Vot pentru viol

Pe cine alegem si noi sa ne violeze tara 5 ani de zile? huh?

Mi-am cumparat acuarele.

Acuarele “Colibri” de la combinatul fondului plastic. Acuarele cum foloseam cand eram mai mici si total netalentati, cum suntem si acum. Mi-am mai luat si doua pensule, una subtire si una mai sanatoasa. M-am gandit sa incerc sa ma distrez cu ele putin si am pus in seara asta pe un A4 o idee care s-a cam nascut in mintea mea si a altor cativa.

Asta:

Chivu e de fapt un fotbalist talentat.

Sa explic.
Vorbeste ciudat, ciudat de tot, are si o alura mai ciudata.
Si face reclama la orice cu super-seninatate.
…Mda, aceasta combina de spalat alimente cu diagonala de 15” este exact ce va trebuie, va recomanda eu, Chivu.
Stiu ca e un jucator talentat dar asta nu-l salveaza, omul pare autist.

De ce a fost o emisiune buna.

Zic buna, si nu extraordinara, pentru ca, dupa cum zicea si Vije, parca ar fi avut destule materiale pentru un “special”. E vorba despre Top Gear Series 14, episode 1. Episodul din Romania. Episodul in care suntem “Borat country” dar si tara cu “The best driving road”. Va mirati si sunteti indignati? Vaaaai….au filmat vaci care pasc pe marginea soselei. Au filmat numa’ tigani jegosi in satele lor pline de cocioabe. Au zis ca totul e comunist (si asa e). Si va asteptati la altceva? E vorba despre o emisiune de entertainment si asta au si facut. Nu noi suntem targetul lor, au j’de’miliarde de viewers. Eu nu ma mir si cred ca a fost o emisiune buna. Nu corecta, nu respectuasa, nu realista, doar entertaining – exact asa cum e gandita. Apropo, ce bine sunau masinile pe sub Palatul Parlamentului. Astept sa aruncati cu pareri in mine.

World Blogging Forum Romania 2009 Overview

With The World Blogging Forum 2009 now at an end I can finally chill out and look at everything that happened in these few very interesting days. I have to say that this is the first post that I’ve ever written in English so please signal any mistakes in the comments below. I have to mention that this is the WBF the way I saw it, the point of view of a member of the Romanian team that organized this event.

The Palace of the Parliament, a.k.a. Casa Poporului

As I’ve become more and more interested in blogging and new media the idea of the WBF sounded very interesting to me from the beginning (I have to admit that I was a tiny bit worried that we would screw something up, but that’s just my usual paranoia) and when Mihaela Draghici (ASLS’s current president) asked if I would be interested in the project I immediately said yes.

The first day (I’ve already posted a very brief article about the first day in Romanian) was more about getting the location ready, greeting the bloggers at the airport and taking them to the hotel.

Some minor preparations

In the evening we went to Meu Café and had some food and drink. At first I was a bit nervous when talking to our foreign guests but I soon got into my English speaking persona and started to get into conversations with a few of them. I was really impressed and didn’t expect them to be so responsive. Feedback was good about their arrival and hotel check-in.

Tuesday we really got into it. The location was already set up so the talks started immediately. We delegated people for every aspect so the ASLS team was covering just about anything you could think of. We really did our best to make everything as good as possible.

After Traian Basescu’s speech the media, in their traditional manner, stormed out. Basescu did not impress me personally and I cannot share any political view on this matter as I am apolitical. The foreign bloggers on the other hand seemed to be impressed with his speech and the fact that he knew anything at all about new media. Loïc Le Meur was surprised to see that Basescu is using twitter and they even shared a couple of tweets. Austrian blogger Ritchie Pettauer , who maintains Datadirt dot net said that if this happened in Austria the president would just show up, wave a bit and leave, so he was surprised as well. (Ritchie Pettauer is one of the most sociable persons I’ve ever met, really enjoyed chatting with him).

The coffee and lunch breaks were a welcome pause in the terribly poor moderation of Dumitru Borțun. I repeat, this is my personal opinion, so if you liked the way that mister Borțun uttered his loud viewpoints that’s fine with me. Still, wtf?

Me and Val Vladescu

Anyway, coming back to the discussions. The first day was very surprising to me as I found out about the way that media is censored in China from Zhou Shuguang and the really bad situation in Egypt from Wael Abbas. I have to admit that most of the discussions were way out of my league and I am not going to mention most of them because of this. No offence to anyone (Not that anyone will even stumble upon this post written by an unimportant amateur…can’t even call myself a blogger). The discussions were still very interesting to me so I slowly worked my way into a spot at the huge round table in the Human Rights Hall.

