Saturday, June 20, 2009

A day out with the bloggers < PJ Challenge '09 Bloggers "K"arnival">

They say - "Things do happen for a reason"...Rewind....rewind!

A week back!

Cursing the local Malaysia post office service for not being able to deliver a Tune Money card which I'd been anticipating for weeks, I decide to collect the card in person from the Tune HQ office in PJ.

While trudging along on my way back, I notice something which captures my attention near the overbridge adjacent to Jaya33. "PJ Challenge'09". Reaching back home, I google for links on PJ Challenge and register myself online for the event. From there on starts the resurrection of my bloggin...

A day out with the bloggers:

After collecting the goodie bag, and collecting the K-Klub freebies, wait for the event to kickstart. There were some dance events to kickstart the show at 9.15a.m



I stand sidelined waiting to form a "team" as the treasure hunt required 4 people. Lucky to find 3 other mates who were looking to participate in the event. Thanks to Mr. James, Ms. Jocel & Ms. Florence for the being there at the right time and right place - 'Enjoyed the event guys'.

The Team - Treasure Hunt



Attended the blog 101 (by Ooi Eu Veng a.k.a EVO) which provided info on basic tips to start blogging and for newbies to get started and be part of the bloggin community. Good to see a wide array of diverse age group which had people literally from 6 - 60.



Post lunch saw an advanced version of blog 411, which had Malaysia's top bloggers holding centre stage sharing their views, opinions and experience at the blogosphere.



Joshua Lim & Amanda Choe handle the role of MC's quite comfortably. The 'Live Blogging' session is declared 'open' at around 1.30 and time to submit not later than 3.45p.m

Each speaker is allotted 20 minutes which includes their topic for the day inclusive of a brief Q&A session.

Kenny Sia (www.kennysia.com), Malaysia's top blogster (blog star :)) shared his personal take on blogging, peer pressure influence and gives real-life experiences on responsible blogging and what to do / what to avoid when it comes to blogging.



"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" & "With great power comes great responsibility". I think these two captions more than summarizes the essence of his topics.


Rames (http://rames.blogspot.com/) & Jason (www.smashpop.net/)



hold the crowd spellbound with their amazing creative talent coupled with some techie talents (great combo guys). Rames maintains a separate blogsite on Adobe tutorials (http://adobetuts.blogspot.com/) to teach Adobe to the humanity at large. Jason on the other hand has created a 'brand' out of his blog. It really has a catchy titlename with a punch tagline :) Great session about their blog and photoblogging and how each have created a niche for themselves. Additionally, Jason maintains another blogsite (http://symbian.smashpop.net/) tracking and sharing Symbian (Nokia's proprietary operating software for their mobile devices)


And did I forget something folks - they did perform the 'smash pop' jump :)



Enter - Beauty pageants? er yes/sort of!? hmmm...'Ruumz Finalists'?



Ellie Chee (missycheerio.com) & Amanda Choe (http://theoppositeofchocolate.blogspot.com/)

discuss their blogging experiences, and on the boon and bane of being a woman/gal/lady..blogger! Though it sounded quite intimidating from their 'harrowing' experiences, they've learnt over their mistakes. So all gals out there, moral of the story.
1. Ensure you put in only 'limited' info on ur personal life. esp avoid mentioning your mobile numbers or even worse - address!
2. When 'adding' up someone ensure you know 'em before hand. No point in regretting later on.

And coming back to a point, yep :-) they did a smart campaign for themselves for the upcoming Ruumz Finals event (Ruumz is the "new kid on the block" as far as Social networking sites are concerned and is targetted towards Malaysia's young and hip crowd) - should see Friendster comin up with some innovation soon if they gotto retain their market share! lol



Hat + Journalist + Blogger + Bangsar => plz welcome Niki Cheong (www.nikicheong.com/blog/). Niki relates to blogging closely as his love & passion are in elegant use of words - something which he breaths in day in & day out and cherishes every moment as a journalist. When all these above statements suggest its gonna be easy for him to blog, here comes the challenge, he's got to ensure he doesnt mess up / mix up personal blogs with his columns, which means he's treading on a tight rope. Amazing buddy! Another concept which I personally could relate and agree was on the 'Citizen blog' - Huge potential! Let the citizen blog tribe grow...

And last but not the least, enter the duo.



Entrepreneur Josh Lim (http://josh.my)(Advertlets)/ expert relationship blogger & (Soon Wei) (www.soonwei.com/)'Brylcreem fame' Soh Hem Sem (until the video was played - i thought it was "So Handsome"). Soon had the crowd laugh their hearts out loud with the interesting video (Apparently Soon - i think I remmber seeing this video through a forwarded mail a while back in India)They set the final concluding points on the key aspects on what it takes to come out with a good blog! It just goes on to prove that world over is moving constantly towards the e-biz (from advertising products or services to making purchases (or atleast making purchase decisions prudently))

This marked the end of the speaker insights session!

The Quiz session begins with 50 bloggers going on-stage in groups of 5 to get eliminated until only 5 are on stage.

The show stealer was without doubt the 11 year nexgen prodigal wizzkid Master Gloson (www.glosonblogs.com)



He amazed the crowd with absolute genius ('phishing' was something a normal kid would ever know unless hez at it - btw he writes a tech blog and has 1100+ followers on twitter - can u beat that). He truly deserved the lappy :D His progression to the final stage would have easily reminded you of the oftly said David-Goliath story :D (As a matter of fact, he felled me in the penultimate round in semis so to say) :) to beat his opponent in the finals!

My multi-tasking proved useless with my participation in 'live bloggin' not getting me anywhere.

The finale was the prize distribution ceremony for the kiddos (Coloring contests), Treasure hunt, Live blogging event, quiz, photo contest and lucky draw.

Master Gloson receiving the most coveted prize of the day (Acer laptop) gleefully from the chieftains organizing the event.



'Report card' :D - not bad 0187 proved to be one of the lucky draw numbers! :)



In all it turned out to be quite an eventful day, with a consolation prize for the quiz and getting lucky with the lucky draw. But most importantly getting to know gems of people, forging new relationships and yahoooo!! resurrecting my almost passive blog! A perfect Saturday - enthralling weekend with hopes of better tomorrow!




Thanks to the sponsors Kaspersky, Association of Australian Backpackers and MBPJ and the organising team for putting up a great show.






Special thanks due to Josh & Ellie for the candid moments! Truly appreciate it..

Pic courtesy: Nokia E51

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, thx for dropping by like u said u would do :)

Nice to see u getting active in ur blog again hehe. It was good to meet u that day. Hope to see u around for the next event !

Till then:)

Anonymous said...

Hey buddy. My first visit here. :)

Will be back more often. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

BTW that was me, Shashank. Was a bit too eager to hit 'send' on the last one :D

Anonymous said...

;-) Bro' Vignesh,

Just read your posting,
recalling the cherish moments
of that interesting day.

May you be well & happy always.
God bless.

JamesQuah
www.facebook.com/jamesquah2u