It says something when, in the midst of crisis (rice shortage, escalating gas prices, reeling food prices) an institution decides NOT to pare down its service or hike its prices but instead decides to give EXTRA to its dining customers — no charge, without questions, without being asked. Just like that!
That is exactly what I experienced when I got a special invite from Ann of Yehey.com to be one of 15 bloggers last June 16 to experience and taste Italianni’s EXTRA treat at Bonifacio High Street.
I was the first to arrive at the venue so I chatted briefly with Ann and Jori of Yehey (Jori was wearing a cute panda cap that made him look like Po of Kung Fu Panda fame).
I also got to meet Cyril Reyes, the General Manager of Italianni’s Boni High Street, who indulged me as I did an ambush interview.
I had long been wanting to organize a yoga blogger event. Maybe it began with my love for yoga followed by a desire to get more people interested in their own healthy lifestyle. The idea had been brewing for over a year now but I did not even know where to begin.
Enter The Blog and Soul Movement with Jayvee and Juned, two buddy bloggers I first met at iblog summit two years ago. When I spoke with Juned about it recently, he immediately offered Blog and Soul as a venue for gathering the bloggers. This was followed by a lunch meeting with both Jayvee and Juned to seal the deal. We were off to organizing the first ever Fat Blog series of Blog and Soul (the first of several planned series to get bloggers who often lead sedentary lives off their butts and into a healthier lifestyle). And of course, my yogini mate-cum-blogger herself, Chona, is helping out with the logistics.
This is to be followed by a short Q&A on health and yoga and capped by a vegetarian dinner.
We also have some sponsors so as is usual in a blogger event, there will be items to give away.
Some details are as follows:
Date:June 28, 2008
Time: 5pm onwards
Place:Vinyasa Yoga Center, 17/F Strata 100 Bldg., Emerald Ave., Ortigas Complex, Pasig City
Space is limited at the shala so Blog and Soul is only taking in ten (10) bloggers. Several things though to keep in mind. One, you MUST BE A BLOGGER. Two, this is for non-VYC students as this is an event to make more people aware of yoga.
Head on over now to Blog and Soul. Those who make the cut-off will get confirmation emails from Blog and Soul. More details will be provided later. Visit this blog regularly for updates.
I just realized that it was May 26, 2007 (just over a year ago) when a group of mommy bloggers came together and met for the FIRST TIME over lunch organized by the Pinoy Moms Network which included Connie.
Wow, has it been one year already???
Most of these mommy bloggers are still active bloggers who I bump into every so often. Of course, the likes of Noemi and Dine are already steep into blogging and you can be sure that at almost every major event, they would be in the crowd and never without their laptops. However, every so often, I would also bump into the others like Chats who joined a recent dinner/reunion with Raquel at Dine’s bday celebration. Or twit with her, Feng, Cess, Julie and Kongkong.
Since I met this group of bloggers, life has not been the same, at least for me. My blogging has escalated several notches and my network of bloggers has expanded. We greet each other on birthdays and anniversaries and exchange tips of all kinds. Isn’t that just wonderful?
Lately, there have been a handful of DADDY bloggers already in some events and I hazard a guess there would be more. Husband-wife tandem bloggers are starting to crop up and recently, even brother-sister combinations. Family blogs are sprouting with each member of the family contributing articles to a blog. Wow, family blogging is born!
I can see so much potential in family blogs and who knows, this could very well be a topic in the next iblog5 summit! If technology is one bonding tool with this multimedia generation, why not in the form of blogging? Family events can be blogged about with each member contributing his/her own view and having all these combined into one post. Family memoirs preserved through blogs.
Founded by Todd Goldman in 2000, David & Goliath is an American clothing company that makes tees with slogans which regular clothing outlets would never dare print but which Todd’s brand gets away with. This guy, who doodled his way to creating these “misfits” while taking Accountancy, has a collection of 57 characters (of which 21 are available locally).
