I have not been to Web Wednesday since they moved the venue to Volar. But this was a special day. Guy Kawasaki is stopping-by to hang around.

Guy Kawasaki.

Read one of his book (How to drive your competiton crazy) long long time ago. I just want to be there. I will never get a chance to see him…again…ever.

My take on Mr. Kawasaki. Well, He is Evangelist first, Marketer second, VC third and somewhere between Marketer and VC is a Writer.

Why I said that. When he talk about VC biz, the word he churned out was just depressing. It’s almost like the VC biz was bust.

But when someone ask about his ghost writer on Twitter. His eyes lit up and give a long Evalangical statement on that.

Then somewhere in between he manages to squeeze in alltop.com. That is a good Marketer.

Overall, I enjoyed his talk. I left earlier because I absorbed enough. Too bad…I did not take a picture with him. Hong Kong has been for me. Meeting so many people that I will never ever dream off and thanks Napoleon for getting this together.

If you want to watch the entire talk, Belle has a recording here

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The guests for the month were the founders of alivenotdead.com. Previously, they founded rottentomatoes.com and sold it for $10 million USD. It’s interesting to see and hear what they have to say. Not many dotcom companies survive beyond 2004. These guys not only survived but cash out in the end. It awesome by my account.

Part of the conversation was a lot of flash back on the rottentomatoes.com. After they got funded, the dot bomb came. They have to cut 21 staffs/friends to 14 then to 7. The agony and paind of asking your buddies to leave.

Patrick – co-founder of Alivenotdead.com

Now, alivenotdead.com – an online community for artists and fans. They have 12,000 artists from around the world in this community and I don’t remembered how many signup fans. It’s an interesting mesh up between artists and fans. They never disclosed whether they are making money or not but it’s does not matter to me.

Stephen – co-founder of alivenotdead.com

They were very candid talking about their adventure and we all know the journey is long and ardous. I felt…their current model will need a lot tweaking and adjusting in the years ahead. They have all the ingredients but somewhere,somehow it’s not clicking in bucks. I mean megabucks. I don’t know which dot is missing…somehow I felt some dots are missing…

Juju Chan – Miss Chinatown USA 2009 Miss People’s Choice Winner. You can check her out at the alivenotdead – jujuchan site

The guy on the left is Michael Chan, Juju , Patrick Lee and Jen.

Anyway….it was interesting night. Web Wednesday is getting bigger and there is an entry fee of $100Hkd. An interesting observation came to me, when an audience pay money to an event, everyone somehow stayed very quiet during the guest and the host were conversing. No murmurs at the corner or far back at the bar. Damn interesting….

Do I mind pay the $100Hkd? Not at all. It’s a good thing. Napoleon put a lot of effort into his event.

P.S. Jen – Thks for the group pix correction. Appreciate it.

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“The Future of Online Advertising” with Adrian Toy, the APAC Regional Interactive Director for Universal McCann. That was the title.

Took this pix without flash but with higher ISO…does not comes out that good. (Adrian – far left, Napoleon – right)

After 15 minutes into the talk, I left. Why? Because I did not hear anything solid coming out from Adrian(maybe he does not know his stuff) or maybe the questions was not being ask right. I don’t know.

All I hear was comparison with Korea…I don’t want to hear about Korea because they are a different animal.

I wanted to know something Hong Kong specific. Like…their Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers, what kind of ads they position in the online medium. IE….Chinese portals, News portal or some other portals.

Next, coming into 2009, what kind of trend their advertisers might pursue. Is it more branding, game like strategies or others.

Very simple…that is all I want to know…All I get was general stuff. Well, maybe I am too demanding…I don’t know…or maybe the talks is not important and people just gather to networks.

Again..no flash.

Indeed, that night was very packed. Much more attendance than before. Probably because of the economic and everyone want to come out to network.

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One of the last event of the year and I thought I should stop-by. The guest was Chris from wanta.net. He talk about his journey from click to brick & mortar.

He started sell condoms and other sex stuff on the Net. Started early 2000 and still around in 2008. He shared some of his experience which I think re-affirmed the HK e-commerce environment.

Now, he complement his online store with a retail store across Times Square. A very high foot traffic area and high rental, too.

Let me put some pointers that I think I learned from him….

1. Banner advertising – be very selective. they want a lot money from you but will never bring the result you wants.

2. C.O.D. payment – in HK, you need it.

3. Addresses – if you are selling adult toys, your customers will not give the exact address. they want your delivery guy to call them when you are on that particular street.

4. Retail Store – at one point or another, you need to have a retail store in place.

5. Search Engine – in HK, yahoo is the predominantly search engine used by chinese users.

6. HK Consumers – they still want to feel and touch before buying.

Well…why I put such a long speech? Because I do think there is a space for e-commerce in HK. I can’t believe Hk is all about bricks and mortars. There must be some thing for the internet people.

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That night guest was Rebecca MacKinnon talking about creative commons. Something that I know very little about.

The place was packed again… A lot more ang moh than locals.

I met some news friends.

