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One Night in Beijing

On Friday afternoon I flew to Beijing to give a presentation at a mobile developers conference at the Shangrila hotel about iOS (iPhone and iPad) app monetization. Why’d I speak there? Our company, Tap4Fun, is officially the highest grossing iOS developer in all of China so far this year. Because of this, a lot of attention is on our development process and business model. We’re conducting interviews on a nearly daily basis (today CCTV was in our office filming). Exciting times.

Here are some photos from my day in Beijing:

Waited in line for 30+ minutes to get a taxi at Beijing International, the biggest airport in the world

Shangrila Hotel Beijing

The first thing I noticed inside the lobby of the Beijing Shangrila

Meeting with the designer of Jing.fm, a streaming music service that takes Pandora to the next level

Sitting at the front of the lecture hall

The conference featured three lecture halls roughly of equal size, hosting thousands of attendees

Speaking on stage at the conference, Saturday July 7th

Walking through Beijing International Airport and the line to catch a taxi

Skateboarding My Daily Commute

One of the greatest challenges of a full time office job is the commute. Every day you traverse the same path to and from the place where you get things done.

This repetition, stretched over months and years, becomes tedious and mindless. The longer your commute, the faster this sensation progresses. So I’ve made some changes to my commute.

I started with a driver taking me to my office every morning. Then I started walking to the subway station near my house, which also goes near my office. Now I’m skateboarding through my neighborhood in the mornings and evenings to get to the subway. I get lots of stares.

By the time I arrive at my office, I’m wide awake and alert at 9:30am. The photo above is from this morning at 9am on the Chengdu subway.