“Hi, I’m Mike Abundo - mikeabundo.blogspot.com”

One of the more memorable lines from an audience member.

Dean Alfar on Blogging Creatively

In what’s turning out to be the most humorous and entertaining session so far, five-time Palanca Award winner, Dean Alfar (notes from the peanut gallery), has taken the stage to talk about his reasons for blogging and how it ties into his life as an author, a father, a husband, and entrepreneur. If there’s one reason to go to iBlog, this must be it.

Dean’s quotable quotes:

“I found out about blogging when I was surfing for porn.”

“No self respecting blogger doesn’t update. You owe it to your audience.”

“We artists need validation.  ‘Read me!’ ‘Look at my photograph!’ Maawa naman kayo.”

“Noone will read your work if it’s bad — unless it’s about sex.”

CICT Commr. Mapa on Blogging and Governance

CICT Commissioner Dondi Mapa, the highest ranking government official who’s blogging, talked about his reasons for blogging and his future blogging plans.  Among them is the launch of three new work-related blogs. These blogs are about: (a) the PH ccTLD issue; (b) the Three Year Sector Development Plan; and, (c) The Philippine Cyberservices Corridor.  Abangan!  Thanks, Dondi, for sharing your thoughts with us!

GMA 7 at iBlog

Through some quirk of fate and the resourcefulness of our Conference Chair, Atty. Rissa Ofilada, the folks at GMA sent a crew over to cover iBlog.  I’m not sure when or where the piece will come out but this is a first for us. Let’s hope this increases awareness of blogging and encourage more people to blog.  Mabuhay! (more…)

iBlog T-Shirts

One of our enterprising students, Sharon Corpuz (she’s the one in the blue T-shirt) had the idea of selling T-shirts at iBlog.  Although we had run out of funds, our Conference Chair, Rissa Ofilada, advanced the money to have them made.  After all, we all wanted some souvenir of this event that has taken hold of all our lives for the last four weeks.  They’re selling now for P160 or P180 (depending on the size).  As of this writing (2:15pm), we haven’t reached our break-even point.

If we’re unable to sell more, we’ll continue selling them after the event.  I hope you can help us by buying one.  Thanks!

i.PH Session

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  In order to keep our promise of FREE admission to iBlog, we had to get sponsors.  We had this belief that there was an abundance of companies all to willing to hand us money to get this event together. How wrong we were. 

So, I’m happy that we were able to get 3 sponsors to support the event namely, i.Ph, San Miguel Corporation, and YDS Web Solutions.

That’s Emil Avancena of dotPH demo’ing their new product called Calliope.  It’s an easy-to-use blogging service. They offered a free trial to the folks who attended the event and I understand they got a lot of sign ups.

To our sponsors:  Many thanks!

Morning Session Open Forum

Open Forum at iBlog where Gail and Abe answered questions posed by newbies. 

Kutitots Talks on Beautifying Your Blogging

Gail Dela Cruz (aka Kutitots) spoke next on adding bells and whistles on your blog (from blog rolling to tag boards to whatever else is out there). Instead of the usual powerpoint presentation, her slides were in flash.  We’ll still have to figure out how to upload them to our site but we’ll make it available to you at the iBlog site. 

Yuga Speaks

Yuga Near

Yuga Far

Our opening session was presided over by Abe Olandres (aka Yuga).  He talked about blogging basics and gave simple instructions on how to get a blog started.  It was an informative session.  Thanks, Yuga. 

Blogging at iBlog

After a short delay in getting the Internet connection up, iBlog was off and running at around 9:30a.m.  Before the event officially started, we asked the folks present to introduce themselves and say something about their blog.  We were pleased to find that many bloggers were present and it was a nice experience to place a face to a blog. A blog comes alive! 

Pic by Jon Lao

An elderly lady stood up and explained that she knows nothing about blogging but she wanted to learn so she could be closer to her grandchildren.

Perfect. 

Blogging is also about connecting with other people — even people you see every day or those who are closest to you.  Welcome, ma’am, we hope iBlog can make a difference in your life. 

For now, we’re still about to begin. 

Wish us luck.

