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? 🙂