Beth: I am here today with Larry Johnson who has some really good work experience in China in journalism. Larry, first of all, can you tell us your background and give us your spiel about yourself?

Larry: Sure. I was a journalist in California and I got an offer to work with a magazine in China called “China Reconstructs,” and it was a one-year contract, and my wife and I both actually got an offer to do that. We went. This was way back in 1987, and we were there from ’87 to ’88.

Beth: I know this is a really loaded question, but what were kind of your strongest impressions of China at the time that you’d like to share?

Larry: Well, the most stark contrast between China and the United States at the time was that it was very regulated, authoritarian. We, for example, we were the first journalists working for this magazine, it’s called China Reconstructs, that we didn’t have a socialist background or a communist background. We were the first just regular journalists hired by the magazine. But, one of the things they did was they kept really tight control over you, and they watched you at all times, and the people where you lived, there was a hotel called the Friendship Hotel where we stayed, and the maids, everybody there, cleaners, they were all reporting to the government: what you did, where you went, who your friends were, especially who your Chinese friends were. So it was a pretty authoritarian atmosphere.

Beth: So did you get to travel in China at all for your work?

Larry: We did. We traveled all over. And this was another first. They allowed us to go as reporters and photographers for the magazine to Tibet, for example, which was pretty unusual to get to go to Tibet at that time. And also, we went to some of the Special Economic Zones they were setting up, starting in the ’80s, to bring in investment from overseas. We went to Fujian province, and that was pretty exciting. It was a thriving industrial area, bringing in factories from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong. So, we traveled and wrote and took photos for the magazine quite a bit.

Beth: At that time, and in China, how did you get your story ideas and find people to interview?

Larry: Well, it wasn’t hard coming up with story ideas, because China was one of the main topics for magazines and newspapers all over the world. In fact, before we left, we set up a little news service of our own, where we sent stories back to about half a dozen big newspapers across the country. And they would suggest ideas, and in our everyday work for the magazine, we’d come across story ideas that were great. It was a great environment for journalists at that time.

Beth: So did you work at all with people who would be seen as PR people, or was that kind of nonexistent at the time?

Larry: It was funny. They were all rolled into one. Journalists in China were seen as PR people, basically, at that time. One of the funny stories for when I was working for the magazine was one of the stories I did for them, they assigned me to go out and do a story on an old China hand, someone who had been in the country for years, from overseas, and helped them get established in various fields. This was a very successful businessman. So I went out, and I interviewed him at his hotel, took photos, came back, wrote the story up, sent it to my editors, and they immediately came over and said, “Wait a minute, you have your byline on this story. You should have his byline.” So, it was like, “What? I’m a journalist. I just interviewed this guy.  And you want his byline on the story?” You know, and I’d done PR before, so if they’d said, “This is going to be a PR assignment,” I would have understood it, but I was really kind of shocked and offended that they were treating me as a journalist as a PR person for this guy. And it eventually ran, despite my protests, under his name.

Beth: I also wanted to ask you if you’re familiar with the term “guanxi.”

Larry: Oh, of course.

Beth: How do you define guanxi, because it’s one of the words in our blog title?

Larry: Well, guanxi at the time, just basically bribes, and still is. I mean, I haven’t been to China in years, but I understand that guanxi is still, kind of an everyday thing. For dealing with, especially, government officials, you want to take them presents. That’s another nice name for it. You give them presents, and you’ll get what you want. When we traveled, and we traveled quite a bit, we would hire someone to get our tickets for us because they knew how to work with guanxi. We didn’t. We’re used to going up, getting in line, paying our fare, and getting on. Well if you do that, at the time we were there, you would never get a ticket to a plane or train, or you wouldn’t get into hotels or anything. So we’d hired someone, they’d give them a little extra, so they could give to the officials some present, in this case, money, and you’d get a really nice ticket, better than most people.

Beth: One thing that’s kind of famous about Chinese journalism is the blur between advertising and editorial content, and bribing journalists and things like that. Did you ever get bribed yourself as a journalist or was it different because you were a foreigner?

Larry: I think it was different because I was a foreigner. No one ever offered me bribes. They knew I was working for the Chinese magazine as a quote: “foreign expert,” and so I was never approached, never offered anything. Actually I went to a travel fair. A bunch of travel agents in China. They suggested that I do things like come to their area of the country and write a story about it, and they would pay certain fees, you know. But they do that in this country, too, they offer to pay your plane travel or train ticket or whatever to do a story on it. So it didn’t seem any different than what I was used to in the United States. But I know, my colleagues, they were offered money and talked about it a little bit, and we talked about the differences between journalism in this country and the way it was done in many other countries overseas at the time.

Beth: So I see that you have copies of magazines with you. Would you like to show them to the camera?

Larry: I do. This is a copy of the magazine when we were working for it in 1987. It was called “China Reconstructs,” and it was founded by Madame Sun Yat-sen, originally. And then in 1998 or 9, maybe 1989, they changed their name to make it sound more modern. “Reconstructs” sounded like the old communist idea, so they changed it to this, and it became a little more modern. More use of color, a little bit better magazine. It’s still basically a PR magazine for the country. I would not call it a journalism magazine. It’s more finding good things about the country to write about, good things, good people, and putting on a good face to the world.

