Inside the mind of a woman

Read about Day 1 of iBlog3 here…

[Start of Day 2]
Unfortunately, we arrived late and missed the first speaker – Abe Olandres who talked about his blogging success story. In addition to that, we also missed Anton’s narration of his own photoblogging success story.

We arrived just as Manuel L. Quezon III was closing his statements on Philippine politics and the Blogosphere. The one sentence that stuck to my mind that he said was : I’m not a big believer of objectivity.

Wilson Chua of eRadioportal touched on Podcasting and Videocasting and how putting media content into your site can definitely increase traffic. He was the first to talk about the Long Tail concept. He also invited all bloggers to join him in proving the Long Tail concept in the Philippines.

A few minutes after, Aileen Apolo of Google Philippines stepped up to the podium carrying several bags marked with the Google logo. She had hoped to make her presentation interactive thereby bringing gifts to give to anyone who can give out facts related to Google. There was a flurry of activity as the audience sat up craning their necks to and straining to hear what the question was so that they could get their hands on the goodie bag (containing a Google shirt). Aileen’s presentation focused on much the same concept as Wilson’s but related to Marketing. She mentioned that today there are more choices and that means more marketing opportunities and more marketing venues. Google helps by organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible.
– By the way, my hubby was the first one to get a free Google shirt.

Norman Agatep had very good statistics and information regarding prosumer and how blogging and bloggers fit into that concept. He delved into buzz marketing, niche marketing or narrow marketing and of course blogging. He talks about how bloggers are prosumers by blogging about our experiences with people, products and services thereby demanding that these people, products and services be of the highest standard possible.

During the Q&A for these 3 speakers (Wilson, Aileen, and Norman), Abe spoke to them about the numbers and statistics that were abundant in each speaker’s presentation. He continues to indicate that although these were very much helpful, it does not clearly illustrate how the picture looks like locally. There were no statistics on how many bloggers there were in the Philippines for example. And though Google has the most resources to be able to give us that kind of data, Aileen sadly says it is not information she could give out. Awww…

The afternoon brought topics related to Blogging and Journalism and Problogging. The speakers were Alecks Pabico, Angelo Racoma, and Malou Mangahas of GMA Network. They had very very informative and intense topics (that had hints of politics and law). And maybe because we just had lunch, but I or rather a lot of us were diverted to an interesting show in front of us… Abe was battling with… sleep. It really wasnt very noticeable at first as he was wearing sunglasses and he was facing his laptop… until the screen on it went blank because of inactivity. Gotcha! LOL.

Marc Macalua rocks!. I’m new to the blogging community really and have yet to keep up with all the blogging personalities. But his reputation precedes him and I have just realized why. I learned a lot just from a few minutes from hearing him talk about blogging to advance one’s career.

I just have to include this… (Thanks Marc!)

5 Ways to Carve your niche by Marc Macalua
1. Have your own tightly focused and compelling content (that needs to surround you even as you comment on other blogs)
2. Hang out with the right crowd (same niche)
3. Corner breaking news before they break (Time to market concept)
4. Beautify your blog
5. Get discovered.

Jayvee Fernandez tackled professional blogging and how to turn blogging into a viable career. He was the liveliest presenter (effective I must say). He talked very fast (maybe because of the time constraints.. hehe) that you just had to be awake to keep up. He showed us how income generated from writing for local magazines compare with income generated by problogging. You probably can already imagine how that looks like. But he mentioned some key items too – for those that were thinking about taking their blogging activities to a higher level. He mentioned the myths that were somehow tied to problogging. One was that it was a lifetime of blogging heaven. NOT!

I love blogging and I would want to do it more often than I usually am able to. However, having to blog 10 times a day with a quota on the number of lines per post, the number of posts per day and the number of posts per month is not something I want to be doing as a career. I look to blogging to take my mind off work and I am not about to turn blogging into work so to speak.

According to Jayvee: Content is King, Context is Crown and Conversation is Kingdom. I will definitely keep that in mind.

Gail Villanueva was the last speaker and she talked about increasing blog popularity. The famous duo (Gail with husband Marc) are known for their deal “No Blog No Sex”. She advises that to increase blog popularity, one must consider the following: blogs linking in, traffic, blog readers, rss subscribers, authority and reputation, and blog brand.

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Other highlights of the event:

• Jester was there wearing his trademark hat
• JJ was sitting with me and Shari for the longest time before I realized he was JJ – sorry!
• The other sleepers at the event aside from Abe were: ChrisH and Jomar
• Jomar kept AJ from winning a Google shirt
• The PM snack was delicioso and I will blog about it in Kubiertos.COM soon
• iBlog3 shirts were given out to everyone and we all had our picture taken wearing it
• I was able to watch Marcelle perform his magic SM fork trick at close range and I still cant believe my eyes.
• Jeff was there still holding his side for fear his stitches might come undone.
• The men, with myself, Jeff, Juned, Eugene talked about Men, Women, Equality and Sex while eating our lunch at the UP grandstand.

And that was the end of another successful blogging event. There was an after-party which we initially planned on going to but we had to go home to a little boy waiting back home so we just passed on that (I’m sure we missed a LOT).

Congratulations to the organizers of iBlog3 and to fellow blogger Janette Toral of Digital Filipino. Until next year!