I love Hong Kong and have done since I was a boy and so a few disconnected opinions.

Coolest Bar - Felix at the top of the Peninsula hotel

Best Barbecue Pork - Dynasty restaurant 4th Floor Renaissance New World Hotel

Best activity - Ferry ride to Central from Tsim Sha Tsui Cost 2.20 HKD

Best area for eating - Lang Quai Fong (no idea how to spell it)

Best Shop for Gadgets Special Mall 64B Nathan Road (See Ricky and or Alex)

I have a lot to talk about our China launches and will add this int he next few days when I am not about to board a flight.

Soon Sales will be welcoming a new member into their fast growing team. Timo Hoppe will start on the 1st November and will assist Sarik Weber. Timo has collected a lot of experience through numerous internships and has spent time at the University of Ireland in Galway and the Fachhochschule Aachen. We look forward to welcoming him into the openBC team.

The events in China are in full swing and so is Bill Liao who is itching to blog about everything. But the restrictions are in force and we are still trying to register openBLOG with the Chinese government. I would like to paint a small picture of the goings-on in China over the past few days so please have a look at the photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/openbc/sets/1219897/
or go to the openBLOG photos page.

There has been a great response to the openBC launch with a large number of journalists attending the press conferences and other professionals joining the evening events in Beijing and Shanghai. The last event will be held in Guangzhou tonight and will be just as busy. I am sure that Bill will provide us with lots more details once he is on the plane out of China.

I intend to ramble a bit now in the hope it makes me feel better.

I am sitting in the first class lounge at Heathrow terminal one, courtesy of my frequent flyer miles and the nice lady at the desk and some very good piloting by a British Airlines pilot who I really should get the name of and send some Xmas cheer.

I am shaky and a bit stirred truth to tell and  this is definitely my first blog entry under the influence of alcohol.

For the record the most important priorities in my life are my wife Kerrie and my three children Liam, Riley and Willow Rose.

I have just arrived in London en route to China for our launch ceremonies there for openBC with Dr Song our JV partner there.

Hot potato and leek soup coupled with a strong brandy has a very calming effect I have just discovered.

Some few hours ago I was shuffling down the gangway onto flight BA 971 in Hamburg and my main concern was the balancing the little bag of food they had given me (due to the catering strike)

An aviation incident is defined as an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.

So I am chatting to a really nice British couple,  the Newton's (and yes one of them is indeed a physicist), as we taxi out to the runway and everything is fine (though half an hour late due to rain) and then we are taking off ....

Then we aren't, in fact we are screeching to a shuddering, skidding, smoking, screaming halt in the middle of the runway (did you know Hamburg airport has a runway apron webcam?).

Now can anyone tell me why on earth people build airports with runways that cross at the ends like Hamburg or Chicago O'hare?

So as we sit there in the sudden stillness we notice a plane landing on the cross runway which we were about to cross ourselves.... "exactly how far into take off do you have to be before you can't stop" I think?

So I give genuine thanks to British Airways for having pilots trained well enough to abort a take off instead of continuing on and I have to ask what was air traffic control doing today in Hamburg?

How close did we come? How can I tell? I'm just thinking "its dumb to have runways that cross at the ends and that this kind of design in an invitation to an accident" (OK I turn into an engineer in stressful situations - Ugly and true...) .

So the pilot calmly informs us that the take of clearance had been revoked shortly after it was granted and I reflect  that  shortly is a bloody good thing cos longly would not have worked for me.

Then our pilot informs us that there is nothing wrong with the aircraft, which is nice, and I am thinking that "the aircraft may be fine and my underwear on the other hand...."  nearly not fine at all and I personally am very very far away from fine.

So we are all wondering why it is that everyone of the crew are calm does this sort of thing happen a lot?  Are they used to it? You hear the term near miss and you think that was lucky and then you are faced with it and suddenly you feel grateful to be alive and sick that you nearly weren't.

So fully alive and back to why can this happen and a little research turns up this Document on runway design and please notice type D the "intersecting runway". Are we so comfortable that air traffic control can prevent accidents that this kind of layout is OK? HELLO? It is just me?

