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Taking the blogosphere to newer heights, the 2nd Annual Pakistan Blog Awards and the series of tri-city Unconferences aimed to bring leadership to Pakistan’s New Media voices. And these by and large, are voices of the bloggers active on a platform that has no downtime! Rightly termed an era of blogocracy, information today is indeed influenced by the opinions of the masses, one tenth of which in active on the internet. As compared to the traditional electronic and broadcast media that promote one-way communication, the era of blogocracy has surged in an interactive platform of exchange that is built on a two-way communication medium.   As more and more social media enthusiasts jump to it, blogocracy has channelized thoughts of all those that belong to an otherwise “constipated society and a constipated conventional media” in a medium that is apolitical. What this calls for, is leadership to be practiced effectively and with integrity within the new media voices, so that blogocracy is kept free of bureaucracy and bias.

Opening the Unconference Sessions in Karachi on the 22nd of December, was Dr. Ishrat Hussain,  Dean and Director of IBA, who was invited to the stage by the sessions’ host, Rabia Garib, Editor-In-Chief of CIO Pakistan, and Badar Khushnood, Country Consultant for Google.   Highlighting the role of New Media and the role of youth in promoting it, Dr. Ishrat concluded his keynote inviting the first panel on stage to discuss ‘BlogTalk Leadership’. Moderated by Jehan Ara, President, P@SHA, the group of panelists included Adnan Malik, Producer of Coke Studios, Sana Saleem, Co-founder of Gawahi, Tariq Mustafa, Assistant Brand Manager â€" Urban Youth at Telenor Pakistan, and Imtiaz Noor Mohammad, a technology evangelist and CEO, Inspire-x. With the entire session live-streamed on Google Hangouts and tweeted with the tag #PBA#, Blogtalk Leadership discussed social media users’ statistics and their frame of activity. Tariq Mustafa quoted Telenor’s current campaign, Khamoshi Ka Boycott that stresses on bringing about change ‘for the masses, by the masses.’

Quite synonymous to the ideals of blogosphere, the campaign encourages youth to step up and speak out against the flaws of our society. One way to do so is to blog/microblog about it. At least one other person, who might be in a position to influence a correction, becomes aware of the injustice. After all, spreading awareness is the key message. As Tariq observes, Khamoshi Ka Boycott is meant to eliminate an instilled pessimism within the youth that looks towards emigration as a ray of hope every time the city shuts down on strike. Boycotting a thought bothering him, Jamal Ashiqain, a photo blogger, questioned how much blogging actually counts towards bringing about a massive change in the society, Serving it right, Sana Saleem countered the thought by noting that blogging talks about what conventional media does not, as the latter only serves the mandate of the politicians. When conveying a message in words becomes difficult, one can capture an unethical act in a picture and upload it. Blogging to bring a constructive change in the society can be as easy as that.  Involving the corporate community in the drive, Jehan Ara proposed that the social media agency should work towards generating ROI from the blogosphere as well.

A profit incentive makes the push towards bringing change only harder. However, a majority of bloggers present at the Unconference opined that it innovation in blogging still lacks luster. As copy-pasting is still the largest content source for bloggers, sustainable ROI to the local blogosphere isn’t justifiable.  It would be unfair to state that a profit-orientation cannot be introduced. Coke Studios that originated in Brazil and was later brought to Pakistan by Rohail Hyatt, its success, driven by original content and a viral promotion, should be emulated by all those belonging to the local blogosphere.

Breakout Sessions  ..

As the BlogTalk came to a wrap, the Unconference proceeded into various distributed breakout sessions held simultaneously to replicate in real-life, a multi-channel communication platform.  One of these held focus on Public Policy and the New Media, in a discussion led by Hammad Siddiqui. Referencing his Entrepreneurship Career Management blog here, Hammad noted that his blog intends to highlight the lesser known faces so that the new media space at least isn’t perceived as a struggle junction by youngsters. Topics discussed at this panel discussion were linked-in with how public advocacy can be used to bring the desired change by engaging the blogosphere. In another follow-up session on Take Back the Tech (TBT), by Sana Saleem, representing TBT; a discussion revolved around using old media and new media spaces in collaboration to benefit the society at large. Where written content often fails the test of originality, visual content, for instance photoblogging, should be used towards healthy activism, Jamal observed. Yet tagging and water-marking should be done wisely to protect against a possible misuse or copyright infringement.

As deemed necessary, how to use wordpress and how to put together a blog, were also discussed. In a session on WordPress Basics, Majid Mirza, founder of goodnews.pk, emphasized that wordpress currently hosts 11 million blogs. Its biggest USP is that it is built on opensource and can be easily customized to the user’s preferences. Goodnews.pk has used wordpress as a platform to promote optimistic content which, in itself, is a rarity in Pakistan.  Due to this, goodnews.pk holds a monopoly in the region, considering the nature of content showcased. A separate  breakout session was dedicated to the craft of writing blogs led by Bushra Khalid with a hands-on round of activity.

Following these were sessions on CSR: Raising Community Awareness Programs also addressed by Majid Mirza, The Power of Storytelling for Causes: Defining a Relationship between Blogging and Journalism led by Talha Bin Hassam, and The Photo Blog: How to Correctly Capture the Right Moments by Jamal Ashiqain.

With the Breakout Sessions, Unconference in Karachi came to a close, having discussed the constituents of effective and intelligent blogocracy. Follow-up articles on the 2nd Annual Pakistan Blog Awards and the Unconference Sessions are also accessible on the website.  If you wish to register for the upcoming 2nd Annual Pakistan Blog Awards Unconferences in Islamabad or Lahore, please click here.

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