Long time no post here, at least for my preference. 🙂 Anyways, last Friday and Saturday I attended the biggest blogging event here in Philippines which is the iBlog Philippine Blogging Summit. The conference was held for the 6th time already and I actually can’t believe that I missed the previous 5 ones considering that I’ve been blogging for 3 years already.

I also mentioned in my post on attending Wordcamp 09 that since late last year, I’ve shifted my focus on trying to network more with my fellow citizens here and connect with more local bloggers. Since I’ve started I was more always on the international side of things. Most of my blogging colleagues are from the other side of the world. I have few Filipino blogging friends but I realized I have to have more.

So I attended iBlog 6 Summit. It’s a 2 day event, the first day was more targeted on businesses on tapping blogs while the second day is more on blogging as a whole. Unlike most of the iBlog posts, this is going to be a comprehensive one. 🙂

Disclaimer: I’m a nice guy but I’m honest so i would put out my personal opinion on every talk. If you’re name is misspelled, hit me up. 🙂 Im also a horrible photographer so I had to steal borrow other photos from other people

Day 1

Since its just my second event, its understandable that I am holding myself back a bit because Im shy. Ok, I arrived just on time by myself and with no friends on sight.

Janette Toral spoke about Blogging for business which is a pretty general talk on how blogs make money and how they are intended for business. It was a pretty broad talk wherein she covered making money from various things like paid review, corporate blogging and selling products.

Janette is a reputable figure here in Philippine and while its my first time hearing her speak, I was not disappointed. I think she laid out all the necessary info especially for noobs on how the money works on blogging.

It was followed by Abe Olandres speech about Advertising in Blogs which is a more in-depth topic than the first one. Abe is one of the pioneers of blogging here and is one who probably have generated the most revenue. Its a pretty great talk and he was not too shabby to share his figures. 🙂

The next one was the sponsor talk and its really something I dont want to talk about. The next speaker is Mr. Gary Viray who preaches about SEO and SEM. Its pretty fundamental for me but I know it really opened the eyes of most new bloggers in the world of SEO. It also debunks the myth of old SEO practices wherein it used to be based on quantity of inbound links.

Next is the lunch and networking part. The food is “” but thats considerable considering its a free and open for all event. Again I was not able to network that much because I was really really shy. But at the time, I met four people by then namely: Mariel, May Ann, Paul David and Jilcae w/c are the people that I pretty much talked with for the whole day.

Carlo Ople then presented something about measuring blog buzz in w/c he tackled on how traditional businesses are so much hurting themselves not putting up proper online campaigns and lacking specific goals. It was one of my fave talk for that day since it presented me to the offline business side of things. Im always like the guy who knows things online but its refreshing to see the “foreign” side of things. Carlo reiterated that we must “show respect to social media” which pretty much sums it all up.

Emerson Banez who is a lawyer tackled legal concerns in blogging w/c I initially thought was boring but he made a way to make it enticing to listeners. It was basically about copyrights, and disclaimers which was beneficial as well. Law is really not my forte but its good to learn something from that side too.

The next one is about the win-win situation for bloggers and advertisers which was presented by Didi Paterno. It was a bit sound and fundamental to me since most of the money made in this blog is through advertising.

Lastly that day, Manuel Viloria which i thought was dressed a bit overformal, discussed about attraction marketing which was a really fruitful topic. This topic was about building a list, capturing them, then using social media to leverage them is something that was an eye-opener especially for most bloggers here. Up to now, it still amazes me how a lot of bloggers dont go into the “relationship-building” business model and instead just stay on the old blogging bandwagon techniques.

Day 2

Day 2 is mostly for bloggers. I anticipated that this day is for newbies, people who haven’t had much experience yet with blogging. With that in mind, I still attended.

The very beautiful, mesmerizing and eye-capturing and lovable Ms. Hannah Villasis started the day by discussing about Blogging 101 which is basically just about blogging and how it has become it is today. I’m hitting my head so hard because I actually missed this talk and wasnt able to take a pic of her while on stage. I woke up late that day and it sucks!

Then the equally handsome Vince Gollangco discussed about Video Blogging which was enticing to me since I’ve been planning to go into that route but never actually have done it. Vince made a great emphasis that we should never really care about those negative feedbacks because there would be always. He also handed out some great tips on how to do videoblogging and how its easier than what most people really think.

PhotoBlogging101 is another interesting talk since I am fascinated with photography lately. Im not a photo blogger but I love taking random pics. Juned discussed it more on a photography aspect rather than the blogging side and it was really a nice session.

Then it was the sponsor talk, and then the talk about launching successful blog contests which is something that I already have an idea about. But again Im sure this talk has become useful to a lot of other people on the said event.

It was followed by the very interesting topic of Impact of Blogging to the community wherein Joseph Gonzales (by far the most lively speaker, also humorous), cited the intangibles of blogging and how he leveraged it in helping his community. It was so inspiring to hear that blogging can do more than what we all think it could and in his case, its really for a bigger cause. And then it was lastly followed by Marghil Macuha’ of Macuha.com talked on how SEO is a must for making money online. It was pretty a fundamental talk but I picked up some nice techniques of his as well. 🙂

Conclusion & Things Learned

The biggest blogging conference and event was really living to its bill. I was so happy that I was able to attend and meet all other bloggers and prominent figures here personally. Of course I still wished to have done better especially with the networking part. In conferences like this, I should be introducing myself, shaking other people’s hand, taking pics with other people, and just building relationship with them, almost none of those were done. (shy alert!)

All in all I would like to thank to all who have stumbled upon in the event. My new buddies, May Ann, Jilcae, Paul and two other persons I didn’t recognize that much. The speakers who I know really prepared so hard not just to present something, but to make sure they give out the best ones.

And of course the organizers, Ms.Janette Toral, the emcees, the photographers (hey how can I find the pics that may possibly include me?), the hyper-active Mike Abundo, and all those people who worked to make this happen. Usually organizers are the ones who don’t get much credit but here I’d like to put an emphasis to them for doing such a wonderful job. Having an event for 6th straight years is just plain awesome.

iBlog 6 Group Pic — Photo is from Carlo Ople

If you have your own coverage of your iBlog 6 Summit, please comment here so I can post your link here as well. 🙂 Do share your opinion as well about this Summit and let me know what talks did you enjoy the most.

Other iBlog 6 Press/Blog Coverages:

More Photos are located on the photos page

iblog 6 pics

Day 1

Day 2

Conclusion & Things Learned