Sabah bloggers got a different treat this year for the annual gathering, unlike the previous three years. It was more grand and complicated than before, (being that I only realized a couple of days before it happened) that this event, glamorously called B2.0, was going to be held over a 2-day, 3-night period! Wow!

Organized by the team at Borneo Colours (BC), the event started with a preview dinner on 28 October, followed by a seminar on the 29th, then a paintball get-together on 30th morning, and a closing ceremony cum winners announcement that evening. Being caught off-guard by the overwhelming activities at a last minute, I only managed to attend the preview dinner (see me mingle here) and the seminar a.k.a. New Media Dialogue. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the seminar itself was more impressive than I expected. In the morning, for some reason just more than half the seats were filled, but by noon, the place was packed.

“Borneo’s Regional Blogospheres” was presented by three bloggers representing Brunei DS (Marul a.k.a Geek In White), Kalimantan (Dwi Wahyudi a.k.a. Blogger Borneo) and Sarawak (Cyril Dason) regions. I came in late but just in time for Marul’s presentation, so I wasn’t sure whether there was anyone from Sabah presenting at that session (maybe Daniel Doughty’s opening remarks was it?). Overall it was a good warm-up session for what was to come.

“Blog Monetization” by Addy Kho of The 9-Hour Work Week blog was a session that’s right up my alley. His monetizing focus was on Internet and affiliate marketing. When he mentioned using Top Commentators to engage users, my ears perked. My eyes missed the widget when scanning his blog the first time, so I thought he removed it. However, it was actually right on the sidebar slightly way down the website. It’s great to know that Addy further validates the use of TC in relation to increasing readership and subsequently the ka-ching factor.

Reeda Malik a.k.a. AnakBrunei’s session on “Managing Your Personal Brand” led me to ask him this: is it possible (or has there been any case) where a person can successfully separate his online persona and his real-life identity? To be known for his skills rather than his personality? The gist of Reeda’s answer was that more often than not there exist a very fine line in separating those identities, and you might as well be a schizophrenic to achieve that. E-hem. I was hoping I could be like Clark Kent / Superman, you know. Clark being the equivalent of me in real life, while Superman being the equivalent of WebGrrrl, ‘cause we have super cool names, you see. Why, people even mistakenly calls me Lana sometimes, so… *flatters self*.

I’m glad Cyril Dason posed the question on the use of disclaimer in a website after Eddie Law’s session on “Blogging Limitation — Law and Ethics”, which affirms what I’ve known all along about it – it’s useless. It doesn’t protect you from the law. Otherwise if it does, you won’t see so many bloggers in Malaysia go to jail so easily. Eddie’s session garnered the most questions in this seminar, which was a pleasant surprise for me. This shows that we bloggers do care about integrity and civility, contrary to political and contemporary beliefs.

One minute into Rob Angeles’ session on “Effective Steps to Online Engagement”, and you’ll realize that A) he really knows what he’s talking about, and B) he has a great sense of humour. Through his extensive statistics and technical glitches, he kept us guffawing and at the same time more aware of how important social media is for businesses to engage in. Keyword: Enterprise 2.0.

I frankly wasn’t keen on paying attention to “From Zero to Hero Using Social Media” by Ronnie Klassen, a politician who happens to blog. It reminded me too much of my disgust towards the current Malaysian political scene and the fact that I will soon have to vote again for the lesser of two evils. I wasn’t even trying to listen, other than on the part where he mentioned about his top — and most controversial — three blog posts that ended up getting him locked up in jail while earning him a few thousand US dollars per post from Google AdSense at the same time. Note to self: controversy pays.

GreenSurf’s session, especially its videos, kept me back on pace and Harjinder and Alice rocked! “Case Study: Winning Hearts & Minds Through New Media” provided not just the volunteers’ experiences on behalf of Sabahans in acting against the proposed coal power plant in Lahad Datu, but also gave a very honest view on the benefits and limitations of using social media to voice the people’s true decisions and thoughts on this matter.

Joomla made its debut in this dialogue in the form of Azrul’s JomSocial in “Powered CMS”. I’m impressed with this Facebook-like plugin that powers Borneo Colours’ website. This still didn’t stop me from poking fun at Joomla lightheartedly by clapping loudly when Azrul pointed out the stats whereby WordPress has the highest number of plugins compared to Joomla and Drupal. At the next slide, he showed that Joomla plugins were downloaded the most compared to WP and Drupal. I just like to think that this is because WordPress gets more done with less Still, I’d like to thank Azrul for even considering WordPress as a CMS.

