More on China Foo

Two great reviews of this last weekend’s China Foo event are Rebecca MacKinnon’s comments and Tim O’Reilly’s thoughts. I’ve been thinking a lot about the language barrier that came up. Tim’s correct in his assessment that “there really are two tech communities in China: the one we reached, and another one, that is more distinctly Chinese.”

It’s surprisingly easy to be in China and be completely disconnected from the people here. Language and culture create almost bridge-less gaps. I’ve struggled with this myself as I’ve tried to reach the Chinese open source community. For example, there are distinctly western and eastern approaches at open source, technology and simply doing business. Coming from the US, I sometimes get frustrated with the number of top-down open source initiatives which are government driven, not community driven. But these efforts are significant and should not be discouraged. In fact, cooperating with these groups and getting involved in these initiatives is critical. This is one reason why I’ve spent a lot of this last year simply listening and helping where I can.

I’m helping to organize Hong Kong’s first barcamp this December. All the initial organizers are expats and we’ve been very concerned about making sure this event includes locals and expats alike. It’s a tricky, sensitive balance, but it can happen.