Panel Statement

Panel:  @China, Virtually Speaking: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion on Emergent Practices in China

Xin­dan­wei, which lit­er­ally means “New Work Unit,” is a so­cial en­ter­prise and grass­roots co-work­ing com­mu­nity in down­town Shang­hai that pro­motes and fa­cil­i­tates cre­ativ­ity, shar­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Xin­dan­wei com­bines the best el­e­ments of a work­space (pro­duc­tive, func­tional) with a so­cial media plat­form (hy­brid, real-time, ef­fi­cient) and a cre­ative hub (so­cial, en­er­getic, cre­ative). Work­ing across many dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, Xin­dan­wei con­nects more than 2000 peo­ple who do amaz­ing things, and has or­ga­nized more than 100 events to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who ex­pe­ri­ence, en­counter and ex­per­i­ment. Xin­dan­wei has been fea­tured in CNN, Urban China, Face, Shang­hai Weekly, DI Ar­chi­tect and De­sign and more. Some of their pro­grams in­clude “Magic So­ci­ety”, an in­no­v­a­tive plat­form that in­spires and ed­u­cates peo­ple about how things work, build­ing and re­build­ing stuff, re­cy­cling and re­source con­ser­va­tion; “New Shanzhai: In­no­va­tion in Chi­nese way?” ex­plor­ing the phe­nom­ena of Shanzhai, China’s knock-off cul­ture that ques­tions le­git­i­macy and au­then­tic­ity of de­sign and blurs the line be­tween cul­tural ap­pro­pri­a­tion and out­right theft; and “De­sign2Change”, ex­plor­ing the pos­i­tive im­pact of de­sign for so­cial change.  xindanwei.com

• Liu Yan, CEO and the co-founder of Xin­dan­wei, is an ad­vo­cate of cross-cul­ture and cross dis­ci­pline ex­change, en­tre­pre­neur and com­mu­nity or­ga­nizer. She is a reg­u­lar speaker at in­ter­na­tional fo­rums on so­cial in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and dig­i­tal cul­ture such as Skoll World Forum, TEDx and the Geti­t­louder con­fer­ence and was nom­i­nated by girl 2.0 China as the “top fe­male in­no­va­tor”.  As an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant and lec­turer in the Nether­lands and China from 2004-2007, she served as ad­vi­sory board mem­ber on cul­tural en­tre­pre­neur­ship for the city mu­nic­i­pal of Utrecht, and worked as the ad­vi­sor of the China pro­gram of Dutch Elec­tronic Arts Fes­ti­val. In 2007, she co-founded Da-Tong China Desk Cre­ative In­dus­try in Am­s­ter­dam. Da-Tong has or­ga­nized the Cre­ative Cross China & Eu­rope con­fer­ence for Pic­nic’07, Am­s­ter­dam’s lead­ing an­nual in­ter­na­tional event, high­light­ing cre­ativ­ity and in­no­va­tion. Upon to her re­turn to China in 2008, she co-or­ga­nized and chaired 3S Re­Union – an in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary monthly sem­i­nar for art, media tech­nol­ogy and aca­d­e­mic re­search.
• Aaa­jiao (Xu Wenkai), CTO and the co-founder of Xin­dan­wei, is one of China’s fore­most dig­i­tal artists, blog­gers and free cul­ture de­vel­op­ers. In 2003 he es­tab­lished the sound art web­site cornersound.com and in 2006 he founded the Chi­nese take on the blog we-make-money-not-art called “We-Need-Money-Not-Art.com”. He is de­voted to Pro­cess­ing, an open source vi­sual pro­gram­ming soft­ware and Dork­bot, a non-profit ini­tia­tive for cre­ative minds. His art­work can be seen at:  eventstructure.com