The focus of the event was to hear brand/agency perspective on IWOM. Future events will focus more on consumer stakeholders.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Sam, your personal skills, experiences, and guanxi are tremendous assets in themselves. But, when you add the power of your esteemed roundtable team, the event promises to be China’s best social media event of the year.

I posted about this event (in hopes of tipping others off) at http://www.indium.com/rickshort.

Sam, I will meet with you in Shanghai after the event to discuss your great success.

The environment we have decided to have is one that allows companies to feel more comfortable to share some of their experiences. Some of our panelists could only get permission to participate if it is off the record. Of course, before and after the actual panel, conversations can be on the record depending on the participant you talk to.

It is not uncommon for commercial events like this to be off the record nor is it uncommon for conversations with reporters and bloggers to be off the record. If you attend any conference related to IWOM, you will likely see us evangelizing about IWOM. If you read through our blogs, especially our Chinese blog, you will see we are evangelizing and sharing our experience in great detail. We decided for this particular event, we wanted to create the most conducive environment for sharing, and this is the decision we made.

We knew that there might be opinions such as yours. Nielsen Buzzmetrics in the US faced similar comments when they hosted such an event (see http://nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/mouthpiece/archives/2006/10/why_we_asked_at.html). We understand your opinion, and at the same time, we hope that you and others can understand ours.