3 Articles for 'Bernard Moon'
- 2008/04/24 Progress update on the Asia Web Conference plan (14)
- 2007/10/09 Quick chat with Bernard Moon
- 2007/10/05 Quick thoughs on Bernard's post on "Life after Facebook"
It's been some months since I wrote an open letter on this blog, proposing the first-ever Asia Web Conference (the final name of the conference is TBD).
Since that post, I've been talking to bloggers and web experts in Asia, in an "under the water" fashion. And within some weeks (early this year), we had kickstarted the project - here's a brief update.
We now have the following people as the organizers for the Asia Web Conference:
If you follow blogs about Asian web industry, you should be familiar with these names already. They are some of the best and brightest guys, I'm sure.
As you can see here, we need oranizers from other countries - most notably missing is Japan. If there's anyone reading this blog post from Japan who's interested in making this conference happen, come aboard! Just roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, it will be fun.
For the last several weeks, we've been exchanging various ideas about the conference via Google Docs (which we're still doing). We recently put together the possible list of speakers and sponsors, and we now have 54 A-list potential speakers on our list. Of course this doesn't mean we'll have all 54 of them on our conference, but I'm sure we'll get some of the best speakers you can find in and out of Asia in our conference.
The central theme of this conference will be "social". We used a couple of criteria when we decided the conference theme: a) the topic should be about an area where Asia has unique strengths, b) the topic should be important/trendy enough to attract participants/speakers/sponsors, and c) it should be where each Asian country has its own market-dominating player, so that some nice cross-country comparisons can be made. We came up with "mobile" and "social" as two best possible topics, and we finally chose "social". Social isn't such a terribly narrow topic either, but the topic shouldn't have to be too restrictive either, we believe.
We still haven't decided on the venue. Well, we didn't even decide which country to hold the conference in, for that matter - I'm still rooting for China but there's the Olympics logistics issue, and the visa requirement doesn't help either. I'm also looking at Korea too, part of the reason being I'm kind of being the main guy pushing this and Korea is my home turf where I can get some help from companies and even the government more easily.
As always, what matters most is the money side. We should find sponsors and come up with the financial plan. To do that, we need big-name speakers, and to do that, we should finalize the venue, dates, and the program, and to do that... well, there's still tons of work to be done.
But in any case, I still firmly believe that the Asia Web Conference is very much in order, as the world's internet industry increasingly sets its eyes on Asia, both for market opportunities (ie. China and India) and for inspirations (e.g. the digital "craziness" of Japan and Korea). Heck, I personally met two big-name Silicon Valley CEOs within three days in Korea!
This was just a brief update, and I'll keep you posted as we go along and get more updates. Of course, if you are interested to be an organizer/speaker/sponsor, don't hesitate to contact me or anyone listed above.
Since that post, I've been talking to bloggers and web experts in Asia, in an "under the water" fashion. And within some weeks (early this year), we had kickstarted the project - here's a brief update.
We now have the following people as the organizers for the Asia Web Conference:
- Angus Lau (852 Signal, Hong Kong)
- Benjamin Joffe (Plus8Star, China)
- Bernard Moon (Silicon Moon, US)
- Lu Gang (Mobinode, China)
- John S. Kim (Paprika Lab, Korea)
- Tangos Chan (China Web 2.0 Review, China)
- Chang Kim (Web 2.0 Asia, Korea)
If you follow blogs about Asian web industry, you should be familiar with these names already. They are some of the best and brightest guys, I'm sure.
As you can see here, we need oranizers from other countries - most notably missing is Japan. If there's anyone reading this blog post from Japan who's interested in making this conference happen, come aboard! Just roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, it will be fun.
For the last several weeks, we've been exchanging various ideas about the conference via Google Docs (which we're still doing). We recently put together the possible list of speakers and sponsors, and we now have 54 A-list potential speakers on our list. Of course this doesn't mean we'll have all 54 of them on our conference, but I'm sure we'll get some of the best speakers you can find in and out of Asia in our conference.
The central theme of this conference will be "social". We used a couple of criteria when we decided the conference theme: a) the topic should be about an area where Asia has unique strengths, b) the topic should be important/trendy enough to attract participants/speakers/sponsors, and c) it should be where each Asian country has its own market-dominating player, so that some nice cross-country comparisons can be made. We came up with "mobile" and "social" as two best possible topics, and we finally chose "social". Social isn't such a terribly narrow topic either, but the topic shouldn't have to be too restrictive either, we believe.
We still haven't decided on the venue. Well, we didn't even decide which country to hold the conference in, for that matter - I'm still rooting for China but there's the Olympics logistics issue, and the visa requirement doesn't help either. I'm also looking at Korea too, part of the reason being I'm kind of being the main guy pushing this and Korea is my home turf where I can get some help from companies and even the government more easily.
As always, what matters most is the money side. We should find sponsors and come up with the financial plan. To do that, we need big-name speakers, and to do that, we should finalize the venue, dates, and the program, and to do that... well, there's still tons of work to be done.
But in any case, I still firmly believe that the Asia Web Conference is very much in order, as the world's internet industry increasingly sets its eyes on Asia, both for market opportunities (ie. China and India) and for inspirations (e.g. the digital "craziness" of Japan and Korea). Heck, I personally met two big-name Silicon Valley CEOs within three days in Korea!
This was just a brief update, and I'll keep you posted as we go along and get more updates. Of course, if you are interested to be an organizer/speaker/sponsor, don't hesitate to contact me or anyone listed above.
