World Blogging Forum 2009 – The Opening
The World Blogging Forum 2009 has started today. In the morning, Mr. Traian Basescu, former mayor of Bucharest and now president of Romania, greeted us with a warm welcome; I actually expected him to just drop by for a couple of encouraging words, but Mr. Basescu obviously is a quite avid followers of the blogosphere and even pointed out that he prefers political blogs over traditional media as they are a lot less biassed.
One of the organizers also told me yesterday in the evening, that one of the Romania's A-bloggers got leaked some info about the event way too early – seems he was dissing the event and/or thinking it's a fake. Guess what – you couldn't have been more wrong – thins is as real as events get :mrgreen:
The location definitely is most impressive: the conference takes place at the Palace of Parliament – I guess one could easily get lost in here as this enormous structure is the second largest building in the world! We are sitting in a large circle in a huge, heavily decorated room, we got simultaneous English translators, excellent WiFi and big expectations. Apart from the noble setting, the event resembles a “traditional” (it *is* a weird attribute in this context though) BarCamp.
Today the WBF09 will deal with two topics: from morning to noon it's all about Blogs and citizen journalism, in the afternoon we will take a close look at E-Democracy | Blogs and freedom of expression. Want to visit the Palace of Parliament virtually? Check out the
WBF09 Live Stream
…or discuss with us via Twitter, the official hashtag is #wbf09. Right now, Loic Lemeur is starting his keynote about the fundamental change from one-to-many to many-to-many media. Gotta listen now!
btw, one more thing about Bucharest: traffic here definitely is crazy… I'm not the only one who noted that:
After checking-in at our hotel and dumping our bags, it was off with my fellow bloggers on the bus to the welcome party. And that brings me to another observation about Bucharest: the traffic here is crazy. Not Bangalore-bad, Bangalore was madness, but it was jam-packed and people were constantly jockeying for position, with lights only sometimes obeyed. It made for an interesting trip.
Luv the first pic! Who’s the girl who’s shaking Loic’s hand?
Unfortunately, I don’t know her name – she was part of the organization team which did an amazing job. I’m still stoked.
Intr-adevar, sunt fanul nr 1- cel putin din Romania- al lui Ramon.
This comment was originally posted on Blogu` Lu` Sorin
Si eu am mai scris despre wbf, pe mine nu ma treci? )
This comment was originally posted on Blogu` Lu` Sorin
Ramon e cu adevarat “free”, dar asta este alta poveste; cat despre chinezul nostru, era mascota #wbf2009, sa-l fi vazut cum sarea in sus, cand faceam poze;
This comment was originally posted on Blogu` Lu` Sorin
@genius : the name of the girl is Anca Selejan, , she was the Project Manager of WBF2009