Citizen Brand

A Kansan in Shanghai

My colleague, Jeff Risley, is representing Barkley this week at an IPREX meeting in Shanghai, China.  IPREX is the 60 member global network of public relations firms that Barkley has been a part of for more than a decade.  Like the foreign correspondents of old, Jeff is writing dispatches from the other side of the Pacific at his blog, Risley Ranch.  Link here and here to see his first reports.

I had the great opportunity to visit China in 1984.  It seems amazing that in the last 24 years, the most populous nation on the face of the earth remains at times mysterious and still cloaked in secrecy.  The veil is being lifted rather forcibly of late as the Beijing Olympics loom less than 100 days away.  Will these Games prove to be the leverage the rest of the world needs to help China understand what is required of a nation who is a growing economic force in the world.

Jeff will return from China with his own views.  I look forward to sharing stories of what we both saw 24 years apart.  It will be interesting to see what has changed and what has not changed.

So much for that Mt. Everest getaway.....

From the Associated Press comes a story that must warm the hearts and pocketbooks of every mobile phone provider in the world.......

BEIJING - China's largest cell phone service provider successfully tested a transmission station on Mount Everest on Tuesday, making it possible for people in the area for next year's Olympic torch relay to make calls, a state news agency reported.

China Mobile had to hire yaks and porters to transport equipment up to the station at an altitude of 21,325 feet, the Xinhua News Agency said.  Aside from the physical challenge of climbing the mountain, which straddles the border of Nepal and Chinese-controlled Tibet, the torch had to be designed to burn in bad weather, low pressure and high altitude.

The new station and two other high-altitude China Mobile stations, one at 17,060 feet and the other at 19,095 feet, are to provide cell phone service along the entire Mount Everest climbing route, Xinhua said. It was not known whether the two other stations operate on a continuous basis.

Immediately after testing it, workers began packing away the station for the winter, Xinhua said. It will be reassembled for the Olympic torch relay next summer, when the flame is to be carried to Everest's 29,035-foot summit.  A worker at the station called China Mobile general manager Wang Jianzhou Tuesday afternoon and had a clear signal, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company spokesman as saying.

The construction was "incredibly difficult" because the oxygen level was only 38 percent of what it is at sea level, the spokesman said.  An official with Tibet Mobile, the Tibetan subsidiary of China Mobile, said the station would operate based on the needs of mountaineers and scientists, Xinhua reported.

Phones rang unanswered at China Mobile's headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday evening. The Lhasa office of China Mobile did not have a listed telephone number.

Organizers of the Beijing Games plan to stage the longest torch relay in Olympic history on an 85,000-mile, 130-day route across five continents.

I do have to admit the notion of the Olympic torch making it to the rooftop of the world represents some big thinking.  It should provide us with one of those magic moments that we will all be able to share via the web.

And finally, I bet there will be fewer dropped calls at the Everest site than I get on my way home every night on Ward Parkway in Kansas City.