Sep 14, 2007

[Blogosphere] Is This It For Us?

Flickr: Shenghung Lin - shine on, you crazy laptop


Over dinner tonight, a friend of mine started talking about the local blogosphere and how the various communities related to it appear to be getting along. It certainly got me thinking about a number of things, hence this entry.

As always, I keep coming back to the question, "Is this it?" Is this as far as we're going to get in terms of how we identify as bloggers in this country and how our groups and gatherings are supposed to be?

Allow me to share my thoughts on the matter...

First, where are we headed as a segment of the greater blogosphere? Do we want to move forward as a group tied by citizenship / nationalism? Is our being Filipino enough basis to unite us and refer to us as one collective entity? Are we trying to make a name of local bloggers in the larger blogosphere? Are we trying to stake a claim in the global scheme of things?

For now I'm not so sure if we're doing that very well. All we are is being more and more focused on local issues instead of making a larger impact on the world by presenting the Filipino perspective on things. I'm not saying writing about local concerns is bad - it's just that I feel it's not enough. There has to be more to all this, right? Hence I ask the question again - is this it?

That brings me to thinking of something else - perhaps my second point. Just who are we really as a blogosphere? Is it enough to share a common country of origin for us to claim to be one group? So far that's all that ties us together. There are some smaller regional groups that are making an effort to establish a clear identity for themselves but as you expand to cover the national scheme of things, there's not much really to discuss.

That brings me to my third point of discussion - our current blogging events. While I know I have not attended a large enough number of them to make a truly accurate assessment of things, for now I have to admit that there hasn't been that much to rave about. We most have awards events for those bloggers who are already famous half the time and we have social meet-ups where everyone is thrust into a room together and expected to get to know one another. Instead we still stick to our own groups and relate amongst ourselves with only the more devoted younger ones making the rounds and trying to get to know their blogging idols of sorts.

Is that it?

What do you want to happen? What kind of a group do you want to become a part of in order to discuss things with like-minded bloggers? What do you want to see happen at a blogging event?

Do we need more seminars? Do we need forums that allow participants to discuss pertinent events, blogging strategies and perhaps even surrounding philosophies? At the next social meet-up, should we have bloggers meet by segment and discuss things that concern them? Should we form a sort of overseeing committee or pseudo-government? Should we really come together to form an organization to make our voices better heard?

I feel like none of the existing groups answer this need for now. That is neither good nor bad - the purpose of the various groups out there today don't really tackle this and were never intended too. Perhaps it's time for a change, something new.

I want to see local blogs making waves around the world - for our bloggers to be way up there and compared to the top blogs of the world and not just whatever ranking we come up with here within the local community alone. Is that a bad thing to want? Shouldn't there be more to things than just this?

Is this it for us, Filipino Bloggers?

Photo linked from Shenghung Lin's photosteam.

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