatively small number of people regularly uses the foreign Internet, but still the total effect must be huge.

Alex mentioned that he might eventually consider to leave China because of this. Naturally I have pondered about that as well, but for me the advantages of China generally (still) outweigh the disadvantages of the terrible Internet. But at times I am so frustrated that I can’t wait until my next trip outside the Great Firewall.

Only in China I guess… The picture of this billboard was taken in Changchun airport, it makes you wonder whether the designer actually knows what happened to the Twin Towers.

Original source: Reddit user @dktoday (through Shanghaiist.com)

Over the past 4 days Stars 2011 in Stein am Rhein took place, an event for the ‘global leaders of tomorrow’ to discuss the challenges and opportunities that we will see over the next 10-20 year. Among others speakers like Bertelsmann CEO Harmut Ostrowski and politicians-turned-corporates like Lord Hastings from KPMG and Mona Sutphen from UBS shared their insights with the group of top managers.

I was invited to talk about the future of online media, discussing how online media changed the world over the past 18 years since I first started using the Internet. I actually wanted to say ‘since I first fired up a web browser’, but browsers didn’t exist yet at that time. Netscape was only founded a year after and I was using the Gopher protocol to make my first small steps into cyberspace. Hard to believe how difficult it was to go online in those days, my kids will probably never be able to understand that – good for them!

The Internet has literally become a second brain to me. Wherever I am I always carry my iPhone, iPad and laptop with me so I can instantly look up what I need. I think finding the right information online is one of the most important skills that kids should learn in school. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know anything anymore, however. I think people will always judge others by how much those persons know and if they can put that knowledge to use, instead of how fast they can find the right information. But being able to instantly find additional information makes life a lot easier and fun.

In my presentation I also touched upon how fast news spreads and how social media are changing politics. Not all politicians may embrace social media yet, but it is a fact that the Arab Spring was only possible because of Twitter and Facebook. I argued that this could not have happened even one or two years earlier, simply because there were not enough people online yet in social networks to get the required snowball effect. And this is not only happening in developing countries: also the riots in England this summer were coordinated through social media.

Don’t underestimate what this could mean for businesses – whether good or bad, fact is that the management is no longer in charge of the conversation. If top management does not embrace social media they may be in for an unpleasant surprise. But don’t see it as a threat, if management is entrepreneurial (which should be the case, right?) they should see it as an opportunity that their business can profit from.

New very profitable businesses suddenly emerged (social games anyone?) because of the changing role of online media. It’s forcing many traditional companies to quickly adapt their business models. I discussed the book, music, newspaper and TV industry in more detail with my ideas about what they did right and wrong and what their future will look like. In my opinion this is just the beginning – we ain’t seen nothing yet.

I enjoy giving talks like this, especially to groups that are not as focused on the web as I am, or to peers that like to challenge me on my purposely rather bold statements (“I don’t believe in privacy”, “If you don’t want to see others what you put on the web, you probably shouldn’t have put it there in the first place”). Above I embedded the slides that I used as guideline for my talk.

If you have a conference or corporate event where you would like me to speak feel free to get in touch with me directly or through the China Speakers Bureau.

I was quite impressed by the medieval town of Stein am Rhein in North Switzerland where I spent the last weekend. I already put up a blog post on Sunday with a few pictures, and here are a few more that give a good overview of the town and its surroundings.

View over Stein am Rhein from the Hohenklingen caste

Vineyards in the hills above Stein am Rhein

Countryside with vineyards around Stein am Rhein

View over the Rhine during lunch at the Chlosterhof Hotel

The Rhine is still very clean when it passes by Stein am Rhein

View of Stein am Rhein and the Chlosterhof hotel

View from the bridge in Stein am Rhein

Stein am Rhein as seen from the bridge

Stein am Rhein with the Hohenklingen castle

After speaking about the influence of online media in Stein am Rhein, one of my points about how social media has changed our lives was proven on the way back to Shanghai. Yanik Cantieni, a former Daimler colleague and friend of mine (we were both on the international management trainee program 15 years ago and we later both moved to China/Hong Kong for the automotive multinational), saw on Facebook that I had been flying through Frankfurt over the weekend and asked when I would fly back. I told him I would transfer at FRA on Monday night and by coincidence he also had a late night flight that evening from there!

I only see Yanik about once a year or so, we live in different places and both work a bit too hard. The last time was in November last year when I was speaking at an Internet conference in Jakarta. At that time Yanik was still working as CFO of Mercedes-Benz Indonesia, but since then he has moved back to Europe and he is now a vice-president for Magna. Usually when we meet for dinner and drinks the evening only ends when the bars close (work hard, play hard!), but because I only had less than two hours to change planes we had to pack our stories of the past year in a shorter time frame.

Yanik picked me up at my arrival gate and we then went for drinks in the Senator lounge at FRA. This one has a good bar with a bar tender that mixes some excellent cocktails. We decided to stay with Weizenbier though; I was thirsty and I am not a big fan of mixes right before going on an overnight flight.

We both had quite a roller coaster year, not only in terms of our business but also of private lives. But I guess that’s normal when you’re in your late 30s and try to get the most out of life? I won’t go into detail – my life may be semi-public but Yanik is in corporate life where privacy is still valued a bit more :>. While walking to our respective gates (coincidentally his gate was almost next to mine with only a 5 minute difference in departure time) we concluded that we both had enough material to write a book! It was cool to catch up again Yanik, let’s talk a bit longer over the next couple of months somewhere on this planet.

