I can’t imagine a better way to return to the United States, after nearly a month in China, than the four days I’ve just spent in San Francisco. It’s been an intense couple of days, not least because I haven’t been able to sleep more than a couple hours. But I haven’t had the usual problem with staying awake during the day, thanks to the lively and entertaining atmosphere at the SIIA Content Forum. This is the SIIA’s big annual event, with two days of programming and a black-tie dinner at the end where the CODiE Awards are presented. Because the SIIA has four divisions, there are awards for a remarkable variety of services and products. I was glad to see more awards for blogs and blog services this year, and there’s been much discussion of social networking and social media at the sessions. Larry Schwartz at Newstex, who won a CODiE for his blog aggregation service, has posted some photos, and born-to-be-a-blogger John Blossom has written more and better about the event than I can. (If you’re wondering about Berkshire’s blogs, I have to confess that I didn’t even read through the e-mails to find out what the procedure for submissions was, and was a bit chagrined when someone said it would only have been a 50-word entry. But I’ll bet it’s more work than that.)

When it comes to industry commentary, there’s no way I’m going to compete with John [read his detailed reporting here], so instead I thought I’d share a few memorable moments.

• The words, “Will China please join us,” from Ed Keating as he was starting the second day’s program. I’d got a group together to discuss China plans and we were just wrapping up at the back of the room.
• A time shift feeling as I sat in the lobby with Qiang Li, who set up our first database when he was a Yale graduate student and now works here in San Francisco, and SIIA member Joshua Cohen of PR Newswire, who is a real China hand and speaks and writes Chinese with great proficiency. They were speaking in Chinese and I was enjoying the chance to listen and puzzle out what might be going on. I pick out occasional words, but was floored when Qiang turned to me and said, “What do you think?”
• The look on a colleague’s face when I leaned over during a session and said, “What was that adult website you mentioned?” He’d been saying that we could learn a lot about successful social networking design from the site and I just wanted the name for reference. And I wasn’t planning to start browsing it then and there.
• The statement that “People are trusting user-generated content more” from a panelist. I’m not sure that that’s an empirically based conclusion. Surely it depends on what and where. I’ve just heard that some school districts are not going to allow students to cite Wikipedia, for example, and that doesn’t sound like trust.

I’m meeting now with Brian Gruber of the remarkable Fora Television. More notes to come!