As mentioned in my previous local events posts, its just been since last two years (2009) since I started attending (or more so becoming more aware) local events here. I have been a blogger since 2006 but I haven’t been that much involved in the local scenes primarily because the demographics that I am catering to is more of foreign for most of my blogs / past projects.
Anyway iBlog7 is the second iBlog event that I attended. Funny how I missed iBlog 1-5 though. 🙂 Just in case you don’t know, iBlog is THE largest blogging summit here in Philippines in w/c lots of bloggers, PR practitioners, business persons alike grace the event. I met some people here last year that have become my friends since then while I also have finally seen some of the respected figures in the local scenes like Janette Toral, Carlo Ople and so on.
I’m not anymore going to discuss each and every talk made in the event since most people have already done that. Or you can just make a reference to the iBlog’s official site to see the topics that have been tackled all throughout the event.
Me Speaking
Yay! I haven’t really been posting a lot in this blog lately so you’re probably unaware that I was one of the speakers in the event.
So obviously I was feeling some nerves during my talk mainly because I haven’t spoken in front of that amount of audience. You can consider that as my first stint to a big blogging event so my mouth was kind of like drying as I was speaking.
The topic that I tackled is entitled “Blog Traffic 102” in w/c I talked about some ‘modern’ ways that I always use to drive traffic to my blogs. The way I planned it was for me to tackle that topic in-depth and obviously that didn’t turn out very well since I just had about 20 minutes to talk about it. But in the end, I thought I did pretty well but of course there are still lots of room for improvement.
If you’re looking for the PowerPoint presentation, kindly grab it here. Hint: The amount of helpful resource links inside is enormous and is something that a lot of people requested me to share in this blog post but you may want to look at the last slide as well since there’s a free gift link in that slide. =p
Learnings
The reason I attend these events aside from the networking part is because it always amazes me how I learn lots of things during the event. It’s not just about the tips or sleek tricks but its also about the intangible things that we, as bloggers usually forget. Like for me, I’ve been making money from blogging since a long time but I never really realized that much before how the money part is just 10% of the ‘industry’.
Sometimes its the other things that make blogging much more fulfilling. Things like helping out other people unknowingly, like fighting for something that we believe in, having our own advocacies, reaching out to people. Its about having that community that I admittingly, sometimes think I don’t have nor I cared about. And of course its the variety of people that you will meet that will help you grow more as a blogger.
I mean iBlog itself is a free event since it started. No one pays for anything, organizers work hard to do this and do that, and as a result of their hard work, bloggers benefit a lot. So that I think is my biggest reflection in attending this event. Hopefully I can comeback next year not as a speaker, but more of just like a normal blogger. Who knows, I might be able to do some sponsoring and organizing as well in the future. But for now, I’ll just cross my finger. 😉
I’d like to give special credit to the organizers, to Ms.Janette for organizing such a wonderful event. I haven’t done that much networking since a).I was too shy and b).I was too shy. But those who said ‘hi’ to me and asked some questions, I appreciate that.
P.S. If you have a picture of me while on the stage, then please let me know. 😉