Planning iBlog5: The 5th Philippine Blogging Summit

The iBlog5 team met yesterday to discuss the logistical requirements needed for the event. This is scheduled to happen on May 9, Saturday at the UP College of Law, Malcolm Hall of U.P. Diliman, Quezon City.

iBlog5: The 5th Philippine Blogging Summit is an activity spearheaded by the U.P. Law - Internet and Society Program (UP-ISP) headed by Atty. JJ Disini. UP-ISP is now a body under the Institute of Government and Law Reform headed by JJ as well.

We are now in the process of finalizing topics and speakers for iBlog5. Your input on topics and speakers will be very much appreciated. We also hope that majority of our speakers, same as last year, will be new faces from the blogging community.

This is initially what I have in mind. Note that this is still subject to revision.

Morning session: (some can be sponsored talk)

• 9:00 - 9:20 Blogging 101 (Micaela Rodriguez & sponsor slot)
  
• 9:30 - 9:50 Photo Blogging 101 (Faith Salazar and Fritz Tentativa)
  
• 10:00 - 10:15 Break
• 10:15 to 10:35 Video Blogging 101 (Azrael Coladilla)
  
• 10:45 - 11:05 Mobile Blogging 101 (sponsor slot)
  
• 11:15 - 11:35 Do's and Don'ts of Blogging 101 (Benj Espina and Juned Sonido)
  
• 11:45 - 12:05 Blog Promotion & Traffic Generation Strategies 101 (Winston Almendras and Coy Caballes)
  
• 12:05 - 1:00 Lunch break
  

Afternoon session:

• 1:00 - 1:20 Legal issues in Blogging
• 1:30 - 2:30 Preparing Bloggers for the 2010 Elections
  - COMELEC on Blogging & Bloggers
  - Citizen Journalism for the 2010 Elections (Oliver Robillo, NAMFREL Chairman - Davao City)
  - The Bloggers Election Handbook project release (Janette Toral)
• 2:40 - 3:30 Blog Advertising Situation in the Philippines (Yehey and 2 sponsors)
  
• 3:30 - 3:45 Break
• 3:45 - 4:45 Blogging to the Next Level (Fitz Villafuerte and Anton Diaz)
• 4:45 - 5:00 Raffle & Group picture taking

7:00 pm onwards After-Event Party (sponsored)

At this point, we will appreciate referrals you can give in terms of entities we can approach for iBlog5 sponsorship. Just send me their info (contact name, position, company, email, contact number) and the assigned iBlog5 team member shall get in touch with them.

As usual, free food and schwags will be given to participants!

See you soon at iBlog5! I look forward meeting newbies and veteran bloggers alike soon!

How to Photoblog & Vlog from the Mobile Phone

With mobile Internet becoming faster, it is now possible to actually mobile blog from your cellphone, take photos for your photoblog, and videos for your vlog. All of this can be also uploaded straight from your mobile phone.

I've been tinkering around this lately and able to come up with a settings that will work best for my Nokia N95 and support my mobile blogging endeavors. Here is what I've done to optimize it:

• Photo settings
  Pick on small which is ideal for MMS. File size of pictures is less than 100kb which is good for blog posts too. Although you can also go for the e-mail size medium setting which saves a file at no more than 200kb like the Sony Vaio P shown here. (click on the image to see how big the photo really is)
  
  
  
• Videos
  I'll go for e-mail normal quality. As viewers on the mobile phone may have limited time and you don't want to wait too long for uploading. Try to come up with 1-to-1.5 minutes video only. Be creative about it. For my videos, I tried creating a What's New series as an experiment and here's how it looks like. This is a quick interview with Jing Garcia, tech times editor of Manila Times, as he talks about the Sony Vaio P.
  
  Note however that once you picked a higher setting, the time duration I mentioned may not necessarily apply. Depending on the regular or mobile blogging platform you'll be using, check out the maximum file size allowed.
  
  For the e-mail normal quality with 1-to-1.5 minutes content, that should be like less than 4 mb file size.
  

So I guess my point here is that you can now actually do mobile blogging with all the necessary photos and videos taken and uploaded straight from your mobile phone. With the right settings and program format, the content you'll be able to generate can be an exciting one. Try it out!