I am spending the weekend in Stein am Rhein in Switzerland where I speak at the Stars 2011 conference. This is a bi-annual conference in Switzerland and China where 80 ‘Leaders of the Next Generation’ come together to discuss about the challenges and choices for the next decade.

The participants are leading figures aged between 35 and 40 years old from the world of business, science, politics and NOGOs, all hand picked by their own bosses. Think partners in top consulting and accounting firms, country managers for multinationals or directors of NGOs. I am not one of them of course, but was invited as a speaker on the influence of online media. I will give a talk on Monday in a section on “The Media and its Changing Influence”. Among others Bertelsmann CEO Hartmut Ostrowski will also speak in this session.

I look forward to the talk, because after spending since Saturday morning with the group of participants I realize that many are far behind in social media use – at least in comparison to the people that I normally work with. I spent quite some time talking to people here about why they should use Twitter, Facebook or other social media. Several argued that they are too busy, but actually most have never tried it and don’t really know what they are missing or how it can help your business.

In contrast to other conferences that I normally attend nobody was using iPads or laptops during the talks, and there were no Stars hashtags on Twitter. I found a couple of tweets from participants, but most were actually using pen and paper to make notes. I realize of course that social media usage at big organizations is different than that of start-ups and that is fine. But I think it’s important that this group of future multinational CEOs realizes how online media has changed the world and how it will keep on changing it.

This morning I was surprised by two of the speakers when they among others discussed the use of Twitter and Facebook. English politician Lord Michael Hastings of Scarisbrick (Global Head of Citizenship at KPMG) and Prof. Joachim Bitterlich (former foreign policy advisor to Helmut Kohl and currently a.o. board member at Veolia) both argued that Twitter and Facebook lead to a focus on short term decision making and don’t allow you to step back and take a longer term view. Having that opinion is fine of course, but not when you first announce that you don’t use Twitter and Facebook! It’s so typical that people who don’t use social media seem to be the biggest critics of it.

When Joachim Bitterlich then called mobile devices ‘awful devices’ (“During most of my career we did not use Blackberries and that worked just fine”) and Lord Hastings nodded in agreement I could hardly believe it. They are very smart and experienced men, but without being disrespectful I have the feeling that life has moved faster than they have and it almost seems they don’t want to acknowledge that. Generally they have excellent views on the world and the strategic risks for the future, but this part made my hair stand up on end.

The location of the symposium is in Stein am Rhein, a late-medieval town on the river Rhein. I took the Friday midnight flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt and the shuttle flight to Zurich from there. A driver picked me up from the airport on Saturday morning and drove me to the town. The hotel we are staying is directly on the Rhine and my room (a suite actually!) is directly on the river, with a huge balcony. On the other side of the Rhine I see the vineyards, it’s an amazing place to spend a few days. The late September weather is also great, sunny with highs in the low 20s Celsius, which makes it even nicer. Before the seminar started yesterday I ran 20 kilometers along the Rhine (a good remedy against jet lag) and it almost felt like a holiday.

I had never been to Stein am Rhein and I have to say it’s a beautiful town, full of old renovated houses. If I understood it correctly the town owns 1% of stock in Novartis and they use this money to renovate the buildings. The conference is held in the Buergerasyl, a renovated building that’s hundreds of years old (one of the participants told me the renovation costs were 13 million EUR just for this building!). An impressive location for a seminar, probably one of the most interesting place I ever spoke at. And tonight we will have cocktails and dinner at the castle of Hohenklingen high above the town and the river, which something really special that I now already look forward to.

All in all the Stars conference is excellent, in terms of participants, content and organization. Most of the speakers are top notch and I had tons of interesting discussions about politics, NGOs, strategic views of the future and (of course) social media. I am very honored that the organization asked me to speak to this group and I am happy that I could fit it into my schedule. I met several people that I will likely stay in touch with and I learned a lot already. Thanks to the organization and the sponsors for putting together such an amazing event!

Last night I was asking Grace about an interview she was going to do with Bloomberg today. She was surprised that I knew about the interview because she didn’t think she mentioned it to me. I told her that she put it in her calendar, so that’s where I saw it. Then she was even more surprised because she didn’t know I could see her Google calendar.

I told her that while I was in the US last week suddenly all her calendar items popped up in my Google calendar. I assumed she was finally convinced of the fact that the more you share the better it is for you, and that she took it to the next level by sharing her calendar publicly. A year ago she was still complaining to me about me sharing my whole life on my blog, on Twitter and Facebook, but now she probably posts more on Weibo (Chinese Twitter) than I do on all social media sites combined. So this could have been a logical step. Or maybe she just wanted me to know when she needed the car and driver without having to tell me. Whatever the reason I found it quite practical.

Because around the same time my colleague Joop Dorresteijin also started to share his Google calendar I thought that Google may have given people an incentive to share calendars. I checked with Joop today and it turned out that it was a coincidence, he had not planned on sharing his personal calendar but only the work related UnitedStyles items. The settings in Google calendar are not very clear and now also some of his private appointments appeared in my timeline.

For Grace it turned out to be a mistake as well. She set up a new MacBook Air and I assume she must have unknowingly changed some settings while importing her old calendar items. She was obviously not too happy that I had access to her calendar without her knowing this, so she changed the settings right away. Well, at least my calendar is not so clogged up anymore. And I will check my own settings to find out with whom I am sharing my calendar!