Day 2 in China --

Here was the agenda for the day --

7:00 - 8:30 am -- Breakfast -- This was serve at the Hotel's restaurant.  As we came toward the restaurant it became apparent that sending 1200 people to breakfast at the same time was overwhelming the restaurant.  It was pretty busy.  We had to be in business casual dress.  The breakfasts were pretty fun -- I showed some of the pictures from the buffet on a previous post.  Here was a photo of my breakfast today. 



Then from 8:30 - 10:15 there was an opening plenary session where we heard from the CEO-elect and the COO.  It was interesting and about the firm. 

At 10:30 the partner's headed to get a group photo and the spouses / guests went and changed clothes so we could go on a tour to Tianamen square and the Forbidden City. 

11:00  the busses left and we all had in our hands the largest packed lunch box I had ever seen.  It included -- a full turkey sandwich, potato salad, green salad, apple, banana, water bottle, freshly squeezed orange juice, a yogurt, a hazelnute cookie, and a moon cake. 

So while Trent sat through 5 or so hours of meetings I got to go see the sites (some of which we saw the day before as well).  Here are some photos from my iphone from today (since I didn't bring the big camera this time)


















Here is the standard toilets here in China. This one was at the Forbidden City and had a sign rating it a 4 star toilet.

  

Once we got back from our tour then it was up to the hotel room to change clothes (again) and rejoin our spouses for the keynote address by Sjell Nordstrom -- he is an economist (think "freakonomics"). His address was really amazing. Some of the highlights . . .
-- women out educating men in drastic numbers
-- the ability to "print" products in your own home
-- that innovation will continue to come from the United States as it is an idea, not a nationality.  He asked how long would one have to live in France to become French??  or can a person live in Japan and become Japanese?  NEVER  was his response, but to come to America and embrace the ideals and become American enables people to dream and innovate in ways that other countries are not even able to
-- the gap between the collective knowledge in the world and the knowledge one person can gain meaning that collaboration must grow because one cannot know or do it all anymore.  He pointed to the Nobel prizes to point out how they now go to teams of people because the level of information that must be processed to accomplish things now requires many people. 
-- the rise of the machines and that humans will only be needed for ethics (meaning a car maybe able to automatically swerve to avoid hitting the car in front -- but a human must decide if that is a favorable option than swerving and hitting the child to the right or the school to the left)

After the keynote address Trent and I walked around outside.  It was a beautiful day  (and thankfully not smoggy like the day before).  It was nice to just be outside and see this amazing city. 

Then we headed up to our hotel room to change (this is now my 4th outfit for the day) into our back tie clothing for the evening banquet and party at the Summit world hotel. 















This really was a spectacular evening. Sit down dinner for 1300 people and fun dancing (and yes Trent danced a lot).