Then comes Daniel Doughty’s session on “Collaborative Marketing Initiative”. He might as well just call this “What is Borneo Colours” In all honesty, I’ve been pretty confused with what Borneo Colours is trying to achieve in the online social media arena. Are they volunteers? Are they doing these for free? Are they commercial? Up to that time, all I see was little transparency, with much hyped superficial activities and bombastic publicity words, and I made sure Daniel knew my thoughts about BC when I chatted with him at the preview dinner. His session did clear it up: BC is a commercial entity with a noble cause, which is to use social media and gather bloggers specifically to promote tourism in the Borneo region. So now that he’s cleared up BC’s business model, how about its revenue model? Hmm.

I always love startup stories, so I really wanted to sit through FlickEvents’ Yan Phun as she talks about her company’s experience in “Start Ups Challenge and Opportunity”. However, realizing that it was time for me to split and pick up my kids from school, I had to rush out and miss most of her talk.

I’d like to add more thoughts on this event, but good golly am I tired (I have another hour left before I’m off to work and I haven’t slept a wink!). So, kudos to Borneo Colours for going all out to organize this event. I can imagine how challenging it is to organize such an event with four regions over three different countries.

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Since last night, I’ve been busy uploading and tagging, tagging and uploading photos and videos of this year’s fine Sabah Bloggers Gathering. Seriously, I don’t know where to begin, so I’m just gonna do my story-telling in bullet-form. But before that, here’s how I looked like.

I am Soulja Grrrl. Get it? *ROFLs to self*… Dressed to kill, coz I’m a mean grrrl. And playing too much Half-Life: Counterstrike will do this to you. I also made it a point to have an “official” pose to make things more tacky, like so.

• Enemy spotted! The first costumed guest I saw as I went out the elevator was a Japanese-uniformed dude. And he had no weapon! Dead meat
• My action plan was to get to know as many people as I could, under the pretense that I wanna take pictures of each and everyone who came to the gathering. AND EVERYONE FELL FOR IT! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH! Seriously, though, everyone was so cool, and you can count only a handful out of more than 100 guests didn’t come with costumes. I really enjoyed taking pictures of and with everyone. You peeps really rocked the house!
• The Allies ruled! It was three Allied US Army soldiers versus one Japanese Axis soldier sans ammo. But I’ll exclude the masked terrorists (you people know who you are). And luckily our War Correspondent was neutral, though he did don a US Army colour. Yeah, lucky Axis guy   The cool thing was us army troops – Charlie, Vera and I — were lounging together in the same table. That’s the spirit — stick together, team.

More photos!

• I sat with Margaret as well, coz she was one of the few people that I know personally. You know how DIFFICULT it is to do some ice-breaking alone. I dragged poor Margaret along wherever I went so that I didn’t feel too embarrassed to introduce myself, and have her be my official assistant photog! Heheheh Margaret, you’re a lifesaver!
• So glad I met up with more familiar bloggers, namely Chegu Carol, Alus, Pai, Massy and Alvin Ting. Siok!
• I was psyched to meet the performers for Sabah Bloggers Gathering this year, as they are well-known nation-wide as well. However, I did not expect to NOT recognize Alvin MY of Infinatez. I even asked him who are you, and what is your blog’s name? Oh god, that is embarrassing now that I think about it. Because, honestly, he is way more good-looking in real life than his promo shoot at SBG’s web site. Thank goodness he’s such a gracious guy. Loved his performance, too!

More photos!

• Performances by emcee Jonathan Tse and supremo guitarist Roger Wang did not disappoint. Jonathan’s simple but melodious music is simply melodious (hihih on the almost-pun). Yes, I’ve heard his songs online and, I’ve got to admit, his voice complements his songs very well, and I see a bright future for Jonathan’s music career.
• And Roger. I’d like to call him the Andy McKee of Asia, but he’d probably wouldn’t want to be compared, because Andy is Andy and Roger is Roger. In any case, words do no justice to his classical and fingerstyle compositions. When he plays with just his guitar, it’s magical.
• Imperial International Hotel did not spare any expense when it comes to theming up the place for Halloween! Food, decor, and servers are all in character! Now you know where to go when you need to organize your next big bash. Don’t believe me? Check the pics below.

