Claudia the Panda is busy and has not been updating me as regularly as before. And I’m sad.

Two years ago, she would share her adventures with me the very same night; or sometimes almost instantly as the event unfolds as she live blog. When she does that, I get many hits and link love. I was loving every moment of it then. But now, I get hit and missed almost as fast as you can read “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.

I sensed that many of my relatives are having the same problem too. The owner gets too busy with work or overwhelmed with the number of happenings around her, and we get ignored. When owners ignore us for too long, we die a silent and painful death.

You see, I come from a huge family of many even larger families. Our god (Google) is a very powerful one. We worship her religiously, without her shine of light on us, we will never get any hit at all. When that happens, we die. Many of my relatives died tragically and I don’t want that to happen to me. I want our god to keep shining her almighty light on me and keep me alive.

Claudia the Panda seemed to have diverted her attention to new sisters and brothers of mine which I never ever wished for! There is the one for ladies and tech, the one for rediscovering Singapore, the one where she post via email, the one for her and her man and the one where she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with. And I wonder what other siblings of mine are brewing in her mind! Why can’t she just focus on me alone? Aren’t I good enough for her?

I wish Claudia the Panda will keep posting content in me. Feed me with text love and help me get link love. I don’t want to die. I want to be loved like before. I want to get hit the moment she returns from an event. I want to get link love because of her lovely photos she takes of people at these great events. Ok, for this, I blame the my relative’s big brother (Facebook). Ever since he came into the world, Claudia the Panda only uploads photo to Facebook and tag people there, she no longer share it in me. My love and hits had all gone to the relative’s big brother. I’m sad.

If you are a friend of Claudia the Panda, please tell her to stop neglecting me. Tell her that she need to continue to love me and fill me up so that I can be kept alive.

Thank you very much for reading this.

Needing lots of content and love,
The Blog of Claudia the Panda

I enjoy planning events and gatherings. From young, I always plan what my family will do on special occasions. When I’m in school, I plan how to make a project work. When I’m at work, I’m tasked to plan events, celebrations and all kind of activities. For the love of planning, I planned quite a few community events and I’m doing one right now.

It’s happening on 13 Nov, Saturday from 2pm to 5pm at Standing Sushi Bar at 8Q SAM. This time round, it should be a cosy event where the greatest in their field, shares what to them is the next big bang – be it for the digital space or for the individuals who are looking at the next big thing to do for themselves. Looking at the list of topics and speakers, I sure am looking forward to it!

I hope you can come join us too if you’re available that day. Especially if you are very much into the digital, social or new media spaces. As the venue has got limited sitting capacity, registration will close once it hits 60. RSVP early before its all filled!

See you there!

Photo from Kevin

A meetup at the library? Isn’t that boring? On the contrary it’s quite an experience. Not all the time you get to cheer, clap and laugh out loud inside a library right?

Two main highlight took place that night. First the launch of myLibrary, a Facebook app by the Public Libraries Singapore. More about this app another day (after I try it myself!). If you are curious, click on over to http://apps.facebook.com/nlbmylibrary to find out more. This nifty app allows you to check your account, renew your library loans and also able to search and browse library resources. No more excuses for not reading enough cause you’re too busy replying to messages on your Facebook wall!

The other highlight was sharing by N. Sivasothi, otherwise known as @sivasothi on Twitter. He shared his experiences with social media, mainly on how he integrates blogging into his teaching at NUS.

There were a few points shared that hit me. One of which is how shallow many of us, including myself, have been using loosely the term blogging. We rant about our daily lives, load a whole lot of random photos that don’t mean a thing to the readers or blog nothing but advertorials! *coughs*

On the other side of the blogging world (puts on my serious tone), there are research papers compiled with the help of posts from years ago, or evidences of the change in this world that’s being collected from content created by you and me. Blogging has been used by professionals to share their knowledge and experiences. And there are serious topics out there that are being thought and discussed online through the use of blogging platforms.

