The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

The UAE was just a short visit for me - 2.5 days with a flight out to London at a mortifiying 1:45am.  I was locked up in meetings for most of the time and only got to break away to The Mall of the Emirates for a few hours.  Ski Dubai, in the mall, was the most amazing thing.  Talk about some real estate developers who had too much money.  I heard a comment that someone had once said - “who would ever fly to Dubai to ski at the mall”?  The nearby UAE citizen replied - “We didn’t build it for you.  We built it for us.”  ‘Nuff said.

With all the money they have, the infrastructure (in terms of roads) are horrible.  My 4:30pm trip to the mall (25km) took 1 hour and at 7p on the return, took 1.5 hrs.  Unbelievable.  Dallas friends - we’ve got it easy, baby!  I remarked to a taxi driver that while UAE has 5 million citizens (for the entire country), I’d just come from a city in China that had 10 million people IN THE CITY and the traffic wasn’t as bad.
I didn’t make it out to the “Sailboat” hotel, although I saw it from a few miles away.  A stunning piece of architecture, even from there.  I’m confused - some say it’s a six-star hotel, others say 7.  Who cares - apparently it costs 60 Euros to peak in, if you’re not staying. 

Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Chili’s - it’s such a western place, it amazes me. While the Middle East might not like Americans, they do like our stuff, I will say that.

Speaking to the title of today’s post, as you can imagine, with the amount of money they roll in, it’s more normal to see Ferrarri, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maserati, Lamborghini than it is to see a Mercedes.  It seems in that country, you would be embarassing yourself if you were to try to make a financial boast by driving one of those.  It’s all relative.

Working Late, originally uploaded by Ed Weaver.

This guy was always working (as a part owner of his MP3/MP4 manufacturing company, it should come as no surprise). This picture was taken during dinner around 10pm after a long day. The restaurant was the only place I saw a rat the whole week in Shenzhen.

Gone are the days of taxi-ing to the terminal and watching golfers tee off  in between runways.  That’s depressing.  But, to make up for it, Thailand has gone all out in making this the most beautiful airport I’ve ever seen (to date at least).  This place is huge! (picture coming soon)

I realized that the last post was 9.14 - and here it is almost a month later and nothing has been written.  Even though I’ve been to Northern Europe, Orlando, FL, USA and now am in the Thai Airlines Royal Silk Lounge in Bangkok, one would think that I’ve got more than a little bit to say these days.

A lot has been going on, developing partnerships and talking with old friends finding was to work together on podcasts.  So, hopefully we’ll find more to write about here shortly.  In the mean time, Laura and I are on our second trip to SE Asia this year, but will only be gone about 8 days this time.  More to come!!

Monday, Macworld UK uncovered a story of Apple’s iPod manufacturing partner in China - originally published by Mail On Sunday and the blogosphere went nuts. At issue was living conditions, monthly pay, and hours worked. Apple was quiet initiallly and now has responded.

Considering that we just returned from a business trip to SE Asia, where a portion was spent in Shen Zhen, China, it’s necessary that I read these articles with an open mind. I wrote about that portion of the trip here. I should read with an open mind, consider what I personally saw in the factories which we buy from, and then act accordingly.

While the factories we were in weren’t the cleanest places I’d ever seen, I didn’t see any evidence of poor treatment of the workers or conditions that were unreasonable. When we arrived, the factory workers were taking a lunch break, and since ostensibly we were there to see the working factory, it was decided that we would go and eat lunch ourselves. Lest you think cynically of us that maybe we were naive, we did see the factory workers leaving the building en masse as we drove up.

We asked questions about working conditions and hours, but didn’t ask specific questions about monthly wages. We generally were satisfied with the responses and attitudes of the people we spent time with.

