Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Today I had lunch with Prof. Men Ming, director of the Center for Financial Markets and Investments at UIBE. We discussed organizing a conference on private securities litigation, an idea I broached some time ago with the Smith School executive education folks and the UIBE people working with the Smith EMBA program in Beijing. Prof. Men and I seemed to hit it off. He has been enlisted as an enthusiastic co-conspirator. This scheme may now start to pick up momentum. I have emailed him the grant proposal draft I wrote to describe the idea and seek funding for it.

Prof. Men also gave me the name of Prof. Zhang Jikang at Fudan University, also a finance professor and the deputy director of a Center for International Finance Studies. He is a foreign exchange guru, which is currently a hot topic in PRC foreign relations. I will try to meet with him next week when I am in Shanghai.

Afterwards, I went by the CSRC offices on Finance Street in western Beijing. The person I had met with before in the international cooperation department is now on maternity leave. I chatted with a deputy director of the department. He gave me a CD with information from the last “annual report” of the CSRC. He tried to be helpful, even though I dropped by unexpectedly. In terms of a conference, he said the CSRC usually only works on a government-to-government level. I explained I didn’t need them to sponsor the conference or even brand it, but that when the time comes a speaker from the CSRC might be invited (or might not…I don’t want to hear some rot about how the sange daibiao inspires their regulatory efforts…).

I’ve not been at this blogging thing for a week yet, but I am already a zealous convert. I came across an article “Scholars who Blog” from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I imagine academics will take to this in droves. At the time the Chronicle story was written, many already had. Clearly the “early adoption” phase is over. Now creating a basic blog is as simple as using email. But the really impressive ones–in terms of content and visual appeal–are not just click, click you’re done.

I have kept a paper journal for many years. I have dozens of bound volumes, stemming back to my undergraduate days. This format is clearly more extroverted. Plus it allows hyperlinks, unlike my paper journals. One can edit, too. But I don’t feel any necessity to meticulously polish and “Bluebook” (format an array of footnotes) as legal scholarship requires. So it is a nice intermediate step between thoughts just floating in (and out!) of one’s mind and formalized publishing. I think keeping a blog will help me do more of the latter, actually. It is hard to gather the emotional energy and concentration to start a paper or article or book. But it feels effortless to fire off what seems like email to myself, albeit posted on the Web in some wild exaggeration of an “open book.” So maybe this type of writing will help me step over that shadow that falls between thought and deed (between the impulse to write and publish and the act of actually BEGINNING (and continuing, and finishing…).

Today I downloaded a Google tool bar that has a “blog this” button. I added a default “minimalist homepage” to my “site,” providing links to my departmental bio, this blog and my CV. I must post a better picture!