I went to the first ever Philippine BlogCon 2006 last night at the National Sports Grill in Greenbelt 3 sponsored by Globe Innove. I finally got to meet some of the people behind the local blogs I read such as Abe Olandres and Markku Seguerra.

Now if you know me, you’d probably be surprised to know that I went there own my own, not knowing anyone personally who would come as well. I’m your classic introvert and mingling with unfamiliar people is something that I’m not very good at. (I’m shy, hehehe.)

Anyway, I sat down with Mimi and Karl de Leon, the founders of Peyups.com and struck up a simple conversation. Mimi was very nice and made me feel comfortable talking about stuff. A little later we were joined by Markku and his girlfriend, Anne Bailon, and Markku fortunately recognized me from cyberspace. Rounding up the group were Dax Dizon, Joey Climaco, and Kevin Codamon.

There were some nice short talks by Abe, Noemi, Marc and others on topics ranging from the history of the Philippine blogosphere, to professional blogging and blog-related careers, and some search engine optimization specific for blogs (or Wordpress-based blogs it seems). After the talk, people mingled around and interacted with the other participants.

Interestingly, aside from one renegade Nikon, all of the SLR cameras I saw at the conference were Canon cameras. Canon prides itself in being the #1 choice of professional photographers. Several of their ads, in fact, show pictures of rows upon rows of sports photographers sporting Canon cameras with matching thousand-dollar camera lenses.

Anyway, what about the post title? I was lucky to win one of the conference’s raffle prizes: a 256 MB PQI USB flash drive. I was thinking of buying a flash drive for my personal use, and now I don’t have to. And all because I blog and had the nerve to attend a social event. Incidentally, Markku and Anne each won the same prize. The post title is also a play on the problogger quote, “the something that blogging bought”. Hehehe.

Found below are some pictures from the event. (My Canon Digital IXY 800 IS pales in comparison to the EOS SLRs there. )

Update: Sep 27, 12:12 a.m. I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one feeling a just bit left out or OP (read Jeff’s feedback). The first word that came to mind when I observed the crowd was ‘cliquish.’ Most people seemed to know each other. Or maybe most of them were just extroverts. But that won’t stop me from attending the next BlogCon; the event was great and I did leave it feeling happy. (Of course, the flash drive had a part in it.)

Another thing: I had a hard time answering the question people there asked asked me the most: “What’s your blog?” I resorted to some combination of uttering “vaes9” (pronounced like “vice 9”) and “a personal/technology blog.” Pffft.