A nosebleed seminar

Nose bleed. That is the only word I was able to think about the training/seminar on Online Writing Techniques I attended held at Hillside Resort, Puerto Princesa City from November 14 to 16, 2007. The participants came from SUCs all over the country who would document the different activities of the CICT-iSchools Project.

I’d like to believe the other participants may have other words for it, but they would all boil down to one thing – nose bleed. The series of activities were done under extreme time pressure which I didn’t see a problem at all but indeed a challenge for all of us. The Internet connectivity was not very cooperative and friendly though.

The topics that were discussed, like news and feature writing, photojournalism, and blogging were not new at all; but just like a feature story, it was presented in a new perspective, in a new angle, with the use of the modern media. The trainers, Luz Rimban and Yvonnee Chua, have impressive track records in their fields which add more pressure to the event. Indeed, they are very good trainers. From them we learned how traditional we had been when it comes to news and feature writing, and writing captions for photos. As what Ms. Yvonne Chua would always say about past events, ‘back from nineteen tralala.’ True, our knowledge about some aspects of the topics were really back from nineteen tralala. Now we know which should de done and should not be done…

I was excited on the first few hours of the first day of the training. I liked how the topics were presented or discussed but as the hours went on and the activities in each topic started pouring on I started to feel as if there were blocks of ice or matches lit under my seat. I was battling against time and Internet connectivity. I was not able to connect anyway on the first and second days of the training. Its consequence: late submission of output 2 for photojournalism and for feature writing. The trainers, in fairness, were very willing to share their laptop, but of course I could not take advantage of it all the time because I was not the only participant they attended to.

As I’ve said, the biggest hindrance to much better outputs I and the other participants have encountered is the Internet connectivity. For blogging alone, it took me five to ten minutes just to be able to upload a single photo. Obviously, much as I would like to give it my best in blogging, I simply can’t for some reasons beyond my control.

Given the problems we have encountered, we expect that in future undertaking like this sufficient time will be allotted for each activity.

Anyway, thanks to CICT for this very meaningful training/seminar.