Beth: This has been really great. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to share?

Larry: Well, I think, I would just encourage people to do things kinds of things, to go somewhere overseas, especially in countries where journalism, public relations and public affairs work is considerably different than what we have in the United States, just to get the difference and kind of understand how other people operate.

Beth: Lastly, how can we find you online?

Larry: I’m on Facebook. I’m on Twitter, under @larryjohnson. I have my own web page at larryjohnsononline.com.

Here are my four favorite speakers, what they did right, and what my least favorites did wrong, in my opinion:

Albert Shum, Windows Phone Design Studio General Manager, Microsoft
I was expecting to hate the presentation on Windows Phone, but instead, Albert’s presentation was one of my favorites of the day. As highlights, he:

• Acknowledged his product’s competition – iOS – had a much larger market share, then focused on Windows Phone’s future.
• Used story elements, such as creating a character. He shared market research with us on the character Windows Phone has decided will be its best target customer, a young man named “Wei.”
• Provided exclusive, specific information that was interesting to the whole audience. I found the market information on young, somewhat affluent, urban Chinese – pretty similar to my friends in China – fascinating and informative.
• Didn’t waste time or people’s attention by talking about common knowledge information. In this case, he began his presentation by acknowledging that everyone’s trying to figure out how to sell products to Chinese consumers.

Gang He, CEO at Grand Cloud
Halfway through Gang He’s presentation, I decided I should move to China and work for a cloud computing company. Then I realized this decision was merely a result of his persuasion at work. As highlights, he:

• Positioned himself as an expert on the conference topics through sharing specific, useful knowledge. At the end of his presentation, the moderator called his presentation amazing and summarized that he probably told us everything we could possibly want to know about cloud computing in China.
• Painted a picture of his industry and country as having exploding business opportunities, but ones that you should partner with locals for. He explained several factors that are contributing to massive business opportunities for cloud computing in China, as well as the challenges companies face in the same industry.
• Plugged his company’s product, but made sure to share impressive proof points while doing so. 8,000 customers bought Grand Cloud in the first two months of its availability.

Weiling Li, Vice President, iSoftStone

I’ve attended several panel discussions at a variety of events, and I’ve decided that they are inherently difficult for everyone involved: audience, moderator and speakers. Weiling Li showed the key to a successful panel is the moderator taking control. He:

• Announced a format for Q&A at the beginning of the session, letting everyone know that first he would ask questions, then he’d open it up to questions from attendees.
• Addressed questions to specific panelists to prevent some from speaking way more than others.
• Was available to answer questions if prompted, but focused on the panelists’ knowledge instead of his own.

George Zhu, Senior Program Manager, HTC
George was the most impressive panelist I saw of the day. He:

• Began with his employer’s elevator pitch, including how it was relevant and qualified for the conference topic, when prompted to introduce himself.
• Closed with a call to action to apply to work for his employer, when prompted for closing remarks.

I’m not going to name my least favorite speakers of the day; instead, I’ll outline worst practices. Don’t:

• Make the presentation only useful to those who use a certain product, unless the event is some sort of users’ conference such as WordCamp or Dreamforce.
• Show off your own personal abilities.
• Attack another company repeatedly throughout your presentation.
• Related to the above, don’t come off as competitive for the sake of it. People with this quality often do well in business, but it can come off the wrong way during presentations.

What technology speaking best practices do you recommend? Did you go to the Global Mobile and Cloud Conference? What did you think?

Thank you for checking out Seattle Guanxi, a blog by Veronica Truong and I  for people in Seattle who like China, public relations and social media.

Three factors motivated me to ask Veronica to start a group blog with me:

• I realized I knew some cool people in Seattle who, like me, were into both public relations and China.
• I noticed a lot of China-related stories in Seattle media that were obviously driven by public relations practitioners, such as the Bing/Baidu partnership and the opening of the Seattle Chinese Garden, which I could blog about.
• I remembered that during his presentation at Puget Sound PRSA’s 2011 Jumpstart event, Scott Meis recommended group blogging as a way to excel in online personal branding for a relatively low time commitment.

We’re hoping that Seattle Guanxi will be not only a blog but a resource, which is why we include suggested events and groups on our site. We are also considering including Seattle area job and volunteer postings related to this blog’s topics.

In my opinion, successful new blogs today rely heavily on community, include video and treat the blog’s site as part of a content ecosystem that also includes Twitter and Facebook. We plan on incorporating all of these into Seattle Guanxi, accomplishing the community part by interviewing and including contributed posts from people who are more influential and popular than us. You will see video through our own vlogging and hopefully video interviews, as well. We also have a @seattleguanxi Twitter handle and Seattle Guanxi Facebook page that we will use within the contexts of those two sites’ own communities.

Feel free to comment below or communicate with us on Twitter or Facebook on what you would most like to see out of this blog.