it was faster than i thought it would be

It’s this Tuesday, March 10 @ Es Teler 77 Resto, Jl. Adityawarman 61, Blok M (map here).

More info:
FB Event Page | FB PK JKT Group | PK JKT blog

with Matt

Wow. One of my wishes since a couple of years ago finally came true. A WordCamp in Indonesia.

Seeing there’s pretty much nobody did write about the event in English, I hope this could be a bridge to the English readers.

I was just talking with my friends about the possibility of having a WordCamp in Indonesia at PestaBlogger 2008, when a couple of days later it was announced. It’s like a serendipity or something. I’ve been thinking a lot of someday doing it since the Nu Substance Festival in 2007 (and the possibility of doing it in Bandung). It happenned by the chance, that we’re going to organize an event, and the WordCamp Indonesia commitee approaches us to do a related program.

First Day - Second Day – Photos – Related Posts

WordCamp Indonesia 2009

However it wasn’t doing very well. The progress with the organizers are very sketchy even up to the day I came. But I came with optimism since I had to support the event whether it’s spectacular or mediocre. WordPress had changed my life a lot, and I don’t want one people less came to the event and it became to be a not so good precedent. I want the Wordpress community in Indonesia to grow, even when we weren’t fully networked, and this could be a chance to start progressing.

I had to say, Valent Mustamin, the organizer had difficulties in delegating. Maybe he hadn’t much people to work with, since he’s relatively unknown to the Indonesian blogosphere. This is something that you had to built from the bottom up by building networking within the blogosphere (and since we didn’t have any widely established developer/user community). So he had more than a couple of obstacles along the way. But it the end, he did it. It was a fair success, and without his efforts this event could still be just a wish in our conversations.

On the first day (which we first met), he informed me that due to miscommunications and Matt’s tight schedule, we weren’t able to invite Matt to Bandung the next couple of days to the WP Bandung Meet Up. I know that this would cause a lot of disappointment with the Bandung enthusiasts, but I was okay with it since he shouldn’t cary the burden of guilt. My primary goal is that on the second day, the highschool magazine kids could come in and present their work in front of everyone who came to the WordCamp. It is very important to them, to gave them the credits of achivements they made, even if it’s just an easy thing with professionals.

Meeting Matt Mullenweg in person was probably the moment I been waiting for (and surely everyone who came!). It’s like meeting with a Nobel lauriate or something. Of course I do try to behave casually, but I couldn’t stop thinking that this is the guy who started it all. We spoke about the .bdg too (which I’m wearing the T-Shirt).

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23plumpang
also the current trending topics @ twitter.com

school-press.com

Here in Indonesia, the highschool’s magazine / press clubs aren’t as extravagant compared to those in the US schools (or in the TV precisely); there are no Veronica Mars or Chloe Sullivan. Probably because of the smaller student amount of a school or their budget on journalism activities. I’ve been in one back in the days. However, the most common press / journalism culture for schools in the nation are wall-posted writings, or Mading (Wall Magazine). But for most, it doesn’t goes anywhere far from it.

So, a couple of months ago, in the moment of a new momentum, we (Bandung Blog Village) are discussing on what events should we organize. The common notion is, we should held a blogging competition. But we had to admit, it is becoming a mediocre, every institution, every month of the year seems to do the same, with little difference. In fact some of us had already won. So we decided to make the most of our skills and with a tight budget availability, without being average.

The comittee of Wordcamp Indonesia then approaches us with interests to do an event in Bandung related to the Wordcamp in Jakarta. We were all very excited at the idea, since most of us are avid Wordpress users and developers. Rather than just the usual blogging competition, we wanted the competition to utilize the magazine-style theme / layout that has grown prominence to be a trend lately (which I did with Deathrockstar.info since 2005). It is also always a good chance to showcase the CMS potentials of the Wordpress platform. And since we are aimed to educate and develop skills, we choose highschool students as our participants.

Climate Change Centre ITB and detikBandung are also interested in helping us out, so we have people from dealing environment issues / themes and online journalism. So we set a series of events, from workshops to tutoring sessions to support the competition. Unfortunately I was away when we decided the name, Bandung Blog Vaganza (in self-reference), but I was there when we chose the domain name, school-press.com (in reference to WordPress). To the full extent, we also choose to use WordPress MU as the platform for the multiple blogs (10 schools) rather than a self-hosted WordPress, and layout customisations are made by CSS.

While we’re then choosing on a magazine-style base theme to use, someone mentions Arthemia, in which we found out that the theme author, Michael J. Hutagalung, was a Chemical Engineering student in ITB, and it was an instant decision. We wouldn’t love more than to use the local products. Furthermore, he actually made a premium version which were user-friendlier at the admin side. I then tried to contact him and asked if he would allow to use the premium version for the students, and he generously did.

