iBlog 3 Day 1 Summary 0
Atty. JJ Disini head of the UP-ISP program opened the program full of excitement. He expressed his view as to how the blogosphere is growing and adjusting as the need and lifestyle of bloggers change in time. Hopefully, the annual iBlog: Philippine Blogging Summit event will continuously play a role in the changes bloggers go through.
Chris Haravata gave a great opener on blogging 101 and the tools that he used to make one’s blogging adventure as hassle free as possible. This session was actually meant for newbies who haven’t tried blogging although most of the participants already have their own blog. I realized later on that the session was fruitful as there are still many things, widgets or plugins, that we didn’t know are already available.
Lauren Dado shared the do’s and don’ts of blogging. Her experience on bloggable and non-bloggable concerns was really interesting. One important lesson from it is being very cautious when using your blog to attack someone. According to Lauren, this is her first public speaking engagement and I must say that she is certainly very good at it. (Download a podcast version of her talk)
Noemi Dado talked about her blogging adventure, technique in building and promoting one’s blog. It is heartwarming to know how iBlog2 played an important role in growing her blog popularity.
Marcelle Fabie shared tips from the Artist Way as tool to develop one’s blogging capability. He was very creative in his presentation as he did some magic tricks at the same time as well.
Arelle Valla, who attended iBlog2 last year and got very inspired, was able to capitalize on blogging as a business tool. Even Dean Jorge Bocobo was amazed to how she has grown. Arelle now uses her blog to market real estate properties and her other business ventures.
Steve Tsao of IPVG shared the company’s interest in the growing local blogosphere and wanting to explore areas of collaboration. This is especially true for growing its DreamVille community that has more than 400,000 members today. Another exciting announcement that Steve made is the release of Granado Espada this year. Experiencing the game in its closed beta was most enjoyable and look forward to its launch soon.
Jonas Diego announced his mission this year of making WebComics through blogs a reasonable profitable venture to inspire other publishers to do the same. As a publisher of my own books and reports, I agree with Jonas that it is quite tough and expensive to do that these days. Although, like Jonas, this forces me to be creative in approach.
As always, Dean Alfar has inspired a lot of the non-bloggers to consider blogging soon. He encourages bloggers to keep an open mind in sharing knowledge, oneself, and critical comments. This is especially true for avid readers whose value can help in improving oneself.
Roby Alampay of SEAPA enlightened the audience on how lucky Filipinos are with our freedom of expression and why we should take an active voice about bloggers in nearby countries who have been put to jail by their governments for dissenting opinions they expressed. I do hope that iBlog4, with SEAPA’s participation, will become a regional event in 2008. The Philippines is the ideal venue being one of the countries where freedom of expression is very much strong.
Emerson Banez talk about blogger’s code of ethics highlighted the various events that happened in the blogosphere that always raises the question on code of ethics such as below the belt social commentaries to acceptance of product giveaways in exchange for a review. Emer did not really cited a list of rules. However, he hopes that pro-blogging should not be limited to being a money-maker or revenue-earner type of blogger but also because they are practitioners that follows a certain code such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, among others.
Atty. Jaime Soriano discussed the various challenges that bloggers face with copyright regulations. However, with Creative Commons, bloggers can now explore sharing their work to the world with appropriate guidelines. This is one aspect that I’m certainly open in integrating in my blog and published works this year.