The discussions took a very different turn with the guest speaker from the Netherlands, Ramon Stoppelenburg who shared with us his very inspiring travel story. You can find more details about Ramon from his English blog and his travel website. As I said before, I was sitting at the round table so I had a microphone in front of me so I thought “Hey, I should totally participate” so I waited until Ramon was finished so I could talk about the amazing blog Mongolia.ro, which has a very unique story of a Romanian photographer that traveled from Romania to Mongolia and back using his beloved motorcycle and money he got from selling off the story of every 500 km that rolled under his wheels (I’ve followed his journey in Romanian and became a huge fan). American blogger, David Sasaki picked up on this, liked it a lot, and included it into a post on his blog. (David really impressed me with his speech in the second day, so his blog and website is a must-see)

Ramon - the grandfather of couchsurfing

After this, the focus went back on the social side of things with more talks about citizen reporting. Excepting some minor periods of down-time, not more than 10 minutes long, the wireless connections that were especially set up for the forum were remarkably fast, chiefly on upload. The bloggers had positive feedback on this aspect as well. Come to think of it, the minor complaints (some needed more power sockets to plug in their devices) were resolved in decent time. Don’t get me wrong, the technical set-up could have been better – a lot better. The projector was kind of a mystery to me in the beginning but we got it to work half of the time . Sorry for any technical setbacks, next time we’ll try to be better prepared.

Tuesday evening, after leaving the Palace of the Parliament the VIP guests were taken to Carul cu Bere for some traditional food and music. They had a good time but when I arrived, much, much later, it was almost time to go back to the hotel. I managed to have a nice chat with Petru Terguta, the journalist and blogger from The Republic of Moldova, nice guy. This just meant that I got a few more hours of sleep, welcome rest indeed.

The second day of actual discussions was Wednesday. The focus shifted to a different side of new media, the future of blogging. Guest speakers included the blogger from Hungaria, Dobó Mátyás, an IT expert. Ritchie Pettauer, who told us about the monetization of blogs, had a very interesting presentation. I really was interested in what they had to say so from the very beginning I found a spot at the round table between Ramon from the Netherlands and Erkan Saka from Turkey. Just as I was about to ask a question, the moderator Dorina Guţu (who did a pretty good job, by the way) rushed the speakers for the lunch break so I didn’t get to ask anything. No matter, I got my answers during the lunch break in the hallway. The catering was to my taste on both forum days, the coffee was strong and the fruit fresh, the staff friendly, nothing to complain from me.

The translation was pretty good. I went around and asked a few of the participants to rate the translations. Feedback ranged from good to very good. Kudos again to the translation team (the team was not made up of professionals, but of students and fresh graduates) that managed to do a good job even with really bad English, fast talking, difficult subjects and a lot of non-native speakers. For the next forum (can’t wait for the next one) we really need to get people to help out on more of the languages (Chinese blogger was really hard to understand due to bad English, sorry for that).

WBF translation team

On Wednesday I got to ask questions twice. First was after Helge Fahrnberger’s presentation. It turns out that blogging under the cover of anonymity is illegal in Austria. From what Helge told us, every blog needs to have a contact page by law. Most of us were intrigued by this and it got tweeted a lot afterwards. Twitter was actually a big part of things. My allies were ipod touch and Twitterrific, so I followed most of the tweets on wireless and didn’t have to carry around heavier devices. The ipod had an unfortunate accident. It slipped out of its leather case with force and slid about 3 m on the marble floor after crashing loudly. I am amazed that it still works and that it only got a few scratches on its screen, tough device. The bloggers turned twitter red hot and the #wbf2009’s were flying back and forth. Behold the power of microblogging that I’ve only started using a couple of weeks ago….starting to get the hang of it.

I know that this post is getting waaaay to long, but hey, don’t read it!
Andrea Vascellari, the finnish-italian blogger made a very interesting presentation and at the end of it I got to ask him his opinion on consumer trends. I asked about his opinion on the development of the “prosumer” (a term I had picked up from my older brother a couple of years back and that to me, at least, means a consumer that researches a specific product or service before spending money on it) due to internet penetration. His response satisfied my curiosity.

Me and Ana Istodorescu. I don't look like a dork in this one, yeeeah!

In the second part the discussions shifted again to the citizen reporting side and the social aspects. There were many interesting presentations on the matter, but again, way out of my league so I’m not even going to attempt to report on them. I do have to say that the moderator for the second part of day two, can’t even remember his name, was not even paying any attention to what was being said. The had an automated response at the end of every speech, a very brief “thank you, questions?”. Moderators have to be chosen carefully next time as this was one of the weaker points. The day ended with a tour of the Palace of Parliament which I didn’t attend, but no matter, I got to some more networking in the evening at Presei Café. Got a lot of feedback, only good, maybe they were just being polite , but I am really satisfied with what we’ve accomplished as a team. We had feedback on the presence, or rather absence of the Romanian blogosphere. The guests were stunned that so few Romanian bloggers came to the event. I am not going to comment on this matter since I’ve discussed it over and over during the coffee breaks, I can just say that I’m a bit disappointed.

