I Am Blogie

Last 13 & 14 May 2009, Lyle Santos and I conducted a blogging seminar at the Coffee Club 101 in General Santos City, concentrating on WordPress and Google AdSense.

In attendance were GenSan’s bloggers, both seasoned and neophyte, all under the tutelage of Avel Manansala. It was a good group, coming from various age groups, interests and backgrounds.

I was able to introduce WordPress to the participants, and hopefully, allow them to appreciate the power and flexibility of this awesome blogging platform. Admittedly, at present very few bloggers in GenSan use WordPress. But after that first seminar, I am hoping that the numbers will increase. Especially that more and more bloggers there are getting into niche blogging and content specialization, I am counting on their looking to WordPress as their next publishing medium.

Lyle was “discovered” during the 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit last year in this city, when he was asked on the spot to give an impromptu presentation on Google AdSense. He is quite the speaker — very engaging and interesting. And so, I look forward to doing more blogging seminars in tandem with him in the near future.

I’d like to thank Avel for making the blogging seminar possible, as well as Coffee Club 101 for hosting the group for two days. This coffee shop is most certainly a blogger-friendly establishment — and serves quality coffee to boot!

Speaking of which, the bloggers of Cagayan de Oro are also conducting a similar event this week. Kudos to ChiQ Montes and her crew for this effort! Blog on!

My trip to Cagayan de Oro City last 7 to 9 December was very fruitful, as I was able to meet up with a good number of bloggers there. This is the second incarnation of an active bloggers group in Cagayan de Oro — the first group, the members of whom I met last June 2007, has unfortunately fallen by the wayside as those bloggers have either gone to other places or dropped out of the blogosphere altogether.

This group is now being led by Chiq Montes, who was one of the tireless volunteers at WordCamp Philippines 2008. Last 8 December, I also got to know Goma, Bang, Ding, Cloyd, Robstroy (who was also at MBS2), Amelia (whom I had already met last June 2007), and Mike Abonitalla.

They’re a fun bunch, and they seem to have just the right amount of enthusiasm to be able to sustain their presence in Northern Mindanao. They were very eager to learn about the experiences of the Davao and General Santos groups. The CDO bloggers are rarin’ to be a much more active part of the Mindanao Bloggers community.

It is indeed remarkable that groups of people who are geographically, socially and even religiously disparate can come together as one cohesive community. Beyond the cities of Davao, General Santos, Zamboanga and Cagayan de Oro, other areas are now coming online: Dipolog, Malaybalay / Valencia, Kidapawan…. I just wish I could touch base with the bloggers of all these places very soon!!

The CDO group is obviously very excited about the prospect of hosting the 3rd Mindanao Bloggers Summit. Well, the core group of MB originators (Andrew, Ria, Migs, Winston and yours truly) are going to arrive at a decision very soon.

Cagayan de Oro is one very progressive city. At a casual glance, it’s very hard to tell whether Davao City is still in the lead in terms of development. Population- and geography-wise, Davao is still much bigger, but CDO is clearly making large strides towards economic and social progress. As a destination, the city of golden friendship is more than ready to host the Summit in October 2009.

Kudos and more power to the bloggers of CDO!!!