Received an email today that made me think about how the GMBL [what is this?] in conjunction with the Best Malaysian Blog Awards (nicknamed the Bloggies) proposal i sent to The Star can bring much deserved recognition to the talents of Malaysian bloggers, and promote the art of blogging to yet-to-begin-bloggers-to-be.
This was my reply to her email.
Dear { a friend },
No unfortunately, i've not gotten a response from The Star yet, not even a letter of acknowledgement...
My next step will be to to write them via snail mail (maybe printed hardcopy will have a better effect) about the Malaysian Awards. Together with this letter, i intend to include a press release for the GMBL; hopefully they will publish that thus creating greater awareness for the GMBL, inviting more people to participate. If that works, then maybe the Star (or some other sponsor) will be willing to take up the Awards projects. Usually people like this will only do something if we can demonstrate to them that they will benefit from it somehow.
If all else fails, what say you that we set up the first ever Malaysian Blog awards ourselves - try to get a few celebrity writers to be judges, maybe get some famous bloggers (such as the founders of Blogger, and/or Movabletype) to be judges, and see what happens then. I know a few professional writers who are members of PROMUDA (Young Malay Professionals Association - www.promuda.com) who may be interested to be judges.
No rush, really. I'll take things one step at a time. For the time being, i'm going to concentrate on building up the GMBL. Won't rest until ALL malaysian blogs (at least those whose writers are interested - i can't and won't force anyone to join the list; that's simply not the reason why the list exists in the first place) are part of the list. Then, once a suitable critical mass has been created, only then does it make sense to push to have the Malaysian Bloggies (cute name for the awards, huh?) since it'll be easy for the judges to judge all the blogs when everything is in one place.
Of course, i plan to have a system where all bloggers will be able to vote and nominate their blogs of choice for the Bloggies, but that will probably only be, say 50% of the total score. The other 50% will be awarded by the judges. This will allow for peer-review by the malaysian bloggers, a very important step in order to create a sense of value for the Bloggies.
Maybe if we can get the first year's award off the ground, then people like The Star may be interested to pick it up next year, or the year after next.
Hahahah... listen to me. I'm getting ahead of myself. I just have these ideas rolling around in my head. My main concern, in fact, my ONLY concern is the building of a Malaysian blogging community. I think there are enough of us out here in cyberspace to deserve recognition. Like today, in InTech, an article was published talking about our blogging-brothers/sisters worldwide. NOTHING was mentioned about Malaysian-made blogs (although i do appreciate the fact that The Star ran a story some time back and featured some Malaysian blogs such as Hani's Honey and Jean Bond). That's a shame, because just as there are 300-500k blogs out there worldwide, i believe a fairly large number of them belong to Malaysians. And our talents at writing and design can compete with the best of them. Check out the list so far - there are some INCREDIBLE blogs already listed in the GMBL - yours in one such site (it's already a "Popular" site), Digital Fugue is a great read, momentary life is a design showcase, and many, many more. Just looking at site after site today, validating links, has shown me just how much talent there is out there. It should be recognized.
Oh well, let's see what happens. As i said, no rush. Rome was certainly not built in a day.
Take care, God bless.
Peace,
Aizuddin Danian
http://www.aizuddindanian.com
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