Pic from Venturebeat
I'll save all the business talks from the lunch. Just one thing to be noted, though: The K-group. There are quite a few Koreans working in the Bay Area, but the industry network among the Korean tech professionals around the Bay Area have been pretty weak. K-group looks to be quite new, and as of August '07 there are around 300 members. Given there are expected to be tens of thousands of Koreans in the Bay Area, many of them presumably working in the tech sector, I guess the K-group has some large room to fill with new members.
TAG Bernard Moon
Bernard Moon, the co-founder of GoingOn Networks, recently contributed a piece on VentureBeat with his views on the future of social networking. It's a good piece - I recommend you give it a read.
Here, I am quickily adding some thoughs on the piece.
1. Facebook will cool down, but won't go away anytime soon either
In Korea, 90%+ people were already using Cyworld even before Myspace and Facebook became widely known in the US. Therefore, looking at how Cyworld is doing now in Korea might give some clue as to how Facebook and Myspace will be doing in some years later.
The answer is, Cyworld is still doing okay. Of course the novelty is long gone, and people don't put up their content as religiously as they did before. Many people leave Cyworld complaining their "Cyworld fatigue". But, one thing to be remembered is, kids are growing - i.e. constant influx of new users.
In Cyworld's case, as I mentioned in my CNN piece, the service sees a constant stream of new users - mainly early-teenage girls. Twelve year old girls would do whatever they think 20 year old girls do, like putting on a makeup, and Cyworld is one of them. I think this will apply to Facebook as well - college is the environment where there's a constant influx of new people. I can't agree more that Facebook won't last forever (nothing does), but I also think it won't disappear overnight eiter.
2. Will social networks last?
I think a longer-lasting concept than social networking is "communication". People have always wanted to stay in touch. Communication between people have always evolved, changing its shape, from fixed line telephone calls to IM to SMS to social networks to content sharing. But at the core of those various types of interactions lie the fundamental needs to communicate.
In other words, when we boil down the human interaction to nodes (people) and lines (communication), the real value might lie in the lines, rather than in the nodes. Traditional thinking from social networking put a lot more values in the nodes, asking people to produce as much content as possible and publicly share them.
But we know people are all too busy for that. The initial interest and fun of producing/sharing content on the web wears off, hence the "fatigue". But people might get tired of producing content, but they will never get tired of communication with other people, and a more efficient means of communication will only help there. So the right question is perhaps, how can social network evolve in a way that can make communication between people more effective?
3. Profile-based recommendation: Is it the future?
Is life always about personalized recommendations? If I like Red Sox, Jazz, Apple Macbook Pro, should I get recommendations on those stuff for the rest of my life? One of my professors bought a present for on his friend's birthday, and this friend happened to be a gay (the professor is not). As a result, the professor gets recommendations on new products for gays all the time!!
I think life consists as much of stumble-upons and serendipities as it does of personalizations and recommendations. I think human life is much more complex than what machines and algorithms can infer, calculate, or let alone predict. IMHO, the only possible way of satisfying the needs for both personalized recommendation and stumble upons (even "pleasantly whacky" suggestions) would be from the friends who know a person well. I think this is where the current social networks isn't capitalizing on the potential effectively, and can therefore evolve into.
Here, I am quickily adding some thoughs on the piece.
1. Facebook will cool down, but won't go away anytime soon either
In Korea, 90%+ people were already using Cyworld even before Myspace and Facebook became widely known in the US. Therefore, looking at how Cyworld is doing now in Korea might give some clue as to how Facebook and Myspace will be doing in some years later.
The answer is, Cyworld is still doing okay. Of course the novelty is long gone, and people don't put up their content as religiously as they did before. Many people leave Cyworld complaining their "Cyworld fatigue". But, one thing to be remembered is, kids are growing - i.e. constant influx of new users.
In Cyworld's case, as I mentioned in my CNN piece, the service sees a constant stream of new users - mainly early-teenage girls. Twelve year old girls would do whatever they think 20 year old girls do, like putting on a makeup, and Cyworld is one of them. I think this will apply to Facebook as well - college is the environment where there's a constant influx of new people. I can't agree more that Facebook won't last forever (nothing does), but I also think it won't disappear overnight eiter.
2. Will social networks last?
I think a longer-lasting concept than social networking is "communication". People have always wanted to stay in touch. Communication between people have always evolved, changing its shape, from fixed line telephone calls to IM to SMS to social networks to content sharing. But at the core of those various types of interactions lie the fundamental needs to communicate.
In other words, when we boil down the human interaction to nodes (people) and lines (communication), the real value might lie in the lines, rather than in the nodes. Traditional thinking from social networking put a lot more values in the nodes, asking people to produce as much content as possible and publicly share them.
But we know people are all too busy for that. The initial interest and fun of producing/sharing content on the web wears off, hence the "fatigue". But people might get tired of producing content, but they will never get tired of communication with other people, and a more efficient means of communication will only help there. So the right question is perhaps, how can social network evolve in a way that can make communication between people more effective?
3. Profile-based recommendation: Is it the future?
Is life always about personalized recommendations? If I like Red Sox, Jazz, Apple Macbook Pro, should I get recommendations on those stuff for the rest of my life? One of my professors bought a present for on his friend's birthday, and this friend happened to be a gay (the professor is not). As a result, the professor gets recommendations on new products for gays all the time!!
I think life consists as much of stumble-upons and serendipities as it does of personalizations and recommendations. I think human life is much more complex than what machines and algorithms can infer, calculate, or let alone predict. IMHO, the only possible way of satisfying the needs for both personalized recommendation and stumble upons (even "pleasantly whacky" suggestions) would be from the friends who know a person well. I think this is where the current social networks isn't capitalizing on the potential effectively, and can therefore evolve into.
TAG Bernard Moon, Facebook, Social Networks
