Raincity Studios Discuss China and the Internet with Business in Vancouver
created on 周二, 2008-06-10 14:53 
Vancouver writer Jonathon Narvey interviewed Raincity's CEO, Robert Scales and President Kris Krug, and chatted with some of the Raincity Studios crew, for an article in Business in Vancouver magazine.
He discussed the Raincity Shanghai office including the work/lifestyle, communication processes, team building across oceans and technical challenges and advantages of working with a very multi-cultural team.
Having attended open source software and blogger symposiums in Beijing and Shanghai, Krug has seen China’s Web 2.0 dynamism up close. With a team of 13 employees in Shanghai, mostly open-source online publishing software developers, and their CEO Robert Scales, Raincity now has an established beachhead in the country.
The article also explored the size of the Internet market in China and the rise of open source software and inpact on innovation.
“Web 2.0 is exploding in China,” said Raincity Studios president Kris Krug. “The Chinese are totally wired, totally online, using web phones and all the mobile technology we use here.
“There’s a growing middle class wanting to use all these open-source tools, in part because that means they don’t have to worry about using proprietary software and pay licensing fees to western companies.”
He also dug deep into the personal expression issues around the Beijing Olympics - a topic we've discussed a lot recently in the China, Social Media, Olympics, etc. series and Scales' article at Now Public.
“Last time I was in Shanghai, the Chinese government announced they had just hired 100,000 new cyber-police,” Krug said. “That’s on top of however many they had to begin with.”
{snip}
Krug has also learned how easy it can be to run afoul of vigilant Chinese cyber-regulators.
“We were running a bar camp (an informal Web 2.0 drupal tutorial seminar), and our wiki was totally open. Anyone could register and write on it.
“Within a couple of days, we received a letter [stating] that we had to change our site in accordance with the rules in China. Users had to be pre-approved, content had to be moderated and we had to make changes on the website. We scrambled to make the changes in 24 hours.”
Mr. Narvey also checked in with Olympic pundit Maurice Cardinal of OlyBlog.com for his opinion about the regulations of athletes telling their personal stories online.
But the flip side for all these Chinese Web 2.0 enthusiasts is how online communities and new media will be allowed to operate when it comes to the Beijing Olympic Games.
This is a topic i've watched closey (see: Blogging, Athletes and web sites - to be continued ... and listen to Olympic Outsider Podcast #3 - Coffee talk with Gold Medalist Ross Rebagliati) and I am curious to see where the line between personal and professional is drawn.
The article is available at: "Internet technology to grapple with the Great Firewall of China - Beijing Olympic Games will test the host country’s ability to control information gathering and distribution." We invite your comments about Narvey's area of research and findings.
Hat tip: thanks to Jordan Behan for the paper copy.
The Great Firewall
It's a daily chore trying to navigate the internet here...attempting to find the best and quickest ways through the firewall to get the information you need. The internet the average Chinese views is the highly regulated version that is available only in Chinese...venturing outside of that and trying to gather information internationally can prove more challenging from time to time.
The biggest hassle for me is the blockade on RSS feeds...particularly anything from Feedburner (translate that to...podcasts). I either have to use the HK lease line in the office to download podcasts, or use the multitude of proxy services that are out there to try and circumvent. The problem with most proxy's are the severely degraded connection speeds once you connect to something. Example...at my home, through a proxy, I can download podcasts at the blazing speed of around 50-60kb/sec...while on a business trip in the USA recently and staying at a Fairfield Inn, I was able to pluck podcasts at close to 400kb/sec.
I don't worry about the cyber cops too much...all of my surfing is on English language websites and blogs and they are less worried about those than they are Chinese language ones in which the average person can read.
But, I get by with what I need...I can tune into Canuck games, download bit torrents and generally make a nuisance of myself on blogs now and then...although getting to a Blogspot blog is a pain in the butt (again, blocked).
Your resourcefulness is inspiring!
Great background GZ! As a content maker, i am pleased that you are crafty enough to do what it takes to get the podcasts you seek. Interesting to see what sort of content is blocked - it all seems sorta arbitrary from an outside point of view.
The Great Firewall of China
Very interesting first comment. I'd love to see more stories in comments here about people's experience with web 2.0 in China. It was a fascinating topic to research and I suspect I was looking at only the tip of the iceberg.
Nice work Mr. Narvey
This is a compelling topic for sure with many facets to delve into. You might consider a blog article to expand on your findings.
James Fallows has written about Great Firewall
For a detailed and perceptive look at the Great Firewall by a US journalist living in China, see “The Connection Has Been Reset” by James Fallows, from the March 2008 Atlantic magazine. See also the interview with him, Penetrating the Great Firewall, by Abigail Cutler.
James Fallows' blog is on my daily reading list. He's a really thoughtful student and insightful commentator on a number of topics that interest me.