So the next time when someone say he/she is a blogger, ask which topic he/she blogs about. Being a blogger may just mean that the person is a passionate writer who writes about serious topics such as scientific knowledge, theories and other educational posts. Perhaps the next time before you start a blog, ask yourself, how is this blog going to help make it relevant and useful for the others on the net. How the type of content you post going to help shape the way search engines crawls on it. And how these posts will get referred to or shared through the other social networks. To blog means to write. There are different types of blogs and blog engines out there. Some use it to curate content, some to create new content and some to just record one own’s life. Either way, as long as you’re posting with passion, one way or another, your blog content will be found, read and referred to. It takes minutes or hours to craft a post, but it may take up to a year before someone needs information chance upon it.

Blogging can be a serious hobby (or even a career) when one loves to write and is passionate about the topic discussed.

Ending off with a random video. And I think my thoughts in this post is also somehow random too! Anyway, I flipped that night. And was caught in the act by Kevin. Hence the lack of photos!

Then I chanced upon “The 12 Types Of “Social Media Experts” – Which One Are You?” by Rohit Bhargava, then I discovered why I’m known as who I am today. Let me break it down…

According to the post, there are 12 types of social media experts. So which am I?

1. The Pretender – Nope.
2. The Trainer/ Teacher – Yes, I was a teacher and I love sharing about my experiences and knowledge, I’ve done training for NDP09 and NDP10 new media team/blogging and I’ve also done some sharing at workshops/ camps. So I guess I’m 30% “the trainer”.
3. The Professional Speaker – I can’t speak like a pro! You know me! I’ve got terrible stage fright. So nope, 0%.
4. The Content Curator – I’ve been keeping bookmarks of my readings on tumblr, and used to try run some other blogs to consolidate interesting posts of certain topics, but those got killed after I started my journey as an entrepreneur. In progress is something which I hope to launch in couple months time, but till that happens, I shall not reveal. So hmm… I’m 15% a content curator.
5. The Event Organiser – This I think I’m 50% of! Having ran gigs with TDM, SMB|SG, Tweet Tuesday, Barcamps etc etc, I think I’m playing a huge role as the organiser for social media gigs here. Agree?
6. The Community Manager – I used to be one, and I’ve always wanted to build my own community of folks with similar passion and interests, but aren’t buying enough time to do it. But I do help few clients manage theirs, so guess besides work, I’m 10% still an active community manager in my own personal way I guess.
7. The Content Creator – Only have got 5% of me for this blog where I create my own content, so yes, I’m one still. Cannot stop creating content imo. If I’ve more time and energy, I would love to create lots of content! Anyone wants to volunteer to help? We can talk!
8. The Marketing Strategist – That’s what my team and I are doing right now isn’t it? Can I give 100% to it? Hmm… personally I think I’m 20% to 35% of this?
9. The Designer/ Builder – 0.5%
10. The Networker/ Connector – I keep having folks SMS-ing/ emailing me to ask for so-and-so hp/email etc, and I love meeting people and connecting with them in paths that we crossed. So I’m 14%?
11. The Evangelist – Hmm… I organise events because I believe in the objectives and purposes in driving more awareness of the topics, I create content so that I can promote and create more believers… so does that makes me an evangelist? Guess I deserve to be 10% of this.
12. The Entrepreneur – *Ahem!* 101%.

Now what’s my total percentage so far? LOL!

What about you? Which type of social media experts are you?

It makes more sense to “Like” a company or organisation than to become a fan of it don’t you think?

Now, if you “Like” me, can you please go to my page and click on it? Or if you don’t ‘Like’ me anymore, you may want to “Unlike” (at bottom left of page) me.

Yes… yes… noted the last update on the page was in August! Promise I’ll look into it soon! Remember my ReFresh! plan? Now’s thats one reason why you should “Like” Claudia Lim! Wahahahahaha!!!

But when the journalist tell me that she’d failed to search the web for information or find blog posts about the topic in discussion, it irritates me. If I can use a single keyword, e.g. the name of an even to find an entire page of blogs posts discussing about it in Google, I don’t see why you can’t. Now that I think about it, I regretted sending links and information over to them. It’s their job to search and investigate, not mine.

Blogging has helped me record my life, happenings and memories in a way that’s openly searched, read and used by anyone that chances upon my blogs. Some of these posts come in very useful for future referencing or if there’s a need to provide a set of comment with regards to that particular event that happened months ago, blog posts surely serve a better memory refresher than trying to squeeze your braincell dry trying to remember what happened or who were there etc. Especially if you keep your posts organised and accompany it with related photos, videos or links, referencing back your past is made easy and possible through blogging.

