On March 10th, NextStep Shanghai was at Latitude Longitude on Yueyang Rd near Dongping Rd. Over 100 ppl came to enjoy the French venue, but also to listen to the Shanghai Young Bakers (SYB).

Celine Le Cotonnec, SYB Project Coordinator, gave a terrific presentation explaining all the legal issues that they faced and are still facing while bringing this project together.

After the event we received a very good feedback of their presentation, but what was most important to us was to know that we brought something to the Shanghai Young Bakers who had a dozen of interesting leads.

Here is what they said about the event :

“NEXTSTEP – Tuesday March 10, 2009

One month after the start of their training program in traditional French bakery for under-privileged Chinese young adults; Shanghai Young Bakers charity project was offered the opportunity to showcase at NEXTSTEP’s last event the hard work the team of 12 French volunteers has accomplished in the past 18 months to make this dream come true.

Shanghai Young Bakers is one of the 6 projects of the French Junior Economic Chamber in Shanghai (JCEF) and has been ongoing for nearly 2 years.

The number of difficulties you will have to go through and the time and energy you will have to spend when considering setting up a charity program in China as a foreign organization, especially when it comes to education matters are totally unforeseeable and countless. You can get a rough idea yes, but still whatever you enterprise you always have this feeling to progress in a grey area.

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I have been emailing my Senator’s office, Arlen Specter, since I first learned of the near certainty of the US absence at the upcoming 2010 World Expo. His office has told me the 111th Congress would have a look at it. Well I have decided to go straight to the top. Let’s see how open and transparent this new administration is, do they practice what they preach? You can see below the message I sent to Barack Obama on day one of his administration. Let’s see if he responds. Keeping my fingers crossed…

As an American entrepreneur in China for four years, my livelihood is very much tied to the dynamic, and often shaky, Sino-US relationship. Something that will leave a black eye to kick off the Obama Administration with the Chinese will be our lack of participation in the Shanghai 2010 World Expo. This expo will be the highest attended world expo in history, with more than seventy million Chinese and expatriates expected to attend. The Federal Government, by an act of Congress in 1991, cannot fund US participation in World Expos. If there is ever a place to kill two birds with one stone, then here it is looking the administration straight in the face. You can help the endeavoring entrepreneurs and business managers in China while simultaneously shifting away from the Bush Administration policy of cold bully tactics with the Chinese. This is your chance to step forward with the Chinese and make the first gesture of goodwill and cooperation. It won’t hurt your standing with the regional party head Xi Jinping, who is most likely to become the next President of China.

There are literally on days left for an executive order. I have already contacted Senator Arlen Specter’s office on this matter, who have given me a positive response with their desire to work on this, but nothing has moved forward. “On this day” “we can” bring change to an extremely pivotal diplomatic relationship. Create the legislation, free up $10-15mil USD, and let’s change US-SIno relations today, not tomorrow.

There is an urgent cry from US business owners and architects in China to get Congrees and the new administration on board, and on board quickly. There have yet to be only limited plans drawn up for the US pavilion, and they must be done so immediately, but unforutnately the funding will have to come from an act of Congress. Click this link to find out more. Ground must be broken by mid-February. Action is needed now, because the Bush Administration and the 110th Congress dropped the ball on this small yet critical issue.

This is to invite all the NextStep followers in and out of Shanghai to join us in Beijing on this coming Thursday for the “Branding in China summit: creating passionate brands for 1 billion people”.

The Summit is an interactive and case study-oriented event that gathers advertising, branding and marketing experts to talk about the innovations and challenges unique to the Chinese market.

The organizer – that is the China Economic Review - draw together accomplished business and branding leaders to share knowledge, experiences and present innovative strategies to increase brands value on the Chinese market.

Along with representatives from “The Walt Disney Company” and “Siemens China”, I will be joining in to deliver a speech about “Brand verbal identity: the delicate art of naming brands and products and why it matters”. Come numerous to network with other attendees and exchange viewpoints on the opportunities and challenges strategic branding can offer for the growth of your business in China!

All NextStep bloggers and friends are more then welcomed to join – at a 20% discount on the early bird rate for courtesy of Labbrand. Just cite our name when registering!

If you want to know more about the event go check details here or here

Hope to see you there!

