anthroblogia

I went to another blogger party last Thursday (participant observation is such a drag sometimes... ) - for once it was not a Nuffnang party, but one organised by Advertlets (I didn't have a camera, so I'm borrowing some pics from others - sources indicated)


The event was at Envie - a nice little club, with an 'interactive dance floor'. This is the best picture I could find


But actually it's more interesting than that - it's a 'touch sensitive' dance floor, and each square is like a 'pixel' and there are games possible. We played 'Musical chairs' on it (I got a Google t-shirt - uber geek!) - but that was the only game I saw, and I would have liked to see more. They're also a bit sensitive about the RM250K dance floor, and you're not allowed to be holding your drink while on it.

The emcees were the stars of the 8TV series Blogger Boy (I think you can watch the episodes online too) - there was free flow until 10, and lots of bloggers partying, camwhoring, drinking, doing silly things for prizes, and generally messing about I met a few bloggers I know already: kruel74 (who put me on the guest list, thanks!), Tian Chad, and Dustyhawk - and of course the founder/CEO/etc. of Advertlets himself - birthday boy Josh Lim

I also met the sole employee of Google in Malaysia (who provided the Google t-shirts) - he told me that you can now get Blogger in BM, which was news for me. However, a lot of people prefer to use the English version because that's what they're used to already, even if they blog in BM.


It was a nice evening, smaller than the usual Nuffnang event - but with nice people and a good atmosphere as well. There were very few 'Nuffnangers' there - this fits in with previous observations of other meets I've been too: AMBP, All-Blogs, etc. Generally, most bloggers seem to stick with one group: this leads to questions about the 'blogosphere' as whole... Some bloggers have said to me that there is no real 'blogosphere' - what do you think?


Other blog posts about the event (please tell me if I've missed any):
• Bitchy Mitchy: Thursdays full of rainbow
• Let there be chaos: Hatin' On the Club
• Life's Journey: How are we, my Friday feathered friends?
• Mai Tomyam: Malaysian Bloggers Evening 2009: Super Party Time for Bloggers
• nadea.maradana's blog: Malaysian Blogger Evening by Josh Lim
• RowYourBoat Blog: Party @ Envie Lounge
• Stephen's Blogs: Malaysian Blogger's Evening - Party Like A Blogstar!
• Tian Chad @ ???: Envie Club With A Little Surprise!
• Yantz.Yanttie lif3st0ry: EVeninG p@rty for bl0ggErs

A previous post looked at blogger alliances in the world. Though instead of 'world' I should really say 'English language Google & Technorati' because that's all I looked at. I will look at French and Italian at some point, but more interesting would be to look at Korea, China, Japan, India (though the latter would likely have turned up in English...), Russia, and so on.

There were not many, and I categorised them by the broad categories: Political, Religious, Hobby & Single Interest, and Blogosphere Centred. Now I'll try to summarise some of the characteristics of them. The first of which is that they were almost exclusively American (20 out of 22).

Geo-Political boundaries
Most of the political ones were based on bloggers within a certain constituency (for example, the state of Virginia), banding together to represent their interests online, in an extension of their offline political allegiances. The 'Kurdistan Bloggers Union' refers to an ethnic rather than a geo-political territory, and no doubt many of the bloggers there were not necessarily based in the region of 'Kurdistan': this offers one example of the transnational potentialities of the blogosphere.
Others that transcend (potentially at least) offline geo-political borders would be the religious ones (though one is locally based – the 'SoCal [South California] Bloggers' Alliance') and the nascent 'Sci-Art Bloggers' initiative.

Founders
This one is a bit difficult to find out without further research, but some seem to be more individual initiatives, such as the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, while others have more of a collective base - Media Bloggers Association may be an example of this, though I don't know for sure.
Knowing the context of the founding of these groupings is important because then we can gain insight into their goals and motivations. For example, a single person might set up an 'alliance' and invite others to register and/or post simply in order to benefit (financially and/or socially) from the traffic on the website; a group effort is more likely to reflect particular social goals such as an effort to create a 'space' for contestation/alternative discourse. Continue reading "Bloggers allied - Part II"