iBlog: The 6th Philippine Blogging Summit

http://houseonahill.net/

Aside from being the owner of House on a Hill, Connie Veneracion is a lawyer, a chef, a mother of two, and a writer.
Connie studied law at the University of the Philippines College of Law and passed the bar in 1991. Connie practiced for several years but then decided to just freelance. She enjoys writing about current issues and analyzing the political situation for Sassy Lawyer.
In 2003, her site www.cooking.houseonahilll.net won the Most Informative Blog Award.

http://www.yugatech.com/blog/

Abe Olandres is a founder of or partner at plogHost Web Services (www.ploghost.com), which provides services for shared web hosting, IT consulting services for web design and development, search engine optimization and content management services
He is also the chief architect of Grabeh.com! (www.grabeh.com) and project designer/developer at Gallardo & Associates Creative Media Agency (www.gasso.com.ph) which designs web interface for corporate website, develop Flash animation for creative media presentation and back-end Content Management System

http://1mjobs.blogspot.com/

Commissioner Damian Domingo O. Mapa was appointed to the Commission on Information and Communications Technology in September 2004. He heads the Strategic Business Development Group of the CICT.

He is a 20-year veteran of the information technology industry. His private sector career includes consulting assignments in the Philippines, the United States, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Kenya and Tanzania; working on various projects such as business reengineering and systems implementation.

http://deanalfar.blogspot.com/

Dean Francis Alfar is a five-time Palanca awardee, a contributor to the National Book Award-winning comic book anthology Isaw, Atbp., and was a fellow at the Silliman and U.P. creative writing workshops. His first internationally-published short story was chosen for inclusion in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He is a playwright, a fictionist, and a scriptwriter, but adamantly denies being a poet, despite having written some really quite decent verse.

http://www.kutitots.com/

Gail Dela Cruz is a 23 year old freelance digital artist for almost 9 years. She also considers herself an expert in Website Design, Photography, Logo Design, Graphic Design, Flash and Banner Design. She started designing websites since high school, but only took the field seriously last May 2004 when she began to forge partnerships with international web solution firms as an outsource designer.
In 2004, her site www.Kutitots.com won the Filipino Blog Site of the Year award.

I’ve got some interesting memories of the National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development (NISMED), our venue (please see our map and directions). It’s where I first saw the web, demo’ed via projector, by a visiting American professor whose name I can’t even remember. That was almost ten years ago, when I was just a freshman who’d read about this Internet thing from Time Magazine and Doctor Dobbs Journal. Jeff Veen describes his first encounter with the web, just like his first encounter with the Mac GUI, as a mixture of connectedness and isolation. For me it was like falling from a manhole and ending up in Myst island. This was when Yahoo was just a collection of links in a Stanford server, before Google and Blogger crawled out of the woodwork.

Though I doubt if anything these days can compare to the frisson of surfing the web for the first time, I hope newbie bloggers can walk out of the summit with something comparable: Isolation from staking out their personal spaces in the blogosphere. A sense of connectedness to a larger community of bloggers. As for old-timers, perhaps a recognition that all their voices, big or small, add up to something new and powerful.

See you all at NISMED!

[UPDATE: Download PDF map/instructions courtesy of Prem]

Though the Summit itself is scheduled from 9AM to 5PM, please try to check in at NISMED at 8AM. We still need to “process” those who will attend. Think of it as a physical login. For those who’ve already signed-up online, all it will take is a few minutes to check your name in our listing, and you’ll be prioritized for stuff like seats, badges, and kits.

We’re not going to charge you anything for attending iblog. We’re not going to sell you stuff (though we might try to sell you an idea or two). Attendance is free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech.

The only requirement we ask is that you register. In lieu of a lawyerly privacy policy, we’ll just promise not to use the information you provide for any other purpose than: 1) building a blogroll and 2) sending you occassional e-mail for the event (which you can always opt out of). We’re not going to be evil about the information you give us. How’s that for a privacy policy?

Help us promote iblog by spreading the word through your blogroll, egroups and bulletin boards. You can also link to our website by putting up our buttons in your blog.

Blogging is about ‘being heard.’
-Abe Olandres and Connie Veneracion

The Internet Society Program (ISP) of the U.P. College of Law is pleased to announce the holding of the 1st Philippine Blogging Summit—an open event where Pinoy bloggers and newbies can discuss everything and anything about blogging.

ISP recognizes the pioneering efforts of the originators of Pinoy blogging. Through their initiative, blogging became an effective tool for disseminating opinion and personal thoughts on a wide array of topics. The Filipino blogging community has since grown. And Pinoy blogging has become a vibrant and revolutionary medium of communication.

Hence, the summit aims to explore the potential social and political impact of blogging, as well as, document the history of blogging in the Philippines and encourage the growth of Pinoy blogging.

Globally, blogging is fast becoming a relevant social phenomenon. Blogging has gradually emerged as an effective tool that will have an impact on a broad spectrum—from political discourse to science and technology, and corporate governance to employment, among others.

Through this summit, therefore, ISP also wishes to engage the collective thoughts of our Pinoy bloggers and gather ideas on Pinoy blogging as a socially relevant phenomenon.