The Seminar on Social Media and Society: Promoting Responsible “Netizenship” was held last Thursday, and I was invited to give a 30-minute talk, or as Ari and Rodz put it, I was ended up giving a lecture.
Whom did I lecture you may ask? I believe it was a room filled with 87 clueless souls on who I was, and how I ended up there giving them a ‘lecture’. I guess, it’s hard to remove that ‘teacher’ in me, even more when I was a lil’ bit nervous knowing my audience were intellects and people with ranks.
Being one of the youngest speakers, and probably the only one among the speakers still in the 20s, I focused a lot on the need for early education to prevent blogs/social media from becoming a platform for rumor mongering. I also touched a little bit on #yorais, and stress that the government should not look at social media users, particularly bloggers in a negative manner. Well, I thought that Prof Narayanan of UNIMAS did a wonderful job winding my session, which was shared with MCMC (Malaysian Communication & Multimedia Commission).
To say the least would be to state that the event was good, because I personally felt the event went beyond educating those attending on social media, as it was an exciting place to build networking and learn from those with great experiences. The rest of the speakers for the event were amazing, with Dr Danilo Arao from the University of The Philippines being one of the wittiest. Mr Ahmad Nor Hisham of MCMC was enlightening with his statistics on what the government has done, but this point was one of my favorite “MCMC does not act if there is no complaint from the public.” Yep people, no complaint, no problem.
So if you didn’t lodge a formal report to MCMC about some of those abusive sites which you have visited, then don’t complaint if there’s no action. Those sites banned/blocked are merely because there’s a complaint. I however forget to ask how do I submit a complaint to MCMC.
Well, I’d love to say more on the event, but I think most of the best quotes can be found at the Sarawak Bloggers site. Do check ’em out.
Before I left for a good pre-Octofest session with Rodz and Ari at Rajang Lounge, we snapped a group photo with the Sarawak Bloggers gang (photo below).
Oh ya, one of my favorite quotes from the event would be “Don’t claim to be something if you are not, don’t claim to be a specialist if you are not.” – Dr Danilo Arao. I bet that quote would hit a chord in some people claiming to be experts or specialist in certain fields without having the certificate or credentials to back it up. =)
