Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email 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? 🙂
Haha! Play ‘safe’… More like because my level of interest in politics get lower by the day. I think having too many politic stories on the newspaper frontpage for the past few months have became stale bread topic. It just feels like our political scene is like a drama stage, sometimes I think perhaps other countries are laughing at us. But that’s just me.
Anyway, glad you were there at the Bloggers Buff 2008. Hope we have inspired you in one way or another about blogging.
Hi Cmate,
like or not, we can’t run away from politics – either at macro or micro level. Each and everyone is affected by decisions made by the people in power, and there will definitely come a time when a person have to make his/her voice heard (barring elections). I agree that we are being overloaded with political news – what more with political parties having party elections and the opposition having a bigger presence.
I prefer to talk about socio-politics because that’s more relevant to us at the ground level. Things that happen around our neighborhood, our state, our country, that in one way or another affects us. For example, I remember the moderator Florence asking a panelist on her views if the government bans a popular singer from having concert in Malaysia. Of course if your favorite singer is banned from performing, you’ll go mad. You may curse everyone from PM to the religious extremists. But if you say “no comments”, hmm…. That’s play safe in my view. 🙂
It was great hearing you talk on that day. I think all the panelists provided some good points. Its up to the audience to pick up the needful and improve on their blogging. I for one agree with you that blogging improved my writing skills.
hey there,
I’m glad you took your time off to come to this event, well, like they always say, wisdom are given to those who are ready, and often, it is usually not appreciated. To be fair also, I must admit we didn’t have enough time to actually promote the event, and that showed on the turn out on that day, but overall I will have to say, most of us walked out with at least a bit more knowledge, and questions which we’re all having are answered, so to speak.
Regarding the lucky draw, well, it’s really due to the lack of time, that we took it out last minute (also the blog awards), and our sponsors took it back, so, that’s the best answer I can give you, if you’re wondering.
Hi,
thanks for dropping by and the clarification.