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.”

Raincity's international man of Drupal - accompanied by a retinue of Drupalists - are jetting off to Barcelona today fresh off the networking success (and curious food) of China.

While on their trip, Robert and Kris organized BarCamp Beijing and BarCamp Shanghai - a series of unconferences in which participants are the show - with free form workshops in 4 languages organized on the fly on a giant (and very analog) planning board.

It was great to be part of the organizing team of the second Barcamp in Vancouver.

This is a shot of us sporting the "fuschia" shirts!

I did a session on open source business development, I am sure someone will write something on it and I'll cross link. I was under the impression that my topic would not attract many people and 30 minutes would suffice, silly me! Room two was packed and half-hour was a tad too short, it seemed we where just getting started!

I enjoyed KK's photo-walk and I managed to get a bunch of pictures.

A special shout to John for his iPhone for Canadians session, maybe the hi-light of my day! Yeah I know; geek!

This weekend is BarCamp Vancouver and I'll be heading up a PhotoWalk on Friday night and a PhotoCamp on Saturday.

Here's some shots from last years late night photowalk at BarCamp.

If you're interested in photography, cameras, or just want to take a walk around east Van with us... it would be great to see lots of you out there. Here's the details. Get in touch with me if you have any questions. :)

PhotoWalk
- signup on FaceBook
- meet at WorkSpace
- 11pm, Friday August 17th

PhotoCamp
- signup on the Wiki
- @ Workspace during BarCamp Vancouver
- TBD, Saturday August 18th

Thanks to Jordan Behan for an exellent post. Like Roland, I just shamlesly reposted...

QUOTE

Barcamp Vancouver, the 2007 edition is fast approaching, so get ready to get your Barcamp on. Unless of course you’re not already signed up, because the pattern is full, Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.

This year’s Vancouver event is already well over-booked, with a waiting list of over 70 people! So this post is more for the folks who are already signed up to attend.

Tags:

• Barcamp
• Beijing
• China
• Shanghai
• Vancouver
• workspace