Ben Croxogod of Hkday.net

Kelly Dakin from Moni-media.net.

Thks Ed from Dookaz for taking the pix.

Nothing much I can say about this creative commons. Will there be a wide adoption on the platform, probably not in the near future. It will take a lot education to get the message in HK. This is my thought.

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I can’t believe the crowd attending this month Wedwednesday. It was really packed. Maybe because of the two power guests or Napoleon is doing something different.

The one in the middle is Michael Logan (Editor, Multimedia – SCMP.com) and the one on the right is Sam Hui (Business Director – atnext.com)

Took a pix with Michael Logan of SCMP.com

Michael talked about providing podcast at scmp.com and some other technology they are looking into.

Well, most of the companies that are under the Tan Sri’s usually are very conservative. They don’t try new things. Podcast is cheap to produce. So, that is why it’s easily available at SCMP.com. Moreover, SCMP.com is the dominate newspaper in town. Why do something new that cost money and has practically no ROI.

Do I download podcast?

NO…Why? Sorry Michael..no offence. I am very selective…what can I say. I will download podcast when these two criteria satisfy me.

First, I will only accept two distinct native english accent such American and British. All other is no good and no pseudo american accent (like me…heheee).

Second, the tone of the voice. If I don’t hear something closer to a TV or Radio broadcast tone of voice, it’s no good.

Imagine me, a malaysian with heavy malaysian accent doing podcast and the listeners are American or British. They won’t accept my accents, my enunciation and my tone of voice.

Me and Sam Hui

Atnext.com seems pretty innovative with their portal. They let real time comments on certain feature news. This is a good way to gauge the public opinion. Another thing was webcast and Sam spoke about a webcast they did with Kelly Chen (the singer), some of fan was so ecstatic because they can chat with their idol.

Question is why webcast and not Web-TV? the rumour on the street was the cost was too high, so the boss cut short on the Web-TV goal. I would not blame them because you really could not see where to make money while maintaining such a big team.

I heard OnTv has about 200 personnel on ONTV team. That is a lot of manpower.

To me, the destination of newsprint is web-tv. Web-tv will will complement and provide new channel of revenue. The question is when they can achieve respectable revenue. Only time will tell…

Me and Rebecca McKinnon (Rconversation.blogs.com)

This second time I met her. The last time was during Barcamp.

Its a quick snap of Belle Liu of Beansbox.com

Need to thks Aaron of cubiclemuses.com and Ed of Dookaz.com for taking some of pix for me.

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I went to the 14th Wedwednesday Social Mixer. The interview was with Chris Justice, the MD of Quamnet.com. A financial service portal.

I am always kinda interested to know how they have survived the dot-com bust and still hanging around today. Moreover, their contents are not free. It’s subscription based.

I have seen many financial portal sprung up in malaysia during year 2001-2002. Many have gone and those who survived today have turned themselves into an I.T. solution provider company. After the bust, most of the financial portal springs up were from stock brokerage house.

I asked about three questions – 1) does their research help me if I am a technical trader 2) how many event they do in a month 3) does their live chart able to port with product like tradestation or metastock charting software.

With the answer given by Chris, I can pretty much sum up (I am guessing) that Quamnet.com derived most of their revenue from events managing, magazine advertising and most probably funds managing (I saw they have many division listed on their site). Subscription services probably contributed less than 20% of the company revenue (Again, I am guessing). They are basically a media company leveraging on stock market research as a front end tools.

It really reaffirms my belief that to be successful on the internet space, you do need a mixture of off-line business model. Solely relying on the internet will only bring death.

There was a lady asking why Quamnet.com does not move up another step. I think she meant Quamnet should provide online trading. If it’s online trading, I can only say…don’t tread that water. Quamnet will never be able to compete with the like of Interactivebrokers.com. These guys lived and breathe on online trading. Quamnet will never be able to compete on price or match Interactivebrokers.com robust infrastructure.

Anyway, it’s good to know Quamnet are successful in their own rights. To be around since 1999 is a tremendous success.

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Its has been 3 month since I attended Web Wednesday. I went because Ed from Dookaz.com was going and we have some stuff to chat about.

The one in the middle is Ivy Wong, COO of Tvb.com

The guest was Ivy Wong from TVB.com. They hv re-launched the tvb.com site and she was there to talk about future plan of tvb.com. To me, her vision was nothing new. I think everyone on the web media is striving to that goal of interactive internet, where the contents will convert into ads dollar and e-commerce dollars and continuously able to entice users to keeps coming back for more.

The big question here is – can she do it at tvb.com? This is a chinese run company with a tradition of conservatism. It’s not Yahoo (she was recruited from Yahoo hong kong) where you can sell certain concept/s and most like they will go with it. I would be quite surprise if half of her vision is implemented.

What she has changed at tvb.com was already done at oriental daily. Oriental daily is moving a step further into internet tv where they are able to upload their exclusive breaking news within one hour of getting the raw news.

Ed from Dookaz.com

Angus from 852signal.com

Napoleon from webwednesday.hk. The man who organize the monthly social networking.

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