Communities
I’m going to keep this post short and shall let the photos do the talking… firstly cause I’m kinda tired already after going through the photos, and also cause my brian is kinda dead after “DOH” at AMK Hub Cathay just now after the pinging gathering. (Sorry that I’d to leave early.) Here are the photos taken today at M-C-C. (aka Miss Clarity Cafe) Looking forward to future gatherings! And nice meeting everyone…
Then someone came alone…
You’ll see his face later in the photos… continue scrolling…
First this is the menu…
as bright and colorful as their website! I spent quite awhile looking through it while waiting for the rest to arrive, and my eyes were strained due to the colors…
Jzin ordered this…
Miccheng ordered this…
And here’s my order…
Well, as mentioned by fellow pingsters, the food could have been better.
Hope they’ll improve on it.
And the yummy cookies from Arzhou
Here’s Chillycraps and Miccheng enjoying the cookies…
Next up are the pretty-and-none-candid-shots…
Sheylara and Nannywen
someone jumped out from behind while I took this shot…
and he just cannot miss taking photos with these two pretty girls…
after that shot, he still feels it wasn’t enough, so one more…
with 2 guys and 1 pretty girl…
From here on are all the candids and not-so-pretty-at-times-kinda-of-shots…
What’s Nannywen looking at?
What’s DK pointing at?
The “Moon”… which something magical happened below it…
(but we didn’t pull our cameras out in time to take that magical moment…)
Guess what they’re doing…
Simplyjean, Daphne and tstar (with Surfslayer hiding behind tstar)
Don’t ask me. I also don’t know what these 3 guys were doing!
Jzin, Chillycraps and Miccheng
Chillicraps with Chilly… you figure out where’s the crab.
Miccheng trying to show how he keeps his head shiny…
And later he tried teaching ways of animating for shots…
I’m awarding him the “Most Animated Pingster”!
The models of the day for Ping.sg Advertisements!DK retook his version…
Miccheng just got picked…
And here’s Jzin…
Hmmm…
And last but not least… Uzyn
That’s all for the gathering. Looking forward to the next one. :)
I’m a happy pingster. But at times, darkness scares the hell out of me when I’m home alone…
Try it out yourself!
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A Ping.sg logo must always be at the top your picture because you are helping to advertise Ping.sg.
The meaning of “Community”… according to Wikipedia… “A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. ” – in this case the shared interest for blogging. And “blog” is to… “provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries.”
What makes one wants to blog? What is the reason for one to start a weblog? Why some choose to be blogging anonymously while some choose to stand out and show their face everywhere on their blog? If a personal blog is to be a personal online diary, than why are we opening it up to allow others to read and even comment on it? And if one should allow readers to comment as they want to build a community of readers whom will give comments or suggestions or sometimes critiques to their entries, who gave the readers the right to judge the author? And who gave them the right to read and misread it using their own interpretation? Especially if you don’t even know the author IRL.
As I’ve blogged before, I started disliking online communication due to certain reasons. And now it just seems like there are more reasons for me to dislike it!
The beginning
When I started blogging more than 3 years back, I wanted to record my thoughts and events that happened in my life. I dont remember having any readers at all. And when I asked if my friends blog, they would ask me whether it could be eaten! (Some of them lah). Come to think of it, I was introduced to blogging by Uryll whom I know from an online community forum. I was planning to start a forum at that time, but he told me that its very difficult to run a forum and thus told me about a blog and what it can do. Still unsure of what it was, I installed my first blog on my ex-domain using MT. The kick that got me addicted to blogging is not so that I can write story online to share (cause I hate writing! and I still do now!), I got addicted cos I wanted to understand CSS and designing of a blog theme etc… yah, I know its kinda silly to learn about CSS through setting up a blog, but that’s what got me very excited about it. I did lots of research on it and slowly I learned and understand about CSS and some php. (I’m not a very clever person, but I’m happy that whatever IT skill I have now are all self-taught. And I’m pretty proud of that! Ok this has got nothing related to this entry.)
Hence I’ve started blogging ever since. I blogged so that my friends who know me IRL can find out whats happening in my life since we don’t get to meet one another that often after graduation. I blogged to share about my passion for photography and scrapbooking (to share my work with those who visit). I blogged so that if one day I should lose my memory, I have a blog where I can read and rediscover my past on my own. I blogged so that one day my children and grandchildren will be able to know how was life like at my time… (ok this is a little far fetch lah… but still its one of the reason lah…) So throughout the entire 3 years or so that I’ve been blogging, I’ve been thinking that my blog is pathetic cause no one seems to be reading it cause there wasn’t a single comment! But later realised that all my readers are silent readers. They read and when we meet IRL, they’ll ask me how’s things and all… than I asked how they came about knowing it, they told me they read from my blog… (that’s how I know that there are actually readers in my blog.) When I asked why they didn’t comment on it, they either didn’t know they could do that or they said that they prefer to communicate in person rather than posting online.
