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.”

NOTE: Pardon the third-person writing (I feel like Bob Dole talking about Bob Dole ;-).

Raincity Studios' Community Evangelist Dave O riffs with Leo Laporte about do-it-yourself art and self publishing for personal, creative expression on the Lab with Leo TV show. Like old pals, they explore Dave's collection of ditto-ed newsletters, punk rock fanzines, gig handbills, well-traveled cassettes, and other projects while riffing about remixing ephemeral objects in digital art and participating in the new artistic renaissance.

Checking in from the basement of CBC's Vancouver headquarters as we kick off an event which is bound to be quite remarkable - the CBC Digital Development Labs.

This morning was introductions by the entrepreneurial-minded attendees chosen to display and refine their ideas for possible development by CBC. I'm participating as a mentor (along with others) here to advise, gut-check, collaborate with (and learn from) the emerging visionaries.

Our secret lair (which is very cool by the way - set up with a variety of workspaces, conversation breakout areas, Mac labs, gamer stations - feels like jPod) is also loaded with industry types acting more as observers to see how projects come together in the new media paradigm.

Lab with Leo is a technology show filmed in Vancouver. Hosted by the well known Leo Laporte with Matt Harris serving as producer of the show and has been working with Leo for 3 years.

Leo Laporte is well known on TV and from technology forums, a best-selling author of several gadget guides and technology almanacs as well as a TiVo guide. He also hosts The Tech Guy radio show and works on several podcasts on the TWiT.tv network, plus was a host on Call For Help and The Screen Savers.

Raincity's President Kris Krug has appeared on the show many times. He's covered topics like the Creative Commons licensing, Drupal, Facebook applications and more and recently filmed three more episodes covering the way bands are use content management systems as a way to power their new fan sites, growing open source Internet business in China, and the way corporate PR strategies have changed with new media.

On Thursday I leave for China with Robert Scales to attend the China Access 2008 "What is Your China Strategy?" Forum in Beijing and it's starting to get to crunch time. I worked through much of the weekend catching up on email and Bryght projects and cleaning up my hardrives and disks to make room for all the media we're going to make while on the road. I also bought some fancy new clothes for our meetings, stocked up on expired slide film, packed my backpack (and posted it to Flickr to make sure I didn't forget anything ), and read travel guides for China and Thailand cover to cover.

This morning, the Vancouver Sun ran an article about doing business in China and the China Access Business Forum taking place tomorrow in Vancouver and featured quotes by our partners Andrew Gilkes and Rashid Ahmed as well as a lil blurb by me...

"Vancouver-based new media partners Bryght and Raincity Studios, which are working with China Access 2008, also see opportunities at the Beijing Olympics for BC's technology companies.

"We have an interest in learning as much as we can [at the Beijing Games] so that we can find out what companies and teams and countries are looking to do online around the 2010 Olympics," Krug said."

Here's a cool link to an audio transcript of the Vancouver Sun article... neat!

Thanks to Megan Cole from Raincity on her help securing the interview and Petrina the Intern and the rest of the Bryght cew who have helped out with planning and logistics and support while I'm out and generally making this opportunity a reality. :)