July 15, 2012

Nuffnang Blogopolis 2012

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will be attending the Nuffnang Blogopolis. So on Saturday morning, 14th July, woke up so early *yawns* (I think it's the earliest I've woken up during this hols!) and got my ass down to Concorde Hotel, KL.

FYI, Blogopolis is a blog conference for bloggers, by bloggers. It's a day long event with master classes to educate, learn and foster the growth of the Malaysian blogosphere. This is the first blogopolis held in Malaysia, though there has been others like in Australia.

Warning: Lots of pictures, links, description and it's a long post below. You have been warned! *wink*


Pic of me first!! Haha...lace dress for a smart casual event!


Arrived! Concorde Hotel is one of the oldest hotel in KL but it has been refurbished and it's beautiful!


The arrivals outside the grand ballroom.


Met Dewgem there and here we are with Batman!


It's like the so called 'paparazzi' entrance where when you come in, you write something on the board for the photographers to snap you! 


Yeap, that's me! 


Half part of the Grand Ballroom


People are filling up the places.


Blogger!


The twitter screen. Twitter is the 'in' thing that day to win giveaways and almost everyone's tweeting non-stop to update their status! #NNBMY2012


The event started around 9.30am, a bit later than scheduled. When it started, it got the ball rolling with fun speakers on stage, sometimes three or two speakers at a time.


The emcee, Sophia and the screen shows the first three speakers on Idea Sourcing and Content Generation: Ken Wooi, Chee Wah and KY.


So, I'm going to do a little introduction on all the speakers. Ken from kenwooi.com is a funnyman online and offline! He is the life of the group and gave good insights on doing locally influenced post which will attract readers and trending celebrations. 

Chee Wah is the editor of TimeOutKL magazine and he mentioned everyone has their own point of interest so your interest will be your strength, hence, use that advantage in your blog posts and you will never lose interest in blogging. I cannot agree more!

Food Blogger, KY, gets blog post inspiration from his passion for food, therefore, advicing bloggers to be inspired by your passion!


Me with Ken Wooi! Very nice person =)


Another one with Dewgem!


After that, it was morning tea! Went out to find some delicious snacks prepared by the hotel.





And then it's the 'Opportunities gained through blogging' session.

Huai Bin and Hui Wen.

Huai Bin from Sixthseal.com and Hui Wen, creative director of Azorias(WOW!) from revel-in-me both opined that blogging should not be work, but doing what you like or else it won't last. Further, networking is important to expand your horizon and just be yourself while writing!


Guess who I met?! You know, the 'meme' proposal girl, Audrey Ooi from fourfeetnine *screams* (such a fan of her!) and right is Hui Wen!! Audrey is really petite and she's always smiling and so nice hehe


Next is Blog Design 101 session. I know nuts about blog designing so there was much to learn. 

Eric Cruz, Firdaus and Lionel Chin were the experts!

Eric is the Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett and he emphasised that although design plays an important role, the contents of a blog should be prioritised. Of course, people are interested to read what you write rather than just stay and admire your cover page. 

Firdaus is the Lead Creative Designer for Netccentric, parent company of Nuffnang and Churp Churp. In effect, the designs you see on the Nuffnang page is by him and his team! For a blog to attract readers, he said to focus on the contrast, fontsize, legibility and readibility! For colour scheme tools, Kuler tool was recommended.  

Lionel, the web designer of Xiaxue's blog is the co-founder of Ripplewerkz. He's quite quiet but very knowledgeable. He advises for blogs to be clear, concise and have easily digest layouts and ensure compatibility. It was a very informative session!


Moving on, it was the 'Building your brand' session.

By Vivy Yusof and Abang Nara.

I'm a big fan of Vivy and follow her at proudduck where she talks about her life mostly. Her advice is to make your brand unique so that it stands out and never be a copy cat! Also, blogs should be updated often because people get bored easily(true!) and keep it nice and clean for good readability.

Abang Nara from beautifulnara is a super popular Malay blogger. He took 4 years to create his brand name and now is one of the top bloggers in Malaysia. His advice on bad/hate comments is that not to fight back because you don't want to portray a certain persona. Just keep quiet and go on doing things you love hehe

With the beautiful Vivy Yusof!


With Abang Nara!


Then, it's lunch time! It's a buffet and there's plenty of food. Very delicious as well. The food at Concorde was really awesome!


The salad bar


The dessert bar..Yumms!


Okay, there's the main course but I did not take pics of them because 1. I'm so excited to eat the yummy-licious food *laughs* and 2.I got carried away with the desserts. It's not in the pic but the cheese cake and the chocolate cake and the whatever cake/mouse/fruits were just so delicious, I got greedy LOL..I took so much until was so full till dinner =p

Met with Isaac Tan during lunch.


The master classes started again and it was Blog Photography 101.

Speakers: Carlos Nizam and Sue Anna Joe

CarlosNizam is a photographer and he has a photography blog. I like when he said that, 'A real moment is something you can't create'. It's just there and it just needs the right moment and with some luck to capture it.

