#kittyful

[asksanrioboys]

Shunsuke Entry Kitty-San should be featured on more instruments in the future. Any band with her blessing their surfaces will surely be better for it and will gain more experience and fortune as they play.

[srt4k]

Bouta Save This Egyptian Prince from a life of Captivity, Shelter and Abuse #Jala4K #catsofinstagram #bloodup #longtimecoming #kittyful #giver (at UW-Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve)

[beijingtechreport]

WHAT'S WRONG WITH CHINICT

I haven't met a single person who's ever attended a CHINICT conference, past or present, that had a nice thing to say about it. To find out why CHINICT suffers from such a poor reputation, I decided to attend CHINICT myself, despite the opposite advice of many. Hopefully, I can provide some constructive criticism for the conference or, at least, dissuade future attendees considering paying the absurd 2,000 Euro price tag.

Expectations are set too high. This is my biggest beef with the conference. CHINICT's homepage touts “over VIP 700 on-site participants, 100 journalists, 2 million online viewers.” On the same page, it claims to be “the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship.” Those two statements are already in contradiction. Just two weeks prior was the annual Global Mobile Internet Conference, which also highlights both technology and entrepreneurship. I'm not sure how CHINICT defines “largest,” but GMIC slaughters CHINICT in terms of attendance (12,800), surface area (four floors in the National Convention Center), and speaker prominence (people you might have actually heard of). CHINICT didn't even seem to meet it's own standards. Looking over the single auditorium, the audience would be lucky to break 200, many of whom are hackathon participants waiting for their turn to speak. The 100 journalists and two-million online viewers was probably a stretch, too. Adding insult to injury, the conference was reduced from two days (May 20-21) to one.

So once CHINICT's attendees arrive, they are bound to be disappointed. The event could seriously benefit from less embellishment in its marketing scheme. A smaller venue would also feel more intimate and encourage more audience participation. When well over half the seats are empty, the audience is left to separate into tiny groups who never really interact.

On-stage dialogue is unprofessional. Many of the keynote speakers don't have speeches prepared—one of them told me they had been booked within just a week of the conference—so CHINICT resorts to interviewing them. The problem is that these are not seasoned interviewers, and it shows. One interviewer repeatedly tried to make a joke about how much he needed to urinate, but couldn't because he had more interviews to do. No one laughed. Then it was the self-proclaimed “face” of CHINICT Frank Nazikian's turn to talk to an attractive young radio host, one of only two female guest speakers for the entire event. Nazikian spent a good portion of the interview openly flirting with her. I bet the supposed two-million people watching online were impressed. At least that part was interesting, though. I had trouble staying awake through the rest.

CHINICT is unlikely to get many repeat customers or returning guest speakers. Almost none of the people I spoke with at the event had ever been before, and they weren't too keen on coming back. Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin's appearance as a keynote speaker last year seems to be the only thing anyone remembered from past iterations.

And just to drive the nail into CHINICT's coffin, I feel I should tell you about Kittyful. Kittyful is an app used to take and share pictures of cats. If that sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. Kittyful was the winner of last year's CHINICT Hackathon (apparently in desperate need of mentors) and was promoted heavily prior to the conference. That's because Nazikian, the organizer, is an investor. When he introduced the Kittyful team on stage, Nazikian claimed to have come up with the idea for the app at last year's event.

At this point, you might be asking, “Why would a middle-aged man be so interested in an app for taking and sharing cute cat photos?” When I talked to one of the app's developers, he revealed that the app's original name was Buttiful (not sure about the spelling), and it's original purpose was to take and share photos of people's butts. I'll let you put two and two together.

By the way, the included lunch sucked.