The winners were announced today, I happened to be one of the jurors, and the results were amazing. And to think we didn’t actually done much, they were already novice, if not experts. I think we should do this again this year, with broader scopes in Western Java such as Sukabumi, Cimahi and Garut, and also Jakarta (I was hoping that the our sister-community, TukangLenong would be interested in helping out). Moreover, we now know that if this was an easy thing for highschools students, why don’t go for junior highschools and do the blogging competition with elementary students. I always wondered what would the future generations would produce.

So here are the winners:

1. SMAN 20 Bandung
   

   SMAN 20 BDG

2. SMK Informatika Bandung
   

   SMK Informatika BDG

3. SMKN 4 Bandung
   

   SMKN 4 BDG

I hope the thing with the WordCamp Indonesia committee goes smoothly and we could send these kids to Jakarta and present their achievements in front of hundreds of Indonesian WordPress users and developers and it’s founder (Matt Mullenweg). We are just functioning as an enabler, and we’re hoping that they would continue using their blogs, and there are some ideas of opening the school-press.com domain for other schools to sign-up.

Related media coverage:

• http://newspaper.pikiran-rakyat.com/prprint.php?mib=beritadetail&id=51687
• http://www.detikinet.com/read/2009/01/08/173306/1065336/404/mentoring-akbar-di-garasi-lombok-33
• http://bandung.detik.com/readfotodetail/2009/01/08/143838/1065191/684/0/mentoring-akbar-di-garasi-lombok-33
• http://www.detikinet.com/read/2008/12/18/183023/1056090/404/bandung-blog-village-tuang-mading-ke-blog
• http://www.detikinet.com/read/2008/12/27/083955/1059881/404/online-kan-mading-kreasi-siswa-bisa-mendunia

Related Posts

• http://www.achmadbisri.net/bandung-blog-vaganza-mading-online-sma-bandung.html
• http://www.bbv.or.id/inside-bbv/3-tim-finalis-terbaik.html

theopenlabs.com

The last couple of days, I’ve been toying around with Buddypress, the open source social networking plugin for WordPress MU. I’ve been planning for this to happen for a long time, ever since they released the WordPress MU (the code they used with Wordpress.com) to the public, and after a while Andy Peatling made ChickSpeak, a costumised WPMU installation with social networking. I’d knew sooner or later, there will be some plugins surfacing, and hence Buddypress. And I’d always wanted to implemented it to the local/indie music community with Deathrockstar.info.

However, I realized that for a site with heavy visitors like DRS, running WPMU behind it with a cheap hosting (if you decide to use them as well, enter MURAHAN as the promo code and you’ll get 1 free domain and 70$ discount) wouldn’t be as smooth. There’ll be a lot pressure because of the CPU time used on a shared hosting. And at the time Buddypress were still at its infancy. So I held back, and still (for DRS, at least).

Ideas arised when Emil, the chairman of BCCF, asked me if I would be interested to make a social networking site for the CEN’s project. At Helarfest 08, Raw Nerve offered to use their upcoming white label Creative Networking Platform to be implemented. However, up until now I haven’t got any updates on the project, but after looking at the test site, I’d definitely love to try it out.

Meanwhile Buddypress is out, and it started to feel a little tingly. After another successful implementation of WPMU on another project, I couldn’t have enough. This is it, the next logical step. I need a study case community, one with a very receptive talent pool for technology and social networking habits, my generation, the digital native. Moreover, I’ve been heavily involved with the community from the preconception and hangout with them intensively at Common Room. So, a couple of sleepless dawns, here it is.

My intention is purely experimental, so there’s no plan what so ever, just have a little fun, get bored and move on to the next interesting thing. There’s no ambitious agenda, folks! Be gentle to the server, okay?

Anyway, what I hope for the next is, this thing could spread out the other local communities and cities in Indonesia. To gain optimum advantage from this tool for their own networking. I’m just an early-jumper.

New Year 2009 @ Common Room

Starting this year I’m going to start myself a blog. Really.

It’s been a long time coming since I’m not really a new face in the local blogosphere. I used blogger in 2004 just to try out stuffs, then 2005 with wordpress to publish what now has become the most popular music online magazine in Indonesia. That year I also moved my blogging activities to multiply, because then it has the most convenient commenting system for me; urging more  active discussion within my circle of friends, has a publishing privacy system, and has a simple gallery to facilitate my photography outlets.

Since then I’ve juggled my way with wordpress and the K2 theme, produced many blogs and websites, but still haven’t found the way of reasons to a domain, literally.

I’m not actually a fan of new year resolutions, since while I actually plan things ahead, I don’t plan things that weren’t necessary next in line, if you know what I mean. So a lot of my previous new year resolutions weren’t contextual anymore by March.

I know that from the moment on, I’ll be posting here. This year I also set a few goals; do my thesis so I can finish my undergraduate degree, turn it into a book, build my portfolio, make another architeture-related book,  and then focus on Helarfest and a couple of creative community events.

So, Happy New Year!

New Year 2009 @ Common Room