Maverick named Blogger Indonesia of the Week

Maverick has been featured as Blogger Indonesia of the Week in Blogger Indonesia. Thanks Fatih.

Here's what it says:

When I lamented in a bit disappointment about the passive attitude of traditional media towards blogs and bloggers or you can call both as blogosphere, R.M., founder of Blog Indonesia aggregator advised me to be patient because he's rest assured the time will come when Indonesian mainstream media will look into the blogosphere more seriously as far as the blogs trend and growth in the West keeps up. He actually wanted to remind me of this: our traditional media will follow whatever trend happening outthere sooner or later.

But he also warns Indonesian bloggers to keep quality, beside quantity, intact to attract many others to blog.

I reproduce here his good comment:

I believe it is just a matter of time.
Indonesian blogs still have some growing up to do. Honesty, credibility and consistency are qualities that can only be established over a long period of time.

Blogs with such quality no doubt will shine and it would be foolish for the mainstream media not to pay attention to them.


He further said that, even New York Times learns from bloggers:

...
Today, the New York Times launched its site redesign, announced by a prominent editor’s note on the homepage. There’s a few lessons for bloggers to learn from the redesign, as well as some evidence that the Times itself has been learning from bloggers.

In other words, the more media people (and academia) go blogging, the more it will be followed by others and that's the time when blogging become inseparable part of tools to communicate thought, news and ideas; beside the already existing tools like print media (newspapers and magazines), books and academic publication which are only accessible to certain circle of people.


It's in this context that Maverick Indonesia's presence in Indonesian blogosphere deserve duly attention. Maverick, as mentioned in the blog header, is "A Jakarta-Based PR Consultancy on the media, journalists PR, communications and life in Indonesia." An institution which is very closely related to the media.

Wonderfully, this blog is a collaborative works, similar to Agoravox or Global Voices Online, although all the 15 contributors seem to be from the same office.

You can read a lot of interesting and quality stuff in the blog that covers various topics, mostly on news, journalism and current-affairs commentaries that you might not read in the print media.

Just to take a few example, see Maverick's meet-up with Ulin Niam Yusron, a journalist from the weekly publication KONTAN. And see also its critical and unpriveleged-leaning commentary on Jakarta Governor, Sutiyoso's speech which is one of my favorite piece. Maverick said:

Reading about his speech, I couldn’t help thinking that his “Acting Metropolitan” plea is geared more towards those who are less privileged in the city, while we know that some citizens who drive around in fancy new cars or big chopper bikes are also “kampungan”. Well, those who are less privileged tend to imitate or look up to the behaviors of those who are perceived to be at the higher social strata. So, perhaps in his final year of his second term, Bang Yos should be tougher in enforcing his rules and values to those who are supposed to know the rules already - those who have experienced the “better” cities in the world, and those who know how other citizens work together in making their city a better place to live.


So, as far as Indonesia goes, blog appears to be a converging point of two different world: a chatting and friendster culture on one hand and the journalism, traditional media and academia on the other. A meeting point that needs to be preserved and if it continues will surely create a bigger and unprecedented positive forces in the future.

While the former, with more edges in IT technology related stuff, can give some help to the latter on blog nitty-gritty, the latter can "teach" the former on how to make a good and quality content. I hope the former should learn to communicate with the latter and vice-versa, to make the "converging process" going smoother.

Defense Minister Juwono has started blogging

Corporate communicators, journalists and PR hacks in Indonesia take note: your Defense Minister has just started blogging. What are you going to do about it?

If conversations with professional communicators in Indonesia are anything to go by, the answer is probably nothing. The typical attitude, especially for those over 40, is that blogs are for angst-filled teenagers writing syrupy prose and bad poetry on the Net.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Blogs are very likely to change the way businesses and organizations and businesses communicate, especially when it comes to crisis and issues management. The rise of the blogging phenomenon as a potential force in society is well documented in publications such as Fortune, Tom Freidman’s The World is Flat and Naked Conversations, a book co-authored by Robert Scoble, best known as Microsoft’s appointed blogger, and Shiel Israel.