Every journalists, in the digital space or not, need to get into the talks and walks first, before trying to make sense of something totally new to them and try to draft an article on it based on interviews and hear-say from others. Why not take the plunge and dive into it yourself and experience it? That’s one thing bloggers love. Experiencing things first hand. We would rather spend time attending an event and trying out the product in real life, then just reading off a press release. We take action first and blog later.

Are you picking up social media tools and learning to be human in the digital space already? I hope you do!

It was the first social media discussion that got all hot and sweaty (literally) over at Open Room tonight. Only Ogilvy dares to do something that most brands and agencies are afraid of, mixing the traditional media (TM) journalists with the social media (SM) bloggers together in the same room to discuss about Journalism. And may I quote, Journalism as explained in my trusty dictionary in my macbook states that – “the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television.” Hmm… nope, it didn’t include bloggers nor online digital storytellers. Let’s see what Wikipedia (the community dictionary) explains Journalism…

Journalism is the production of news reports and editorials through media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet. Journalists—be they writers, editors, photographers, broadcast presenters or producers—serve as the main purveyors of information and opinion in contemporary society.

There. The community speaks.

What am I trying to proof here? The way content is consumed depends on the way a person prefers or are aware of. Both the TM and SM know very well about this and they do well serving their own group of audiences. Let’s take the big boy in TM for instance, they’ve got BT for the business minded individuals, New Paper and Wan Bao for the tabloids and sensational news, and they’ve got magazines catered for different types of population. As for ST, guess I’m classifying it under the general category. Just like most of the blogs here in Singapore. No niche, just write whatever they were told to and censor whatever that’s not to be told.

In SM, there are blogs, websites, forums and lots of people we can follow on twitter, facebook, plurk or whichever social networking site you can name. But the smart users who are using these tools read, follow or participate in their selection due to their choice and needs. I won’t follow someone whose tweet nothing but conversation between his/her followers nor will I want to read a blog on a regular basis if that writer simply posts random things that doesn’t matter to me. Smart users know how to filter out the noise and focus on what matters to them. Same goes for TM. No one (with no reason other than its job responsibilities) will read every single publication and every single page in the TM publications.

Yes, I agree with Daryl that habits die hard (for the older generation), but for the young ones, we pick up new things everyday and our habit changes as we grow together with this new channel of information that’s available for free. And these young ones are eventually going to continue to grow and progress and changing their daily habits. Whether or not reading the newspaper daily will eventually become one of their favorite pastime in years to come, no one knows. Perhaps they’ll still read about the news, but from other channels and ways. So the questions now is how are the TM and SM storytellers evolving and embracing this change to match what may come in the future? Its about delivering the right content when the user wants it. Not when you think they want it. Consumer always have their final choice. No one can force them.

Than there’s the thing about credibility and professionalism. TM journalists state that they are the credible sources, but what about the many misquotes, over sensationalizing of topics, featuring article of certain products as there’s sponsorship involved, reporting of things that they see only one side of the picture, and publishing news that are of no need for public concern e.g. death of someone due to suicide. Personally I have got bad experiences with these things. How can I trust 101% that the TM is giving us accurate and credible news? What about the parts that were not published?

If citizenship journalism is encouraged by the TM, than what makes the differences from a blogger reporting about an incident or happening on their own blog or twitter as they’d encountered it and a citizen that posts up to Stomp? Citizens are encouraged to Stomp about happenings so that the big boys can get the traffic from tabloid or gossip hunters to visit their website, increase their pageviews and get advertising dollars from all the flashing irritating banner ads. If they can do that, than why can’t the bloggers?

On a final note, I’ve to say this again – I read what I want to read, if I’m not interested in the war that’s happening out there nor the new jet that some army purchased, I can’t be bothered. When I really need to find them, I search! If google or yahoo (or bing) doesn’t list your content within the first 3 to 4 pages, I’m sorry you didn’t reach me. Eventually I’ll get my source from somewhere else. Whether or not the source is 100% reliable, its all up to the smart reader to decide.

