I have been a bit remiss in writing up my China FOO camp experience from November 9-10. FOO Camps are organized by the O'Reilly group to bring together people from a variety of backgrounds who may not ordinarily meet to discuss and explore innovation. Tim O'Reilly is the one who coined the term "Web 2.0" and FOO stands for "Friends of O'Reilly." This event in Beijing was sponsored by IBM, among others.

Others have done a good job summarizing the overall experience, including Tim O'Reilly himself, Tangos , Rebecca MacKinnon, and Marc van der Chijs. Marc has pics here and Keso has pics here.

Among the highlights for me was participating in the discussion of social network in China. It was led by Michael Wong from Cootek, who has a real passion and interest in the topic and who did a great job moderating this "unconference." During the discussion, I had a chance to meet Wang Xing, founder of Xiao Nei as well as its new competitor, Hainei (see Tangos write up here). This discussion alone really made the whole trip worthwhile. It was great to hear thoughts from other people like Wang Xing who really have "hands on" experience instead of the typical foreign agency blabber you hear at foreigner focused events (I condemn myself in this statement as well). The discussion has been ringing in my ears all week and put into perspective much of my thoughts about the relationship/role of social networking in the Chinese net culture so dominated by BBS. More thoughts on this soon.

After this, I attended a talk on gaming and gaming culture led by Frank Yu from Microsoft, a very knowledgeable guy in the space. Discussions confirmed my belief that the Internet in China is an information medium, an entertainment medium as well as a social medium--in the end it is THE medium of life for those who use it, especially in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Frank made the interesting observation that just as my generation of Americans remember watching the Brady Bunch on TV, the current generation will remember WOW, Freestyle etc.

At the event, I also had opportunities to meet some great people from IBM. It is clear in sponsoring this event and in the massive turnout they had that they are really supporting innovation and everything "web 2.0" in China.

All in all, good fun and good learning.