A day for bloggers

The date : April 26, 2008 (Saturday)

The Blogging Summit - 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

I have been blogging for almost a year – 11 months and 3 days to be exact.  And, this was the first blogging summit  I attended.  It’s already the fourth annual Philippine Blogging Summit.  The third one was held just about a month before I started blogging.

My wife, Beng, and I arrived at the venue thirty minutes earlier.  I was pleased to recognize the familiar faces of bloggers whose pictures I’ve been seeing only in their blogs. During the breaks, I was able to meet and shook the hands of the real persons behind the blogs that I’ve been visiting. Bloggers really come in all ages, sizes, and shapes.  Most bloggers are very young, and a number of them are even younger than my kids - some of them are still students.  My wife and I were happy to see bloggers of and over our age.  I was very sleepy because I slept pretty late the night before.  Nonetheless, I managed to stay awake to listen to the speakers and the discussions.

The topic that I was most interested in was the “Legal Challenges in Blogging".  Bloggers may innocently post pictures, graphics, logos, or something not knowing that sooner or later they may be sued for infringement of intellectual property rights.   And, I don’t want to experience that.  Other interesting topic for me was the Problogging; and I was all ears when Pinoy Blogero was speaking.  Imagine, Pinoy Blogero is earning a thousand dollar a month. The highest that I earned in one month was $600 only.  Not bad though for a new blogger on a part time basis.  My target is $350 only for the monthly amortization of my car loan.  Unfortunately, my earnings for the past few months have been below my target.  I hope it would improve sooner.  The other topics were interesting too and relevant.

During the lulls, bloggers were given the chance to pitch their blogs.  After the summit proper, T-shirts and some items were raffled off and group pictures were taken.

The Bloggers’ Night - from 7:00 PM onwards

After the summit was party time at the Katips Bar.  It was hosted by 88DB.com.  There were parlor games; where I won two movie tickets from the “bring me” contest.  My wife anticipated that in my category “Cars and Bikes”, a gas receipt would be asked.  And, she’s right.  She also got her price for completing the ‘human bingo”.  Congratulations to the other winners and to Chicken Mafia for winning the PSP in “Come as Your Blog” contest.  The other contenders were Batang Yagit (our bet) and Pinoy Blogero.  There were free food and drinks too - though they were very limited.  Thanks heaven, we ate some snacks before proceeding to the party.  Nonetheless, we enjoyed our short stay seeing other bloggers and meeting some of them.

We left at the middle of the party; while the band was still preparing.  We needed to go home early; as we’re going out of town early the next morning.

 
It’s so nice meeting you:

        Deyey
        Maricris
        Carlo
        Carlo’s Mom and Dad
        Tess
        Dexter
        Mica
        Cai
        Maki
        Louis
        Peter
        Jen
        Kai
        Arpee
        Nina

Hope to see you again in future bloggers’ events.