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My EVOKATION! Game Design!

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Video: China’s retail revolution—An interview with Ed Chan

Wal-Mart China's CEO discusses the retailer's strategy in the world's most populous nation.


Todd Guild: There’s been a lot of discussion about the effects of the global recession and the role of China in its recovery. Can you tell us how has the slowdown affected Wal-Mart’s business plans in China?

Ed Chan: Last September, we were seeing some slowdown in spending in a small patch of China. I think this export slowdown probably kicked in slightly earlier than September. So, we were seeing in, for example, our Sam’s Club, our professional members—those who run restaurants, those who run hotels, those who run factories—they were becoming conservative. The first sign we saw was the big autumn festival back in 2008, when some members of Sam’s Club, [who] used to buy a lot of gifts for their trading partners or their employees, were buying a lot less.

There’s no doubt that China’s economy, given its reliance on exports, has been affected to a certain degree. But by and large, this economy is still, I think, growing at a pace that many other countries are somewhat jealous of. We look at China as one of the most interesting and good markets for Wal-Mart.

Todd Guild: Tell us about your direct reports and your leadership team in China.

Ed Chan: In China today—in our own operations, in our associate company Trust-Mart—all the stores are run by Chinese general managers. They are our very senior team members of the company. In terms of my direct reports, we have a very good mix of what I call global capability, but they work in China.

The one big characteristic of our team here is they all share the Wal-Mart values: how to save our customers money so they can live better. They all are passionate about China. They all are passionate about Wal-Mart in China. And they just love what they do.

Todd Guild: China is clearly characterized by its regional differences. What has Wal-Mart done to tailor its assortments and its formats to regional differences in China?

Ed Chan: We have learned so much about the diversity of the customer base in China. And the diversity will fall into different categories. This country is huge. From north to south, the geography implies a number of things. Number one: climate. Number two: differing customer preference. Number three: we can see the varied income level from the very rich coastal provinces, the megacities, to inland China, where income could be one-third or sometimes even one-quarter [of income levels in] the big megacities of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing.

Todd Guild: What do you see in terms of the effects and the speed of the shift for retailers in online retailing and multichannel retailing in China?

Ed Chan: China probably has the largest [number of] Internet users officially or unofficially already. Second, it’s the country with the largest [number of] mobile-phone users. Internet and mobile—the combination of mobile and Internet—is a reality.

With these two, we know that online and e-commerce is a matter of time. They’re still small, but there’s no doubt in my mind that online e-commerce, multichannel, will be an important part of the retail consumer market in China in the years to come. I’m very excited about it. We don’t have an online business yet, but these foundations of Internet usage and mobile technology will no doubt create a huge market in that space for any consumer company.

The other aspect of development is what I’m seeing in the fascinating infrastructure development in China. We all know about the highway density in China. It’s probably approaching the US already. We know the number of high-quality airports in China. What’s also amazing is the rapid build-up of definitely the most sophisticated and the biggest railroad network in China.

When you have all these infrastructure investments coming onstream, and then when you combine it with the technology—Internet usage, new-generation mobile phones—I think, with these developments in China, I won’t be surprised that the consumer technology, the infrastructure, will all blend together to create once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for companies who understand how to tap into this.

