With Northern Voice behind me it's time to finalize preperations for my trip to Austin Texas for SXSW (thats South by Southwest for the uninitiated) 2007.

Last year SXSW was huge for us at Bryght. We had a booth, thew a great party with Raincity, Blue Flavor and NewsVine, and drummed up a bunch of great Drupal development and consulting gigs. Since last year we've worked on lots of online community projects including the one for Warner Brothers Records and are excited to mix it up again with music industry moguls down in Texas.

This year will be more of the same with the exception that I'll be speaking on panel this year. The first panel of the whole conference in fact! Alex Williams, Corey Dennis and I are working together to present the talk "Snakes on A Mother Fuckin Plane". Raincity will have a booth this year and Bryght will have a presence in it. Come find me in booth J5 during exhibition hours.

你好

Ni hao! Just a quick check-in from the China Access 2008 conference here in Beijing. The conference has begun now and I'll be networking and talking about the internet and how companies can use technology and the internet to tell their story and move into new markets.

This is me videoblogging with Qiang Bai of Venture Pacific Group. He's a VC who splits his time between Shanghai, Beijing, and Dallas(!) and has experience investing in the Web 2.0 industry here in China.

It's been a fast and full 3 days of new people, ideas, sights, sounds, smells.... *everything* is different. Here's my photos on Flickr and here are Robert Scales' of Raincity Studios. Lots of podcasts and videoblogs to come!

I'm here at the China Access 2008 Business Forum with Scales and MC of Raincity Studios and Richard Eriksson of Bryght. We're getting a whirlwind business tour of China including an overview of the economy, political climate, growth trends, geography and communications challenges. There are about 40 or so people here at the SFU Centre for Dialogue from Vancouver companies who are either already doing business in China or plan to, as well as a bunch of masters students from UBC Business School who are focusing on economic development in Asia and China.

So far it's been a great session led by Alan and Andrew of China Access 2008 and supported by lots of influential Vancouver business people currently doing business successful in China including Business Objects, CanFor, and Optima Health Solutions (hey Rashid... I'll trade ya a China strategy for Bryght for a web strategy for Optima!).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be on Kootenay Co-op Radio with Jill Boland, Executive Director of TechVillage and Jason Taylor of Selkirk college. Tech Village is a non-profit based in the Koots whose mission is to support and grow the new media and technology industry in the region. From their website...

"Our mission is to flourish as an enterprising non-profit that strives to be nimble and responsive to the needs of digital media, software and IT members in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia, Canada.

Tech Village provides suppport services to local businesses such as professional development, consulting, networking, and project opportunities to members.

Our organization shares the core values of integrity and transparency, collaboration, long term community building, commitment to quality, frugality and simplicity, an entrepreneurial attitude, sharing recognition, opportunities, and knowledge, and maintaining balanced lifestyle."

I talked about the basics of Web 2.0 and blogging and what's going on on the internet. You can download the half-hour show here... enjoy the Andrea Bocelli intro and outro. :P