Friends of Mindanao is a group of foreigners and their wives/partners, based in Davao City. They meet socially in each other’s homes and in local restaurants. They also organize group trips to explore other parts of Mindanao. On the first and third Wednesday of each month they meet as a larger group to exchange news [...]
Today, Filipinos celebrate the 25th anniversary of the EDSA REVOLUTION, which brought the Marcos regime to its knees. On 25 February 1986, Filipinos peacefully won freedom from oppression and neglect by the conjugal dictatorship perpetrated by the Marcoses for two decades. Today, Filipinos can be proud of a legacy of revolution by peaceful means through [...]
ICT Davao Inc. (IDI), the umbrella organization of all information and communications technology associations in Davao City, is spearheading a truly worthy endeavor to help protect the environment. Recognizing that its particular industry is a huge contributor to e-waste, this organization has mounted this campaign to hopefully stave off environmental damage. Such damage, caused by [...]
The Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco) organized last 26-27 November in Davao City a forum for government, media and citizen communicators, for peace initiatives in Mindanao. This was done through Medco’s Mindanao Information Network for Development and Peace, or MINDPeace. It was a well-represented group of concerned parties: there were delegates from mainstream media, non-traditional [...]
The hideous event yesterday in Maguindanao Province has proven yet again how power corrupts the weak and the cowardly. It corrupts people to their core. The Mindanao Bloggers Community condemns the perpetrators, those criminals, and their masters who allowed the massacre of innocent people. The bloodshed, we are all too aware, was meant as a [...]
BlogFest.Asia, the first-ever pan-Asia bloggers’ conference, became a venue for introducing the Mindanao Bloggers Community to the world. Put together by the DotAsia Organisation (the registrar for .asia domain names) in Hong Kong from 6 to 8 November 2009, 3 Filipinos were present at BlogFest.Asia to provide the audience with primers on the Philippine blogosphere. [...]
I was very happy to have visited — at long last! — Asia’s Latin City (from 17 to 20 October), and to have touched base with the bloggers of Zamboanga. I’d already met some of them online (and two of them ‘offline’ during the 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit last year), but seeing them all together [...]
The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), through its Southeast Asian regional secretariat, Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), has launched a worthy program that is very much in line with what the Mindanao Bloggers Community stands for: iBlogforPeace. “iBlogforPeace seeks to broaden the discourse on peace by providing an online platform for [...]
Last 13 & 14 May 2009, Lyle Santos and I conducted a blogging seminar at the Coffee Club 101 in General Santos City, concentrating on WordPress and Google AdSense. In attendance were GenSan’s bloggers, both seasoned and neophyte, all under the tutelage of Avel Manansala. It was a good group, coming from various age groups, [...]
My trip to Cagayan de Oro City last 7 to 9 December was very fruitful, as I was able to meet up with a good number of bloggers there. This is the second incarnation of an active bloggers group in Cagayan de Oro — the first group, the members of whom I met last June [...]
The Department of Tourism – Region 11 (DOT-11) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts last Wednesday & Thursday held the Mindanao Media Summit on Culture and Tourism in Davao City. MindanaoBloggers.com was invited to be part of this occasion, and I was asked to be one of the reactors. The presentations by [...]
Ever since the 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit in October 2007, I’ve seen various bloggers’ groups sprout in different parts of Mindanao. Back then, there were groups in Davao and in Cagayan de Oro. Then General Santos, inspired by the Summit and by the activities of MindanaoBloggers.com, also got themselves and organized and were successful in [...]
25th October 2008, General Santos City — the 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit was conducted and concluded with flying colors, thanks in large part to Avel Manansala and his team. The bloggers of Soccsksargen really made a fantastic showing! But let’s not forget that a blogger from Zamboanga City, Ryann Elumba, made a big contribution by [...]
In a forum where the gatekeepers of Philippine media congregate and discuss pressing concerns, MindanaoBloggers was given the opportunity to break into the consciousness of mainstream media. MediaNation is an annual convention of publishers, editors, news managers — the movers and shakers of the country’s media organizations, and it recently concluded its sixth conference. I [...]
In his column today, Manila Standard columnist Bong Austero (writing under Are We There Yet?) challenges his fellow journalists who write myopically about Mindanao. His words are a refreshing breath of fresh air, considering it’s coming from the general direction of Metro Manila. But it should not be surprising, because Austero grew up in Davao [...]