OK so I am calm now, taking a deep breath.... As I said I am glad to be alive and well and I love my family and my friends and my business and The Hunger Project in roughly that order.

With grateful thanks to BA and some trepidation to Hamburg airport and its designers.

Bill

China is an increasingly important country and also has an ancient art of social networking "Guanxi", where one's place is defined in the social structure and provides security, trust and a prescribed role. openBC professional networking is based on security and trust and helps people define who they are through meeting contacts and strengthening their knowledge. This is an excellent base for doing business.

We are pleased to announce that openBC China will be launching with 3 events from 26th to the 28th October. The first event will be in Beijing at the world class Landmark Hotel, followed by Shanghai in the Cyprus Hotel and finishing in Guangzhou at the Regal Rivera Hotel. Each event will have speakers from openBC, namely Xinyu Song (country manager China, see picture), Bill Liao (senior partner) and Maria Sipka (COO).

These events are for openBC members living in China. You can find the event details under "Events" and "openBC Official Events". Or if you are not yet a member, register today and join us at these events.

We look forward to welcoming new faces to the platform!

Etre finished up last night with a gala dinner and yes despite rumors to the contrary I do own a tuxedo.

The Mayor of Athens is obviously very switched on talked to many of the guests. Alex was in his element  going from table to table, as ever the charming and caring host, thanking everyone for their participation.

Alex is a class act who really knows just about everyone and he also has an encyclopedic knowledge of the whole technology space globally. As a super connector you have to admire his abilities.

He did pause for another quick photo as well I think Maria, not me, is the one making him smile though :-)

openBC is very happy to work with MySQL and it was a pleasure to meet their CEO Marten Mickos here at ETRE.

I hope that we can work even more closely together in future and that we can count on them to deliver more and more innovation that supports our platform.

Just participated in a great round table lead by Alex Vieux, George Coehlo from Benchmark, Ian Lobley from 3I, Bernard Yvetot from Invest in France  and other eminent persons and then there is me.

The topic is Entrepreneurs in Europe and the conclusions eloquently summed up by Alex and paraphrased by me are that in Europe the effects of Government policy, taxation and geography are not as potent as the ones of European societies tendency in general to punish both success and failure to harshly and thereby tend towards the mediocre.

One point I did not agree with for the future of entrepreneurial-ism is the one made about mobility which has been relevant in the past with the formation of clusters of excellence globally (like Silicon Valley) I feel that  the new generation of  entrepreneurs will be much more connected  in a virtual world and so  physical mobility  will be  less important in my view than digital  accomplishments.

We are meeting new contacts and old at the dinner events and there have been some interesting rumors floating around including who openBC may be working with in the future.

While none of these rumors seem to bear much truth, I can say that there are some which may come true...

Also turns out I get to participate in one of the round tables today so I hope to be able to contribute some information fo my own to the mill.

Stephanie Busch joined openBC in May 2005 as my personal assistant after studying towards a doctor in Business Administration at the Free University Berlin. She became an expert on internet startups with a study on growing pains of German internet companies. From the results she developed an idea for her PhD Study on "First Mover Advantages of Internet-Startups in Germany" and won a scholarship to do the research. Stephanie was comparing successful and failing first-movers on their different strategies, resources and market segments. Her book has been published under the title “Pioniervorteile am Beispiel der Internet-Ökonomie” (Pioneer advantages focusing on the Internet economy). Unfortunately the book is only available in German.

You can find it here at Amazon.de.

This week Stephanie received her official doctor´s degree (magna cum laude). We would like to congratulate her and we are extremely pleased that she is a part of the openBC team!

Working hard at our openBC stand keying in members who wish to use our new business card scanning service which we are trialling here at ETRE as an extension of our openBC concierge service.

Btw, the speech by the Mayor of Athens was inspiring she is very dynamic and has a great vision for the city that goes on beyond the whole Olympics infrastructure upgrades.

Met Gil Penchina from Ebay who's VP of international and whose attitude towards international matches our own.

Gil is introducing me to the guys at Flock who are building a social browser.

