DATELINE: China World Hotel, Beijing, 25 October 2006

Spent six hours leading 30 RDS senior execs through an extended version of the brief, complete with discussion sections and instant feedback votes. Half were from outside China and half were local Chinese. Very invigorating discussion and interaction that left the RDS training execs very happy along with Duke Educational Corp people (my direct clients).

Today's performance guarantees my participation in next event, which isn't until next summer and probably will be in either Dubai or Moscow. I have not briefed up roughly half of all of Royal Dutch/Shell's senior execs, so it'll be interesting to see what that critical mass yields.

After that long effort, went shopping with local friends, buying art and a few pearls from the famous RuPeiPei, who recently received some business (actually, RuPeiPei had to go to her) from Condi Rice during her recent trip. RuPeiPei is where all the foreign dignitaries go for pearls, as all the celebrity photos on the wall of her shop attest.

Then a late dinner with local friends and a connected senior who's going to help me get BFA published in Chinese.

Tomorrow is a roundtable with a bunch of senior military officers. I am told to expect most of the discussion will be about North Korea. No presentation by me, since I briefed a large number of officers at this think tank last June, so this time is all conversation for about three hours. Should be more than interesting.