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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*Yawn* As I predicted since the announcement of the AF teaching faculty, ALL the students’ vocals were mediocre, and Cikgu Syafi has YET to DO ANYTHING with expanding their vocal talents. Someone just give her a slap on the head and GET HER TO DO WHAT SHE’S SUPPOSE TO DO! OK, I’ll just hold that thought for a while and go through my comments starting with:

EBI: It breaks my heart to say this to a fellow Sabahan, but his facial mimic was all wrong for this song, and his voice and performance were pathetic. Ebi gave us a sample of his vocal prowess (or rather, lack thereof) in Diari AF week 1, but I still kept my fingers crossed hoping I was just hearing wrong. As soon as he started singing Sudirman’s “Milik Siapakah Gadis Ini” though, I right away wished that he would be the first person voted out of AF. And I was almost on the spot, if not for the fact that Diya screwed up her performance, and Zana pulled out at the last minute.

FARHA: Oh Farha, how can your baby face convince me that you can carry a Search rock song? He’s got a slightly better than average voice, making him one of the few male AF students to potentially last till the top 8. Performance-wise, his was average but he’ll probably do better if he gets songs that are of his genre, like ballad and slow rock. Sheila On 7 and Dewa songs might just work best for him.

CANDY: I’m glad the members of the jury noticed Candy’s vocal tone, something that appealed to me as well when I first heard it through Tirai AF. Just like Ogy A.D., I couldn’t understand a word of English she said, but I can tell that she gave her best during her performance. If she’s given songs such as — oh, I don’t know — Joss Stone’s, I have a gut feeling that she may just amaze me (save for her English pronunciation). Candy was one of only TWO participants at this point to receive positive reviews from all three jury members.

NONI: You see, the major downside to Noni is that although she has good vocal tone, her range is very, very limited. Her performance tonight could have been OK, if not for her attempt to get the audience to join in (when you don’t have enough stage presence and confidence, an effort like this gets very lame). Her lack of maturity doesn’t help with her popularity either, but since she just got out of high school, I won’t bother saying much about that.

• Based on the VT shown, Aswad has the potential to score this season as one of the top 3 winners of AF. I’m not betting on it just yet, since what was played was the studio version of his voice, not live singing.
• Oh my God, I see another Mawi fanaticism coming in Heliza. If she was as polite, as intelligent, as pretty, as level-headed, and as mature as she was right now WITHOUT the tudung (veil), I wonder if she’ll still be as popular. In any case, if the AF teachers guide her well and if she heeds their advice, I don’t think anything should stop her from becoming the first ever AF female to win the top spot.
• Dekna proves that her singing is not as pitchy as Mas AF2, LOL! Too bad Dekna’s voice doesn’t have the uniqueness that Mas has.
• Speaking of AF teachers — after listening to their vocal performances, can you blame me for hating Cikgu Syafi?! Gah! I’m just so fed up with her! She failed to improve their vocal techniques last season, and she’s not faring any better this time. So it’s too early through this AF season, so what. Even Cikgu Adnan gave better advice than she did when it comes to vocal performances. Listen back to the voices of Mila, Heliza and Afiq to name a few; they have excellent voices, but they were very pitchy and they fail to exert power or sustain them — wouldn’t happen if Syafi did her job effectively. During their singing practices, it’s never enough to remind the students every minute on the importance of breathing, which Syafi doesn’t emphasize enough the way Siti Hajar did. Getting Cikgu Chedd involved in giving these students extra vocal exercises proves my point about Syafi’s ineffectiveness.

Bosan (bored), I tell you. The show and its people couldn’t match the intensity that was AF2 and AF3. So I wait, yet again, amidst the constant illnesses that are befalling Akademi Fantasia students, and hope that after concert number 2 there is something worthwhile to be excited about.

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This has got to be the most Sabahans ever to be selected in Akademi Fantasia — if you’re considering Ekin of AF3 to be a Sabahan, get your geography right… even the people of Labuan don’t consider themselves as Sabahans, alright? I lived there during AF 3, I know. Our Sarawakian counterparts weeren’t so lucky — only one guy was selected. In any case, let’s hope their quality is any better than AF3 (no offense to Velvet and Lotter of AF4, but Marsha and Felix were waaaayyyy better).

But wait, did I count right? 16 total participants, instead of the usual 12? It’s interesting enough that Astro decided to premier AF three months early. I’m guessing that Akademi Fantasia will run a bit longer than its usual 2-month period, which means that our mobile and phone bills will be suffering for a while longer, hah!

Grabbed from Sultan Muzaffar’s site, here are the Sabahans selected for this season — Candy, Kadazan-Dusun from Tambunan; Ebi, Malay from KK; Farha, Bajau from KK; and Noni, Sino-Malay from KK. Is it just me, or doesn’t Noni in the picture look a bit like the AF guest judge and One In A Million judge Syafinaz? Candy, in the meantime, reminds me of Nikki from Malaysian Idol, but I could be wrong ’cause I don’t watch Malaysian Idol much. Coincidentally, these two hails from the same hometown.

and…

I’m gonna check with my little sister Laura later, and see if she knows any of them.

Trivia: My uncle’s niece is Marsha AF3, who is a cousin of Linda AF2. Rich AF3 is a former classmate of my sister Laura, and Velvet AF4 is my relative (his dad came by my mom’s batik shop in Tuaran during AF4 to buy some stuff… and to lobby for Velvet, indirectly of course, hahah!). You know, when you’re a Dusun living in Sabah, you have relatives everywhere.

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My sister was the first to be tried out by Ajai and company when she went for auditions on the 25th of last month. She didn’t get the cut though.

Still, I wonder how AF’s going to be this 5th season. Since Akademi Fantasia (Wikipedia) opened its doors for Borneons to join during the 2nd season, our fellow Sabahans has been monopolizing as 1st runner ups — Linda in AF2, Felix in AF3 and Lotter in AF4. Will we ever manage to get numero uno? Will the 5th season bring a wind of change? Will Sabahans suddenly get richer this year, resulting in an overwhelming feeling of generosity towards Astro, that we’d be willing to spend thousands of ringgit each week (like Mawi fans have) to vote for a fellow Sabahan, thus ending the 2nd-place syndrome and finally having him/her become the first ever Sabahan champion?

Or would any of us Sabahans even care? Looking at the track record of our runner-ups, their shot to stardom post-AF has not been impressive. Even Felix, who was recently nominated for Berita Harian’s Popular Star Awards (Anugerah Bintang Popular), has not been exploited to his full potential, appearing and disappearing in the local entertainment news like the Chipsmore cookie. Adam has faired better under KRU Corp‘s care despite being 3rd in AF2, although I remembered an article a few years back where CEO Norman mentioned how the corporation planned to focus more on its filming ventures due to the ease of piracy in the music arena.

In any case, I am quite frustrated with the level of achievements of our fellow Sabahans from the reality shows thus far, so I’ll see how AF 5 goes but I won’t be spending my SMS credits just yet.

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