Chinawhite

I will provide some of my opinion, and also point to you to a few other places with summaries about the event:

USA companies sending "anyone" who happens to speak Chinese, or even looks Asian is NOT the way too go, I saw and spoke to at least 4 representatives from large USA companies who had no idea what they were doing in China apart from the fact that they happened to be Asian.

Time slots of sessions at 50 minues was way too short, especially as many Chinese when given a microphone and an audience suddenly think they are "President of China" and babble on about god knows what for hours, very frustrating and something no one had planned for.

Audience was quite mixed, and the Chinese wanted to learn about Western marketing tactics, and the Westerners wanted to learn about Chinese skills, unfortunately a few of the speakers ended up being sales pitches for western companies trying to tell the Chinese how good they were in a completely foreign market (NOT the way to go).

MSN party was kinda like their search engine, very nice and exclusive with bells and whistles, amazing venue and food, invites to all the wrong people (we gatecrashed anyway), but unfortunately the event had NO oooommmppphhhhhh....

Wednesday nights Baby Face party by MIxMedia was cancelled at last minute, so everyone ended up in the Grand Hyatt Piano bar courtesy of the Hyatt and Susan's qiuick thinking, however NO party was a bad bad pr move.

Neither Google, Baidu, eBay or AliBaba had booths or stands in the exhibition hall, which was very surprising, although there were staff members from all the major companies, I spent quite a bit of time talking to Google folk on the ground in China, and can say that these guys know their stuff, they are NOT laowai or ABCs just dropped in to China, but movers and shakers who know their stuff and their target audience.

I also realised that my 3 months in Asia this year have NOT been wasted, and I actually know more people in the Chinese web space than I could have imagined in such a short space of time, maybe I should change career and get into the Headhunting/HR space instead, as I made a few potential job introductions and also took a few of the boys to a good old Indian restaurant for a fine meal of Chicken Tikka Masala and Onion Bhajis, not forgetting a night out for some of the west coast boys to some of Shanghais finest bars and clubs.

Hope the above gives you some insight into what I think happened last week, and below you will see views from others, I'll add links as and when I or You find them, many of the attendees are still asleep and no doubt will publish stuff in the next few days.

To sum it up, we have a long way to go, both for the industry, the conference organisation and the attendees, hopefully next year will be better, but as a 1st time event i China, it rocked and will be remembered for a long time to come.

but please please do NOT think that just sending a fine looking Chinese girl straight out of School to represent your Nasdaq listed company complete with Business Card titled "Head of China" will help you enter this market, it won't, I guarantee you that...

Everyone’s talking about the new world in online, but few really understand what’s happening in China. This week, I thought I’d hit the big red country to look under the Chinese interactive marketing hood. There’s a lot of horsepower in China, even if the engine is going to take a year or two to really warm up.
Kevin Ryan's piece

Although there were some disappointments like the BabyFace Networking party being cancelled and the lack of energy and somewhat serious tone of the first day’s keynote (its common Chinese business protocol to have local Chinese government officials give an address and kick things off), things did liven up by Wednesday evening for the adhoc drinks at Jin Mao Tower in the Hyatt Hotel thankfully due to Susan Cendara’s spontaneous corralling!
seerosen's piece

The session was conducted in English at the beginning. COO of Sina and Director of MSN attended the panel. The language barrier was obvious. In which language a conference is presented now is an important decision. English seems to be the usual choice, but it really breaks down the communication this morning. It presents the same problem if the session is completely in Chinese. It is especially hard if English is not the native language for the panelists. I don’t know what about native English speakers; at least I tried very hard to understand.
Wang Jian Shuo's piece

I am not sure what I expected out of ad:tech Shanghai. But one thing for sure, just being here is mind boggling. Urban legend has it that over 70 percent of the building cranes in the world are in Shanghai. That may be close to true. Whatever the number is, this is a boom town. And China is definitely on the fast track to go from the third world to the first world, skipping the second. This is a very sophisticated city. All the best stores, great hotels and restaurants and easy to be in. The organizers went to the trouble to ask each person whether they were presenting in English or Mandarin. Then they rented headsets to everyone. True to form, the greeting was in Mandarin. Then the headsets went away and the translator has not had much business as the whole conference has been in English.
David Smith's piece

Later, I am greeted by the man, the myth, the internet node otherwise known as Shakil Khan. Although only a recent arrival to Shanghai just a few months prior, he’s on a mission in China to help VCs scout the China opportunity while identifying a piece for himself along the way. As the man who brought or “bought” search first in the UK back in 2000, the man seems to know everybody, developing relationships with Google, Yahoo, MSN, Commission Junction and leading internet advertising players the world around.

True to his calling as a master networker, after making me a quick introduction to the Allyes.com CEO, David Zhu, Shak is off again no doubt to connect another constellation of internet stars in China. I’m telling you that it’s only a matter of time befor his entrepreneural story adds another chapter in China, either by his connections or another self-started venture.

TR Harrington's piece (TR >>> $20 is on it's way)