Vladimir

It has been more than a month since our Green Business Forum, and I have finally found the answer to a pressing question that was repeated several times that July 12th afternoon, “Can I personally purchase carbon offset credits on the open market, a-la Ebay or a similar auction site?” Surprisingly no on had heard of any projects offering such services, and to be fair I have been looking for this type of information for quite a long time without any luck. I happened to come across an interesting site today, PopTech!, that has a clear mission, “A network of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas and innovative projects that are changing the world.” Being the serial entrepreneur that I am, I was immediately intrigued to dig deeper. In doing so I came across PopTech!’s carbon offset program. They got it right, they made it simple to understand, an easy to use platform integrated with Ebay, and a moderately successful PR campaign (frankly I never heard about it) to push the message. Although the auction period has long since expired, you can easily get the point of what they are trying to achieve–allow the masses to particpiate easily in creating a social change in the appreciation for the environment and a call to action at the individual level to effect change.

But, here is the thing that still has not yet been answered, and please someone comment on this blog. Does carbon offsetting really work, or are we just passing the buck to the guy who can do it cheaper that allows us to feel better about the CO2 we are individually pumping into the air? Does it not make more sense to simply reduce our dependency on the activities that necesiate fossil fuels that in turn pollute? That sounds a heck of a lot easier than any solution out on the table today. Combine that with actively taking the steps to offset whatever carbon emmissions you do emit, and you have a truely well armed environmental change agent.

If you want to find out more about the Green Business Forum you can click here to listen to my interview on the ChinaBusinessNetwork with Christine Lu. Mind you it was 1am Shanghai time when I was answering these questions.

The Green Business Forum is an important event for me, as it is my first attempt to get a large community behind a movement–a movement that matters. If you are reading this blog now, we are only three days away from the first Green Business Forum in Shanghai. I want to get people thinking, I want to get people active, and I want people to actually care about how they are conducting their businesses. What we are trying to achieve with the forum is simple, get you active and give you the tools to make a difference. Roots & Shoots, Greennovate, 350.org and JUCCCE are all excellent companies and organizations that will be able to help you as an individual, as a manager, as a business owner to really make a difference.

If you want more information about the Green Business Forum click here.

The Forum is on Saturday, July 12th from 2 til 6pm at the Grand Hyatt in Pudong

Thanks everyone for making the One Year Anniversary an incredible event. We had over 300 people turn out, far more than I was expecting. Last night was made even better for us because we were able to introduce the BlackCard and of course the NextStepDirectory. For those of you who missed it, here is a transcript of the presentation from last night.

“Good evening.

Most of the projects I have worked on have tried to identify a real need and figure out a way to solve it. NextStep, this event, is the perfect example. Joe and I were entrepreneurs in this great city and felt there should be a community for all of us to support each other. So while working here in Shanghai, we recently discovered another need. We realized that there was a lack of information.

Each day, we’re trying to operate our businesses as efficiently as possible. So when you need to find a company to help you with what you need, where do you go? One option is to go online and google what you’re looking for. Or, you can go look through the back of a few magazines. There are even a few websites with some scattered information. But there isn’t really any one place you can go to find everything. And that’s when we realized what we could build. A comprehensive directory for business services.

And here are the categories that we decided should be included in the directory. For now, there are 30 in total. Categories such as business license consultants. Visa services. Even ayis! At that point we thought we had a great product. But when we sat back and thought about it some more we realized, you know what, its still not enough.

Most of the directories out there today do a good job of telling us which companies do what, but not much more than that. For instance, if I wanted to find a company to renew my visa, I could look at the back of a magazine and find a list, but that’s about all. So we thought, why not create a directory that had specific information about each category. So that when I go to look for a visa, not only do I know which companies offer it, but I also know what type of visas they offer and for how much. We took this idea and created industry specific surveys for each category and had them filled out by the companies. So now all the information is in one place. And then, we thought we definitely had a great product. But when we sat back and took another look we said, its Still…still not enough.

When most of us go to buy airplane tickets, we usually don’t go to the website of a specific airline. No, the internet has enabled us to aggregate information in some incredible ways. So instead of going to a lot of different airline websites, now we only need to go to one such as Ctrip or Elong. These websites don’t just list prices, but they enable you to compare the prices of all these different airlines based on price, date, class and even time. Well what about business services? Could we do the same? Well we have the companies divided into categories. And we have surveys for each category. Why not enable our users to compare these services however they want? So that’s what we did.

Everything I have just described for you is small part of what the NSD will be in the coming months. I didn’t want to give away all our secrets on one night. But for tonight, we are launching the beta version of the NextStep Directory which includes a handful of categories and surveys. By May, everything I described for you tonight will be fully up and running. I hope all of you will give it a try and find it as useful as we have set out to make it. Thanks.”

Thanks again to everyone who came out last night.  Here is the NextStepDirectory