Hi, I'm Jean Snow, and I'd like to welcome you to the first edition of my monthly M31 newsletter, in which I plan on sharing the latest updates in regards to all of my events and initiatives I currently run in Shanghai. This will include my bi-monthly PauseTalk talk series, the PechaKucha Night series I organize with George Lobo, my FOTO5 photo club, and the Shanghai Design Pins group -- and whatever else I end up cooking up.

What's M31? It's a name I used decades ago as my sort of publishing imprint/company label for the activities I was doing while I lived in Tokyo, and I've decided to revive it. It's simply inspired by my birthday of May 31.

All of the activities mentioned above have dedicated groups in WeChat, where you'll get the latest updates, and so please contact me to be added to any of them.

PauseTalk

PauseTalk is a talk event I've been running for what is coming up on 20 years now, first in Tokyo, and now in Shanghai. It's an event open to everyone, where I, as the MC, moderate a discussion that is based on who shows up, but generally touches on the idea of being creatives in the city. The next one, Vol. 98, will be held on Thursday, August 28, at Bananafish Books (7 Hongbaoshi Road). We start at 19:30, there is no entry charge, and you are free to bring drinks and snacks -- I usually bring a bottle of wine. The "official" moderated session usually lasts around 90 minutes to 2 hours, and some tend to stay to chat more. Right now I'm looking at holding Vol. 100 in December, to mark the end of the year and celebrate the milestone.

You'll find archives of past events on the PauseTalk website, which includes recaps for each session.

PechaKucha Night

I've been involved with the PechaKucha organization since 2009, and for years worked closely with founders Astrid Klein and Mark Astrid on running the worldwide organization, as well as producing the Tokyo series, and special one-off editions. Since 2023, I've been organizing the series in Shanghai with George Lobo, starting with Vol. 30. We currently produce events mostly on a bi-monthly basis, with extra volumes here and there. Although not yet announced publicly, our next event, Vol. 46, will be held on September 11. You can always check our Shanghai page on the official PechaKucha website to see the listings for the latest events.

FOTO5

FOTO5 is a photo club I launched earlier this year, with the idea of sharing 5 photos on a particular theme each week. The reason to start it was that I felt like I was no longer being creative with photography anymore, and so wanted to give myself some sort of weekly goal -- and I figured it would be even more fun to create a community around it, to see what others would share on the theme. We've done 20+ themes so far, and the example you see here is taken from a presentation I did about FOTO5 at a recent PechaKucha Night (the FOTO5 I did for the theme "movement").

If you're interested in participating, contact me so I can add you to the group on WeChat.

Shanghai Design Pins 📍

Shanghai Design Pins📍 is a group I also created on WeChat earlier this year as a place to share design-related spots (and events) in Shanghai. The idea is for everyone to share spots (or pins) they uncover, and so it makes for a growing collection of city highlights that I began sharing on this page on my personal website (although I haven't updated it in a while). Now that I have this newsletter, I'll start sharing a few recent spots each month here as well.

Shanghai Design Pins 📍 is a group on WeChat -- contact me to be added.

One More Thing

I'll use this section in each newsletter to share something I'm particularly interested at the moment, or that I happily experienced recently. For this edition, I'd like to highlight some shots taken with the mood.camera app, which I've been experimenting with -- it replicates old film stocks, but in a way where there's no post-processing of shots, so you first decide the stock, and then snap away.

The following photos were taking during a random walk at night with my dog, and I really like the warmth.

And that's it for this month, and the inaugural edition of this newsletter. It may evolve over time, as I come up with things I think would be interesting to share in this format -- but it should continue to be focused on the activities and initiatives that I'm currently doing in Shanghai, where I live. For more on me, you can alway have a look at personal website -- I've been blogging since 1998 -- or for lighter stuff (and lots of movie reviews) you can follow me on Bluesky.