编者按：在我向这位日本互联网最具影响力和号召力的投资人约稿时，他已经连续工作了48小时。但他说，我马上就开始写。在接下来的文章中你会看到，田中章雄用文字还原了一家日本互联网管理团队在灾难发生后所表现出来的冷静有序，更重要的是，这家全球闻名的互联网企业是如何创新性的利用互联网产品特性和全球化特征，来兑现社会企业应有的责任和担当。感谢互联网，因为我们进入了一个社会化运动的新时代。天下犹一家，四海皆兄弟，祈福日本人民。
作者简介：田中章雄（Akio Tanaka），日本顶级风险投资机构IVP（Infinity Venture Partners）董事合伙人，Groupon日本公司投资人。他此前负责Adobe亚洲区的投资业务，加入Adobe之前，曾在Macromedia总部任CEO顾问及Macromedia日本CTO。IVP近年来陆续投资了近十家中国企业，包括热酷、天下网和摩卡等。
我刚在日本Groupon公司度过了一个星期，地震前一天我回到了澳门。
3月11日是我的生日，我正打算那天晚上举行生日晚宴。下午的时候，我还通过Skype参加了几个网络会议。
然后，地震发生了。
我在日本的同事说，这是他们所经历过的最严重的灾难，但我那时还没意识到灾难的严重性。接着媒体报道铺天盖地而来，我们意识到事情已经演变成一场我们闻所未闻的紧急灾难。我试着打电话给我父母，但电话并没接通，试了几次之后，我终于联系到了他们，也知道他们目前安好。
通常来说，大灾难发生的时候电话很难接通，但是网络相对稳定，我们大多依赖Gmail、Skype和Twitter进行通讯。
公司COO联系到我，跟我讨论了一下日本地震的严重性，我们决定迅速成立一支紧急应变团队。我们非常担心，因为我们的办公室遍布日本，包括在灾情最为严重地区附近的仙台市办公室。由于我是唯一一个日本以外的成员，我成为了日本公司和海外总部的通信枢纽。我也取消了我的生日宴会，因为这实在不是庆生的时候，而应该迅速行动肩负起责任来。
我们跟管理团队所做的几个事情：
- 让骨干职员间相互告知各自的紧急联系方式
- 确认所有职员的安全
- 在东京总部设立控制中心
- 制定危机中的网站策略
当务之急是确认职员的安全。我们组织了销售经理等人去联系我们在日本的所有职员。上至北部的北海道，下至南部的冲绳县，我们共有愈800名员工。很快我们就能够确认所有员工的安全，就只是没找到在千叶市的一名销售人员，但后来我们联系上了他，每个人都安好。我们对位于灾情最为严重地区附近的仙台市员工最为担心。该市的办公室已经遭到损害，所幸没有人受伤。我们也有团队成员之前从海外来到日本，我们确认了他们目前的状况，他们都安全呆在酒店里。
这时我也想起了一名从美国出差的高管，他那天晚上在去成田机场的路上，并不在我们人力资源部的核对名单中。我担心他可能滞留在机场了，因为机场已经关闭，大量航班取消，导致所有机场的酒店房间均悉数订满。我叫了日本团队帮他找一个酒店，当时确实很难找，但最后在东京迪士尼乐园附近找到了一个房间。与此同时，我给他打了几次电话，都没接通，最后他通过手机回复了我的电子邮件。他处于安全，已经在机场附近。最后他决定留在机场，而不是前往我们所找的酒店。不管怎么样，我们都松了一口气，毕竟他是Groupon的创始人之一。
下一个要做的就是确保我们的员工安全回家。日本大部分公共交通系统处于瘫痪，道路严重堵塞。人力资源部叫我们的员工尽早回家，因为天还亮着，回家会安全些。我们将办公室作为临时安置所，让那些离家很远的员工可以逗留。当时我们的关键团队包括CEO、COO、CTO，他们在危急中可以作出并执行重大决定。其他负责公关、社会营销、网络开发的职员也在办公室，为公司运营作出贡献。
为了确保我们的生存，我们派了公司行政人员去购买食物，因为我们预计便利店和超市的食物将会销售一空。我们也向员工发出信息，告知他们如果回不了家，他们可以回到公司过夜。我们有充足的食物和水，充足的电源，也能够进行通信。最后大概有50人在办公室过夜。
接着是关键的商业问题。我们意识到网络上充斥着地震相关的信息，我们的广告不应该出现在这些信息背景中。我们关闭了所有的广告。我们意识到，在危机中通信设施承受着巨大的压力，为了确保不会增添不必要的网络流量，我们决定停止日常电子邮件的发送。事实上，日本有许多明白事理的网站也有类似的做法，停止大量不必要邮件的发送，从而缓解通信设施的压力。
基本的事情得到处理后，我们开始讨论Groupon日本公司在这次灾难中可以做些什么。Groupon起源于一个名为the Point的服务，该服务背后的精神在于，使用集体的力量解决个人不能解决的问题。我们的团队认为，在目前的情况下，我们能做的最好是发起为日本地震灾民捐款的活动。因此我们立即开始工作。
我们决定取消Groupon日本网站上所有的交易，当时我们有超过80笔交易在进行，所以作出这个决定并不容易。但我们觉得不是赚钱的时候，而应该专注于帮助其他人。幸运的是，我们有一名曾在红十字会工作的员工，我们联系上了红十字会，决定发起捐款活动，筹得的善款将交给日本红十字会。我们也决定，Groupon日本将也将捐出与筹得的善款等额的捐款。Groupon日本也会承担通过信用卡捐款所引起的费用，我们希望确保用户所捐出的每一分钱都能得到使用。我们随即得到了Groupon总部的批准，捐款活动正式上线。
我们是日本采取此类活动的第一家网站，网络群体也注意到了。大多数网民对我们的行动表示支持，捐款也开始不断涌来。但也有一些用户误解和质疑我们的活动，他们以为我们从每笔捐赠当中赚取佣金，事实上我们是零报酬，我们将捐出筹得的善款等额的捐款。我们随后更新了网站，以澄清我们的立场。
现在日本已经进入夜晚，但芝加哥刚刚天亮。我给Groupon总部CEO安德鲁•梅森（Andrew Mason）打了电话，告诉他日本地震的最新情况。他对日本的巨大灾难感到惊讶，但他立即表示将支持我们的活动，并承诺美国公司也将进行赈灾捐款活动。与此同时，日本团队通宵达旦工作，确保我们为未来几天做好准备。Groupon美国网站捐款活动也在几个小时后开通了，这样的效率让人惊讶。Groupon美国公司同样是日本以外首家进行网上募捐的大型互联网公司。
周六，发生地震一天以后，来自Groupon全球各个公司的支持开始涌来，纷纷发起捐款赈灾活动。挪威是第一个，接着是德国、香港、荷兰等，接着还会陆续而来。日本团队对于他们的大力支持甚为感动，他们的行动速度也给日本团队留下了深刻印象。在过去，我们还从没看到过如此快的行动速度。我们进入了一个社会化运动的新时代。在日本经历最严重危机之时，我们看到整个世界变得更小，变得更为温暖。
