Bloggers.sg BlogCon: ST Reporters Got Tired And Yawned

Today (Saturday) is the Bloggers.sg event to be held at NTUC at the Esplanade. I'll be helping out at the event, so see you there!

Sunday Update (!): When I saw this in this morning's papers, I literally LAUGHED OUT LOUD!


Click picture for bigger picture. I believe I know what the reporters are talking about. At the event (I was the guy ferrying the microphone around), I was standing next to one Chinese blogger/明日 editor and a reporter approached him to request an interview. He then asked the blogger if he had a blog, and the blogger said 'no'. No?! Wahahaaa... He's only saying 'no' because he didn't want to give you a quote to run with, that's why! I wonder how many people said 'no' or were reticent to give comments when asked the same question. No wonder it's such a big YAWN for the ST reporters and the bloggers seemed so 'guarded'! Which reminded me of...

"I won't be your monkey."
~Daily Show's comedian Jon Stewart, responding to his hosts on CNN's Crossfire who suggested he wasn't as funny as they thought he'd be.

So anyway, in the morning, fellow volunteer Angela and I went to Woodlands library to attend the morning session where Xiaxue (Falling Snow), mrbrown and Preetam were speaking. I wanted to attend as she's the most popular local blogger and also due to the fact that she mentioned 'editorial integrity' in big, bold letters in one of her recent entries. Any media person who believes in these two words gets my vote LOL. A third reason was because the target audience of her speech were parents and teachers, and I was most intrigued to see what would happen if this demographic of people actually went to her blog and read what she was writing! Anyway, I thought Xiaxue did well in her speech, and already has made at least one parent understand the need to let the kids blog freely. All in all, I think she's a nice person, has that 'X' factor, and she's been very kind to Angela before... Too bad there wasn't enough time to get more indepth into her presentation topic, but good stuff from hers and mrbrown's presentation... We were late for the blogcon and left before the third presentation from Preetam...

There were about 15 volunteers at the afternoon session at the NTUC club next to the Esplanade. Han has the pictures; I'm in picture number four talking with Gabriel. It was electrifying to touch his rebonded hair (with permission, of course.) It's really very smooth and straight. You should try it sometime.

The legal panel was good. My only regret was that it was too short, which wasn't really anybody's fault. I'd have no problem listening to legal interpretations of blogging for hours on end hehe... I thought Daniel the lawyer was pretty objective in his explanations, and didn't really take the 'oh you better don't blog sensitive things' sort of scare-people advice. He mentioned the spirit behind the defamation laws, and what possibly might constitute defamation and what might not. I managed to squeeze in a question for them about disclaimers, and Daniel's opinion was that disclaimers alone are not a good defense if the intent to defame (or basically to go really overboard) is apparent to reasonably intelligent people. Personally, I still think when all has been said, the grey areas regarding interpretations is just so wide that it's very difficult to pin down exactly whether a certain piece is defamatory or not.

The session on blog technology was useful for me as well. I'm really not into RSS, but maybe I should consider implementing/using it. Again, the session could have been longer, but it's very difficult to please everyone since everyone's expertise and proficiencies were different.

Overall, I thought the event went as well as I thought it would, given that this was the first time that a conference like this has been organised, and having it run like it did was no mean feat.

A few of us volunteers later went to Marina Square to have some dinner before coming back for the free drinks; Angela, Stephanie, Yan Ying and Yuhui. One thing about the NTUC club is that the service is very good. La Idler later told us that's probably because they didn't have much business and were probably very happy that they even had customers. At 11.30pm, not a single person had started dancing at the dance floor. Poor DJ, play techno music, yet no one wanted to dance. Yuhui has a longer writeup. Other people I met included Chin, Eddy, Kelly, YewJin, MercerMachine...

Hopefully we'll have this again next year. I think mrbrown and miyagi are quite excellent moderating panel discussions. mrbrown can really talk to a newbie about technology, as seen during the morning session. These guys have no airs about them, and were very nice... In the meantime, I guess regular drinking sessions at Hideout isn't a bad idea at all hehe...

PS. I want to take this paragraph to talk about Kenny Sia who also flew first class from Malaysia to attend the blog. Kenny, you remind me of the chimpanzees at the Singapore zoo during the 'pay money to take a photo with the monkey. Peanuts not provided' attraction! Lots of people wanted to take pictures with him, he just seems like a photo prop and was very patient with everyone. If only he got a dollar from each person... Yeah, and I also saw SPG who has written quite a long entry.

Me, Eddy and Kelly.

Angela and I.

Me and _unidentifiedhotbabe_ . My attempt to have the same face colour as Guan Yu has been quite successful!

Update (!!): Tym has a much better explanation for the big yawn. As usual, the MSM doesn't quite get it. :) More from RamblingLibrarian, an angry Anthony, Mr. Wang, the Associated Press (whose reporter didn't yawn), Cowboy Caleb who reminds the journalists that the Blogcon wasn't meant to be a Mardi Gras, LindaChia who probably saw the same reporter (she calls him the bugger from Sunday Times) I mentioned in the beginning, and Airhole who didn't entertain a reporter's request for photos. More trackbacks from Tomorrow.sg .

Update (!!!): Confirmed by TinkerTailor in LindaChia's entry, the photo taken by Postmaster-General of the reporter I mentioned in the beginning of this entry is Shawn Woo, one of the reporters who wrote the story. Finally, checks and balances, right of reply, say one wrong thing and you're in trouble! modus operandi of blog journalism's answer to MSM LOL!

Update (!V): Tuesday's supplement which focused on the bloggers at the blogcon was much, much better. More from Tomorrow.sg .