so, i was one of the five lucky bloggers that got sponsored by Nuffnang to go to one of the talks by Singapore Sun Festival.. and of ‘cos, the talk is all about blogging!

entitled, “To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question”, it was held at The Sun Tent in Empress Place Park

but god knows where is it right?! HAHA! anyway, i met up nadia at the train station and we proceeded from there.. lucky the place isn’t too far away..

AND the venue was awesome!

i think many of us thought that it would be kinda seminar-ish talk with plastic chairs that will make you feel restless after awhile.. little did we expect the place to be filled with so much of cultural flavour, and the entire talk was relaxing, as well as engaging at the same time..

the speaker was Jacqueline Le Sueur:

she’s very humorous and witty AND she calls her macbook, “Daniel”

she went like, “i hope daniel works, so i show you guys……..” i thought that was pretty funny!

around 10 minutes into the talk, a tray of delicious finger food from indochine was served to us!

the popiah-looking thing has its own acquired taste, to which i loved! but some say it tasted weird..

back to jacqueline, (haha! singaporean lah! get sidetracked by food)
at a point of time, she mentioned like there are a ton of different types of bloggers, and she called the group of us as the “GEN-Y” bloggers

estee explained to her that we’re from a blog advertising community, and it ended up with ming plugging nuffnang in the talk.. ha! totally unexpected, but it was okay ‘cos she said that the talk is not just about her talking, it’s everyone of us that made up the blogosphere..

she didn’t buy the idea of blog-advertising at first, and goes on saying that some research has shown that only a few percentage of bloggers actually earns through blogging.. Ming then mentioned that the top earning blogger in nuffnang gets thousands per month.. (which we already know who she is! haha)

jacqueline stopped for a moment in blank and then goes on by saying, “well then i must get your business card later on!” haha!

then she went on with the “anatomy of blog”, which breaks down into two, “IDENTITY” and “CONTENT”

1. identity being how the blog looks, and the first impression it creates.. she said something like, “the first thing that make a person attracted to another(person or blog), is by its looks”
2. content being the stuff you put inside!

i went “BINGO!” in my head when she said that ‘cos i remembered my recent post had something akin to what she said about “the attraction” to blogs..

she further broke down the two points, and mentioned that the very important thing of blogs is, the “lede”.. it’s the lure & attraction of the content in a blog that keeps and gains readers.. “what can set people coming back for more?”

also, the layout/design of a blog plays an important role as well..

“people are attracted by what is NOT on the page, and by what is on the page” ..and in layman’s terms, “too much or too little is no good”

in the later part of the talk, we did two writing exercises..

very intriguing, and we were shown the diversity of people thinking differently although in similar situations..

you know how bloggers ALWAYS take photos wherever they go? jacqueline made a point related to that, in which i thought was very interesting.. she mentioned that we should use our five senses to experience, rather than to just live behind that lens, and see everything in the photographs..

wow, what can i say, it was a quite an intriguing talk..

got to take a photo with neil humphreys!

THANKS A GAZILLION TO MR.NUFFNANG!