Here we are at ETRE: Maria, Sarik and myself. Just finished watching Alex gril the Qualcom guy and we have setup our little stand. This year I am more renewing old acquaintances rather then meeting new people.

The atmosphere is buzzing and I have to say that there are quite a few movers and shakers working the crowd.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Today we welcome a new member to the team :-) Lars and Daniela have this morning become the proud parents of Helene Laetitia Hinrichs who was born this morning 51cm 3530g and all completely gorgeous!

Let us all join Daniela and Lars in celebrating their little miracle! :-)

Pictures to follow....

And with apologies to the Bard:

As a any parent will takes delight
To see their active child do deeds of youth,
So we, now blessed by fortune's dearest might,
Take all our comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,
We make our love engrafted to this store:
So then we are not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That we in thy abundance are sufficed
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look, what is best, that best we wish in thee:
This wish we have; then ten times happy we!

Another great networking event with a real spirit of smart people working to make a better world is the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference which will be held in Monterey, California next year. I am a TEDster and regularly enjoy reading the books they send me from the book club as well as of course enjoying the events themselves which are awesome and really offer a new take on the world and what can be done to mobilize the great skills and ideas that are in our communities to make a difference.

I also noticed they launched a blog today which you can find here so take a look!

We  just got back from the seminar "Networking for journalists", where Lars gave a speech on the possibilities and success factors of networking on openBC.  The publishing house "Linde" had invited Lars, Stephie and me to the beautiful Literaturhaus in Hamburg, where 22 journalists were waiting to learn how to improve their professional life with networking in general and openBC in particular. The most striking thing about the participants:
21 of the 22 journalists were female, exactly 1 was male.

Why is this? Do men know how to network and have no need for a seminar? Are men naturally better networkers than women? Given the fact that 75 % on our platform are men, you start wondering...  One reason is be that women still have a reserved attitude towards the internet.  But then again, offline networking clubs are a traditionally male domain, too.
If you have an explanation, please let me know.

Lars and Andreas Lutz, coach and author of the book "Praxisbuch Networking", outlined the advantages of openBC as a research tool and a quick and efficient way to find interview partners and experts opinions.  They had to dispel on or two concerns:  Can I protect my sources=hide my contacts on openBC? (Yes, you can.) People will contact me with suggestions for articles all the time - how can I react politely? (You don't need to anwer every contact request and if you reject one, the person will not see it.) What about privacy, I don't want everyone to see my personal data? (You can individually decide about how much you show to whom.). 
Lars was highly supported by the openBC members among the participating journalists who had already experienced the advantages and were enthuisiastically reporting on them. By the end of the seminar he had them all convinced and we are looking forward to new openBC members now :) .

This week we had a new telephone system set-up in the office, the GN9120 from GN Netcom, a global manufacturer of wireless communication technology (although the website is only in German). The new headset will give us more freedom of movement so we can all become multi-tasking experts and not only at our desks, we can telephone throughout our entire office.

Deutsche Telekom is the provider and we  will control the telephoning via our computers. It will also be handy for telephone conferencing as up to 4 head-sets can connect via 1 portal.  Now we feel very efficient and a part of modern technology!

Check out some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/openbc/sets/1131623/, or have a look on our photos page.

Just noticed a couple of nights ago an artistic installation on the river consisting of giant floating lights.

This is a post testing my ability to Blog remotely and thereby hopefully be able to do a bit of ad-hoc reporting from Etre this weekend.

I have been working for openBC since February 2005. I have been a  part of many projects, from market research - strategy - CRM - event management. I find my job exciting because it covers so many different areas of marketing and everyday brings new challenges and achievements. It is an honour to work in a company that is still quite young but at the same time international. This opens up a lot of interesting work, where I team up with many fascinating people from all over the world. There is never a bored moment and it is excellent to see people network and the happiness and success it gives them.

The marketing and communication department wants to grow and we would really like to welcome a new member into our team. We are looking for a marketing and communications intern for 4 - 6 months. We are based in Hamburg, Germany so we are looking for a German citizen or someone with a fluent knowledge of German. You can see the job description on our website homepage, just click here.

