May 5, 2002

• NBA

  
  

  I found out some cool news a couple days ago... I think I have a good chance to meet Vince Carter or the Toronto Raptors and a couple other NBA players.

  
  

  NBA and Nike were going to do a world tour last year that was supposed to kick off in Asia, beginning with the city I'm in now, Shanghai.  Unfortunately, due to the incidents of last year's terrorist attacks, that whole idea was quashed and it didn't materialize.

  
  

  Fast forward to this year, plans are again underway to bring NBA and Nike's collaboration to Shanghai.  Although I don't know this year's line of players, my inside informant tells me that Vince Carter is one of the guys coming.  So how will I meet him?

  
  

  I've finally done some financial analysis of my conference and as of now, it looks entirely feasible (financially).  We have confirmed financial support from Ernst & Young and more commercial support from companies like Microsoft, Legend Computers and am in talks with a couple venture capital companies, the Bank of China and Hewlett-Packard.  I'm currently also assembling a panel of entrepreneurs to speak at our conference, and tomorrow I meet with a group called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization that have newly established a branch in SH.  Along with this group, I've met several people who are starting up their own thing here in Shanghai, and I plan to approach them, including this guy I know who runs his own events company.

  
  

  This events company is responsible for doing promo events and running marketing campaigns in Shanghai for various brands of goodies.  They are a small operation, but compete fiercely with their bigger competition here in Shanghai.  They've been doing pretty well for themselves, securing contracts from a few companies here and there, including the local Nike contract.  Anyways, the guy that runs a company is about my age, 25ish and is a cool guy.  He used to do hip hop events here in SH and has since moved on to start his own company.  As an entrepreneur in China, he has a lot of experience in starting his own thing and being an entrepreneur.  I'm sure he's got some stories to tell about doing this type of thing in China.  As a role-model for others, my conference is a great marketing opportunity for him and his company.  He's very nice to people he knows and if he gets on board, I think I'll be able to squeeze my way into some hard core NBA action in Shanghai (and get a pic with Vince).

  
  

  Dana's working on some private hip hop boat party next month, hopefully it will coincide with your visit MARV, if so we'll get some crazy VIP treatment here.  I'm quite busy this month, but when you get here, things should be more freed up and we can see about getting drunk about 95% of the time that you are here, and trying to see a little bit of SH the rest of that time.  And Mars, when are you making your next trip out to China?

  • 6:01 am
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