jeremy snyder's meta|remix

a while ago, i heard a piece on npr about harper lee, the author of to kill a mockingbird. it piqued my curiosity, so i went out and read it.

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i was in australia for a week, visiting sydney, melbourne and the yarra valley. the first two were for business, the latter for pleasure. Read the rest of this entry »

is this a good sign? hear some of my thoughts on the jeromecast.

Hint: it’s not Rome. It does have to do with the Internet. Listen to the latest from the Jeromecast to find out more.

listen to the latest episode on speeding and harsh fines.

a few years ago, i heard a story about a chinese musician who was touring in europe. i don’t remember the story perfectly, but i believe it was a woman, and she was being interviewed on a german talk show on television. it went something like this:

tv host: i’m asking you some controversial question about china.

artist: ok.

tv host: please consider this question very carefully. this is a very important show. we have approximately 10 million viewers.

artist: hmm. if you had 10 million viewers in china, you’d probably be canceled.

i don’t know if this story went exactly like this, or if the story is even true. if anyone has a link or confirmation of that story, please let me know in the comments. but that same story came back to mind last week, as i was discussing the status of cantonese in china (recently protested) relative to the future of the finnish language.

me: finnish will probably die in about 50-100 years. (nb: i didn’t mean that it would completely die, but that it would go from being a strong national language to being kind of secondary language and that finns would generally speak english more)

him: that would be shocking. it’s a language rich with history and culture.

me: isn’t cantonese also?

him: well, maybe, but it’s just a dialect.

me: how many speakers does cantonese have? around 100 million, right?

him: maybe. maybe less. (nb. turns out it’s less, closer to 25-50 million by various estimates)

me: finnish has 5 million speakers.

him: oh.

that was his reaction, based on our conversational evidence of 100 million speakers. so why do i think finnish will have such a struggle? well, first of all, finland has already had a wave of nokia immigration recently. that’s made life in helsinki in english completely possible. couple that with europe’s upcoming demographic problems, and english will just continue to gain strength as the lingua franca. i hope i’m wrong, but it puts a light on critical population masses and the perspective you might have on it, coming from different backgrounds.

hear my thoughts. but seriously? i mean, seriously?

i had a chance to spend an extra couple of days after some business meetings there in early august. i stayed in tsim sha tsui, which is great from the location standpoint, but the hotels in the area are fairly low-rent. not being my first time in hk, i decided to skip the main tourist things, like the star ferry, the peak and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

i happened to be in hong kong for meetings, and had an extra day scheduled today. so, based on a tip from a friend, i spent the day at startup saturday, held at cyberport. here are some of my observations:

• the people in the hong kong startup community who spoke today recognize that they need an eco-system of entrepreneurs, investors, infrastructure and other support
• boot.hk sees the demand for something like a hackerspace. apparently, they got the financial commitment they were looking for during the event today and will be launching that sometime soon. awesome!
• the panels were pretty interesting, with a range of speakers from an architect who does a very successful and cheeky (no pun intended – see his mooncakes) lifestyle brand business, to a couple who are active only in china really, to one who took an existing successful multinational, and turned that into a profitable local startup. unfortunately, i couldn’t find a delay no more t-shirt. i really wanted one.
• 20 startups presented, and i have to say that they did a good job. something about just talking about your company, without the pressure of actually pitching for funding, brings out the best in speakers.
• cyberport is a massive, beautiful building. it seems under-utilized, though.
• one thing i was kind of missing from all of the discussions is the exit discussion. but hey, maybe it’s too early to get into that.