I have had the same email address for a long time and as such I am very attached to it so it irks me that over the years it has been found by the spammers .

One of the things I like about openBC is that our message system is secure enough that it is commercially unviable for people to use it for spam so I often respond to private messages before I respond to emails.

Recently I installed Cloudmark having tried a very large number of different anti spam tools I was very skeptical. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised by how clever cloudmark is in getting its community to cooperate in spam fighting.

Still there are false positives and my account gets hit by about 1500 spam a day of which on a typical day cloudmark lets through 3 or so.

It has saved me time and I ultimately prefer to receive private messages on openBC rather than emails. If someone did send me a message I did not like on openBC  I, like any user, can communicate back and even block someone entirely.

Someone once said to me that email would always be free and attempts to charge for it would never work I agreed at the time yet now when I look at what spam costs me in time and money
I am paying a premium for my emails above and beyond the cost of the bandwidth and the computer.

I guess that we will see continuing escalation between the pro and anti spam messengers so I will probably end up using my private message account far more than my email.

At the moment we are planning the next annual openBC market research "Communication and Networking". Last year the focus was on Europe, this year we are focusing more on an international level. This research helps us find out what people think about openBC's service and features. It also provides us with new knowledge about communication and networking generally and through using social software. 

To see if we were on the right track, I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask you what you think we should include in the market research? What do you see as important areas and why?

We are conducting this research to learn more about people's thoughts on openBC and the development of the new social software phenomena. It would be very interesting to hear what you would like to know about openBC and/or communication and networking!

a fellow openBC-member and friend of mine released his new venture plans last weekend. Martin  is a well regarded and successful, serial, parallel, entrepreneur. He created several companies including Jazztel, Viatel and Ya.com. His newest venture is mind-blowing, bringing the spirit of open source to the WIFI-World, enabling everybody with a hotspot to share his bandwidth with other members of a global WiFi community who would also share their bandwidth. The company "FON" - is an outcome of martin using openBC. I encourage you all to take a look at this amazing project "FON" here.

Coming up this weekend is another of my favorite networking events which is the European Technology Round Table Exhibition I have found in the past that this event run by Dasar and their ebullient CEO Alex Vieux to be a really amazing opportunity for networking and as I have said before I enjoy greatly meetign people and bringing the together.

I will be trying out the remote posting technology to the blog this weekend that I use to do my own blog to see if I can offer some of the flavor of the event to you while I am there in Athens.

This year is a first for us as we are also providing some of the technology behind the scenes with our white label solution providing the Etre Insider site.  If you are also going to Etre please connect to me in the Eyre Insider site.

For my birthday this year Lars gave me a very nice present in the form of a folding bicycle called a Brompton and I have to say when in Hamburg I really enjoy riding into the office it feels good to be under my own steam again after so many years not riding. 

That said I come in for roughly equal parts of  praise and heat  for  riding this  tiny folding machine as people either find it seriously cool or ridiculously funny ( a bit like a Sedgway).

We have recently had one of our top super connectors Udo Hamm working with us on global strategies  here in the office and he is definitely and arbiter of good taste so naturally had comments on my little bike.

I think the argument of cool or not is settled admirably and in both directions simultaneously by Udo in the following photo....

:-)

For more of my ravings about my bike click here!

Do you know that openBC also has Private Clubs ? For those who don´t: We have developed a professional white label platform based on openBC's software to offer big or international companies and communities a perfect networking solution for their own brands.

Last friday, openBC Hamburg was bustling as a Private Club training took place. Daimler Chrysler, AIESEC and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde (DGM) visited us for an intensive one day training. They spent the day learning the ropes to each manage their own Private Club. They now know how their Private Club works to get the most out of the network and to let it all run smoothly…

I note with interest the recent announcement of the LinkedIn - AOL alliance. Though I notice they do not mention it on their website press area ;-)

While we are great believers in anything to do with enhancing communications between people it remains to be seen whether this is a direction that will prove popular.  I suspect that if the integration is seamless it will be a good thing.

