Last night I attended blogOUT2007 at Geek Terminal here in Singapore. blogOUT2007 was a local networking and blogger discovery night where hundred plus local bloggers and enthusiastic designers, photographers, writers and friendly folks gathered to discuss blogging, social issues surrounding blogging and corporations, technology and coding, new gear and heavy networking and socializing. blogOUT2007 was organized by The Digital Movement a local group who (from their site):

"...are a group of young and energetic people passionate about experimenting new innovations and seeing the impacts they have on society!"

Six of us from Microsoft attended the event (which, for disclosure we sponsored too) at Geek Terminal. Geek Terminal is  local high tech spot that opened their doors in advance of their official opening to host the event. A stylish, high tech enabled meeting spot, they include power everywhere, high speed wireless, and on-site geeks to help out for any technical emergencies. Everyone who entered the event had their photo snapped and automatically uploaded to Flickr (Flickr tag blogout2007 (my entry photo here)) and there was endless twittering, and on-screen live rotation of active on-site bloggers who were tagging their entries.

Nic and I set up some computers and showed off Popfly and Silverlight and there was good interest from people who wandered by to take a look, as well as a surprising number of people who asked us about the technology. Thanks! I had a great time hearing everyone's feedback on what we were doing here at Microsoft, good and bad. Keep it coming - good to hear it.

After opening comments, there were some interesting panel discussions, followed by multiple round table discussions. Both were great. Nic and I both were interested in hearing feedback on the state of corporate blogging and trust for it. I also got to meet dozens of really interesting people that I hope to keep in touch with locally. (Feel free to contact me anytime.)

Special call-out to Kevin Lim who has a blog theory.isthereason.com. Kevin arrived wearing a backpack that included a portable Vaio with wireless with two shoulder mounted cameras. One camera was live broadcasting everything he did up to UStreamTV and the other recorded it on to HD for later review and indexing. Nic did an interview of Kevin and will probably post more later on his blog here.

Great event. I had a lot of fun.

 

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