First stop after 20 hours of travel: The Geeks on a Plane Rethink Shanghai dinner.

Many thanks to Kris Krug who used a flash (unlike me). You can see more of his amazing photos of the GOAP tour and more at: www.kriskrug.com and www.staticphotography.com

Turns out Christine Lu had arranged for Dr. Zhao Gang (the director of Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development and Ministry of Science and Technology) to speak with us, so within moments of arriving I was listening to his vision of a low carbon economy in China.

So I figured, what the heck, might as well bust out the flip cam and see what I can learn. Dr. Zhao was kind enough to take a few moments out and discuss the importance of planting trees to address desertification from drought, the initiative to put 1,000 electric cars into 10 cities, and more.

Stay tuned for a much longer (and coherent) article on Dr. Zhao Gang.

Many thanks to Jing Zhou for translating. If you are dying to see a bit of our conversation, see below. But I warn you, if you care about production quality, spare yourself the torture (it was very dark) and consider yourself warned (aka I don’t want to hear any complaints).

GeeksOnaPlane had a terrific year in 2009 traveling all over the world. Our upcoming trip to East Asia leaves on May 21st from San Francisco. The main tour group will visit Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, and Singapore. A few of us will also end the tour in Tokyo.  For more info, see the tour overview below or visit the pages for each of our tour cities.

Reservations for the main tour group are now sold out, however you are still welcome to join us for individual events in any of our tour cities.

Tour Objectives:

* Meet startups, geeks, & investors in cities around the world.
* Learn about trends in internet, mobile, and other tech platforms.
* Gain insight into local markets, demographics, business models.
* Meet cool people, new ventures, have fun on planes, trains, buses.