Damian Holmes

Last week I posted summaries of the China market and government news, however it takes too long to collate that information and write up a good summary. However, I broke one of the tenants of good blogging – don’t chase news. News and information especially in China happen too fast to consume, analysis and then report. Therefore I am changing the post content to major items and ideas so that you still get on the ground information. If you would like me to cover a certain topic email me via damian@damianholmes.com

What I love about China and business in China is there is never a dull day. Business occurs 24/7 and doesn’t stop with over 1.3 billion people business occurs in offices, coffee shops, tea houses, farm fields, online via e-commerce, QQ, microsites, micropayments – the monetary sums are in the billions or just a few fen but it constantly moving and changing the landscape and way I look at China everyday – you think you know something or where a company is heading and then it skyrockets, plummets, falls apart or decides to do one of the biggest IPO’s in history. The business and its news cycle in China is never ending as China is now an economic superpower that influences every market, anyone who doesn’t agree has never been to China or has been asleep for the last three years. To use a paraphrase the parlance of the market if China catches a cold the rest of the world will have pneumonia!

I will try reporting on a daily basis what I see as I often think that I read so much about China and share with so few people also I would like to actually start using this as a way of curating my thoughts about China. Am I going to cover everything? no…the market is too big but I will be looking at the major stuff and then anything I think maybe sliding through without notice from the mainstream media. I’ll try explain some of the companies but most of the time will be linking to wiki’s corporate websites or other resources for further reading.

So here it goes…….

As apart of my setting goals for 2010 I set 5 words – one of which was Simple.

Simple Ideas. Simple Concepts. Simple Processes and Simplify.

Tonight I decided to Simplify my web reading. In 2009, I read too much business news, business trends, social media trends which often was great for small talk but often lead to information overload that really in the end didn’t help move my ideas move forward. I had created too much noise. Most of what I read is via my Google Reader which I open every morning and spend about an hour scanning the information and another hour at night. I use this as a good way to research and gain ideas for my business and sites.

Over the last couple of years I have added newspapers, magazines, blogs, zines and other RSS feeds. However, I realised that I needed to simplify the amount and type of information I was reading. So, I went through each category – business, landscape, architecture, entrepreneur, news, etc and culled each to 2 to 5 sources from 10-20.

How did I do it? Well, I gauged how much I really gained from each source and how useful it was to me last year. Also if I thought that I could get the same content from another one of my sources I culled it. I also  found during 2009 that I often got duplicate information from multiple sources especially US-based newpapers on China or Asia. I also culled a lot of the USA based magazines as some of what I read was useful, but I decided I need to focus more on Asia were I am based.

To concentrate more on Asia and other topics I searched Alltop.com for RSS feeds and added 2 sources maximum to some categories.

I am also Simplifying my social media habits – less twitter/foursquare and more writing ideas down and then thinking of ways of implementing(doing) them.

I also decided recently that I needed to reduce the number of my sites from 5 to 3 and probably soon to be 2 (not including my blog!) so that I can spend more time on my design studio SUSTAIN.DS and World Landscape Architect.

I hope this gives you something to think about and what you will do in 2010. What are you doing in 2010 to simplify your life?
Leave it in the comments section or email me

My News Years Eve 2005 – Sydney Opera House Steps

This time of year is often when people in the west reflect on the past year and set resolutions. However living in China most people don’t reflect until Chinese New Year which is February 14 – Year of the Tiger. So, as I am living in China, I have two times a year (New Years Eve & Chinese New Year) when I reflect on the past year and what I want to achieve in the next year.

At New Years I often set  goals but this year I am taking a different approach similar to that used by Chris Brogan’s 3 words but I am going to use 5 words. After listing the 5 words (the what I want to achieve) I have then listed the why, how, when for the words. The when doesn’t have to be in 2010. So the list is what, why, how and when. I hope this approach will give me more focus, and less distraction. So how is this different from resolutions? resolutions are goals but often with no process of how they will be achieved.

So how do I reflect at Chinese New Year – its a family time in China and often it is a good time to reflect on family and then review what I have done in that 5-7 weeks (chinese new year changes based on lunar cycle) and what I need to do more or less of to achieve the goals.

2010 will be interesting – developing and growing my design studio – SUSTAIN.DS, changes to my websites, travel (china & abroad) and personal life changes. Overall, I have decided that 2010 is going to be doing less reading, less reflecting and far more doing!!

What are your goals, resolutions for 2010? what didn’t you do last year that you can do in 2010?

Email me damian@damianholmes.com

Chinese New Year 2009 – City of God Temple Shanghai

Wow, time flies. I didn’t realise its been 3 months since I posted something. Funny thing is that I have posts in draft form on here but they are mainly rants.

Also I haven’t been able to find the time to get my thoughts together as running three industry blogs (worldla.com chinalandscapearchitect.com UAElandscapearchitect.com) and trying to start-up a new business is not ideal and running Tweetups & Shanghai Twitterville (although thats not that time consuming)

Something is going to give soon, think it will be one or two of the blogs as they haven’t made me any good money in a long time. Not that is what I started them for originally I had another 4 landscape architecture blogs but closed each one due to time.

However, maybe its time to get serious about getting them to the next level as ezines or pro blogs like inhabitat or treehugger. But, these have teams of people and companies behind them. Something to think about and will make a decision about by the end of 2009.

Also I took some interesting photos of the USA while was there and of the ever changing Shanghai which i have to add to a Picasa stream and place on here.