Thursday, October 14, 2004

talking points

It's come to my attention that the launch of INQ7.net's Talking Points blog has elicited a negative reaction among certain members of the Philippine blogging community -- you know who you are.

It's OK to rant. It's OK to say that you hate our blog and don't want to have anything to do with it -- no one's forcing you to use it if you don't like it. But to say that it's not a "true blog," that INQ7.net has no right to use blogging as a tool because we're the mainstream media (the establishment as opposed to the bloggers who are the alternative media), and worse, to say that we apparently stole the idea from certain Philippine bloggers, well, who are now positioning themselves as the gods who determine what blogging is and who and how it should be used?

What I find hilarious is that here I was, excited over blogging and deciding to feature bloggers in YOU and Infotech after friends got me hooked on it, and now it's being made to appear that all along I was stealing ideas from people. That INQ7.net, evil, mainstream, I'm-the-
establishment INQ7.net, was plotting to benefit from all the hard work of the Philippine blogging community without giving proper credit. Give them credit because we thought of a way to use blogging to give our readers a new means to express their opinion, give them credit because we introduced what the other mainstream media outlets haven't? This is like saying that companies should not put up a webpage because websites are meant for individuals, that it's a personal space that would only be commercialized or what have you. The funny thing is that I've always had a bias for writing IT stories about people, not companies, because I figure companies already have their own PRs to generate publicity for them.

Are we telling people not to visit these personal blogs? No. In fact, I've been featuring these bloggers -- and I didn't hear them screaming, "I don't want to be interviewed by INQ7.net because you're part of the evil mainstream media." Don't we have a right to use blogging as a tool just as we've made news and opinion accessible through PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, interactive TV and other devices and platforms? Wake up and smell the coffee: newspaper columnists are blogging, the military is blogging, companies are blogging. You don't own blogging. The Internet was originally a response to the threat of nuclear war and was once upon time the exclusive playground of the military, scientists and the academe. Does that mean it shouldn't have been made available to everyone, especially the evil mainstream media?

And don't quote Migs Paraz out of context, because I was the one who brought up the idea of using blogging as a tool for online journalism (funny how the relevant phrases mysteriously disappeared in their post, eh?) and this was his response in full:

Do you see blogging as the next step in online journalism here in the Philippines?

I've never thought about it; now that you mention it, I don't see much value in the journalists themselves posting the stories as blogs. What I think would be useful is building a community of bloggers who can post reactions to the stories. The journalists/news outlets can help by making the updated stories easily available -- like by syndicating them via feeds. If the journalists read the comments, then that completes the feedback loop.

In fact here's the article in full. Go to the Sassy Lawyer for the truncated version of a paragraph from the article.

Blogging the RP tech scene
Updated 05:28pm (Mla time)
Sept 30, 2004

By Joey Alarilla
INQ7.net

SURE, we have lots of Pinoy bloggers, yet how many of them write about technology or cover the latest developments in the Philippine information technology industry?

Enter Migs Paraz, techie extraordinaire and one of the pillars of the Philippine Internet community, who, since June of this year, has made it his mission in life to aggregate feeds from Pinoy tech blogs on his Pinoy Tech Scene site at http://pinoytechscene.mparaz.com/.
So, why would anyone undertake this kind of project (for free, I might add)? We'll let Migs do the talking.

What's your main goal for putting up the site?

I saw a lack of tech blogs (and other serious essay/topic blogs, as opposed to personal ones -- though I haven't addressed that yet). I wanted people looking for dynamic Pinoy tech content to easily find it. The bloggers can post topics that aren't covered by mainstream tech sites or give some opinions and insights that otherwise wouldn'tfind an audience.

It can also be accessed with an RSS (which can stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, depending on which encyclopedia you believe. The important thing to remember is that this is one of the standards for syndicating website content and publishing regular updates available to web users.) reader. I aggregate the feeds (Atom or RSS) into a single RSS feed.

How many people regularly visit Pinoy Tech Scene?

Not many. Like the past few days, I averaged 250 hits a day. Some are from people all over the world not looking for anything Pinoy, but [who] came across the site when searching for tech keywords. If the pages satisfied their knowledge requirement, then I'm happy that we were able to export our knowledge!

Do we already have many tech bloggers in the Philippines and what can be done to encourage the growth of tech blogging?

I don't know many aside from the ones I listed on the site. Unfortunately a lot of local tech content is posted in forums which require registration and are thus not searchable from the outside. One of my goals in putting up an aggregator is to make these [sites] more searchable.

Other technical discussions are in the form of mailing lists. While these are informative, they follow the form of a conversation, and one message alone is not complete. A tech blog can help by summarizing the discussion.

Another downside of tech blogging is that many techies aren't really interested in documenting their experiences, or if they are, can't find the time. (Like myself -- there's a lot of stuff I've done that I haven't written about. I want to, but then, priorities...)

How has blogging helped you and other tech bloggers get more people interested in technology and Philippine IT issues?

I don't have concrete examples of it happening, but I think what blogs can do is present a personal face to tech. When people talk about it in the context of their daily living, readers who are interested in personal blogs will discover the tech stories within.

Do you see blogging as the next step in online journalism here in the Philippines?

I've never thought about it; now that you mention it, I don't see much value in the journalists themselves posting the stories as blogs. What I think would be useful is building a community of bloggers who can post reactions to the stories. The journalists/news outlets can help by making the updated stories easily available -- like by syndicating them via feeds. If the journalists read the comments, then that completes the feedback loop.

What new features would you like to add to Pinoy Tech Scene?

My immediate goal is to fix the formatting of the posts. Right now, long posts and those with extra formatting break the layout. After that, I don't need extra features unless I get more tech bloggers onboard. When I do, I may need to organize the posts better.

* * *
Visit Pinoy Tech Scene at http://pinoytechscene.mparaz.com/. You may also visit Migs Paraz's blog at http://mparaz.com.

E-mail the author at joeyalarilla@gmail.com and visit http://babelmachine.blogspot.com.

Posted by Joey Alarilla :: 1:52 PM :: 26 Comments:

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