Marching In – and in the paper to boot!

Blinked once, blinked twice…and where do we find ourselves?

Entering the 3rd month of the year; in the end of the 1st quarter of 2012.

While last month was what I would look back on as a good month for me, especially with notable mentions here and here, I was pleasantly surprised that some of it’s happenings have overflowed into March!

Today I found myself on the local paper!

Well, actually, my friends saw me on today’s Borneo Bulletin and were quick to inform me…but now everyone’s asking what I won. Haha! Guess that wasn’t included in the news article then?

Well, it all began when SocialDeal Brunei had this ‘Share & Win’ contest on Facebook. Basically, one was supposed to share SocialDeal Brunei’s FB page on their own walls with their own captions and the best captions wins…so I did.

Then I got this in my FB inbox:

Hello,
Congratulations, you have won from your participation in this week’s ‘Share & Win’ contest, organised by SocialDeal Brunei.

We would like to invite you to a mini prize presentation.

Day/Date: Saturday, 25th February 2012
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Venue: 2nd Floor, SocialDeal office, iCentre Building, Berakas

Your attendance is much appreciated.

Best regards,
SocialDeal BruneiTeam

To be fair, I wasn’t really such a big win & I didn’t even win the grand prize (in fact, there was another person who won the same prize with me – guess we were both second best to the main winner?) so I didn’t really expect to appear in the paper & yet, here I am. LOL. But Thanks once again SocialDeal Brunei & as I said during the prize presentation, “Keep doing what you’re doing!” Looking forward to more deals & contests (and maybe more?) with you! Kudos on the new home at iCentre too!

So, technically, while the “winning” itself is part of Feb’s highlights, the photo-in-the-paper is pleasantly an awesome start to what I hope to be a Magnificent March!

That’s where it’s SO @

Friday marked an important date in the history of social media in the country. It was the first-ever Social Media Conference in Brunei!

Titled “Social Media: That’s Where It’s @”, the half-day conference took place at Radisson Hotel.

Remember how excited I was to attend? Well, I did! =)

Registration table where the awesome nametags were. Hehe!

And I brought a friend as well…

Enjoying our morning tea.

Inside the conference room.

There were about 80 delegates from the social media scene in Brunei and Sabah (and 1 from Sarawak, ie. yours truly) who attended the event.

This was my first social media conference so I honestly didn’t know quite what to expect but the moment it started I was having a field trip! =)

Welcome remarks by @emmagoodegg.

“The Backbone for Social Media” – presented by Mr Lim Ming Soon, Telbru.

It was a technical presentation on the infrastructure that supported the whole “online culture” and also some very interesting statistics, like:

18,000 users online in a day just in Brunei (population of 400K) and

The most visited site was Youtube…I would have thought it was Facebook, which was actually in 3rd rank.

Another thing that thoroughly impressed me was how unlike normal conferences, where people just sat, listen, took notes and asked questions, this conference was where most sat, eyes on their smart devices (laptops, phones etc), tweeted what struck them throughout the sessions and asked questions ONLINE!

All “notes” are kept virtually on Twitter where anyone can access them by looking up the hastag #socmedBN – cool stuff!

Questions were posted on PigeonholeLive, and once posted, others can vote on them and the higher voted questions get asked – even cooler!!!

Oddly enough, on this day when everyone had their fingers glued onto their keyboards/keypads/touchscreens, they weren’t being anti-social! In fact, it was pretty interactive as the questions posted and the number of votes were projected for all to see and not to mention, super fun when a highly voted question placed @ranoadidas in the hot seat! =p

@ranoadidas smiling his way out of answering the question in Session 1 : “Dude, Where’s My Traffic?” of how much he earned a month. LOL!

At one point, @BruneiTweet had to defend his love for skinny jeans! =p

And Dinoza of Breeze Magazine Sabah was at a lost for words when asked who was his “social media role model”.

The second session “Why Join The Twitter Conversation?” was also very interesting!

