Robert Scales's blog

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.

Rem Yu Qing- From JZ club, the best Jazz club in Shanghai!

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:11:42 -0700

Third time is a charm!

I am currently in Shanghai with kk, we are gearing up for our move here next year.

I should blog about that but not this time..

This is just a shoot at IMO the best Jazz base player on the planet. Not only can this master play a 5 strings base guitar like no others but he is the owner and creative mind behind one of the coolest jazz club in this city; JZ.

He's also running a cool private school..

Anyway, here's some of the shots that I took of him while we hang out earlier this week.

More news from the chinese front coming soon..

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!

A word of advice from the Binary God

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:56:11 -0700

I am a big fan of Futurama, and Matt Groening.

I've been finding myself quoting this line a few time lately..

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

This is the short clip from one of my favorite episode and the source of this quote..

** all rights fox / Matt Groening...

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.

Product Development vs Service provider: Raincity Studios, a drupal service provider since 2004!

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:16:43 -0700

A question that has been growing in popularity since we started in early 2004. I recall Boris Mann and I debating this some time ago, before Raincity and Bryght even had offices...

Drupal product development vs product service provider. What is the best route to take for an entrepreneur?

For myself the answer was pretty easy: To create a reputable open source service provider firm! It is my calling. Why? Simple! I am a business developer, a marketeer and somewhat of a visionary (and arrogant apparently). I'm not a very talented coder or designer, I know my basics but I am passionate about the business development and enabling clients and talent to work together.

Plus it's easier to build other people's products than coming up with your own. At the end of the day, I am unsure how I would cope with having to report to an investor(s)?

If you ask me, creating a service company is easier as you don't have to go through months of development to create a product that will hopefully provide you a decent return on investment to justify the initial expenses and the hardship that the team had to face to get the product off the ground. Not counting the time you need to spend to maintain, support, upgrade and fund this new monster you've just created!

Flickr blocked in China!

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:04:10 -0700

Copied from Flickr's forum

image from adporter

Since around 12:30pm (Beijing time) on June 7th, users in China have been unable to view images on flickr.com.

Our technical staff have looked into this and determined that it's not a technical issue from our end. Evidence suggests that our image servers are being blocked for many users in China.

We are checking periodically to see if the block is still in place, but haven't detected any change. We hope that this is a temporary issue and we currently believe that it will be. In the meantime, we are investigating our alternatives. Thanks for your patience.

As Stewart stated earlier,

"Unfortuantely, the firewall's administrators don't provide contact details, so we can't just call up someone who makes decisions about which sites are blocked and plead our cases. All we can do at this point is continue to monitor, seek advice from colleagues closer to the region and/or with more experience.

Countdown to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:55:13 -0800

Today, in Vancouver, shortly after noon, the Olympic countdown clock was revealed to the public in an event attended by supporters and surrounded by the chaos of protesters chanting and protesting the coming of the Olympics.

Here's VANOC official Press Release regarding today’s presentation:

“What’s six metres high, three metres wide, weighs 1,170 kilograms and is wrapped in a 15 metre by 12 metre gift box from Omega on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s northwest corner in downtown Vancouver?

It’s the new Vancouver 2010 Countdown Clock, presented by Omega, Official Timekeeper. Preparations are underway to unveil it to the citizens of Vancouver, rain or shine, in a fast-paced noon hour celebration on Monday, February 12 – the three-year anniversary to the start of the 2010 Winter Games.�?

What Version of Vista do you recommend?

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:19:52 -0800

A friend pointed me to this little cartoon about Vista..

from this site: www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/915.html

I had the pleasure of testing Vista earlier last year, sadly for Microsoft I'm a mac person!

Scales speaking at the 2010 New Media BC Day

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:32:51 -0800

Kris Krug and I will be presenting on Web 2.0 and the 2010 Olympics as part of New Media BC's New Media Day for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Committee and friends on Thursday December 7, 2006.

We will be showing how "Web 2.0" can further the promotion of the Olympics and help connect the real world Olympic community with the online community world wide.

Bryght's blog post from 2006/12/06.

This will be a continuation of the work we've done earlier this year in Torino, where KK lead a Web 2.0 and Sports Symposium. This is also link with our ongoing strategy towards the 2008 Beijing Olympics with our client; China Access 2008 and the recent BarCamp Shanghai which Raincity helped organize and sponsored.

Raincity and Bryght in the Thunderbird UBC School Journal

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:04:21 -0800

A few weeks ago while we hosted the first joint drupal training session between Bryght and Raincity, Anna Olejarczyk interviewed Krug and I for her upcoming article on Web 2.0 start-ups in Vancouver.

The article came out last week, here's a portion of it.

Robert Scales, CEO and founder of Raincity Studios, says that people who are in the Web 2.0 industry are more like “private investors.�?

There’s not much public investment going on, but in this goldrush stage, there are a number of young entrepreneurs being picked up for their product. Yahoo acquiring Flickr, Google buying YouTube and News Corp. obtaining MySpace – these are all large companies that are getting the missing pieces of the puzzle that will make them leading edge in this new technology frenzy says Scales.

Google acquires YouTube for 1.65 billion!

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:08:16 -0700

In a move that has surprised a few people, Google announced today that it would acquire YouTube, the fast growing online video sharing site founded by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, ending months of speculation that You Tube was bound to fail and would be soon a just a vague memory.

YouTube also managed to sign various other agreement today with CBS, Universal and Sony for rights to share music videos and other content ending what was for month speculation that YouTube would ended up having massive copyright problems such as Napster facced years ago.

The deam was brokered by Sequoia, who at first calculation will walk with just over 595 million dollars for their 11.5 million dollar investment in YouTube.

With this deal, Google/YouTube will now have over 56% of the online video market under their control.

Read more New York Time or read Paul Kedrosky's Infection Greed.. His blog is great and he's got great insight on the whole deal..

More barcamp shanghai news coverage..

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:08:49 -0700

Crystal and Franz pointed me to another article on barcamp Shanghai written by �?玻 and published on the 21st Century Business Herald.

It covers a wide range of topics ranging from the background of barcamp to the upcoming barcamp Shanghai2 next March. It mention my session on Open Source Business with a picture taken by Andy Chang.

The article was written from an interview conducted with Kris and various other organizers and attendees.

Congrats everyone for such great success in bringing, organizing, hosting and promoting this event. We look forward to see barcamp Beijing and coming for barcamp Shanghai2 in March 07.

Reflection on Barcamp Shanghai

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:00:16 -0700

China’s first barcamp

Last month, only a few days after Barcamp Vancouver, on our way to work Kris and I were speaking about our strategy for our upcoming second trip to China. It then occurred to us that it would be a great opportunity to help organize the first Barcamp in China, during our stay in Shanghai.

We immediately recruited the help of Crystal Williams, who had been a key member of the organization team that made Barcamp Vancouver a success. With less then a month to go, we sent a shout-out to the community with hopes to find more help on the ground and set barcamp Shanghai in motion.

Not your typical barcamp planning

As always, Crystal jumped right into action setting up the wiki on barcamp.org, setting up the organizer mailing lists, creating the logo and blog badges. and laying down the foundation to help the organizers move forward with a plan of action.