scales, robert scales

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.

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.

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!