I arrived at the venue pretty much on time. Actually…a bit ahead of the 8PM starting time in the invite. But guess what! Aileen was way, way ahead of me and having her caricature done by an artist at the bar!
I got a table for 4 near the front (for my myopic eyes) and Noemi and daughter Marielle joined me later on.
Funny man Gabe Mercado was host for the night and boy, did he keep everyone laughing with his quips!
He got us thinking of “loser” titles beginning from A all the way to Z! Then made us play charades by guessing the loser title being acted out (and my team composed of Noemi, Aileen, Shari,Jehzlau and moi were losers enough to think that since we were losing the game, they would award the prize to us. In our dreams!).
Later, Gabe got chicken-at-iblog4 guy Arthur to play the Dating Game with Arthur asking 3 questions and through sheer chicken genius, ended up guessing the correct characters of his 3 “dates”: Miss Bitch, Mr. Well Hung and Miss Gossip Queen.
Noemi and I won “Bloggers Suck” tees (the very same ones we were earlier admiring on Dingdong) just because we were chosen as the “most enthusiastic bloggers” during the powerpoint presentation of David & Goliath. (Hey, it must have been because Noemi had her to-die-for Nikon D40 DSLR and I was shamelessly taking videos of everyone and everything).
Then I won another bag of goodies for jokingly defining the word apositive as “the opposite of anegative”. So being a stupid loser pays after all, huh?
And every blogger went away with still another bag of goodies from David & Goliath. Here is everything I had inside the loot bags:
If you squint your eyes and look carefully at the top, you will see — YES, a P1,000 GC — enough to buy another one of those David & Goliath tees which run around P995 each (I am swinging between choosing “Miss PMS” or “Miss Trophy Wife”). No, maybe “Miss Bitch” or “Miss Gold Digger” is more dramatic, hehehe.
So, who says losers can’t be winners?
Here, meet all the LOSERS who came to the loser party.
Of course, blogger events like these mean that bloggers blog about the bloggable event. Here are links to some of them as taken from Noemi’s list — since loser ME has had no time to go blog hopping).
If you blogged about it and I missed you, please holler and post the URL below. After all, that is why I am such a LOSER. Not only am I probably the last person to blog about the event but I also have my very own senior moments! 🙂
One last plug: David & Goliath outlets can be found at Boni High Street, Power Plant Mall, TriNoma, Greenbelt 5, Robinsons Place Manila Midtown, and Rustan’s Makati. Thank you for making us losers, WINNERS!
Just a few days after iblog4, the blogosphere is a-buzzing with post after post from people who were there. I went on Google and blogs in search of people who posted.
WHY???
Well, I want to make a list of blogs down here and continue touching base with bloggers (way, way ahead of iblog5!, hehehe).
To the iblog 4 bloggers >>> There were just so many of you to meet (I hope we can linger longer next time) but I sure will try to include as many of you here so I can at least drop by your blogs and say hi there. If you posted and I somehow missed you in this blogroll, pls leave me a comment with your URL so I can update the list.
For the second time in a row, I was able to attend a blogger summit. Called iblog4 (its their 4th year), the summit (held at UP’s Malcolm Hall auditorium) brought together bloggers from everywhere and from all walks of life. It was a full day covering a wide spectrum of topics.
Last year, I attended alone, driven only by my growing passion for blogging, and met the bloggers who would change my blogging life. This year, I had the wonderful chance to have Chona, my yoga mate and co-blogger, with me.
The summit was of interest to media. In the morning, it was ABC5. And in the afternoon, the folks from GMA7 (Inquirer.net) came over. The whole place was WIFI-ed so bloggers with laptops were able to blog live. There was also a hook-up on the web that allowed people who were unable to make it to the venue to follow the sessions AND post their questions to the speakers! Woohoo, high tech!
Charo Nuguid covered Blogging 101 (tips for newbie bloggers and maybe a tip or two for more seasoned ones).
