Last week, Gian Fulgoni and I were in China as guests of Baidu, the leading Chinese Search Engine. Baidu had invited Gian to participate in the “The Baidu World Conference 2008” in Shanghai, China on June 5th. Not only did we meet many industry leaders in China, we also got to see one of the greatest cities in China.
There were more than 2,000 people from various Internet companies attending the conference. As two of the handful of “VIPs” of the conference, Gian and I were invited to walk down the “red carpet” together to enter the conference, and got an unexpected reaction from several groups of attendees: “They look like the two guys from the movie ‘Rain Man”. Of course, they meant Gian looks like Dustin Hoffman, not that I (a Chinese guy) look anything like Tom Cruise.
Gian was also one of the six guests who were invited onto the stage, along with the CEO of Baidu, for the opening ceremony. It was terrific to have Comscore’s name introduced in China, in front of people from hundreds of Chinese companies and officials from a variety of government agencies.
It was a great conference, great exposure, interactions with great people in a great city on a great trip!