To that end some weeks before Oktoberfest we began working on our own partnership and now we have a  signed and we will reveal with whom in the coming weeks once the integration is complete and we can demonstrate working features in Beta.

Anybody who has read the tipping point will know the theory that the influencers in society come in two broad flavors;  mavens who build social capital with what they know and connectors who build social capital with who they know and of course there are varying degrees of each tendency in all of us.

Now I am these days more of a connector than maven and still I cannot resist the mavenish impulse to share the new things I have discovered particularly if they relate to either business and scientific knowledge and or new technology (read gadgets).

Anyway for some time now I have been capturing these outbursts on my openBC forum where I have sections for reading lists, book reviews and mobile technology reviews. I have as lo finally worked out how to do a link in typepad so you can now read about my frustrations with my latest gadget which is entitled So Close....

Now if you are not a member of openBC you will not see much by clicking the links above so do take a minute to join if you have not already, it is a relatively painless process and best of all its free, so just click here

So despite years of successful connecting I am still also a maven and cannot resist finding out a juicy new piece of information and then spreading it around, so here I am blogging away. I suspect that  blogging really offers the mavens of this world a much stronger voice than they have collectively had before. Any comments?

A big that you to everyone who has suggested project management software several of the suggestions look like they will be excellent and the more efficiently we can manage our development process the better we can make the software.

On the upside I have several great new contacts from our London event and I am looking forward to our Chinese Launch events later this month so if you know people in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing let them know to  keep an eye out for us after the 25th.

One thing though I have had several more people try to connect to me without giving a reason why and unfortunately I never confirm connections from people I have not met unless they give me a compelling reason to connect.

Hi,

Let me introduce myself, my name is Lars Hinrichs. I am the founder and CEO of openBC and I want to welcome you to the openBLOG, our brand new company weblog.

openBC is all about connecting people and so is the blogosphere. That is the reason why we were always very interested in the whole weblog phenomenon. We have been reading many blogs for a long time. But now we have decided to go one step further and become an active member of the worldwide blogging community.

So I would like to present to you “openBLOG”!

openBLOG will introduce you to the people behind openBC. It will also be a tool used to engage in open discussions both with our members and with people who are not members - yet! ;-) So we are really looking forward to receiving your feedback. Please feel free to use the comments extensively!!

Obviously, we are new to blogging. We have already done some "practice posting" over the last few weeks, but we still need to learn the ropes. I think every blogger has to develop his or her own style and that is what we want to achieve over the coming weeks. Your help is always appreciated!

Last but not least, I want to give a thank you to the people who built the openBLOG: Björn Ognibeni (blog concept), Christiane Brink (screen design) and Karsten Rieke (technical realization). Great Job!

Enough introductions, let's start to blog...

Best regards,
Lars

Last week we held the biggest openBC event ever – the openBC Oktoberfest 2005. When the openBC team got on the plane from Hamburg to Munich last Friday, we didn’t know what to expect. Most of us had never been to the Oktoberfest before (after all, we are a Hamburg based company) and the reactions later that day ranged from cultural shock to amazement to enthusiasm.
3 members of the management dressed up as true Bavarians: Lars and Eoghan looked good wearing Lederhosen and if you saw Maria in her dirndl you would never have guessed that she is Australian.

There were many companies partying at the Oktoberfest, but the difference to the openBC Oktoberfest was that we were celebrating all together, with 1.200 members! It was great fun. Everybody had a good time, our team together with our members. As soon as people recognised us as being part of the openBC team (which was not too difficult, as we were wearing openBC polo-shirts), they immediately told us how much they liked openBC and how much it has improved their professional life. There was a brilliant atmosphere! We enjoyed our roast chicken and the excellent Bavarian beer (not too much of course, as we had a long night ahead of us) and mingled with the crowd.

Later that night some serious singing and dancing took place. Lars had reserved a table for the team in the Hippodrom where we had a fantastic Bavarian dinner (the full monty: Dumplings, red cabbage and sausages with many other specialties) and … of course … some more Bavarian beer. Everybody can sing “Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit” by heart now. We were a really international table (England, Australia, India, Romania, Spain,…) and it was funny to watch the unifying effect of the “Prosit” song. For those, who have never been to the Oktoberfest: Every 10-15 minutes the band plays “Ein Prosit”, everybody stands up, sings along, clinks glasses and takes a sip.