Sue Anna, also a photographer and she really goes all the way to find the right angle to capture pictures even when her jeans are torn kneeling or lying down to photograph when she's 6 months pregnant!! This is passion and to her, eyes are the window to the soul! Both of them support instagram! YAY!


With Sue Anna! She's so petite in real life!


The next session is what everyone has been anticipating from the start! No introduction necessary as she is Singapore's top blogger and I think every blogger knows her!!

XIAXUE giving her speech. She's the only solo presenter.


Xiaxue has been blogging for 8 years and have rose to fame so fast that she is envied by many. Her speech was funny, insightful as she is the guru of blogging and very entertaining. She is named a lifestyle blogger but she herself does not know what that means *laughs* She said, you don't have to be specialised in one thing and limit yourself to like a food blogger, beauty blogger or travel blogger. Just write what you're comfortable with and never apologise what you have written! 
Also, auto play music on blogs is ANNOYING! I couldn't agree more with her! And never beg/force people to follow you on twitter or add you on FB!


Me with xiaxue =))

She's actually very petite and looks quite timid one. Serious! Very nice and obliged to so many fans asking to take photos with her. Also, she's like a real life doll, with her pink hair, neon jacket and green bag, she cannot be missed! So small size but very prominent! ^_^ 

And *gasp* I'm sitting the same row as her!! That's her husband, Mike, Xiaxue and her friend.


Next, talking about the Malaysian blogosphere were presenters Premesh, Timothy Tiah and Kenny Sia.



Premesh is the CEO of Malaysiakini and his intake on blogging is that there is a sharp change in the impact of the blogging world as brands are going online. Traditional media are not working very effectively these days.

Timothy Tiah, the co-founder of Nuffnang, basically the boss there, who also blogs at timothytiah.com talked a lot about the history of Nuffnang when he started it at early 2006. It was a very interesting story and I got to know Nuffnang's first advertiser was Exabytes! who is an advertiser of this blog as well! See the above banner of my blog =)) He also mentioned that the blogosphere is evolving a lot from last time.

Kenny Sia is such an awesome person! He knew we were getting tired as it was close to late evening and he made us do some quick stretch to our body. Then he gave good tips to us saying we must not expect too much. Doesn't mean you're a blogger, you're entitled to freebies. Have integrity first, establish yourself and then you will be taken seriously and people will want to advertise with you. 

He's such a cool guy and at the end of it he said, bloggers should help each other and do not need to be competitive. He encouraged us saying, if each one of us were to promote just one other blog, it'll be a great thing in the blogosphere. Such a nice guy! Well, I have promoted soo many blogs here in this one post. I have taken his advice very seriously *laughs*


Me with Mr.Nice guy, Kenny Sia!


The final session was by the last two speakers, Ernest Ng and Maria Elena talking about using different platforms to optimize blog traffic.


Ernest Ng, a creative comic blogger at dontlikethatbro doesn't care if you can't draw!! He said drawing is down to basic pencil and paper. Everyone can pick up a pencil and start drawing on a paper. It doesn't matter if it's not nice! Point is, no matter how crappy you think you're drawing is, you can still be a comic blogger if you believe in your drawings! The top comic bloggers draw in the simplest way and hence no excuses to be creative! 

Maria Elena uses her creativity on vlogging. She blogs and she vlogs as well. Vlogs are video blogging. She has her own youtube channel with more than 3 million views!! She says videos must be clear, of good quality and audible. She's such a funny girl with her own quirkiness and it's great for laughters especially since it was the final session and we were getting tired. 


Finally, the day long conference ended at 7pm. It was such an informative event and I learnt so much and met so many bloggers- all of whom are very nice people! So lucky to be a part of it =)

There you go! That's the summary of each presenter and the happenings from my view of the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2012! Long or not? I think this is my longest post in my history of blogging!! LOL Well, if some of you wanted but couldn't attend it, there's a gist of what happened =)



Really loved this cup from the goodie bag!


The batman poster from the goodie bag I won from P1, one of the sponsors of the event. Can't wait to catch the movie!!


Okay, just one last bit, I promise =p I know there is a certain perception of society towards bloggers. People think bloggers rant and bitch about other people or things only. Well, that's not true! I, for one do nothing of that. However, the blogosphere is evolving and bloggers are treated differently nowadays and that social media can really make or break a brand! Glad that is happening!

Anyway, it's really great to be among bloggers. It's like a sense of belonging =)  I know, coz not many of my college/school friends do this. But, yeah, also found out, the lady bloggers are actually quite petite in real life! The likes of Sue Anna, Xiaxue and Audrey! They seem to have a big voice in their blogs but in real life, they are nice, smiling people and it's really awesome I got to see them!  

They plan to do Blogopolis every year. If there is one next year, all bloggers should really attend it! Cheers~

XOXO
 

4 comments:

  1. This must be th most detailed post I have read of blogopolis so far! Thnks for sharing! That was quite a lot of information:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha yeah, I know, it's LONG!! But sure, you're welcome =)

    ReplyDelete