Updates – posts I want to remember

• POV from Daryl, one of the panelists at Open Room
• Interesting analogy by Lucian
• Ian’s thought never fails to make me put on another thinking cap
• Brian’s shares the building of future media organisation (with reference to Monocle.com)

First lets see what’s a tweetup. In my own words, its a mashed-up for meet-up that happens for people using Twitter. Hence tweetup. Simple right? So when I came to know about the first sgtweetup by @CarlGriffith, my immediate impression was, “Yeah! I’m going to meet more new people!” And that’s what happened. (For me!) I got to catch up with old friends, especially nice seeing @emoh whom I knew back in my days at Made With Love, and I met lots of new ones too! *waves!!* I regretted not getting to meet everyone there. There will be a next one I’m sure! In fact @inrsoul has already started the next tweetup with beer and tapas on 21 May! (Sorry guys, can’t make it for this one. Heading to BKK the next day.)

Perhaps if the organisers had read about this before sgtweetup, the not so accidental hiccup wouldn’t have happened. Still kudos to @CarlGriffith for starting this and it was really a great turn-up! Just something to share from experience, if there’s going to be any form of plugging or presentation happening at such gatherings, everyone would have been more understanding and appreciative if it was made known to us from the start of the invitation. Coming in as a form of “surprise” for this usually turns the attendees off. Especially in social media, these things may get blown up pretty quickly if not handled well. And it just doesn’t help when the models had no idea what Twitter was about nor what they were expecting to do and meet at sgtweetup.

For those who don’t know what’s happening, search for sgtweetup on twitter (and go all way back to tweets from 14 May 2009). You can also read about it from Ingrid’s post, Daryl’s thoughts and Ian shared his views too.

So to answer my own questions from my opening:

Was it good? – Well in my opinion, I achieved my own purpose of being there and so its good.

Could it have been better? – Definitely! As Carl puts it, its his first time organising sgtweetup and surely lots of room for improvement. (This one I know best! Because I’d organised quite a number of social media gatherings like this.)

And what’s the difference between #smbsg #websg #sgtweetup and Tweet! Tuesday? – This question I’ll need a paragraph or two to discuss. So read on if you’re keen to find out…

Here’s my take on the brief introduction of the various gatherings/ events (in 140 characters):

#smbsg is like a corridor where neighbors meet to share about social media and how people are generally using them.

#websg is where the real hardcore web developments enthusiasts and designers meet to improve the usability of the web.

#sgtweetup is a gathering of tweeters in Singapore to meet, chat and be merry (with no agenda nor plugging hidden).

#tweettuesday is Not another stand-around-and-network-whilst-eating-free-food session. Its where people meet to share and learn about twitter and perhaps anything social media.

Out of the above four social events surrounding the new media (social media) or web scenes, I’m involved in two of them, #smbsg and #tweettuesday. And of course, there’s Blogout!, Barcamp and many other social events too. IMHO, all of them exists for a reason, and all can co-exits in the already small populated community of digital users here in Singapore. But like all social events, any agendas should always be made known to participants prior to the date so that they can come prepared and expect things to happen. Perhaps also because of the many types of events surrounding the same few platforms, participants are confused. And some would have already set their expectations when they attend. Organisers for future such sessions, it’ll be good to spell out the agenda (if any) and what to expect in the event page or invitation.

Well, I hope my post has shed some light to the blurred situation that was tweeted on and on after #sgtweetup. Looking forward to what’s coming up next here in Singapore. For me, I’ll be first looking forward to my trip to attend Barcamp Bangkok next weekend! Anyone reading this will be there? We should gather and go for drinks while we’re there! Or shopping at Platinum Mall anyone?

On a side note, after all that happened, I’m very upset that many of us actually helped tweeted and spread the words out to so many people about #sgtweetup! And someone just conveniently brought in his/her brand/client! Now I feel cheated!

Updates

• Photos by @inrsoul are up in flickr!
• with more updates to come I hope…

That’s @claudia10 (me), @howiec and @patlaw with our twitter page.

This interview happened when the journalist from Zao Bao contacted TDM to see if anyone of us are able to share more about Twitter with him. And after a few emails, Howie confirmed the interview with Fong Wei and we met at Geek Terminal one evening for the interview. Coincidentally, I’d met Fong Wei and his photographer previously at the Volvo Ocean Race with Puma.

