Next stop on the flame+smoke masterclass tour: Beijing.

Great turnout on this stop — really amazing.The audience was filled with note-taking artists. We provided course notes to all the participants — but also gave them a download link to get setup files and more enhanced notes. This was the first consecutive translation (speak in English…pause… translate to Chinese) session that CE has done so it was good I went first to give him an idea of pacing. I try to be as relaxed and comfortable and have as much fun as possible during the events, but the timing does make this a bit more difficult. Especially jokes — though my humor is based upon poking fun at myself and admittedly not that refined.:)

Interesting to both CE and myself was that a great number of artists in the room were women. Now its not uncommon to see female artists at the NAB events. It’s simply that in Beijing they made up such a larger percentage of attendees than at other events I’ve done — especially the ones here in Asia. I’m excited about that, because it’s great to see this in such a male-dominated industry. Rick Ledyard, owner of Avenue Edit in Chicago where I used to work full time, was one of the first owners in Chicago to actively promote women editors in town when it was quite unusual. Now, high billing female artists and editors are common…but at the time it was truly a new thing. Good to see the percentages evening out.

And now the obligatory tour photo — CE and I at the Great Wall of China. I’m not normally into posing for photos, but hey — one of the wonders of the world and it really was truly amazing. Took about an hour to hike up this section outside Beijing…I was dripping wet from the humid air here in the city. It’s incredibly steep as well…couldn’t believe it actually. Thinking about when it was built and how they could do it without technology is crazy. Our tour guide mentioned that they say the wall is the largest cemetary in China, due to the number of people killed when building it and buried underneath the wall.

We also visited the Forbidden City, which was amazing. The city of Beijing is going under incredibly rapid change with cranes building new towers all over the place. Preparation for the Olympics next year is in full gear and everyone we spoke to was incredibly proud and excited about the upcoming event. But they’ll really have to do something about the pollution in the city since the games will be held about this time next year. Currently, the skies are yellow from the smog and won’t be condusive to competition. They plan on stopping/banning all construction at the end of the year to help with this…but they have a ways to go. I was amazed how polluted the air was….