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I was running late (isn’t that becoming a recurring theme of late?) for the Blogger Buff event today. Was in two minds on taking public transport. Since it was already 8.25am when I left home, decided to drive. Took me 40 mins via KL-Putrajaya highway to reach PWTC. Guess what - the place was full of people! They have Stamford’s convocation, GoMobile 2008 expo, Batik Fashion show, and a career guidance programme.

I was a bit lost in PWTC and asked the guards where’s the venue that Tun Mahathir will be attending. Guess what? those guards were blur! I got suspicious. Don’t tell me security is that lax until guards don’t know ex-Prime Minister is coming? Something’s not right here…..

Managed to find the venue and got myself registered. Said hi to Amutha, Novinthen and Mahendran. Met Puvanan and Kavilan as well. Then came the bad news. Mahathir not coming. He flew to Syria (???) yesterday. Hmm…how can this happen?

And guess who was the replacement? Syed Hamid Albar!!! I couldn’t stop smiling at this point

The crowd grew steadily till about 80% full. Syed Hamid came in at 10.20 or so I think. It was quite a late notice and he had to come all the way from Kota Tinggi this morning. With the formalities done by the emcee (Sarah), we got to hear Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar deliver his keynote address.

He spoke about many things - importance of bloggers, the need to be responsible, creating an ethics code, and so on. I had a feeling that he didn’t really understand or meant what he spoke. It sounded a bit unnatural for me. He read parts of his text and added some of his own points, but still didn’t really gel. You can read parts of it at The Star.

The Q & A session started off with a Putera MIC fella asking about ISA detention and the status of Hindraf 5. The minister gave an elaborate answer on how ISA works, and the possible ways for a detainee to be released. According to him, those detained under Section 8 will be facing a panel of 3 people after 3 months, and subsequently every 6 months. This panel will evaluate if a detainee is fit to be reintroduced into the community. He stressed that ISA is mainly for prevention. Then, there were questions on the MSC Bill of Guarantees and the arrest of the Sin Chew journalist. The Q & A time was limited thus not many questions were asked. For me, there were few points mentioned by the minister which is contentious or inaccurate. It was then time for tea break. Syed Hamid left after that, and so did about 15 % of the crowd. I met a participant from last year’s Blogger Buff -Dayah. She has completed her studies and is planning to further study. Wish she will succeed.

The next session was a dialogue kind of thing with Datuk Ahmad Talib (Pahit Manis) as moderator. Ahirudin Attan (Rocky Bru) and organising chairman P Kamalanathan were the panelists. Here the focus was on bloggers ethics, responsible blogging, role of bloggers, comparison between print media and Internet, citizen media, selective presecution etc. Again there were some inaccurate points mentioned.

I think the participants were not so interested in the sociopolitical angle so far. Some of the Indian participants perhaps were more interested, but I’m not sure about the rest.

So, it was a welcome relief for some when the third session started. Josh Lim of Advertlets provided some tips on blogging and the need to have the passion for blogging. Tim from Empower Lives also spruced up the environment a bit with his simple but meaningful game.

Lunch break was at 1.45pm (self-funded) and continued with another dialogue session at 2.30pm. It was moderated by Felicia Wong. The participants were Dr Sunny (Big Boys Oven), Jason (Jason Mumbles), Ka Ling (Ling) and Gina (Mini-Bites). Each were involved in different types of interest, nothing remotely sociopolitical. All four were asked questions on why they blogged, what they blogged about, how long they’ve been blogging and so on. Their shared their opinions on blogging about work/office (definite no no) and about politic (all of the seem to be averse to politics!). They tend to stick to “safe” things. Hmmm…takde oomph la. Where got fun I guess for them, sociopolitics means saying something that may offend the authorities. Why want to go asking for trouble. Better keep the mouth shut. All four spoke about the need to have passion and interest. The money part is secondary.

The session ended at about 5.30pm, after which there were some photo session.

I was surprised that the crowd was less than last year. Probably the topics did not interest bloggers. Things like law, ethics, unity, accountability etc. doesn’t affect the non-sociopolitical bloggers much. The crowd was quite mixed - newbies, blogger hopefuls, experienced bloggers- all were there. Not sure how much each of them benefited. As for me, I think about 50 percent beneficial.

Some photos I took:

By the way, where’s the lucky draw prizes?

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I’m going. Managed to clear my schedule. I attended the 2007 event and found it to be quite beneficial. Now it has been “upgraded” to PWTC level.

Mahathir is coming, so this is a good chance to ask him some questions especially on his blog. There’s also a session on legal issues. Hopefully will be beneficial.

Here’s Novinthen, Mr Kamalanathan, and Amutha posing in the newspaper:

FORMER Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad will be the guest of honour at the bloggers conference called Bloggers Buff 2008 on Saturday at Putra World Trade Centre.

Mahathir, who is also a blogger, will be delivering the keynote address entitled Unity and Accountability in Blogging.

The event will be a conference-cum-networking event where established speakers will share their experiences.

“It is a stepping stone to get Malaysian bloggers from various genres to come together to open up their minds towards different aspects of blogging and to comment on issues that affect bloggers in the country,’’ Putera MIC national coordinator P. Kamalanathan said.

GoMobile is sponsoring the conference, which is being organised by MI Fest Management. Traxx FM is the official radio station for the event.

The one-day event is endorsed by Empower Lives, All Blogs and Malaysian Indian Bloggers (MIB) and supported by Putera MIC.

The conference will be held from 9am to 7pm.

The first session will be themed Blogging Realities and deals with current issues like ethics, law, money-making and technology.

The second session, on the other hand, is targeted at young bloggers.

Kamalanathan said bloggers could choose to attend both sessions at RM60 while the morning session was priced at RM50 and the afternoon session was at RM20.

The registration form is available at the official blog for the event – www.bloggersbuff.blogspot.com.

This event is opened to about 100 Malaysian bloggers for each session on a first-come, first-served basis.

Call Tim Fernandez (012-601 1126), Felicia Wong (012-530 2682), K. Novinthen (016-557 4227) or R. Amutha (017-639 3631) for further details.

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Putera MIC launched a book donation drive on Wednesday.

The objectives of this campaign are:

* To help strengthen libraries in SRJK(T) in various par of the country
* To encourage reading habits among indian students studying in SRJK(T) by provising free books
* To nurture reading as hobby among students in the SRJK(T).

To get more info (well, don’t ask to many question, just donate a book la!) or to contribute, contact:

Thanasekaran @ 012 4801989 (Project Director)
Umabaran @ 012 5875215 (Penang),
Saravanan @ 012 3375729 (Johor)
Maheswaran @ 012 4630320 (Kedah),
Rama @ 012 6957150 (Melaka)
Gobi @ 012 4575848 (Perak),
Dr.Thina @ 017 2802767 (Negeri Sembilan)
Parry @ 012 3402749 (Selangor),
Visirajan @ 012 9715502 (KL)

According to posting on its website, they only want books, nothing more - “textbooks, reference books, dictionaries, storybooks, anything. Whatever you can afford to part with”. This campaign will be for two months and future campaigns will depend on the response, says it chief, P Kamalanathan. If you have a sizeable amount of books, they’ll come and pick it up.

Photos of the launching ceremony is at:
http://puteramic.blogspot.com/2008/10/putera-mic-is-on-book-donation-drive.html

According to Kamalanathan, the books collected would be given to a particular Tamil school in each state.
He urged the public to donate unused primary school books and other relevant reading materials to the respective MIC Putera centres throughout the country. THe said that schools must also organise reading campaigns to generate interest in reading among school children.

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