The Experience of Success and Fun - Cebu Blog Camp 2010

What a blast.

Yesterday was a day more than a hundred people won't easily forget. Over at the CAP Art Center along Jones, the first ever Cebu Blog Camp was held, with participants ranging from seasoned, veteran bloggers to those enthusiast bloggers, and even those who have just been welcomed to the world that is the blogosphere we all love. Hey, even we were all amused as early as the introduction of participants when one of us told the audience he started his blog site just last Monday. That just showed that this event is taking out the 'elitist' notion attached to the 'blogger' title for some, and allowed us to take a back seat as we all were about to witness history in the making, the pioneer of what will be a big event in the years to come.(credits to Winston Almendras for the pic used on this post. He runs BatangYagit.com)


Much to the delight of the participants (and I will admit, more especially to me), there were a lot of freebies given away even as early as the registration booth. Over there, I met up with one of the primary organizers of the event, and the owner of Through the Focal Glass, Evanjohn. He's more popularly known in the blogosphere as the Photoblogger, and he did a very good job of mixing up humor and content into delivering a great talk about photoblogging and vblogging. Yes, there were a lot of topics throughout the whole event, and these weren't given just by anybody - all the resource speakers were the masters at their field, and with this I give a great kudos to the organizers for having organized such a pool of speakers for the different fields. Marketing, Blogging platforms, Google Adsense, niches, Community building, Branding, SEO - you name it, and it was there. Such was the nature and ambience of the whole event - a venue where beginners could start off in a big way, where adept bloggers could improve more on what they had already built up, and where the seasoned veterans learned more through sharing their experiences with the good number of bloggers present. In a great way, nobody could ever feel lost or left behind with the range of topics being given, and as such, I don't think anybody ever did.

It's always a great feeling to be able to meet the people behind the blogsites they maintain. This was a great event to be able to do so, and though I did not  get to talk personally to most of them, I was still awed by their speeches and the aura they bring when they're 'in real life'. Come to think of it, there were a lot of well-known bloggers over at that event, and to be in their presence just makes you feel more than blessed to have joined such a gathering.

I sadly don't have a digital camera, because if I did, this post would have been laden with a lot of pictures from the event. However, there were a lot who did bring their cameras, and perhaps I can get the chance to grab some of the pictures soon. Of course, that will be in another blog, so please do wait for them.

Before I forget though, allow me to give some recognition to the pink team, aptly named "Team Baboy" because of the color of the swine. We were able to win the first group activity, and yes, we won prizes for it too. Cheers to Team Baboy!

As a whole, I could really say that the day was great. As with everything, you go into something having a set of expectations. With this event, there were great expectations I had coming in - I was excited as hell to meet fellow bloggers and listen to talks on how to enrich everyone's blogging experience. What surprised me though, was that not only did the event meet the expectations, they left them behind to eat their dust and overtake them as great as any race car could. It was an experience that's really worth having, and right now I'm already looking forward to next year's blog camp. By then, it's going to be a lot bigger, and hopefully we'll have more of the same yet improved topics to listen to.

Congratulations to everyone that made this event a memory that will last a lifetime. :)

(side notes)
Whoever said that giveaways and prizes were scarce, were not present at CBC 2010. Here's a rundown of the things I got after the dust settled and the Cebu Blog Camp success was born:

• A Flashdrive, courtesy of 88DB.com
• A limited edition Microsoft Windows 7 shirt, courtesy of Ng Khai
• An orange Mozilla baller band, courtesy of Mozilla.org
• A Mozilla Firefox pin, courtesy of Mozilla.org
• A roll of Mozilla stickers, courtesy of Drake (check out his blog, wazupdrake )
• A new notepad, courtesy of Nokia
• An original DVD copy of Passionata, courtesy of the organizers
• An original CD of Classical Visayan music, courtesy of the organizers
• Free lunch, rather, two free lunches, courtesy of Jolibee
• Krispy Kreme donuts!

..and many more, would you believe? I loved the event, because honestly, who wouldn't?


(more side notes)
If you were following this blog for the past few weeks and noticed that I didn't have any new posts except the one required by the CBC organizers, I apologize. I was going through a tough time, with confusions popping up here and there. That was mainly the cause of my decision to forego blogging until after CBC 2010, after I cleared up a few things with regards to my relationships to some people, among other things. But here I am, and I'll be back to posting regularly as the days wear on and as school season looms over the horizon. Hope this long post made up for the absence. I'll be more than glad to catch up on you guys, so please leave a comment if you would. Thanks!


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i couldn't take my eyes off you.