*** O, barren branches and winds from the north: Chinese New Year is a predictably dead month for tech as everyone crawls out from behind their computers and scuttles home for the holidays, but it’s not a total wash. Hang on to your panties for the seen-and-heard scrapings of the February tech news barrel.
Crypto-Currencies to buy: The Beijing Bitcoin Meetup
You ever try to buy bitcoins? I did. Two days and a whole bunch of sketch-ass user accounts on the Canadian net later, though, and I put that hot potato down and never touched it again. Then the silly things went and quadrupled in value and I, like everyone at every dinner party in the world, whined about my own lack of tenacity.
I feel the same way about bitcoins that I feel about those clip-on Gulou cat ears, I find them morbidly fascinating, coquettishly alien. I want some, but I feel like they might get me arrested.
Emily Shanahan is the marketing manager at OKCoin, “a Chinese digital currency trading platform and exchange based in Beijing” and as of last year, the largest bitcoin exchange in China. Emily organizes the Beijing Bitcoin Meetup, the only one of its kind in the city, where you can “catch up and mingle with Beijing’s bitcoin crowd. Get advice on using bitcoin, find out about bitcoin activities in Beijing, or just enjoy the bitcoin-related banter. Best of all, you can pay for your food & drink with bitcoin!”
There’s a Beijing bitcoin crowd? I am so into this.
The last meeting was held at The Local on January 28, the natural choice to become Beijing’s ground zero for darknet shenanigans.
Stay tuned for SmartBeijing’s upcoming in-depth coverage on this radness. We'll be checking back in with them after the holidays.
Places to go: AND Inc. Co-Working Space and Café
Heads up, heads up: Now you can make that life-sized Barbara Walters sex doll without having to wipe your home hard drive afterwards. Joining the proud tradition of nebulously named future-spaces (no really, it’s a thing: Old What Bar, Somewhere, The Other Place), new-ish-comer And, Inc. in East Beijing’s Pingod is a dual 3D print center and co-working space. Rent a desk by the week (400rmb) or the month (1,450rmb), or just swing by to use their 3D modelling software and tools. (Check the rates here.) More about them at their main page.
Butts to Kiss: JingDong Open Day and Mobile Technology Summit
Attention startup fanboys: Rub elbows with some of the top dudes at JingDong, one of China's largest B2C online retailers, at their two-day web products symposium nerdfest this weekend.
Day one, February 7, check out JingDong Open Day from 1:30pm to 6:00pm, then follow up at a full Sunday session with JD’s mobile R&D team, as they give attendees an inside look into the strategic thinking behind one of the biggest ecomm sites in China.
Held at the National Convention Center, this Open Day will give green product managers a look at the birth, growth, evolution and eventual success or failure of 100 different web products.
Day two, after opening remarks by JingDong Vice President Xu Lei, and we’ll be hearing from the likes of Liu Weihuan, JD’s Senior Research and Development Engineer, and Shen Pengfei, Senior Wireless Product Manager, who’ll talk about “Hidden Product Design – JingDong’s Product Experience Optimization“.
Check out the full schedule in Chinese here .
Conferences that involve getting up close and personal with industry rock stars usually cost thousands of RMB to attend, but this one’s free, so if you’re at all interested -- and your Chinese rocks ass -- seats are limited to 800 for Day 1, and 500 for Day 2. Get on that.
'Til next time.
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