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Saturday, March 29th, 2008
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11:37p - Social Media Breakfast at Frujch
Early this morning, I went for something called the "Social Media Breakfast". It was held at Frujch at Singapore Management University. It was scheduled to start at 9am, so I courteously showed up (relatively) on time. Of course, the bulk of the attendees turned up half an hour later. I shouldn't be surprised.
I met a couple of familiar faces, but also some new ones too. Also reacquainted myself with one other person whom I had met on a professional setting previously (and reconnected through Facebook just a few days ago). We had a good time chatting about Internet usage across the region. Fascinating and insightful stuff!
Breakfast turned out to be brunch, and consisted of sandwiches, lemon-orange squash and some cakes. Some of the others also played air hockey and pool, but I spent my time chatting and checking out some sites.
The weird thing of the event -- to me anyway -- was that we were given small stickers with which we could "tag" others. It worked the same way that online tagging does, except that this was in the physical world and we had to write the tags in pen! I didn't tag anyone, but was tagged twice.
I don't know if this will become a regular affair or was a school project for SMU's "Social Media" course. I think such networking events are good practices, but require organisation and location.
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Technorati tags: Social Media Breakfast, networking, bloggers
current mood:  content (comment on this)
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11:59p - Commemorating Earth Hour during Green Drinks
This evening, I joined a few fellow volunteers from ECO Singapore to commemorate the first-ever Earth Hour. We trooped down to the office of Yolk, which was also the venue for the monthly Green Drinks session. We arrived at 7pm and were disappointed to find out that the food we were promised to partake in consisted only of free drinks. Nonetheless, I helped myself to a beer.
Earth Hour is a grassroots effort (i.e. no official governmental support) encouraging people of the world to turn off unneeded lights (and other electrical devices) for one hour from 8pm. The idea, if I got it correctly, was that our minute individual contributions would add up to an enormous savings in terms of greenhouse pollution.
Green Drinks, on the other hand, is a monthly networking session to bring together like-minded individuals. For tonight, it was held in conjunction with Earth Hour and also the launch of the second edition of Harboiled Magazine, an online magazine on social causes, which are not necessarily about the environment (though this issue was dedicated to that topic). Apparently, it's the brainchild of local digital agency, Yolk, which office was also the venue for Green Drinks.
I chatted with a few people (okay, I mostly listened to others) and was also interviewed later for MediaCorp Radio's NewsRadio 93.8. Questions included what I thought about Earth Hour and why it was such a relevant cause.
His most critical question was probably about why there was no apparent support by government or businesses, unlike in Sydney where the city was in darkness for an hour. My response, which I thought was the most sensible explanation, was that this was a grassroots effort that depended entirely on whether people wanted to make the effort or not. My implication was that Singaporeans still have a long way to go, and we require baby steps that can be agonizingly slow.
By 10pm, most of us were tired and hungry, so we left the party. Overall, I thought that this Green Drinks session wasn't as successful as expected. I suppose the free drinks and relationship of the attendees to Yolk also affected the outcome. As a fellow volunteer said, most people were there either to drink free beer or pick up chicks. Hopefully, subsequent Green Drinks will have better results.
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Technorati tags: ECO Singapore, environment, Earth Hour, Green Drinks, interview
current mood: good (2 comments |comment on this)
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