* Sponsored by SHINE
** 41 T-shirts ($7.50 each) given out free, sponsored by SHINE

Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui wrote:

I refer to the article "1st Bloggers conference is one big yawn (The Sunday Times July 17). I think the reporters did not fully understand the nature of the conference, Bloggers.SG

Link to image (scanned by Lancerlord)

The Lord of the Links, and Watcher of Mass Media - Lancerlord has kindly scanned and alerted us of this letter published in today's edition of the Sunday Times pertaining to Bloggers.SG

In other news, Natsu No Umi would like to correct the Sunday Times's understanding of the difference between a convention and a conference. Bloggers.SG was a convention not a conference ok?

Anyway, juz a little note for everyone: Its a CONVENTION. Not a CONFERENCE. The difference is that CONFERENCE got paper presentation while CONVENTION is a big meeting of pple from the same area of interest. Got it?

Next time you get it wrong, Natsu No Umi will force your reporters to buy a Bloggers.SG T-shirt with great and vengeful use of force liao.

Update!
The Yuhui is question has been found, and he has published his original letter to the Sunday Times on his blog.

The grand finale for Blogger.SG 2005 was the totally unexpected and extremely awesome Belly Dancers who mesmerized and held the audience captive as they weaved their magic with nothing but their body movements. At the end of their performance, the audience rushed to take photos with the girls. For many, this was their first real-life encounter with Belly Dancing.

Tomorrow.SG would like to express their heart-felt gratitude to Yuki of BellyDance Discovery, who graciously agreed to come down to Bloggers.SG 2005 and perform without a fee. They also had to walk all the way from The Padang to DXO because all the roads were closed. How's that for dedication?

In case you ladies (men not allowed) are interested in how you can learn Belly Dancing - check out Belly Dance Discovery's website.

Link

A picture paints a thousand words so we invited Terz and Christine to be the Official Bloggers.SG Photographers to freeze moments of the event in time to feel nostalgic about it many years from now. Without complaints or questions - the two intrepid photogs lugged their huge heavy cameras to photo-document Bloggers.SG 2005 at both the Woodlands Regional Library and DXO the entire day without stopping.

The result is an amazing collection of photos that capture the Blogger Spirit that was so evidently in the air on the day of the event.

Photos

• Bloggers.SG Set 1
• Bloggers.SG Set 2
• Bloggers.SG Set 3 (new!)
• Bloggers.SG Set 4 (new!)
• Bloggers.SG Set 5 (new!)
• Unsorted shots from Bloggers.SG

Tomorrow.SG would like to thank Terz and Christine for their hard work which goes unpaid because they did it for us FOC (hey these people are professionals) so in gratitude they both get free Bloggers.SG T-shirts.

Let's Play A Game!
While viewing the photos, if you see a blogger you recognize - leave a comment with the photo stating his/her name and blog url (unless of course he is one of those mysterious anonymous bloggers!)

Trackback Your Photos Too!
We know many of you had cameras on that day and were busy snapping away. Share them with the rest of the blogosphere by trackbacking your photo gallery.

Today's edition of Digital Life has an excellent writeup entitled "Bloggers Unmasked" on Bloggers.SG 2005 - 5 pages worth!

What a difference a little social skill makes to distinguish between a good article and a bad one. Bloggers.SG 2005 was just called "A Yawn" by Jeremy Au Yong and Shawn Woo of the Sunday Times, 2 days back.

On the other hand, if you read the articles from Melissa Lwee, Serene Luo, Stephanie Yap of Digital Life, you can tell the bloggers they interviewed opened up and spoke to them honestly. Respect maximus! You gals are welcome with open arms to any blogger event from now on.

In the meantime, Lancerlord and Cowboycaleb cannot stop laughing at how this slipped through the censor's nets and Joel's blog url did not.

Now please go spread the word across the blogosphere.

Link to full Flickr set (All photos scanned by Lancerlord)

For all those of you who either forgot or didn't have a chance to buy our T-shirts, we have a small surplus of T-shirts from Bloggers.SG. To wit:

1 S
1 M
7 L
2 XL
All gone, sorry.

They are still on sale for the low, low price of S$10. Local meetups may be arranged at our discretion. Foreign orders are accepted too, with the requisite postage fee (no handling!) tacked on.

For those who have not glimpsed the design can view an older version here (apart from one or two colour changes and spelling 'orh' correctly, it's the same as the final design).

Please email your orders to gabrielseah@hotmail.com. T-shirts will be sold on a first come first served basis.

1. The IRC channel has been set up. Please join us there. Server: irc.freenode.net Channel: #tomorrow.sg. (Edit: Yes, the event's over, but you're free to hang out at the channel if you want.)

2. Please give us your feedback on the event here.

Please trackback all your Bloggers.SG 2005 entries to this url: http://tomorrow.sg/trackback/1535

3. Surplus T-shirts are now on sale. Please see this post for more details.

For those of you planning to drive to the event, please take note that due to the National Day Parade preparations, there will be road closures in the city area.

One of our volunteers has kindly provided us with a very expert looking diagram of the road closure (thanks K!) The thumbnail is not very clear, so you may want to download the PDF file for a better look, or view it in its full splendor.

It seems as though Esplanade's carpark is still in operation that day, however you may choose to park at nearby lots in Marina Square or Raffles Place in case the one at Esplanade is closed.

If you want to avoid the hassle of mapping out your journey in exquisite detail lest you get stuck behind an interminable tank column, we suggest that you just take the MRT to City Hall and walk to the Esplanade via Citylink.

See you there!

Charlotte said:

Technical glitches brought today's convention to a sudden end, when the Wi-Fi router present in DXO blew up from bandwidth overload, causing a chain explosion in the shelves where alcohol was kept. Agents from the Internal Security Department are currently investigating, and have cordoned off the bar counter. SCDF teams are still picking through the debris. So far, five laptop mice, one digital camera, and half a pint of Absolut Vodka have been rescued.

Charlotte reporting, Channel News Earlier, DXO.

Link

As visitors to Tomorrow.sg know, Bloggers.SG, the first Singaporean bloggers' conference, will be held this Saturday, 16 July, 2pm, at DXO (it's a club near the Esplanade - some of you might know it as the former Embassy club). (If you haven't heard about it, here's the latest announcement.)

Here are answers to some questions we've been asked:

...Continue reading Bloggers.SG 2005 - Frequently Asked Questions

Yuhui said

In anticipation of Bloggers.sg, I created a simple banner 468x60 ad for the event. It's an animated GIF (15 sec, unlimited animation) based on the T-shirt design. It can be seen on my blog at http://yuhuibc.blogspot.com.

I'm not sure if you guys have created any banner ads, but I thought
that this would be a simple and cheap (free!) way to generate some
publicity. If you have your own ads, then of course we should use
them.

If not and you think that this is a good idea, please feel free to inform other bloggers about it.

HTML code provided below:
<a href="http://bloggers.sg/"><img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/25461075_ec3d738b07_o.gif" /></a>

Link to the image (feel free to link to it from your blog)

We announced earlier that Bloggers.SG, the Singapore bloggers' conference, would be held at the Woodlands Regional Library. However, we found that we needed more space...

...Continue reading Bloggers.SG 2005 - Change in Venue and Other Updates

A little update on T-shirts:

Congratulations to Daniel Wang, whose entry for the T-shirt design contest won by a landslide. His work can be viewed in hi-res here.

As this entry goes to press, we have just accepted a quote of $7.50 per piece from Howard Huang. The other quotations were $8.50 + GST from R. Meyson marketing, $7.80 from Ooga Bua and $8.50 from Porcupine Design.