Now, my response to those that are up in arms about Apple - let me ask you this: In the U.S., we demand ever increasing profits so that share prices and company value will rise, therefore lining our pocketbooks or nests or whatever you want to call them. In order to accelerate that (and keep the buying public consuming at prices they are willing to pay), U.S. companies have been driven offshore to find the lowest possible cost of goods sold. Now, when they do, we have heart attacks over where the companies choose to have their products manufactured. Is that completely fair?

Now, let me be clear. I am FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. People should have the right to work, they should have the right and choice to work in decent conditions and make a decent wage (btw - those wages mentioned in the articles are somewhat reasonable for that area of the world, depending on what neighorhood you live in - just like here in the U.S.). Workers shouldn’t be required to work long, unhealthy hours. I didn’t see anything conclusive in the articles to state that these workers were being abused. If, in fact, they are being forced to work 15 hours days, particularly without reasonable compensation and choice as to work those hours or not, then I agree - that is abusive and Apple has the power to change that. One way is to threaten to end its relationship with Foxconn or completely sever it, if the relationship breaches Apple’s own code of conduct, mentioned here (same link as the response above, but included here for convenience), referring to the EICC.

It is a global economy and we do have to ask the question “What is the cost of low cost?”. And, we do have to ask if we’re closing a blind eye as consumers in order to fatten our bank accounts and get new toys at a lower cost. Hmmm.

In a WSJ Online article posted today, Zuo Tao is taking on an interesting role.  While this is not related to podcasting, I can understand his perspective, having returned recently from a business trip that included his home town, Shenzhen.  He is a blogger and has used his internet voice to turn up the heat on the local real estate community by saying that prices are out of control.

The supply of apartments and high-rise real estate seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds when we were there.  If, in fact, there is plenty of supply and the prices are sky-high, then the real estate community in Shenzhen is truly attempting to make unfair profits.  On the other hand, if the building and growth that we saw are just an attempt to keep up prices are being temporarily pressed upwards, that is another very real challenge of being in a popular, high-growth city.

I hope the people of China can resolve this issue without unfair treatment of individuals.  This is an interesting opportunity for free speech.

In this post, I’ll not mention the name of the country we were in, but do a best efforts attempt to describe the environment and experiences.

We arrived after our time in Hong Kong and China, and entered a hot, dirty country that has beautiful people in it. This was only my second time to be in a third world country, and was still getting used to what to expect and what to plan on doing without. There really is no middle class - just the haves and the have nots. As you can guess, the have nots outnumber the haves. We were in a city of 5 million that had almost every type of transportation - bicycles (individual or as a taxi of sorts - rider standing up and passenger on the seat), scooters, taxis, buses (which were packed like sardines), to name a few.

We had a 30 minute commute each morning to where we were meeting, from the hotel near the airport. The hotel itself had good food and great service. Internet access was dialup and was frustrating for an addicted broadbander. No TMobile hotspots or Starbucks to be found here. (The last day we were there I finally found a broadband Internet Cafe, but too late to do anything about it). We stayed 6 days and really missed the people when we left. Some things just were not able to be found, but then again, we were able to purchase 2 HP/Compaq computers while in the country to give to people we did some work with - about the same prices as we would find here in Dallas, so I was pleased that we were able to contribute to the work these people were doing in such a way.

This is a country with many oral learners in it - and those that can read don’t have much access to printed material, in that it can be very expensive. Many different cultures and points of view exist here - learning to navigate the differences and work together is an interesting challenge - one that is somewhat unexpected. Racism exists almost everywhere in the world, I’ve come to learn. I do hope they can learn from us, but I do hope that we have an example that is worthy of learning from. We may not be the best example, but the U.S. has worked hard to acknowledge the issues and make some attempt to change. We have a Civil War in our history to mark the beginning of the battle for human rights. May others not have to go to that extent.

Our first day in Hong Kong was primarily arrival and trekking about to Stanley Market, a western tourist trap for seconds of brand name clothing. Decent deals were had, but nothing to “write home” about.