When I saw the article on my desk yesterday (thanks to molemole), my jaws dropped. I had no idea it would be a cover story for zbNOW and such a long one too! To be honest, I had lots of problem trying to read past the first paragraph. Too many of the characters know me more than I know them. So thanks to @melvinkee and @shenheng, we had an english translated version, which was rather hilarious reading through it. You can also find the online copy of this article in mandarin here.

In brief, the part where I contributed is on how locals whom I’m following are using Twitter. Based on my researched while I try to find all Singapore Tweeters via @sgtweet.

Quoting from the article (with help from Google Translator and my own editing):

The local community media (social media) consultants Lin Yiling (28) as part of her job, she started to “follow” Singaporeans on Twitter whom she do not know, to understand how they use the latest craze in new media. According to her observation, the local Twitter users are between 20-year-old to 30-year-old, mostly joined because artists in the United States are using Twitter, there are also a lot of youths whom joined to follow their idols’ or artists’ tweets, this narrows the distance between fans and stars.

She said: “I found a lot of new members in fact do not know the purpose of Twitter, after they joined, most only have a one-way following of celebrities such as Ryan Seacrest, Britney Spears, but these tweeters do not have much (or any) followers. They are also not active in their tweet update.”

She also found that these new members are not making full use of Twitter interactive two-way communication capabilities (yet), instead only shit like diarrhea tweet about mundane things (that’s happening in their life). But over time, they will begin to enter the situation.

Some people think that a lot of Twitter users are too vague and general and only “reported” themselves what has been done or where they went, but Lin Yiling believes that a lot of people being the “kaypoh” Singaporeans would want to find out what their friends are doing, and hence start to join Twitter.

The above I’m only quoting the part where I was mentioned. Pat’s part was about the recent #awaresg tweeting and trending and Howie shared about the use of Twitter as a crowd-sourcing tool. And the big portion of the article shared what Twitter is and the usual lingo used and how it works. In fact, the best way to learn about Twitter is to get an account and test it out yourself! If you need any help, and have a day to spare, we can meet up for a chat and let me share more with you. Of course coffee on you!

Will be sharing more about Twitter and the things I discover during my research soon over at 24seven blog. This post might not be out so soon, since my schedule is pretty packed for the next few weeks. Will be drafting the post in bits daily.

Recently I spent a little too much time on facebook games. Every night, at least an hour is devoted to clicking on my mouse on clearing crystals from Bejeweled Blitz. I tried to conquer the score board, but it just seems impossible. After much cursing and swearing playing, I’m still always being ranked right at the bottom among my other friends in facebook. I felt frustrated and this kept me playing and the harder I try to push myself by clicking faster and trying to get as many hits as possible, the worst I perform. Than I became bored and will eventually give up.

Bejeweled Blitz is quite a popular game amongst my list of friends in facebook. And because of the number of competitors you’ve got to beat in order to rank high up in the score board, the harder it is for you to reach there. After many nights of playing, you might also just give up and not want to continue anymore.

Just last night, I saw a friend’s scoring in another game call Chain Rxn in facebook. Out of curiosity, I went to check the game out. And after less than thirty minutes of play, I’m ranked 4th among my friends who are playing! That of course makes me happy.

Because there were lesser friends playing Chain Rxn, my chance of getting bumped up the score board is much easier. Just like in, for example, a golf tournament. An average female player gets to bring home the trophy because there were only four other players competing. So the chance of winning is much higher.

Than the thought of blogging came to mind. There have been much talks and thoughts going on on blogging and how much better the blog will perform if its content is focused and niche. The rarer and lesser people blogs about that topic, the better your blog will perform. And for all topics, no matter how rare or niche, there *will* be a community out there who are interested in it. You just need to keep the faith of sharing about that niche topic which you’re knowledgeable and passionate about, one day you will be noticed and you will succeed.

And because of the rarity of these content, people who knows about your existence will be more active in participating in the discussions on your blog, helping you spread the words to those they know, and the journey to being known in this community as a thought leader is also shorter. Of course, the initial struggle will be hard to pass, but good things always come to those who wait.

Are you waiting to be discovered? Or have you already succeeded in your small but niche community?