最后，我要向Groupon日本的同事致以衷心的感谢，他们有需要照顾的家庭，但仍然整晚留在公司，帮助我们履行社会责任。我把诚挚的慰问送给那些地震受害者。
谢谢各位的大力支持。我们永远不会忘记过去48个小时所经历的事情。
（此文为田中章雄先生供网易科技专稿，转载请注明出处。）
相关链接：
Groupon Japan Earthquake Response
编译/乐邦 友情协助/陈柯宇
Akio Tanaka （田中章雄）
- Managing Partner, Infinity Venture Partners
- Investor in Groupon Japan
I just spent the week at Groupon Japan and returned to Macau day before the earthquake.Online. (Disclaimer, we are investor in Groupon Japan)3/11 was my birthday and was planning to go to a birthday dinner that evening. In the afternoon I had a couple of online meetings that I was attending via Skype.
Then the earthquake hit Japan. My colleagues in Japan said it was the biggest they ever felt but at this point I did not realize the scale of the damage. Then media reports started coming in and we realized that this was quickly developing into an emergency we unheard of. I tired to call my parents but call did not get through, after several tries finally reached them and found out that they were OK.
Generally, phone lines were tough to get through but the Internet was on so we mostly relied on Gmail, Skype, and Twitter for communication which were more reliable.
The COO reached out me and discussed the severity of the situation in Japan and we decided to set up and emergency response team immediately. We were very concerned as we have offices across Japan including Sendai, near the worst hit zone Japan. Since I was the only member operating outside of Japan and I became the communication hub between Japan and overseas HQ (we diid not if the communication may be cut off). I also cancelled my birthday dinner plan as this was not time to celebrate but time to act socially responsible.
There were several things we worked on with the management team:
- exchanging the emergency contact numbers of the key staff members
- checking the safety status of all employees
- setting up a command center at our Tokyo HQ
- figuring out our web site strategy during the crisis.
The first and most important task was ensuring that we verity all of our employee's safety. We organized parallel units relying on sales managers to track down all of our employees across Japan (this was important as we have over 800 employees from Hokkaido in the North down to Okinawa in the South. We were soon able to confirm the safety of all of our employees except one sales person in Chiba, but later we were able to get to him and everyone was fine. We were most concerned about our staff in Sendai that was near the heavy hit area. The office was damaged but luckily no one was hurt. There were also our team members who came to Japan from overseas … we checked their status and they were safe together in a hotel.
