mongoDB Beijing: My presentation on alive.cn and building a new entertainment database

I wanted to invite technically-minded Beijing folks again to a presentation that I’m doing on Thursday at the mongoDB conference. While I’m still relatively new to mongoDB, I’m taking the opportunity to give some insights on building a new multi-lingual, comprehensive entertainment database using linked open data. The presentation will go through an evolution starting with the early days of Rotten Tomatoes when we assembled the movie information manually to my current efforts with Alive.cn.

mongoDB Beijing Conference (Thursday, March 3)

I’m still not certain yet whether I’m going to deliver my presentation in English or in Chinese. Obviously, I’m much more comfortable speaking English, but would like to make sure that the audience is getting the message correctly. In any case, I’ve presented both English and Chinese versions of the presentation below. I decided to go with a movie theme in the visuals throughout the presentation to keep things in line with my “entertainment database” topic.

Looks like some of the presentation fonts and layout didn’t get transferred too well with the upload to SlideShare, but you can get the general gist below:

Building a super database from linked data

用互相关联的数据创建超级数据库

Anyone care to share some tips on presenting at a conference?

P.S. Thanks to Terry, our awesome UI/UX Engineer for helping me translate the slides and also, of course, for the awesome still-in-progress design work on alive.cn.

The Gap enters China: Wing Shya + Annie Leibovitz take over Beijing

Wing Shya + Annie Leibovitz photograph ads for The Gap's entry into China
Covering the walls of the Wangfujing subway station in Beijing. Wing Shya + Annie Leibovitz photograph ads for The Gap's entry into China. Each of the photos pair a Chinese artist with a Western artist.

Yesterday was my first day returning to my Beijing office after a long break away for the Chinese New Year. Leaving work and entering the subway station, I came across a welcome surprise. San Francisco apparel store icon The Gap has finally arrived in mainland China. I still claim to be from the San Francisco Bay Area (hence, the name of my blog “Sino Francisco”), so I’m glad to see the iconic brand make it’s way into China, although possibly too late after the wildly successful launches by Zara and H&M several years ago.

More interestingly, though, was that the launch ad campaign, which is currently saturating Beijing, was shot by alivenotdead artist and Hong Kong’s celebrated photographer Wing Shya 永康 along with Annie Leibovitz. What a combination! Both are noted for their celebrity portraits so the combination just makes sense.

The campaign pairs a Chinese artist with a Western artist; besides Wing and Annie Lebovitz, it also features prominent Beijing DJ and frequent Sam Lee 李璨琛/DJ Becareful collaborator, DJ Wordy, and personal favorite Beijing actress Zhou Xun 周迅.

Wing Shya featured in one of our Alive Not Dead promotional flyers

Wing Shya has been the most sought after photographer by celebrities here in China and Hong Kong for many years for his ability to capture seemingly naturalistic, unaffected essences of his subjects. He especially came to prominence as the stills photographer/creative marketing designer for many of director Wong Kar Wai‘s films. Alivenotdead collaborated with Wing for our very first event in Hong Kong, a retrospective of his work along with an epic concert upstair by several alivenotdead musical acts.

Diesel and alivenotdead collaborated in 2007 for a retrospective of Wing Shya's work. Afterwards was an epic, rocking concert upstairs by several indie hip-hop acts.

Check out this wrap-up and photos of the event by Hong Kong Hustle. Such great memories of the awesome event.

My favorite of Wing’s work, however, has to be “Prevation”, a “live-action” manga he shot with additional design by Alvin Goh and featuring my buddy and fellow alivenotdead partner Terence Yin in a teddy bear suit.

Wing extended his reach last year as co-director of the hit Chinese romantic comedy Hot Summer Days 全城热恋 that introduced the world to the currently red hot Angelababy. Being a fan of both Wing and the enchanting Zhou Xun 周迅, I also really enjoy this recent photoshoot video that Wing recorded for i-D magazine:

Or watch a HD version of the video on Vimeo if you’re not blocked in China.

In any case, congrats to Wing Shya and it’s great to see him and his work so prominently displayed around Beijing.

Annie Leibovitz and Wing Shya featured in the new The Gap ad campaign in Beijing