For the full set of photos and videos I took that night, head over to my Flickr’s SBG2009 set.

I’ll save this space right here to give a shout-out to the bloggers and non-bloggers who I’ve met and taken pictures of/with at Sabah Bloggers Gathering 2009. I can’t do this right now, coz I have loads of tagging and uploading left to do on my Flickr and Facebook photos and videos.

Now, for my obligatory shout-outs (those that I didn’t mention above): Amy @ Life Here ‘N’ There, Earthy Emily @ Chronicles of a Taurean Lady, Sheila @ She Says, Dazeree @ The Sky’s The Limit, Joan @ Joan Says, Fairy Fenelly, Vienne @ Life Is Wonderful and hubby (?), RaggaMan Clerence, BuliBahKalauKo peeps, Aleaf @ I’m Not a Green Bag, Ricky @ hushmonkey, Kinky Jasmine, Jacq @ Caneeliea, Wei Chuen, (more coming).

Thanks to the organizers for giving us the time of our lives, and especially all of you party-goers for making Sabah Bloggers Gathering a happening party and a night to remember.

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Oh em gee, Sabah Bloggers Gathering is barely a week away! What makes this year’s gathering special is that it’s held on Hallow’s Eve, and you bet everyone’s gonna get crazy with their costumes!

Speaking of costumes, the theme is suppose to be anything really freaky looking, but I’m not planning to dress like that. I worry that my kids may have nightmares when they see their mom dressing up as a boogie (wo)man. Therefore, I am dressing up as something else but no less grrrl-looking, and I’m keeping it to myself till that night comes.

The hot and hunky organizers are doing a great job, yet again. Venue will be the the scenic loft of the classy Imperial International Hotel, in the heart of Kota Kinabalu city. Local supremo guitarist Roger Wang, and Alvin from the Malaysian reality show group Infinatez will be joining the list of entertainers for the night’s show. And, will Nuffnang and our wonderful bloggers from Tawau make a surprise appearance?

So for those of you who are in Kota Kinabalu and would like to crash the party, entrance fee is just RM20 per head. If it’s anything like last year, get ready to delight yourself with some scrumptious food and gourmet/premium desserts! It’s so worth it just for the food itself!

I’m off to pick up my kids, and then do some costume shopping, see you all there!

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It’s a miracle that I even got the chance to go to SBG’08 last night, as my better half finally decided that he’ll look after the kids. Since I don’t have a digicam, I had to make do with my humble Nokia N70 camphone. The picture quality leaves much to be desired, so understandably I didn’t take any picture.

Well, maybe just a couple.

The far side where the cool people sat.

My side of the room where the less cool people sat, the exception being Gaman (sabahan.com), my money-making guru.

Or three.

Aleaf and Ricardo shares my sad corner.

Or four.

Boogey on the dance floor with Terry Peter and his posse.

These are just sad, sad photos. I’m just waiting for other bloggers who attended to upload their photos so that I can just leech those from ‘em *sigh*.

One of my main purposes of coming to this gathering is for networking, and I vowed to myself that I would shake hands with every single one of them. Which I didn’t. The large crowd and loud music made it almost impossible. Still, I’d like to believe that I did manage to know a lot of them, compared to last year’s gathering. Nice to see familiar faces, and great to know new ones. We have great sponsors, too!

So, a shout out to the organizers and those I chatted to personally (in no particular order): Elphege and Ben Godomon, Gaman, Joneh, Aleaf, Pai, Ricardo (who happens to be my “uncle” whom I haven’t seen in a long time), Echah and hubby, Eshark, Emelda, Gallivanter, Jacq, Wei Chuen, Fara, Julian, Sumardi, Nur, Robb, “Chegu” Carol, Josie, Margaret, Ratu Syura, Shemah, Clement, Dan, Angriani, Zach, Shueqry, Maya, LadyMariah, … oh I swear I missed around 20 or more people with their cool names! This list will grow I promise.

I hope the socializing will continue through our blogs, and I look forward to another Sabahan Bloggers Gathering next year!

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