BoyAcads at BloggersFest in Thunderbird Resort, Rizal

Blogging has definitely gone milestones in the Philippines. It has evolved into a total social experience from just mere visiting, commenting, and following other peoples’ blog to actual face-to-face interactions that allow bloggers to know more about their co-bloggers minus being in front of the computer screen. 

I recently attended BloggerFest, an event organized by Mr.Azrael Coladilla from the Manila Bloggers Network. It was a one day affair filled with workshops, talks, and mentorships, attended by almost 200 registered bloggers. It was held at the Thurderbird Resort Event Center at Binangonan, Rizal.

The first speech came from no less than the organizer himself, Mr. Coladilla who talked about the basics of blogging. Now, if he was a salesman, blogging as his product, he would definitely put me to a deal with the advantages and opportunities one could get from blogging.

The next talk came from blogger celebrity Mica Rodriguez of www.micamyx.com who shared her experience and tips in personal blogging. Listening to her made me think about the current status and the lacking elements in my previous blog design. She also pointed out the importance of blogging ethics, discerning what is bloggable and not.

I automatically used to block all technical sides of blogging from my brain when bloggers start to talk about feed, traffic, etc. , thinking I wouldn’t understand its complexity. Jonel Uy’s talk was very important since I got to understand basically what SEO is, the importance of keywords, and how to maximize weight of the posts in the search engines. For some reason he reminded me of my classmate, Carl Ortiz. Perhaps, it’s because their similar way of talking.

Another niche blogger, Anton Carranza of www.pusangkalye.net, shared his opinions on Photo blogging and responsibility of taking quality photos.

Several workshop sessions also set up. Niche blogging on Music, Food, and Photography were the topics of choice. I attended the Music and Coverage blogging where Justin Gabriel of www.justinbreathes.com and Mr. Coladilla shared their experiences on event coverage. I personally like the idea of Justin that goes like, “There is no such thing as good and bad music, only music that you like and don’t like.” After the talk we were introduced to a band named INDIOS, where we had a sort of press conference and applied what we learned from the talk.

The next talk was from Arvin Ello who talked about the importance of revision and beating the writer’s block. While the tips on getting inspiration from writing were particularly helpful, I didn’t quite get the part about the muse and the dwende. I must be spacing out that time.

JP De Leon or www.kampeonngpagibig.com seems to be a real fun guy. I loved the theatrical sense of his music-ushered entrance as he walked on the stage. His humor really stood out among the speakers of the day. Oh yeah, he talked about domain and DNS Management for blogs.

Fitz Villafuerte or www.fitzvillafuerte.com talked about “How to Write Awesome Blog Posts”. I was really looking forward to hearing this part of the program. His tips were practical as they were easy to apply in writing posts.

Overall, BloggerFest seems to be a success not only to the organizers but also to the attendees. I definitely learned a lot and got to meet people from the online community in my first attended blogger’s event. I’d be looking forward to BloggersFest next year!

** Special thanks to Kuya Anton for lending me his pictures. :)