ThingsCon goes Shenzhen

ThingsCon is organising a research trip to Shenzhen! Follow us and get to know the maker scene and the hardware ecosystem that makes Shenzhen the Silicon Valley of hardware. During our 5 day excursion, we’ll visit maker spaces, hardware markets, manufacturers, and of course ThingsCon Shenzhen. Here we share impressions during our trip.

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Impressions from day 6

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Day 6; Tencent, Artop, HWTrek

This is the last day of the organised part by ThingsCon. We have a full day program planned. We start at Tencent, rather early at 9am. It is impressive to see what this company has achieved with some of the services and apps. They are most well known from WeChat, the social service in China that has become so much more than that.

We got a tour that showed all impressive numbers with fancy visuals, told by a fluently English speaking guide. We learned that 50% of the revenue is by the games they make. That they have 50 bilion location based requests a day and that you can buy shoes for children with a WeChat mesh-network tracker embedded. Never lose your child again! And she was very happy to mention that all the data they collect on the locations of their users is very useful for the police too…

We also got a tour through the user research lab, where they created several IKEA rooms for different types of user groups. Including an eye-tracking demo on a computer with a very old Windows-version. Something you see all the time.

After Tencent we went to Artop, a rather huge industrial design agency that employs 1000 people including their own molding factory. One of the interesting products is an open source car, build from cardboard. And we saw their material display room.

After a traditional dim-sum lunch we drove to HWTrek for the last visit of our program. This platform/intermediair for making organised a meetup around our presence. About 30 people attended. Two presentations, first of HWTrek and one of Element Lab that went into all the pitfalls of the manufacturing process. After that we presented ThingsCon and we (Paul, Martin, Marcel, Tina and me) showed our own projects. After that we had nice talks with the attendees as kind of matchmaking. A good ending of a great insightful week.

We ended with a fancy dinner in Jade Garden and typical karaoke experience in a private KTV room.

This was the last daily report. We will make a full report with pictures and more. We will let you know!

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Is there something like China design? Most of the product design we saw this week was highly professional and completely international as well. Some product categories are specific to the region - it seems every designer wants to have a go at a ricecooker, and there were a lot of tea sets and liquid bottles as well. Spotted this Buddhist phone in the Artop showroom #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen, Guangdong)

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Statue in the hallways of Artop Design - a 1000 people company that does design, patents, has its own patent department and academy and its own factory. The red envelope symbolises “lucky money”, the money given at new year or for a new baby. The WeChat payment service was developed after the many employees at Tencent had to stay in line for a long time to pick up their new year money at the office. These days it stands for mobile payments. #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams

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Touring Tencent, maker of WeChat. Interesting and impressive data. And we made our first WeChat payments

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Folding beds at Tencent HQ for after-lunch nap time. Perhaps this is the secret behind the endless energy and optimism we encounter around here. Naps. #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij 腾讯大厦)

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Finally figured out how to use the WeChat wallet - another user has to send you some money first, which activates the wallet. Register with a credit card and choose an 6-figure password and you are good to go. Now if you want to pay you just show your QR code to the cashier who scans it, done. Bought a fridge magnet at the Tencent souvenir store #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Tencent)

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Report of Peter Bihr on day 5

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Day 5 - Thursday April 27 - ThingsCon Shenzhen & Yamm academy

Today is the ThingsCon Shenzhen event organised by David Li of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab. As new ThingsCon local chapter organiser he is handed over the nice ThingsCon coin by Peter. The start of more to come hopefully. At the event Peter kicked off with a little setting of ThingsCon mission to foster responsible and human-centric IoT. It is the theme of this session and we have a couple of nice speakers. Gabriel is talking on his PhD to research the reassembly of components, very suitable for this area. Malavika Jayaram had to stay at home being ill, but did a Skype talk addressing important ethical issues with AI and IoT. One of our member of the ThingsCon goes Shenzhen group - Dietrich Ayala from Mozilla - is giving a very insightful talk on the web as an interface for IoT (instead of apps). We close with a panel addressing some of the questions. After that we have a meet and greet with everyone and lunch at the SZOIL office, where David Li his sharing some insights on sourcing IoT production. After that people do different things. We go to the YAMM art academy on an invitation of a Dutch teacher Bas Oostrum. He is 9 months now in Shenzhen and shares his views on China and the Chinese. He is very positive on the character of the people and sees a change from manufacturing the world needs to a focus on good and well design products. Something we noticed before. He also shows us around at OCT, an interesting area with some more hip and posh bars and cafes. In the evening a dinner with all people and a night program divided in two groups. All in all is was another interesting and insightful day. Only one day to go…!