The second day was our trip to Shen Zhen and then our third day was in Hong Kong where we were to meet up at the Golden Computing Center to get a demo unit of a particular device we’d seen at the MP3 factory in China. Prior to going there, our partner took us to lunch for Dim Sum at a restaurant overlooking Hong Kong harbor - what an incredible view (this was on the Kowloon side, so we were looking straight out at “Hong Kong” (as in the pictures and postcards we all see). As we were driving to the restaurant, my wife had seen the Hard Rock Cafe, so in keeping with my attempt to buy HRC memorabilia in our travels, I picked up my HRC cap to add to the collection.

Our trading partner had made contact with the rep at the GCC showroom, but after wandering around for about 45 min, the guy at the show room never showed up. At least we got to see the famous Golden Computing Center - so busy you can barely walk through it, but I will say that for the items I was interested in, the prices didn’t seem to be any better than eBay!

After all this trekking around (again, horrible traffic), our partner took us to dinner with his wife and two adorable daughters (11 and 5). The unique portion of this experience was that we traveled out to the New Territories (in between Hong Kong and China) and went to select our live fish from the fish market prior to taking the bags of fish to the restaurant which then prepared them for us to our specifications. Once again, we were at a “local” restaurant, with no Anglos anywhere to be seen. What a tremendous gift it was to see true life on that side of the world, without having to be westernized by the cuisine.

When we got back, I recorded a podcast, which you can find on The Media Swamp.

Pronounced Shenshen, this is a city that 10 years ago was little more than a fishing village, on the other side of the China border from Hong Kong. Now, it is a crowded city of 10 million. Bigger than Hong Kong.

The city is sprawling - from the suburbs to downtown is at least an hour in traffic. And that’s in the middle of the day! It took us a full day to visit two factories.

We met our trading partner in Hong Kong about 9am and took the train from Festival Walk (a very Western mall in Kowloon) up to the border of China. After going through customs, we then traveled by another train up to the end of the subway in the suburbs of Shen Zhen where a company car and driver from the MP3 player factory picked us up for the meeting and tour of the factory. Given the train, customs, another train, and ride in the car, we showed up at the factory at 12 noon, when most of the factory workers were at lunch.

The sales manager of the company suggested we go to lunch as well, so back into the car, for a 2 block, 40 minute trip to a true Chinese restaurant. (They asked if we wanted Chinese food - my wife and I looked at each other as if - what else would we be eating here?! - so we said of course!). I’m not sure if any anglos had ever been to this restaurant - great food, tremendous experience. Our Chinese hosts were very gracious and tolerant of our ignorance of Chinese customs and original food, but we learned quickly and they seemed surprised that Laura and I were eating with chopsticks.

The factory itself was a great assembly process to watch, with good quality control - they can churn out 300,000 units per month, in terms of capacity. They have exciting new products, of which one of them is a 7 inch video display, battery powered, using an SD Card for the source content. This will play any digital audio/video file - MP3, MPEG4, WMA, WMV, AVI, etc. Should be fun to see the applications. it’s certainly not pocket sized, but easily portable - much smaller and lighter than a portable DVD player.

The second factory we sent to was near downtown, in a much older section of town. Dark back alleyways and up a dark stairwell and then you find an entire custom circuit board manufacturing company with Yamaha automatic circuit board pressing equipment. That day, they were making Lenovo webcams. We buy our FM transmitters (similar to the iTrip) from this manufacturer. It’s run by a 30-yr old capitalist who apologized for the appearance of his factory - but, with a grin, he said “We’re profitable” (in only Mandarin to our trading partner). We were impressed - not with the looks, but how determined he was as an entrepreneur to grab hold of opportunities.

We got back to our room in Hong Kong about 7:30pm and then went to dinner to think through our day and what had happened. Our conversation centered around the phenomenal growth of Shen Zhen, the traffic, the new relationships that we had established and the thankfulness for this opportunity to have our eyes opened further to how flat the world really is.