scales, robert scales - Beijing

My Beijing Diary - Post two

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:25:47 -0700

The 29th Summer Games have been underway for a few days now, and so much has happened.

I am excited to be here in China. Beijing is a great host city; people are going out of their way to make us feel welcome and ready to assist fans from around the world.

On Friday August 8th, or 080808 as it will now be recorded in history, China inspired the world with an incredible display of artistic choreography, traditional culture and brilliant pyrotechnic displays.

China blew our minds with this human powered show, an event that will be forever archived as one of the best Olympic opening shows!

After spending a brilliant night making friends with fans from around the world, we went exploring various venues. On our list of locations to scoot, we ventured to the 'Birds Nest' national stadium, the 'Water Cube' aquatic centre, the fencing hall and the Yukeson basketball stadium.

Day one here took a sad turn when we heard about the deadly stabbing of an American relative of a USA volleyball team coach, an event that has raised issues about some of the security measures at non-Olympic venues.

We also ran into the Chinese women's fencing team and their coach. Since I'm such a fencing fan, this was the highlight of my day.

That night we went to Beijing's one and only Drive-In-Theatre where an all night concert was hosted.

On our second day here, we attended the rowing qualification and cheered for Canada, China and other countries. Sadly a thunderstorm forced us to return to the comfort of our apartment in Fulicheng, a district south-east of Beijing. This allowed us to regroup before watching the USA-China basketball game.

Today we will be going to see our peers at the British Colombia Canada pavilion where they will showcase the upcoming 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver.

My Games: Beijing Diary on the BBC

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:27:19 -0700

Cross-posted from: BBC Sport | Olympics | Beijing Diaries

Background: Raincity Studios CEO/Founder Robert Scales and Pres/Ambassador Kris Krug are on the ground in Beijing to document and study the 2008 edition of the Olympic Games. They are publishing dispatches to a variety of news outlets including the venerable BBC. Here's Scales' first installment of his Olympic diary.

ROBERT SCALES, MONTREAL, CANADA

Robert runs a web development company based in Canada

Beijing 2008 Summer Olympiad Social Media Coverage

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:29:39 -0700

Citizens On the Ground

Raincity Studios Sino-Away-Squad of Scales and KK, are on the ground in Beijing to cover and participate in the Olympic experience as citizen journalism, technology experts, social pundits and cultural ambassadors.

The Glimmer Twins' tasks are diverse and their methods varied so here's a preview:

participating in the 9th International Symposium on Olympic Studies, in Beijing, August 5-7 with Olympic scholar Dr. Andy Miah's
documenting the scene for crowd-sourced new site: Now Public, Vancouver radio station: Crave 95, and BBC Interactive - among other media outlets

shooting Creative Commons licensed photos delivered via Flickr
extolling about the new, improved Bryght web community hosting product - available in free, cheap or fancy varieties
meeting up with prospective clients to extol Raincity Studios' status as an approved weblog vendor for Vancouver/Whistler 2010
cheering for Team Canada at the Archery, Fencing, Women's Softball, BMX and more summer games sports
spreading international goodwill in the fun-loving/hard-working style they honed whilst at the Torino 2008 Winter Games.

The state of Drupal in China

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:48:23 -0800

Jacob Redding, John Zhu, and I ran this session. The three of us talked about China, the Drupal project, and why the Open Source community makes so much sense in the Chinese environment.

There is a curious problem with licensing in China. Licenses for software (like Windows for example) are often ignored. There is a brisk trade in illegal copies making it nearly impossible to sell people legitimate licenses. The GPL is perfect in this circumstance. You can't pirate something that is free to be downloaded. Some of this is due to language. The Chinese tend to create a duplicate of many kinds of services--like a Chinese clone of YouTube. There is even a fork of PHP written in Chinese. But Drupal's internationalization makes this kind of duplication meaningless. You don't have to recreate the system from scratch. There is no need to fork and there is no need to pirate.

The 1.3 Billion Person Myth

Sometimes the concept of a 1.3 billion person market, ready to be tapped, makes it into presentations and conversations. This is largely a myth due to the fact only roughly 260 million people have Internet access which shrinks the market to about the size of the US or Western Europe.

Barcamp Vancouver wrap up!

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:10:05 -0700

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!

Barcamp Vancouver is This Weekend! and Barcamp Beijing and Shanghai are just a few weeks away...

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:54:19 -0700

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.

Those of you not in Vancouver are encouraged to search Barcamp.org for your local event, or find details at that same site about how you can organize and host your own. Take a cue from the likes of Kris Krug and Robert Scales, Vancouver’s own adopted sons, who are teaming up to plan Barcamp Shanghai and Barcamp Beijing. Leave it to them to return to the land of the Great Wall with their free-spirited, open-sourcedness to host an unconference in a place where free speech doesn’t even exist.

Scales and Krug 2007 World Tour

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:09:10 -0700

Kris has been bugging me for days about posting my traveling and event schedules.

For some reason, August and September are always busy months for us!

We decided to make our life a bit more complex this year and added a third barcamp on our list of events to organize...

Hopefully we'll post more details about each of these events coming over the next few months:

Gnomedex 7.0 - Four RCS staffers are heading down to Seattle to see Chris, Ponzi, Schlomo, Corey, Jacob and the rest of the geekospher.

Barcamp Vancouver - Vancouver's 2nd Barcamp is expecting to attract 180+ people. I've been helping with some of the organization and Raincity is sponsoring the event again this year. I am looking forward to kk's photcamp and photowalk.

Heading To China Once More

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:32:19 -0700

September China Program Finalized

The September China trip is only a few weeks away. All of the details have been finalized and hotels and plane tickets have been booked. The crew will be making stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, meeting with members of the business community and political figures. There is still time to jump on board if you have not already done so and join the team of business leaders who are making the trek. This is an opportunity of a lifetime to be a part of such a well orchestrated and strategic event. To find out more about upcoming Business Visit Programs in Beijing please, click here

Click here to Register for the September Program.

China Access 2008 is a strategic international business marketing and partnering initiative that has been consciously structured to help China better realize the unique economic development potential arising from Beijing’s hosting and staging of the 2008 Olympic Games.

The venture was publicly launched in Beijing by Vice Mayor Lu Hao in December 2004.

China Access 2008 will utilise the years leading up to the staging of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games to: