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With Network!! Pakistan’s First International Media Summit, CIO Pakistan and PC World Pakistan, for the first time in the history of Pakistan, recognized the efforts and rather conspicuous presence of Pakistan’s blogging community. The event was held in collaboration with the US Consulate in Pakistan and included a number of International guests also who spoke about some of the various issues that Pakistan’s social networking community could address. These guests included Ong Hock Chaun from Malaysia, Hanny K and Anandita P. from Indonesia, Rebecca Chiao and Mohamed El Dahshan from Egypt.

 

The summit started off with a welcome note by the US Consul General, William Martin talked about how the bold and active approach assumed by Pakistan’s blogging community ‘validated and energized his vision for Pakistan.’ There are a number of ways in which Pakistanis interact with Information Technology, and the online social media is just one of those. The Consul General praised the efforts made by Pakistan’s social media activists and said, “People here take extraordinary risks to try and inform the world about the happenings around them, and we must work with them and support the whole idea of freedom of press. We all have a responsibility to try and use this powerful tool, the social media, to try and bring about a positive change in the world around us.”

 

Kamal Siddiqui, the Editor of Express Tribune, also spoke at the session and admitted that a number of his contemporaries do not realize the full implications or the seriousness of the idea of the ‘free flow of information’ that blogging has made available to us. However, while he admitted that blogging ‘gives us the opportunity to try and receive opinions that are fresh from the people, and which have not undergone any gate keeping or editing processes.’ However, he had some reservations regarding how this free flow of information would affect the gate-keeping role of editors.” Parallel sessions followed the opening speeches and highlighted important and interesting aspects of the social media arena.

Monetizing Your Social Media Space

Four eminent speakers participated in a panel discussion to talk over how bloggers could use the social media to “follow their passions and make money out of doing so.” Ong Hok Chuan, Badar Khusnood Country Consultant for Google in Pakistan, AJShirazi and Imran who were two very active bloggers from Pakistan led the panel discussion.

 

The session kicked off with a presentation by Ong Hok in which he discussed ways in which various small-scale entrepreneurs used the online social medium to promote their businesses. “People take up something that they are passionate about and then use their passion to actually try and sell their businesses online,” he explained. He advised Pakistanis and the social media activists gathered there to use the Internet to take off and move forward in today’s world. Badar Khushnood spoke about how, with online monetization, “it is wise to use your short term plans and gains to plan for long term working plans.” For him, blogs can use written content, pictures or even videos since all these genres are popular online.

 

AJ Shirazi said that the idea of ‘Monetizing Your Social Media Space is still a new concept in Pakistan. “Although blogs are still the most explosive medium online, the corporate sector, which could actually advertise themselves online via blogs are sadly not interested in doing so,” he added. However, Imran Hussain added that “when starting a blog, it is actually a better idea to not actually start to think of money right away… Establish an online presence first before actually trying to start thinking of making money online,” he advised the participants.

 

Women and social activism

Considering the fact that we live in a country where women are the most downtrodden segment of the society, blogging has the potential to change the plight of women in Pakistan. Consequently, the presence of Egyptian activist Rebecca Chiao’s, the Head of Development at HarassMap an online forum for women who have been sexually harassed created quite a furor amongst bloggers who spoke of women’s issues online. Other speakers at this discussion were Sana Saleem, the co-founder of Gawahi.com, Jehan Ara, the President of Pakistan and an advocate for TTBT Pakistan and Sabeen Mahmud, the Founder of T2F.biz.

 

Later Rebecca Chiao gave a presentation titled, ‘An interactive workshop on HarassMap.’ She talked about the details concerning her website’s functionality, reach and response. “Egyptian society wasn’t used to women, especially from rural areas, speaking so explicitly about their experiences or using harsh language to describe their ordeal.” For her and her co-workers, it was encouraging to see that the women of Egypt had decided that they had had enough. Whiole encouraging other bloggers to take an active interest and highlight women’s issues via their blogs she said that public attention would come first followed by the government’s notice. Eventually, the police would take notice also.

 

Jahan Ara, replying to a question said that female, or in fact any bloggers who highlighted women’s issues faced repercussions for being so outspoken, but for her, speaking out was better than “keeping quiet and remaining scared. If I don’t speak up then I deserve the society I live in,” she reiterated.

 

Education and good governance

The Egyptian blogger, Mohamed El Dahshan along with Hanny Kusumawati of Coin a Chance! and Anandita Puspitasari of Boger Watch from Indonesia, and Awab Alvi who blogs at Teeth Maestro talked about how blogging and the online forum could be used to create a better system of governance for one’s country.

 

Addressing his audience, MohammedEl Dahshan talked about the recent uprising of his nation and the removal of the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. “About 18 million people participated in the national referendum after Mubarak’s removal from power,” a fact that in itself is very significant to a country where before the uprising the people did not really trust elections. “Unlike blogs, mainstream media does not always know or report the full details regarding a story,” he said. His talk matched Kamal Siddiqui’s earlier statements that  the ‘gate-keeping process which edits a story before it is made public.’ Since no such process restricts bloggers, they can actually be the harbingers of greater change.

 

Dr Awab Alvi, a well-known Pakistani blogger, disagreed with MohammedEl Dahshan when he shared his opinion that the “local blogosphere was not yet strong enough to bring about a revolution in Pakistani politics.” For this he quoted the fact that although people blog and comment aggressively regarding the government’s actions, they do not participate in any rallies to protest either. “Only 0.5 per cent of the online community turns up,” he said citing the generally passive response that had followed various incidents such as the lynching of two brothers in Sialkot and the murder of an unarmed boy by the Rangers in Pakistan which could have sparked off a protest.

 

A total of 20 workshops were also held later on during the Summit which allowed bloggers to meet up and together discuss various issues which would, in the long run, help the blogging community in Pakistan. A raffle at the end of the day brought the Summit to a close. The grand prize, an iPad2 was won by Jehan Ara.

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