Brian Gorrell (yes, the same Aussie blogger who is pursuing the return of his life’s savings from his former Pinoy lover) sent in a vlog with tips on how to maintain one’s blog. Below is the video clip, courtesy of Brian’s YouTube channel.
Juan Carlo Licudine talked about his move from student to problogger as well as the pros and cons of problogging. Hmmm, after he revealed the monetary potentials for problogging, I think it got a lot of the student audience VERRRRYYYY interested!
Juned Sonido covered the world of photoblogs (what it is, what you need, how different is it from photo galleries/albums posted online, etc). Juned amused everyone as he literally unloaded his equipment onto a long table onstage (most of his smaller cams were taken out of several pockets of his cargo pants!).
Jonas Diego updated us on the world of blog comics (or is it comic blogs???). Apparently, it is not always printed comics that get on to the world wide web. In his case, an interested investor saw his blog comics and asked that these be published in print.
Lunch break was a time to fellowship with other bloggers. I found myself having discussions over packed lunches with Noemi, JJ Disini (a leading internet lawyer) and Chona. We got into a discussion about the prospects of libel vs bloggers (with Brian Gorrell’s blog being one of our subjects). Much later, we were joined by Mike Abundo (whom I first met at the Happy Slip Meet-and-Greet) and Azrael Coladilla.
The afternoon sessions were just as interesting as the morning:
Aileen Apolo and Coy Caballes did their presentation on Vlogging (video blogging) and podcasting via what else? A vlog!!!! That was cool! I think this has given me a lot of tips and ideas are now swimming around my brain!
They were followed by several speakers who talked about blogging during the 2010 elections and how we as bloggers can possibly be part of that coverage. They emphasized the importance of bloggers getting involved way ahead of 2010 in preparing different courses of action to get ready to cover the elections. A mini blogging summit covering elections was done last November and Janette said that another one may happen end of 2008.
In the order of their talks on Blogging for 2010 Elections were:
JJ Disini then covered the legal issues surrounding blogging such as copyright infringements, libel, and other such areas. An active open forum ensued as bloggers fielded questions to him and which JJ answered with huge doses of humor.
My dear friend Noemi covered the next topic on Blogging for Advocacy where she spoke about one of her and Dine’s latest advocacies, The Filipina Images: Reshaping the Filipina Image Online, which seeks to improve the Filipina’s image globally by influencing the SEO ranking when people use search engines to find terms such as “Filipina” and direct them to wholesome sites on the Filipina.
Last but definitely not the least was Ria Jose, from Davao City, who was one of a group of bloggers who are taking Mindanao blogging to a different level. I had the chance to chat with them afterwards and exchange contact numbers. You see, Davao City was the city of my childhood. Lots of wonderful memories of that place. Just learning that young bloggers are now talking of one of my favorite cities just brought back waves of memories. I just might hang around their blogs more often…..
There were light moments as well during the entire summit:
Marcelle, upon insistent public demand, performed a magic trick with the help of Sir Martin, his contemporary from that BLUE school where my girls study.
The hilarious guys from Chickenmafia.com had one of them come dressed as a chicken! Hey, heard they won best “Come As Your Blog” entry at the blog parteeh afterwards — which I obviously missed!!! Congrats, chickens! You deserve the award! After all the pains you went to making your props (yup, I read in your blog how you prepared this sans any craftmaking background!)
And of course, nothing was complete without photo ops at the end of it all. If anyone has a picture of the entire group, please please send me one!
The event was not just a chance to know more about blogging trends and tips. It was a great way to see old friends and meet new bloggers as well.
Here’s a shout out to the familiar blogger faces (definition: friends & people I met at iblog3):
I also got a chance to win a free FilipinaImages.com shirt during Noemi’s trivia portion! Thanks for egging me on, Dine! I’ll be SO PROUD to wear this around! I also want a pink shirt! 🙂
Great job to the entire iblog4 team (you know who you are)!!! And see you next year for iblog5.