Especially since it was given by Dato Timothy Ong, Chairman of Asia Inc Forum and moderated by Awg Hj Mohd Rozan of bruneiresources.com.

Many many wonderful messages from this great public speaker. My personal faves: “If it matters to you, find the courage to do it!” and “Social media cannot replace human interaction.” Hear hear!

Even lunch was a great “social networking break”!

Pleasantly surprised to see another friend there as well =)

And the food was gorgeous!!!

Noodles in boxes!!!

Noodles never tasted so nice…

Then again, it may just be the novelty of eating noodles from a box! LOL.

The third and final session was “From Idea To Enterprise: What Does It Take?”, another open forum discussion, this time between Mr Keeran of MeSixty and Mr Simon, the Director of Mint and moderated by Mr Tom of Rapidea Solutions Sabah.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much time for this session as it was the end of the conference soon enough. =(

Overall, it was a great event. Good job to the Organizers!

Andrew, Marul, BruneiTweet, Ranoadidas, EmmaGoodEgg, Maurina & Anakbrunei

I’m glad I attended the event. Thanks Sarawak Bloggers for the opportunity! Not only did I learn a couple of things, I also made a couple of new friends! Can’t wait for the next SocMedBN event!!! =D

Last but not least, dear Delwin, may I have the pic of “the four of us” you took please? =)

~~~

Special thanks to @AhimRani of #candidsyndrome for permission to use the amazing pics above! See his full set here.

The recordings for “Brunei Online – Social Media: That’s Where it’s @” is now online http://bit.ly/mW2UsH thanks to @cornergeeks !

The Written Path

My interest in writing began very early on in life, probably even before my interest in reading!

When I was very very young, I used to keep daily diaries.

In fact, my very first diary was in 1994! That was more than a decade ago! What was I like, 10? Surprised even me when I went to check it just now. (Yes, I still keep all my diaries – I hear some people write diaries and then burn them – what’s the point?! Anyways, moving on…)

From writing diaries, I also wrote a few not-so-mini “mystery” mini-series ala Nancy Drew when I was in my Secondary years. I managed to write 3 1/2 books in the series…1/2 cos I can’t remember now if I finished the 4th book…all are in a box…somewhere…

That was when I realised that writing was a passion and my dream then was to become a Writer, have my writings published and it wouldn’t hurt if they became Bestsellers! LOL. But I never continued with the mini-series or any form of fiction-writing, and although I still kept diaries, I didn’t update them daily anymore…

I pretty much stopped writing then…until I started blogging in 2005. Even then, I had absolutely no clue what blogging was all about! In fact, I was just checking out some of my earliest entries in my very first blog, and I was shocked! – They were all just song lyrics! Hahaha…But I soon got the hang of it. It became more of an online diary, albeit less private than my padlocked-diary days.

My first blog was on Friendster (yes…it was waaaaaaaay before Facebook was even born!) and the next was on Blogspot…so by the time I moved to WordPress in 2007, I was pretty much blogging-savvy. LOL. Granted, my posts nowadays aren’t as often as they used to be, especially after I kinda went AWOL on blogging for about a year(?) as I was adapting to the new job and working life in Brunei.

But believe me when I say my writing journey is far from over, especially now, after becoming a recognised blogger under Sarawak Bloggers! What better way to continue writing and have the opportunity to meet other bloggers while at it?! Part of what I enjoy most about blogging is making blog-friends and being able to meet up with them and just talk blog, which is something non-bloggers just cannot do…

 

And guess what?! Who says Dreams don’t come true?

Eversince I came back to Brunei, I’ve had the opportunity to write for the Vicariate’s quarterly magazine – HOPE. In fact, I have 2 articles pending for Friday’s dateline. Oh boy! Also, I’ve been “recruited” by the Big Boss to write articles for Brunei’s side to the weekly Herald (in Malaysia) as well! No bestsellers, nor do I earn anything from my writings, but for now, just being able to write, and knowing that people read them, is enough for me.