Micah, Rebecca and Bingfeng have some of the best commentary and English-language posting on the past weekend’s China Blogger Conference. From the former, a short comment that mentions myself and Joon.:

Since I translated the schedule of the conference on this weblog before, let me take a new angle on the Chinese Blogger Conference; there were several different groups of people present at the conference: the media, commercial interests, evangelizers and experts, and hobbyists (and probably the PSB, but let’s not be paranoid).

The media are at the conference to cover new trends in the Chinese internet, because that is where the money is right now and they can sell papers if they cover that topic. These guys and girls, depending on their level of Chinese proficiency, were either sitting in the conference hall listening for interesting quotes in the talks, having a smoke in the hallway outside chewing the fat with other journalists, or running around the Green Room trying to get quotes from the last speaker or other stars of the Chinese weblogging scene. They carried laptops, checking their Bloglines accounts and listening in on the official IRC channel, and recording devices and pen/paper to jot down keywords and quotes on the themes they were covering. Sometimes they had a translator or photographer tagging along. The Chinese press had a larger presence the first day, but the foreign contingent stuck around on Sunday while their local counterparts left to take care of other business.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, puppy