This is so so true! Communication IRL is so much better and less miscommunication cause you can see the expression, feel the feeling and emotion of the speaker and be able to give immediate reactions to any action! But sadly, due to the advancement of technology, people now are so used to letting their fingers do the talking that we sometimes forget how to communicate IRL! Hence we became quiet, reserved and some call it introvert. For me I call it shy! Haha! I seem very outgoing and can-talk-anything-under-the-sun-kind-of-girl-online, but IRL, especially if I just know the group of people, I became the shy-girl-who-talks-only-if-need-to. But I’m NOT!! Ask all my friends whom I know IRL, “Claudia? Shy? Oh please!! She’s the loudest woman I know!” Wahahahaha! Yap, I’m that loud that at times it gets me into quite a big trouble. Haiz…
**Ok wait! I think I’m totally off topic! I just typed out whatever that came to mind and now I think I’ve totally forgotten what I initially wanted to talk about! Wahhhhh!!! … scrolling up to check what I wanted to blog…
Oh yes! Community! Haha! Ok… I wanted to say… errr…. wahhh! Forgotten! What?!?!?!…
I have been active member of couple of online communities before and am still am in a few of them. And I’m happy that some of these people became my friend IRL. We go out for outings and gatherings and all… but again, due to the busy schedules, we don’t meet up that often. Being involved in an community is fun for me as it gives me chance to meet new people, and in this digital life we’re living in, if you don’t get to go out and socialise IRL, online communities is the next best thing to help improve one’s social life. In a community, there will be human, and when there is human, there will surely be conflicts and emotions and feelings. And these elements usually aren’t observed as we communicate online, via blogs, msn, forums, shoutbox and what not. And when these elements aren’t observed, miscommunication tends to take place and fire and flames start burning.
Starting a community is no easy job. Have tried and failed. And once I’ve tried to help another community to startup, which during the process we encountered lots of problems and hardship too. Lots of meeting time spent brainstorming how to enhance the community and how we can do better etc etc… and being able to sustain an online community for one year, with growing numbers of members, its definetly not an easy task. Especially when everyone in the team has their own job and life. During the process of building a community, some cried, some fell, some scratched themselves and some celebrated… all these are part of the process, which everyone should enjoy and learn from the downs but celebrate for the ups.
So don’t let some scratches break one community apart. Just use some handyplast and cover it! It’ll heal…
+Disclaimer: Claudia usually blogs with half her brain asleep… so if there’s anything that’s deemed as trash by any of the reader, she’s sincerely sorry for it. Well, it is just her online personal dairy remember?
It was quite an experience at my first blog community event. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected but well, still overall job well done for their first time. Credits to the team at ping.sg. For those who’re interested to find out what happened at Geek Terminal today, you can check out the livestreaming video here. The most interesting part of the 176min long video would be from 58 to 64 min. Really! No time to finish the whole video, just watch from 58 to 64 min. That’s the part I like best! Wahahaha!! The video by him is just… hilarious!
I’m pretty sure everyone, almost everyone, who were there would be blogging about the party and how much they’ve enjoyed themselves and all… I’m not saying that I didn’t, but I thought it could have been better lah… and one thing that I totally agree with what he said was that bloggers are better off online than IRL. The crowd was pretty dead throughout the presentation and the presenters and emcees… well, as per my title… Could have been better loh.
Things that I regretted not doing…
- bringing my macbook to the party
- trying to start conversation with some of the people
- stay at home to continue packing my room
Things that I thought could have been done better at the party…
- to do without the seats…
cos once people are seated at an event, no conversation would have been started. - at least some script or notes or something for the emcee
instead of them trying to pluck ideas out from thin air… and trying to bring up blog posts by some of the bloggers… not everyone present would have read those post… and it is quite ermm… “Dudz…” to these people ya? - if there’s nothing to say, just present the award… trying to enjoy the first few presentations but after awhile, i’m tired. (guess i’m not the only one who feels that way right?)
- less category of awards… too many of the same kind and ended up the same winner for these awards… ermm… another… “dudz…”
nuff said about the party… just voicing my thoughts and you may agree or disagree with me… but well, isn’t this what blog is for?
Nite.
Edited
Forgot to write…
Congrats to all the award winners! And I’m still looking forward to the next and will be better event by ping.sg!
Let me know k.
Edit: I’m in! I’m going! Yeah! So fun! Been awhile since I went for such events… can’t wait!! *grinz*
