IT events take different forms

I am once obliged to Chang, the Korean blogger who is currently based in Japan. His Web 2.0 Asia blog reports on his attendance at the New Industry Leaders Summit (NILS) event in Sapporo. He also posts here and here. I am not as familiar as I should be with details of the events and B2B media/information scene in Japan. As Chang points out, it's not always easy for foreigners to get a real inside feel at these events:

...it was rather clear that the participants were divided into two groups, the Japanese group and non-Japanese group (the latter being the minority and kinda forming a league of their own). I know NILS is first and foremost a Japanese industry gathering, but I still wish the next NILS would be more international, or at least more pan-Asian with more participants from Korea, China, Singapore, and India.

The event doesn't seem to have an easily accessible web site (I certainly couldn't find one) and you have to rely on outside bloggers to find out about it. Ross Mayfield attended last year and blogged on it here.

Meanwhile, it's not all open access in Beijing either. Fons Tuinstra points us to a story on CNET about a reporter showing up to the China Beijing International High Tech Expo only to find some unanticipated challenges:

I made it in and could stay, they said. Unfortunately, the interpreters never showed up. The conference organizers had canceled them.

The event, the reporter says, "is the Chinese government's showcase for the country's technological achievements". Hmmm. Hurry along with those automated translation services guys....and I'll bet there was no Scarlett Johanssen around to amuse him at the bar either.