The IT industry and innovation

The IT industry and innovation
The IT industry has actually lost its ability to innovate. And I think pretty hard about this and about why. In the late ’80s, with some of my mentors, they would be really heavily involved with the senior leadership of many of the big IT companies, whether it was IBM or whoever. We used to cocreate and codesign chips with IBM way back in the late ’80s. I think when the CIOs got together and we really kind of started to push standardization, to basically drive operational excellence, we trimmed down that IT industry, the suppliers, and we also kind of pushed them into a commodity world.
And I think that has slowed down innovation. If you look at the joint-venture capital, it used to be invested really heavily in IT firms or small IT firms. You don’t see it much anymore. And actually, if you get a successful small IT firm that starts to emerge, it gets eaten up pretty quick.
And so some of that innovation, I think, over the years has evaporated. My belief is we can get it back, and we need to get it back. But it’s going to take more collaboration from the IT industry. I think the financial crisis is also pushing the boundaries of these companies, which I also think is healthy—that they’re getting into each other’s space because they’re trying to take things like cloud [computing] and the next-generation data center and some
of these things to try to figure out, “OK, so how is this market going to shake itself out?” I think that will get them talking to each other more than they have. But I think it’ll raise competition, which is good for all of us.
The potential of cloud computing I’ve learned through many scars that there’s this massive hype phase. But the industry can’t be pouring as much money as we’re pouring into it for there not to be something there. We think virtualization is absolutely spot-on. I mean, what we’re doing with T-Systems, putting all our SAP systems in their virtual piece, which is kind of a cloud—a first iteration of the cloud—has been great.
It allows us to do peak-and-valley performance. On our HR system, it has been absolutely fabulous. If you think of the perfect-use case, it is in HR. You have segments of time where you do huge activity: at the end of the year, you do performance reviews; in March, we pay people because of bonuses and other things. If we didn’t have it in that virtual environment, we’d have to scope our landscapes and our performance to meet the peak load. And when we’re not at peak, we waste money.
In the new model, we just ride virtualization. We optimize for the peak and we optimize for the valley. So there’s value here, you just have to be selective and a little bit patient.
3
Managing the long life cycle of IT projects
A lot of the projects that we do now are large, multiyear global projects. Some of them last four or five years. So what you have to do is you have to peel apart against the competitive landscape: where is everybody in their technology-investment cycle?
Everybody goes through these seven- to ten-year cycles, I call them. And the challenge on the project side is, “So where am I versus Exxon?” If I look at investment in a desktop and the end-user computing, you can look at the spend level, but I don’t know if Exxon Mobil is harvesting and I’m investing.
Then the second thing on top of projects is, am I doing it differently than my competitor?
Am I introducing a capability that’s different, and why? So that’s what I always ask: am I introducing a capability, and why? Is it a waste, or is it really a differentiator? What we want to do is have much better competitive information. What are our competitors doing? Or, what are others in the industry doing? And what I’m really interested in is not that we’re doing the same—because in IT we all follow each other, right? It’s the pack mentality—what we’re really interested in is, where are we different, and, more importantly, why?
What happens to some CIOs is, it’s heavy lifting. You do a two- or three-year program and you get to the end of it and then you don’t refresh and say, “OK, what’s next?” In a large global organization like Shell IT, people can’t really think [ahead] more than two to three years. And so that’s why you see me break things up into phases and almost refresh what we want to do every two to three years.

中國百年大乾旱 黃菓樹變涓絲瀑布！ 兩百多天沒雨 六千萬人受災！南北同旱 中共建國最大威脅！

中國百年大乾旱 黃菓樹變涓絲瀑布！
兩百多天沒雨 六千萬人受災！南北同旱 中共建國最大威脅！
張貼者： 公視有話好說-新聞論壇 於 星期五, 四月 02, 2010




來賓：

氣象專家 李富城

台灣大學土木工程系水利工程組教授 李鴻源

電話連線：北京地理環境學者 王紅旗

網路視訊：八九民運領袖 王丹




中國西南地區自去年秋冬以來，遭逢百年難見的乾旱，估計6000萬人受影響，雖然近日有降雨，但仍難解旱象。旱災究竟有多嚴重？



三年一小旱，九年一大旱！缺水本來就是正常現象？

國人熟知的貴州茅台必須停產，亞洲第一大黃果樹瀑布水量也銳減，觀光和農產面臨極大的窘境。為何會如此嚴重？百年大旱對經濟、政治、社會安定會有什麼衝擊？



中國至今已數千萬人投入抗旱.調糧和送水，至於何時才能度過難關還不知道？遭遇百年大旱！無人死亡？糧食無虞？政府因應得宜？人造雨解旱災？蚍蜉撼樹？不無小補？



中國西南乾旱和缺水問題，除了氣候變遷和降雨減少因素之外，還有哪些人為因素？桉樹加劇西南旱災？



是天災人禍？三峽大壩加劇旱災？大壩導致重慶各地氣溫上升？大壩導致水循環中斷？



旱災北移？解決飲水的的威脅，中國政府實在不能掉以輕心。

台灣中南部也鬧旱災？南北同旱、旱澇同災？氣候異常越來越嚴重？範圍將越來越廣泛？大陸大旱，對台灣有何警惕與啟示？

ECFA兩岸協商 桃園大溪登場

ECFA兩岸協商 桃園大溪登場
正反兩極對立加遽 快馬加鞭6月就簽？ECFA挑戰與困境？
張貼者： 公視有話好說-新聞論壇 於 星期三, 三月 31, 2010




來賓：

環球經濟社社長 林建山

成大法律系教授 許忠信

台灣寢具產業團結聯盟理事長 黃光藝

工業總會常務理事 何語

CALL-IN 正反兩極對立加遽 快馬加鞭6月就簽？台灣怎面對ECFA




ECFA第二次協商登場！


ECFA今天在桃園大溪進行第二次協商，會場外聚集抗議人士。協商雖採兩會模式，但是多由雙方行政官員對談，經濟部表示未來還有兩次正式協商，六月有機會簽署！而中國國台辦主任也適時提出惠台五項原則呼籲馬總統不擴大農產品開放和陸勞。



