Lost In Translation 2

I just returned from Tokyo, where I joined Teoma founder Apostolos Gerasoulis and Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher, to help usher in Ask Jeeves Japan.

The company, which launched its beta site last August, is a joint venture between Ask Jeeves US and Transcosmos, a Japanese holding company that also owns the Japanese versions of Doubleclick, Atom Shockwave, Listen.com, Nielsen NetRatings, CinemaNow and others. Last Tuesday they held a press conference to announce the official launch, and the three of us were invited to fly out and participate. Talk about star power.

Mark, me and AG in the heart of Shibuya, near the Transcosmos office

The press conference was a big success. Nearly 100 journalists attended, and the launch was well received in the press the next day. Here is a link to the Excite Japan translation of one of the articles, though you will have a hard time making much sense of it. For example, my name is translated "Mr. Gem Orchis Zone".

AJJ CEO Hiro Shiokawa ushers in the dawn of Ask Jeeves Japan		Mark confirms that the crowd actually understood my jokes

The AJJ launch coincided with the annual World Wide Web conference, which was held in Tokyo this year. Tim Berners-Lee was the keynote. Notably, our newest star on the search technology team, Antonio Gulli of the Pisa, Italy office, had 5 papers accepted into the conference, including ones on news personalization and video search. Congrats to Antonio.

The first night of the conference, AJJ threw a cocktail party for some prominent bloggers. The Japanese love using English words in marketing materials, so sure enough the party was descriptively called "Ask Geeks." Apparently no one took this the wrong way and everyone had a great time.

Poster for the Ask Geeks party		Two of our biggest Geeks

Our favorite part of the trip was hanging out with the team from Ask Jeeves Japan. We hung around the office after the press conference, mingling and giving demos of new products we're working on.

AG and Antonio holding court at AJJ		The AJJ team loves our internal t-shirts, including this one honoring AC/DC

AJJ CEO Hiro Shiokawa then took us all out to Italian food. (Of course, Antonio flew 15 hours from Italy to Tokyo to eat Italian food.) We had a blast, especially the part when we peppered new recruits with "3 Questions", a Japanese tradition. Ask new people any three questions you want, in front of everyone. It got ugly very quickly, with questions such as, "What are your hang-ups?"

Everyone wanted a picture of Mark and AG at dinner

Lastly, as Mark noted on Winged Pig, he did indeed partake in the calorie-busting cream puffs of Beard Papa. Here is the proof:

 

Thanks to our hosts. Mark and I will be returning in June to speak at the CNET conference. Can't wait.

Jim Lanzone