CHINICT,GMIC, China Webmaster Annual Conf, Where to Catch Your Chinese Superstars

Not sure why our Internet people love this month, May. Three conference will be held this week in Beijing:

• Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 (GMIC) – 27th – 28th May – organized by TheGreatWallClub
• CHINICT 6th edition – 27th – 28th May – organized by a great entrepreneur and friend, Franck Nazikian
• 5th China Webmaster Annual Conference (CWAC)- 29th May – organized my good friend Kevin Day’s Comsenz and im286.com

GMIC focus on mobile industry, the hottest sector in Chinese web. Its About says it is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West.

CHINICT says it is the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship. It believes China is becoming bigger than Silicon Valley, both as a hotbed for innovations of global impact & as a magnet for entrepreneurs from all over the world.  It is to showcase this silent yet on-going revolution.

Both GMIC and CHINICT are quite international, i.e. “East meets West” is naturally very important theme. However, CWAC is purely Chinese. If you are an English-speaking reader, you may never heard of this event and even know none of the speakers there, but the fact is that ~2000 grassroot and Chinese webmasters have registered. CWAC as it was in past four years, is to reflect the past year in Chinese web industry, is to think how to build a healthy ecosystem for China web and to discuss “the local industry in practice”.

If you are in Beijing, definitely you need find some chance to catch those superstars in Chinese web. But the question is, which conference you should go for?

1. If you are interested in Mobile industry only, especially want to understand more about Chinese/Japanese mobile industry, GMIC is the one;
2. If you want to see some most interesting entrepreneurs in China, I would suggest you to go to CHINICT since guys like Kaifu Lee will be there.
3. Topic-wise, of course you need make sure if those topics in three conference are attractive enough for you. My two cents: panel discussion normally is better than one-guy speech; the keynotes given by International speaker generally worth your attention rather that the ones by local guys as some Chinese high profile guys usually are good at delivering PR-style presentation which is super boring; But there is also a big problem for most international speakers, they know little about China, therefore their suggestion may not be applied to local market; GMIC and CHINICT are interested in discussing the global issues but CWAC focus on the real issues in China, such as Green growth of local web industry, what’s next for Chinese online social platforms, opportunities and challenges in the government’s “three-networks-in-one” industry change;
4. Speaker-wise, I would like to leave you to make the judgment. There are some people who seems showing-up in every conference and repeat the same talk from time to time; you can also find some people who is un-familiar to foreigners but they are actually playing very important role and have millions of grassroot fans;
5. If you want to save money, of course you need go CWAC which is free but make sure you understand Chinese. The other two obviously, the Chinese ordinary web users are not their target.

So catch your Chinese superstars this week in Beijing, and it’s up to you to tell where they really are.