I have to say I usually only discuss trivial stuff but that evening my throat got sore from talking and talking and talking about serious matters, mostly with one of three italian journalists (the one that spoke good english), and the american photographer they were befriending. Won’t go into details here, can just say it was really fun and interesting. Had some beer, had some delicious cake and then left with the hired bus that took a part of the guests to the hotel (the rest stayed to party some more).

Getting ready for a group photo. This pic is courtesy of Ritchie Pettauer, thanks!

I sadly don‘t know much about the last day, the day that most of them left Romania, but for a few tweets.
That’s it!

If indeed you’ve had the patience to endure such a long article I shall make a few more suggestions:

Jeff Jedras’s blog has some great articles.
Sorin Rusi’s blog has pictures from WBF
Piticu’s blog has a guestpost about #wbf2009
Oana Raluca Brătilă posted on her blog
Ritchie Pettauer also blogged about day 2 of the event here.
Romanian blogger Chinezu posted this after attending the forum.
Great reporting in French from Eric Dupin.
This is an interesting post in Romanian as well.
Pictures from Andrea Vascellari.
Pictures on Flickr from Zola.
Luca Sartoni took a beautiful set of pictures.
These are a just a few links i’ve found. For videos search YouTube.

The pictures i’ve posted are courtesy of Dana. Hope to get more as soon as possible.

If you wish to contact me, check out my contact page.

All the best,
Dani.

change of plans

Acum am ajuns si eu in camin cu autocarul care a dus o parte din bloggeri (ceilalti inca se mai distreaza la Cafeneaua Presei) la hotel. Gata cu WBF2009. Stiu ca am zis ca o sa postez despre a doua zi de WBF. M-am razgandit. O sa postez un overview cuprinzator, dar o sa il postez in engleza… e mai potrivit, data fiind natura evenimentului. Anyway, mai dureaza pana fac asta, dar sper sa reusesc cat mai repede. Sper ca Ritchie sa apuce sa-mi trimita poze in seara asta. Noapte buna!

WBF ziua Zih

Sunt prea multe de povestit. Oboseala ma apasa, si lipsa “tehnologiei” ma face sa fiu lenes. Sper maine sa fac rost de pozele din Ziua Z, si joi-vineri-weekend o sa postez imagini + impresii + concuzii + video…

Somn acum, am zis!

Censorship

Bloggerul din China si cel din Egipt ne-au uimit cu povesti despre dimensiunile cenzurii aplicate internetului si bloggerilor din tarile lor. Liveblogging de la World Blogging Forum Romania.

WBF Ziua 1, maine Ziua Z

Astazi au sosit bloggerii. Jumatate de echipa ASLS a avut grija sa se ocupe de ei, cealalta jumatate a avut de ingrijit sala.

Astazi la Casa Poporului am obosit incercand sa intram. Am ocolit imensitatea de 70000 ori pana sa ne indice intrarea pe care aveam noi voie sa o folosim, ce jandarmi…draguti. A, si am trecut prin detectorul de metale de un miliard de ori.

Inside am cascat gura la cat de mare e si la dimensiunile imense ale candelabrelor. Am ras de frescele printate si lipite pe pereti, cu pixelii la vedere. Am aranjat ce era de aranjat. Am stabilit ce era de stabiit. Am stricat aproape toate badge-urile, sadly. Am umplut mapele cu hartiile necesare….the works.

Seara am chill-uit la Meu Cafe cu bloggerii invitati. A fost foarte tare. Am mancat si am baut o apa cu bule, si am stat de vorba cu unul dintre austrieci, cu egipteanul, cu neamtul si putin cu francezul. A fost foarte foarte interesant. Au inrosit baietii twitterul cand au ajuns la hotel. Oricum, prea multa lume de cunoscut intr-o singura seara….

Maine trezirea la 5:45 pentru Ziua Z

Maraton

Urmeaza o saptamana bizi bizi, probabil si putin incomoda. Urmeaza World Blogging Forum si as we speak ma indrept spre caminul lu’ Bobo sa-mi iau sacoul de la el.

Dap, cateva zile de imbracaminte si incaltaminte “serioasa” pentru ca e un eveniment serios intr-o locatie serioasa (Palatul Parlamentului a.k.a. Hidoasa Casa a Poporului)

O sa fie ceva de genul:

Luni: wbf
Marti: wbf
Miercuri: wbf
Joi: posibil tot wbf
Vineri: school + plecat la clung

Sunt convins ca o sa fie vreme nasoala, munca multa (dar placuta) si nevoie de carat haine de schimb mai mereu. Wish me luck.

Se apropie WBF

World Blogging Forum 2009 se apropie. Nu rata cel mai tare eveniment online din 2009 in Romania. Confirmarile au sosit, puteti intalni bloggerii participanti aici. Puteti urmari si pe twitter: @wbfromania

Rezerva-ti perioada 9-12 Noiembrie pentru WBF!