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono has apparently taken all this seriously and has started blogging from April. So far he’s made five postings, the first was personal and on the arrival of his grandson. His other postings were about the US Secretary of Defence, development planning and the debate on Pancasila.

His last posting, however, is particularly interesting from a issues management point of view and can be a precursor of how businesses, organizations and personalities may try to engage their detractors in the future.

Titled Military Businesses and the Reform Process, Juwono rebuts the points raised by a Human Rights Watch report of June 2006 called Too High a Price: The Human Rights Costs of the Indonesian Military’s Economic Activities.

So what does he achieve?

Read more

BBC Jakarta New Correspondent

Welcome to Indonesia Lucy Williamson.

Lucy just arrived from London on Monday last week, replacing Rachel Harvey who’s now back in London doing grown up reporting for BBC Domestic TV. A little tip about Indonesia, it’ll be useful after you finish your Bahasa Indonesia course in Yogya. Things might be too calm and almost boring here at some points but never lose your guard, cause when you least expecting it a mountain might suddenly decide to erupt or the sea might want to take a too closer look at the land and take people for a violent swim in the process.

Well those are the clear examples. There is also daily confusing news you’ll have to deal with, like…. police caught someone related to terrorism: is he a suspect or just a witness, is he detained or arrested is he even dead or alive…you’ll see.

Surely you will have lots of fun here. At least we have 13.776 beautiful islands for you to travel (some underwater during high tide) and about thousand gazillion people who care about everything and nothing at the same time.

Good Luck and see you around

Syarina

Bye Bye BBC Chicks

Three and a half years in Indonesia, Rachel and Becky flew back home yesterday(June 26th 2006). Yes, those foreign correspondents come and go all the time, but this time it was damn difficult for me trying not to cry.

I worked with them since they arrived here in 2002 till about 3 months ago.

Those chicks are the best people you could ever work with, smart, funny, a bit crazy, caring, respectful to others (it’s a rare quality and a very important one when you have to travel everywhere and meet all kind of people and get stories out of them) and what great talents!

I’ve never seen a reporter like Rachel who could do rants about anything on camera (try, ask her to talk about dog poo, for example) for I don’t know, a full 2 minutes?! Without a single emmm or eeerrr or repeating information. She’s always so smooth and clear. The only time I saw her choked was when she did a radio stand up on the roof top of an only building left standing in Kampung Jawa, Banda Aceh looking out to the totally tsunami wiped out village and tried to put what she saw into words.

Girl, you are an awesome gob on a stick ;D

And Becky…everybody loves Becky. She surely knows her way around all those cables and fancy broadcasting equipments. That is one girl who can do everything. BBC’s producer who’s always ready to help anyone in those too often chaotic moments for TV and Radio and make things right, but then we all know it wouldn’t be broadcasting without things getting screwed up with no apparent reason once in a while. And I was always ready to supply her with a nice kretek fag when things got a bit too much.

For me they’re a lot more than just people I worked with. You can’t possibly spent more than 3 years traveling all over Indonesia together, sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags, running out of rooms in the middle of nights because of earthquakes, listening to people’s dramatic stories from one island to another, drinking beers, playing cards, arguing, and a lot of other things without feeling close to each other.

So now Rachel soon will appear on BBC News 24, and be famous. Becky will be a producer for BBC World Service Radio..and I’ll be working here in Maverick. It’s the end of an era for BBC Jakarta office….he he

It was a great 31/2 years Bubu n Bebek, thanks to you both.

I know you guys will do fantastic back in London and you don’t need no luck for that.

I miss you guys so much…

Bu bu loo

Thoughtful gestures from our clients

We’ve received lots of ‘thank you’ phone calls and emails from our clients because of the ‘coffee packages’ we sent them yesterday.

And surprisingly, this morning we received a hamper full of ‘nasi uduk’ from Citigroup Indonesia’s Corporate Affairs Team! What a thoughtful gesture.

Being well known for their big appetites, the Mavericks couldn’t resist themselves from finishing the scrumptious meals sitting on the table. Here’s a snapshot.... (before we pig out, that is! ☺)