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Very very tall buildings all round, and no qualms about bold decoration #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen, Guangdong)

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A much better report of David's talk by Harmen van Beek of Incredible Machine

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One of the most impressive things in Shenzhen: the popularity of shared bicycles and the wide range of electric and transport bicycles available. Mobike is the shared system that has taken off like a rocket. You scan the QR code and pay 1 RMB per hour (13 Eurocent) with your Wechat account and leave the bike where you want. The city is really full of bicycles. #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen, Guangdong)

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No problem #thingsconams #thingscongoesshenzhen

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David Li explains how to work with Shenzhen. “There are no consultants in Shenzhen. With no shipping, noone makes money.” Whereas going to the markets made the makers in our group giddy with excitement (you can buy anything! We can make anything!) - he explains that for most International designers and developers, that is usually not the way. Work with solution houses, local design and production companies, or find the right supplier via Wechat. There are Wechat boards with carefully selected suppliers. Translation on Wechat works fine. Prepare a good one pager on your product - and omit anything you would not say in public #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab)

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QR codes are ubiquitous in Shenzhen, used to connect everything and everybody on Wechat. A Shenzhen event will start and finish with the event code on screen. Everyone duly takes out phone and is instantly connected. So if you are on Wechat, here is the QR code for #thingsconshenzhen ! #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab)

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Our host David Li heads the Shenzhen Open Innovation lab, part of the government funded Sida program which promotes Shenzhen as an innovation hub. He is superconnected and we cannot thank and his colleague Vicky enough for organising our program this week. We chatted a bit before the start of #thingsconshenzhen which takes place today. He mentioned three examples that give some idea of what is going on here: Small observation regarding production of smart TVs: all TVs made in China are smart. The Android boards are now produced at such a scale that they are used for any TV because that is cheaper. Second example. Shenzhen based BYD is the biggest battery producer worldwide. They now also produce electric cars to grow their market - David showed one model that costs $ 1.000, 4 wheel suspension, no doors, basic chairs and two cupholders. Making these cars they realised they are really good in making metal casings. So now they started a new line - making laptops. They can make metal laptop casings that look like Apple laptops, the interiors they can easily buy here, and they deliver white label laptops for various brands, like Xiaomi. Last example, and this is where David was most enthusiastic: IoT in Africa. As he put it: it now costs $5 to make any product connected, and next year it will be $3. The rising African middle class will be decorating homes, buying kitchens and all that in the coming years. Everything they buy will be connected. Skytech from Lagos has worked with David on two projects: one is an IoT monitor that checks eletricity grid for outages to start your generator automatically. Right now they are working on a POS (point of sale) device for street vendors. In Africa like in China most payments are done by phone but doing payments and inventory on one device can be inconvenient. Skytech made a $15 device that can handle both with added data analysis in the cloud. In Shenzhen they had a batch of a few hundred made that they are testing on the Nigerian streets right now

China produced IoT products for the African markets, that’s where it is at, according to David. And he sees it happening. #thingscongoesshenzhen #thingsconams (bij Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab)

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After three days in Shenzhen, one observation is that somehow, the city feels less exotic than expected. In a way that is because the city is so newly developed with skyscrapers, malls and hotels that are like skyscrapers, malls and hotels anywhere. Big brand stores of brands we know. Laptops, phones, drones, that we all know too well - with millions of variations but essentially what we know. And while the dishes on the restaurant menu’s include some ingredients we rarely eat - chicken feet, bullfrog, jellyfish - it’s Chinese food and we all know Chinese food and its delicious. (As one of us noted, the whole city smells like a Chinese restaurant). It’s also a very young city, and although most people do not speak English, the interactions are easy and friendly. Translation apps on your phone help a lot. It feels safe. What you miss if you think about it: old people, old buildings, the sound of emergency services. In the picture: people picking up breakfast. (bij 深圳華強北電子商圈)