The Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of the most prestigious institute of higher learning in China. It is known throughout Asia as China’s MIT. As a matter of fact, getting into MIT might be easier than getting into Jiao Tong since the students must compete with a much bigger population of applicants. Knowing the position this school holds, it was indeed an honor when Dr. Pearl Wang, Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, asked me to give a lecture on new media to her communications class.
Jiao Tong is positively huge. The university is made up of six campuses scatter throughout Shanghai. The Min Hang Campus (where my lecture was held) is the biggest with a student population of 35,000 and sits on over 280 hectare of land.
While the main topic of the lecture was on new media, I also talked about making money online and I gave the students my five cardinal rules for starting a business. It’s a good thing I loaded all my lecture notes into my Kindle 2, otherwise I would have forgotten many of my points. The highlight of the lecture was when I gave a live demo of Twitter. Amazingly enough, no one in the class knew what Twitter was. After the demo, they understood why Facebook recently changed the look of their home page.
After the lecture, several students got on Twitter and sent the following messages. Follow them if you want to know what life is like at one of China’s top universities. I have a feeling a Twitter tidal wave is about to hit Jiao Tong, Shanghai and the rest of China. Twitter should be paying me for this!
@AugustZhang (Xiaozhen Zhang) says:@JohnChow the guy blown away by twitter demo is coming to twitter!~~^_^
@ChiZhou (Chi Zhou) says:@JohnChow I am Chi the guy who had lunch with you this noon. Your class was really amazing!!!!
@anaiswxy (xinyin wang) says:@JohnChow hi! i’ve just listened your lecture, bravo! A new way of enjoying life while making money~
During the Twitter demo, I ask my follower to say hi to the class to show how interactive Twitter was. Within a minute, over 20 tweets came back. I want to thank everyone who help with the demo. Here are their tweets.
@srpsco (srpsco) says:@JohnChow hi class if you enjoy this lecture don’t applaud but please throw money, but we ask you to please unwrap them first
@AaronSkwarcan (AaronSkwarcan) says:@JohnChow hello class! You had better listen to john, he’s a cool dude. PS-I’m pretty awesome myself
@bostonmarketer (Rachel Levy) says:@JohnChow Hi class! I’m giving one tomorrow too, so hope I’ll get responses then too! Twitter rocks
@JasonLandals (Jason Landals) says:@JohnChow Hello from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to the students being subjected to John’s lecture
I want to thank Dr. Wang and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University for inviting me to give the lecture. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the students’ questions. Given the caliber of students at Jiao Tong, I can tell that China will continue to be a powerhouse on the world stage.