We can’t wait until next year!

Check out the complete openBC Oktoberfest 2005 photo collection on Flickr !

If you do have a Flickr account (you can get a free account here) and photos from the event, just slap the tag "openbcoktoberfest05" on them and they will become part of a public collection of all pictures taken at this event. You find all the pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/openbcoktoberfest05/

And of course: feel free to use the comments here and let us know, what you thought about the Wiesn 2005 !!!!

Growth and new faces are a part of everyday life here in openBC Hamburg. This week International has grown and we have welcomed Sonja Krysinska into the team. She will be helping Stephanie Busch as an intern with duties such as market analysis, country manager and Poland support, and much much more. We look forward to working with her!

Bill Liao is back in the office after various trips around Europe. To our advantage he just flew in from Switzerland after visiting Sprüngli and bringing with him THE BEST chocolates in the world - "Cru Sauvage".

Every December to March Sprüngli harvests a very special crop of the finest cocoa plants in the bolivian amazon area. Sprüngli harvests smaller beans giving the cocoa a more intense flavour. The cocoa beans are refined with fresh cream and enrobed in rich dark chocolate and gently dusted with cocoa powder. The taste sensation is just as Sprüngli says it is, begining with a gentle, flower-scented bouquet, unfolds to reveal a fine espresso aroma and closes with a wonderfully sustained vanilla finish - divine!

I personally can't thank Sprüngli enough for bringing this delight into the world and I can't thank Bill enough for bringing it into our office, giving each one of us a moment of bliss!

It is one week to the day since we moved into our new office and I must admit there are still a couple of boxes lying around. But we all feel very settled and are getting used to being in such a big office. We have many new areas starting with my home, the Marketing area, where we even have a little Zen garden with stones and plants. Support and International take up the main area as they are growing like wild fire! Sales can be found in their own area next to Marketing and dividing us are huge glass dividers, very chic!

The new conference rooms are also very smart incorporating tech tools to aid communication with people all over the world, a necessity in such a global company. Their modern architectural design creates a feeling of openness and light, the larger room even has a view of the Zen garden!

There is a positive atmosphere flying around the office mixed with rich ideas and activities. I think I speak for everyone if I say we are looking forward to many more weeks in our new office!

You can see some pictures from the day we moved by following this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/openbc/tags/openbcmove0905/

You can also see some better photos of the office areas here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/openbc/52108315/in/set-1130697/

Well tonight marked the long overdue first kick off event for openBC in London and we had a great evening with a great location (being the financial book shop in Bishops gate) which is a perfect place for a business themed event and carries the widest range of high end financial books I have ever seen in one place.

London is a great city and I always enjoy visiting and as is often the case with openBC events in great cities the sell out crowd was extremely diverse and most refreshingly some of my fellow antipodeans were in attendance (that's people from the southern end of the globe)

I am always delighted to see people meeting new people and having in depth conversations and of course we encouraged people to talk to people they had not met before. I also always take these opportunities to extend the number of people I connect to on the site as I prefer to only connect to people I have met in person (the exception being where someone has done their homework and given me a really compelling  reason in the "Why do you want to connect" field)

A big thank you to every one who attended and to everyone who created and facilitated the evening.

One of the great things about working for openBC is I get to attend lots of networking events and to meet lots of users.

Many of the events I attend are run by and for  industry leaders and this is the case with today where I attended a though leadership forum on convergence run by Price Waterhouse Coopers, Nokia and First Tuesday Zurich.

I can say that the overwhelming opinion of the room which consisted of industry leaders such as Nokia, Yahoo and Swisscom is that convergence is focused on the users and that voip 2.0 and voip 3.0 is coming and will be a key component of the way we interact with machines and each other in the future.

The other impression I get is that people are really searching for the next wave of innovation and that we have not seen anything yet!