Passion and ideals: the iBlog 2

Quite the last minute, yesterday I signed up for, and today attended, iBlog 2 - the Second Philippine Blogger Summit held at the UP College of Law. I was making my usual round of blog reading yesterday when I happened on the announcement at PCIJ's blog. I don't consider myself at the cutting edge of blogging and podcasting - in fact, up until the summit, podcasting was abstract to me. But registration was free, that was enough motivation for me even at the risk of further delaying several pending work. Besides, I have a meeting scheduled with the Philippine National AIDS Council's advocacy committee in Quezon City anyway, I told myself. I could squeeze in a bit of time... much like the way Mr. Incredible's deciding to do some more saving of humanity hours before his wedding. "I've got time," I could almost hear myself mimicking.

Perhaps more than the free registration, I have been long curious at how the Pinoy blogging community really looked like. I long wanted to have a sense of how the real people behind their blogs and their words come together, relate to each other, beyond cyberspace. And it was somehow a pleasant experience. I initially thought I would be seeing a truly geek-dom community, talking in pure geekabulary, and that in all of this, I would be astounded and amused. I was impressed (not just mere amusement); I was truly impressed at how articulate and insightful some of the speakers are with issues on free speech and human development work. I dig these guys.

Foremost in my mind, I couldn't forget at how pleasant my experience was with Manuel Quezon III's presentation on political blogging (or Manolo, as he is fondly referred in blogosphere). I confess that I didn't get to see all the sessions, I wasn't able to attend the summit in its entirety as I had a meeting-appointment at Philippine Information Agency (as I said). But for the several sessions I did attend, Manolo's was I think one that made my intellectual juices flowing. Maybe because I was reflecting at how sometimes his blog and his name have been referred so many times in comments at the PCIJ blog. More perhaps because of this discovery of the PCIJ blog was due to my rummaging blogosphere of PD-1017 (or somewhat the mini Martial rule that transpired in late February). So much maligning of personalities actually came into ether-space print, Manolo's not exempted. Yet there he was, calm and somehow very discerning of how all of this created a picture of many online Filipinos' intellectualism. Personally, I think it also reaffirmed my positive outlook of all this talk then: dissent, fear not, for it's part of the dynamism of democratic discourse. (How's that for alliteration? hehe)

I regret that I wasn't able to attend Dean Alfar's and Jonas Diego's talks. I met ricci at the summit; he is one of our peer educators for the outreach project in Pasay and Manila. When I got back from the PNAC/PIA meeting, he told me that Dean's talk "Write Here, Write Now" was very lively. I also wanted to check out Jonas Diego's talk, I haven't met him previously, but his topic "Comic Books and Blogging" I was curious about. Ever since I had reconnected with a high school friend, saintvladymir (a.k.a. oliver), who you may now best know for his "Lexy, Nance, Argus" opus, I got a glimpse into yet another circle of immensely creative and passionate people. I'm not a comic book artist nor a graphic novelist (oliver, some day, you gotta give me some 101 here), but I truly long to experience once again, even as participant observer, the camaraderie of such spirited communities. Here romance and ideals throb and thrive. It is I think what some speakers in the summit referred to as niches of the mass audience that blogging and podcasting are thriving and evolving into unique, very special media of communication.

If next year there would be an iBlog 3, I'd definitely make time to attend. I'd resolve to participate more, maybe, even share my experience as a worker on HIV/AIDS and an advocate of the LGBT community. They haven't heard from this niche yet. Besides, maybe I'd get to see the cuties again, and there were really more than a few of them in this summit. Now, isn't that motivation enough? *tongue-in-cheek*