iBlog: The 15th Philippine Blogging Summit #iblog15

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?