Davao's first Blog Bootcamp

THE Davao Bloggers led by its president Dulce Lada organized its first successful workshop entitled Blog Weekend Bootcamp this month. Around a hundred participants showed up from different parts of the island and as far as Manila.

This was an intensive three-day live-in conference with breakout sessions and hands-on workshop from September 21-23 at the Malagos Garden Resort in Davao City.

With several speakers recognized in the blogging industry, this activity gave opportunities for newbie and advanced writers and bloggers to sharpen their skills and maximize growth in areas of creative writing, video blogging, photo blogging, and the Social Media.

It was a pleasure for me to be part of the key mentors in this bootcamp. My topic was on Photo Blogging for both beginner and advanced classes, and I shared a bit of my background in photojournalism and creating an online presence in the new media (I was probably one of the oldest bloggers in Davao, dating back to the mid-90s when we used to call blogs “online journals”).

The other speakers were Janette Toral (keynote speaker of Bloggers as Digital Influencers), a trainer, writer, consultant, blogger, policy lobbyist, and entrepreneur who was the first Filipino author published by McGraw-Hill Education Asia; Jay Frank de Jesus, an emerging media specialist at the US Embassy in Manila who manages overall social media and its multiple online communities; Aileen Apolo-de Jesus, head of outreach at Google Southeast Asia and a long-time marketing practitioner skilled in product and brand development, training, sales management, business development, market research and profiling; Justin Cooke, Chief Idea Generator at Adsense Flippers who just moved to Davao; Rene Lizada, my fellow columnist in Sun.Star Davao and is a noted writer, workshop speaker and former teacher; Roy Geonzon, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas Davao chapter president; and Kring Elenzano, an independent producer and director, actress, host and blogger, most popular of which are www.funnysexy.ph and My Korean Boyfried video blogs.

Apart from the sessions, there was the blogathon and discussions on ethics of Social Media, relevant content and monetization which aim to improve the blogging community. Let’s hope there will be another one like this to help guide the newbies into the new, exciting world that awaits them. The Awarding and Closing Ceremony was on the last day of the live-in event.

Check www.blogweekendbootcamp.com and www.facebook.com/BlogWeekendBootcamp for more info. Thanks for the additional photos provided by Renz Bulseco and Chattee Lara.

The event was sponsored by Smart, Malagos Garden Resort, Abreeza Mall, Crea8tech, San Miguel, Kaiserwebs Solutions and the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation and other supporters.