ECFA 攤牌時刻？越早簽越好，還是要等待社會共識？政府如何決定簽訂時程？




幾家歡樂、幾家愁！ECFA對產業影響：


面對不同產業，ECFA究竟對我國產業的機會與威脅是什麼？面對中國原料價格便宜，工資也比台灣低，國內的紡織、毛巾和皮件等傳統產業，不是產業外移出走，就是選擇留下來、承受成本提高的壓力！



現在政府要推動ECFA，業者擔心，中國商品低價傾銷，已經搶走一半的市場，如果再全面開放，簡直是要他們關門大吉。面對紡織、寢具業者的疑慮，政府的補償救濟足夠嗎？

ECFA提供土壤養分，產業應趁機轉型？台灣產業發展目前的最大困境為何？是關稅還是產業轉型？

東協加一已經整整三個月，目前產業界所受到的衝擊？


談判桌上，運籌帷幄：


從ECFA架構協定的早收清單到兩岸自由貿易協定，這條路會走多久？

中國方面一再喊話，讓利說可信嗎？對台灣有什麼利與弊？只要大陸不列早收清單，台灣就不會受害？談判如何雙贏又面面俱到？

現階段政府一再表示，絕不開放勞工農產品？gatt規定10內全面自由化？屆時台灣將重大衝擊？



WTO 的經驗？當時台灣受到什麼傷害？如何因應？這次會比WTO嚴重嗎？




政界沸沸揚揚，民眾依舊霧裡看花：


政府加緊宣傳的 ECFA，為何還有很多民眾搞不清楚？政府溝通不足？早收清單神秘保留，有助於談判？

短多長空？全面升級？就長遠來看，ECFA對台灣究竟會造成什麼影響？ECFA對就業、薪資的影響？好到老闆，死到勞工？

Adora teaching ninth grade--research skills made easy

8-Year-Old Girl Authors Book (Flying Fingers)







Descriptive Writing to 4th graders



Adora teaches descriptive writing



Flying Fingers



Personal Narrative 1 with Adora Svitak



Adora Svitak Reads from Flying Fingers Part 2




Adora Svitak Talks About Teaching




Child prodigy teaches future teachers at Ball State




Adora'sCCTV interview

The iPad is designed so even a 2-year old can use it

Apple knows people are idiots and didn’t want its consumers to learn another interface. So the iPad rocks the iPhone OS. That way anyone familiar with the other system can easily pick up and instantly use the iPad — like the 2.5-year old daughter of Laughing Squid’s Todd Lappin. She’s not a genius, she’s just part of Generation I.


My iPhone-savvy 2.5 year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment.

As you can see, after geeking out on my Sutro Tower homescreen, she took right to it — including figuring out how to enlarge some of her favorite iPhone-legacy apps to 2x to display full-size on the iPad screen. If you’re good at understanding kid-speak, you’ll also notice that she immediately saw its potential as a video-display device. She lamented the lack of a camera, and wondered about its potential for playing games.

On the downside, she had the same frustration as many adults, where touching the screen-edge with your thumb while holding the iPad blocks input to all home screen icons. Notice also that she was confused by the splash page for FirstWords Animals, her favorite spelling game: Because the start button looked like a graphic, rather than a conventional button, she couldn’t figure out how to start the game.

Most of all, though, it’s cool to consider that as one of the new Children of Cyberspace, her expectations about computing will be shaped by the fact that she’s growing up in a touchscreen world.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

About this talk

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

Jesse Schell: When games invade real life

About this talk

Games are invading the real world -- and the runaway popularity of Farmville and Guitar Hero is just the beginning, says Jesse Schell. At the DICE Summit, he makes a startling prediction: a future where 1-ups and experience points break "out of the box" and into every part of our daily lives.

About Jesse Schell

Why you should listen to him:
From his official bio: "Prior to starting Schell Games in 2004, Jesse Schell was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest, as well as on Toontown Online, the first massively multiplayer game for kids.

"Schell is also on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches classes in Game Design and serves as advisor on several innovative projects. Formerly the Chairman of the International Game Developers Association, he is also the author of the award winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses."
"Easily the most comprehensive, practical book I’ve ever seen on game design."
Will Wright, on The Art of Game Design
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Speed Painter Dan Dunn on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Speed Painter Dan Dunn on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from dan dunn on Vimeo.

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