See You There, Bloggers

As I write this, there are more than 300 sign-ups on the iBlog conference blog.  Our resident blogmaster, reports that more than 100 confirmed their attendance.  Not bad for about 4 weeks of work.  But tomorrow, I’m expecting more — not in terms of number of people but in terms of content.  Perhaps for the first time in Philippine history, bloggers will converge to spend an entire day talking about nothing but blogging.  And it won’t be an electronic discussion. Tomorrow, I expect to place a face and a voice to a blog.  For a day, the virtual becomes real.

I can’t wait.

More on the Ragnarok Murders: LUG Hitmen

While I was trolling through the blog of one of the almost 300 people who signed up for iBlog (the First Philippine Blogging Summit), I chanced upon an entry in MetroBlogging about the issue.  Crisel writes that some people in the Level Up Games’ (LUG) IT department are paid 20,000 to 25,000 to hack delete characters. 

LUG Hitmen. 

It’s a wild charge and I suppose nearly impossible to prove unless you present someone who’s actually done it.  But this seems to be an issue that won’t go away.  Strangely enough, there doesn’t seem to be any reporting on this in the traditional media outlets. 

Media and Political Bias

While trolling around Lawrence Lessig’s blog, I chanced upon this interesting article about Media and Political Bias.  It’s a great read. Enjoy!

Digital Ragnarok Murder

Thirtysomething blogs about the alleged hacking incident involving Level Up’s 2005 Ragnarok Philippine Championships.  Some guild masters believe that someone within Level Up Games hacked into their accounts and deleted their characters.  I’m not too familiar with the details but if what they say is true, then the crime of hacking has been committed.  What’s interesting for me is that this seems to be a case of digital murder because characters were irretrievably deleted.  In the end, however, the “murdered” victim was virtual — composed of so many 1 and 0’s.  So, the law treats it the same way as any other piece of electronic data without regard for its underlying value or other extraneous factors.

If the gulid masters go to the NBI to complain, this story will get some press coverage in the traditional media.  Level Up is one of many local game companies vying for the right to license “Worlds of Warcraft”. A security breach of this nature probably won’t sit well with the game’s publisher/licensor.  I would think that Level Up is the front-runner in the current beauty contest of local game companies, having single-handedly proven the viability of MMOG/RPOG in the Philippines.

Here’s the Telcos’ Legal Strategy for Killing VoIP

As I understand it, there are about 50,000 lawyers in this country of 80 million people.  That’s about 6/10 of 1% of the population.  In yesterday’s NTC hearing on the draft VOIP rules, there were about 20 or so lawyers from among the 100 or so present.  In short, there was an unusually high concentration of lawyers in the NTC. So much so, that if the building were bombed, then some would say, it would have been a good thing for this country.

We should not forget that the NTC Commissioner is a lawyer. Apart from himself, the lawyers for Smart, Globe, and PLDT were present.  Other lawyers representing VoIP clients were also in attendance was well as lawyers (like myself) who were there just for the fun of it.  Everyone likes a good fight and the hearings did not disappoint.

The lawyers were not only present.  They dominated the discussion.  This was equally lamented in INQ7’s report on the hearing.  The lawyers for the telcos took their turns laying out to the Commission the meat of their legal strategy:  WE WILL SUE TO STOP ANY FORM OF VOIP BUSINESS THAT IS NOT LIMITED TO THE TELCOS (aka the PTEs).  There’s a bit of irony here especially since the new players are beneficiaries of the NTC’s policies that de-regulated the telecom industry in the mid-90’s.  Now, as part of the entrenced status quo, they want to keep things the way they are. 

Back to the legal issues.  Here’s an outline of the telcos’ arguments: (more…)

Zoobic Chicken

I am, by no means, an animal rights advocate but I think I should blog about this.  I went to Zoobic, an zoo of sorts in Subic, largely because the hotel we were staying in gave us 2 complimentary tickets.  One of the main attractions is a safari-type tour of an enclosure where tigers roam free.  Basically, the tourists ride around in a grill enclosed jeepney.  At the orientation, our guide mentioned something about a chicken which I found strange but quickly dismissed.

When we were about to head off for the “safari”, I saw one of the staff with a live chicken, its legs bound at the end of a nylon rope.  It was making a noise which led me to believe it was stressed out.  Well, if he wasn’t, I was.

So, here’s our first encounter with a tiger.  As expected the Zoobic staff member threw the chicken out of the jeepney.  What happened next surprised me and made me think of the cruelty we inflict on animals for the sake of our amusement.

(more…)