Only 150 pieces will be produced, so in 10 years time you can make a killing auctioning off your rare Bloggers.SG 2005 T-shirts!

02/07/2005: Approximate size breakdown - 30 S, 40 M, 45 L, 25 XL, 10 XXL. The spelling of "OHR" will also be changed to "ORH" since a quick Google search returns no references (zilch, zippo, nada, nil) to the use of "Ohr" in Singlish.

The board is set. The pieces are moving. Things are now in motion that cannot be undone.

And yes, it is now time to vote for your preferred T-shirt design for Bloggers.SG 2005. After two weeks, we have gotten numerous submissions from many talented individuals, and you will now get to vote for which design you wish to grace the Bloggers.SG 2005 T-shirt.

...Continue reading T-shirts! We have T-shirts! And a call for T-shirt price quotations.

Many of you have been wondering what's going to happen during Bloggers.SG (16th July). Here's some long-awaited information about the program:

Session I. Bloggers and their communities 2.00pm-3.30pm
Is the Singapore blogosphere just about Xiaxue and her loyal blogders? Or mr brown and mr miyagi? Of course not! So this Open Mike session is dedicated to you, for you to introduce yourself and your community within our colourful blogosphere to the rest of us!

...Continue reading Bloggers.SG 2005 - The Agenda and Call for Volunteers

Update 2: Some of you may have had some problems accessing the poll (especially non-registered readers), from 6pm to 12 midnight, 9th June Thursday. There was a bug and it has been fixed. Please try voting again if you had problems. So sorry for the inconvenience and thanks to the readers who pointed it out.

Update 1: Please help us get the word around by plugging this in your blog, or emailing friends who might be interested. Thanks!

To help us plan better (venue, food, etc), we'd like to have know how many of you are coming for Bloggers.SG, the first Singapore Bloggers' Convention, which will be held on the afternoon of 16 July (Saturday).

We don't really need any of your particulars so we're just going to do a POLL.

Last month, Tomorrow.sg decided on a name for the Singapore Blogger's Convention 2005 by asking readers to submit suggestions and then held an open voting process to decide a winner - Bloggers.SG won.

Now we need a design for the official T-shirt . So we've decided to have another competition for you to submit your designs, and we'll vote for a winner later.

...Continue reading The Bloggers.SG T-Shirt Design Competition

With all the excitement about upcoming Bloggers Convention, it's time we reveal where and when it's going to be!

Name: Bloggers.SG
The result of the name poll is out and looks like 'Bloggers.SG' wins by a slight margin. So 'Bloggers.SG' it shall be.

Date: 16 July 2005
It's on a Saturday, so more of you can make it!

Venue: Woodlands Regional Library
It's a little bit ulu, but they've got a nice auditorium there, and the nice people at National Library Board (NLB) are willing to support us by lending us the location without cost.

SHINE (some gahmen initiative) is also supporting us (that's because they have $$$ for refreshments), so the event is also listed on their website.

Keep checking here for more details later!

Some of us are pretty deprived. Like me - I've been of voting age since... since 21, yet I never ever had a chance to vote. But today, on Tomorrow, deprived ones like you and me finally get a chance to vote, on something as monumental as the name of the Singapore Bloggers Convention!

And you don't even have to be 21. Or in Singapore. Or even a Singaporean. Everyone gets to vote!

...Continue reading Singapore Bloggers Convention 2005 -- Vote for a Name!

We are pleased to announce that Tomorrow is organizing a bloggers convention some time in July 2005 and we are all very excited about it. However, we have yet to think up of a fabulous name for this convention and that’s where you, faithful readers of Tomorrow, come in.

We are giving everyone the opportunity to suggest names for Singapore’s first ever blogging convention and who knows, maybe your suggestion would be so mind-blowing that we decide to use it.

What we are looking out for: catchy and creative.

So what are you waiting for? Suggest a name for Singapore’s very first blogging convention today!

(Please suggest in the comments section.)