At this point, I also remembered that we had a US visitor who was on his way to the Narita Airport that evening and was not on our HR's check list. I was worried that he may be stranded at their airport which was already shut down at the time and all of hotels were fully booked near the airport due to massive cancellations. I asked the Japanese team to help find him a hotel … it was extremely difficult to find a hotel at that time but finally secured a room near Tokyo Disneyland. In the man time I called him mobile several times but could not get through, but finally he responded to my email via his mobile phone. He was safe and already near the airport. In the end he decided to camp out at the airport rather than heading back to the hotel we found. In any case we were all relieved. After all he was one of the founding members of Groupon.
The next issue was making sure that we send all of our staff home. In most parts of Japan public transits were shutdown and roads were heavily congested. The HR ordered our staff to go home early as it is much safer to reach home if you leave during the day light. And we kept the office open as temporary shelter for those people who lived too far from the office to walk home. There was also a team of dozen people who were identified as key staff including our CEO, COO, and CTO who were able to make the critical decisions and able to execute during crisis. Other staff members responsible for PR, social marketing, web development were also there to support the minimal operation.
To make sure that we can survive, the office admin was sent to out secure food (as we expected convenience stores and super markets will be running out of food. We also sent out messages that if employees are having difficulty trying to go home without any transit, they can always come back to the office to spend the night as we had enough food and water and running electricity and communication line. In the end about 50 people were in the office spending the night.
The next came the critical business issues. There were several issues.
We realized that the most of the Internet was full of Earthquake related information and it would be highly inappropriate for our normal ads to be appearing in such context. We shut down all advertising. We also realized that during crisis, public communication infrastructure is under tremendous pressure and we made sure that we do not add unnecessary traffic so we decided shut down our daily email, which is sent out to a large volume of users. In fact many sensible web sites in Japan also followed and shut down unnecessary mass email as to ease the pressure of the potential fragile infrastructure.
Now the basics were covered the team discussed what we as Groupon Japan can do in terms of this crisis? The origin of Groupon was a service called the Point … the spirit behind it was to use collective power to solve a problem that one person cannot solve. The team felt that the best role we can play under the circumstance was to run a fund raiser to help earthquake victims. So the team immediately began their work. We also decided to take off all Groupon deals (at the time there was over 80 deals running so it was a very tough decision but the team felt this was not time to make money but focus on helping others). Fortunately, we had one staffer had an experience working at Red Cross and we were able to contact Red Cross and decided to run the campaign as a donation for Japan Red Cross. We also made the decision that Groupon Japan will mach every donation by the user (so that the total amount given to the Red Cross was double the amount that users donate). Groupon Japan also cover the cost of credit card transaction … so we wanted to make sure that every yen sent by our users went to good cause. We reached out to the head of Groupon International and got an OK for such a fund raiser and it went online.
We were the first site in Japan to take such action and the net community noticed. The majority of netizens were supportive on our action and donations started pouring in. There were some users who misunderstood and questioned our campaign (they though we were making commissions on the charity deal. Of course, we made zero commission,but in fact, we matched the amount donated by users). We updated our web site to clarify our stance.
By now, it was getting late in Tokyo, but Chicago was waking up. I called up Andrew Mason (sorry for waking you up, Andrew) and gave him the status update on what was going on in Japan. He was very surprised by the sudden news but gave us immediate support and promised me that US will also help with the fund raising campaign for the earthquake victims. In the mean time, the Japan team worked into the early hours of morning to make sure that we were prepared for the coming days. The US campaign site also went live in just a couple of hours … we were very impressed by the speed of such action. I think Groupon US was also the first major Internet service outside of Japan to start such a campaign.
On Saturday, day after the earthquake, more supports started pouring in our brothers in Groupon International. Norway was the first. Then came Germany, Hong Kong, Netherlands … and more are coming as I write.
The Japan team was deeply moved by their overwhelming support and impressed by their speed of execution. We have not seen anything like this in the past at this type of speed. We are entering a new era of social campaign. During the worst crisis in Japan, we saw the world has become a little smaller, and a whole lot warmer.
Finally, I like to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues at Groupon Japan who indeed have they have their own families to look after, yet bravely stayed behind at the company over night and helped us do what was socially responsible. And sincere condolences to the victims of this earthquake.
Thank you everyone for your overwhelming support. We will never forget what we witnessed in the past 48 hours.
(This article written by Akio Tanaka just for Netease，anyone reprint please indicate the source.)
本文来源：网易科技报道
责任编辑：
王晓易_NE0011
