أكتوبر14

JEDDAH: Organizers are hoping that Arabs will be blogging in a big way on Blog Action Day tomorrow, when the world is set to highlight the plight of the poor. This is the second edition of blogging for a theme.
But two Arabs, who are going to participate this year, are only cautiously optimistic.
Ahmed Badrah, a 20-year-old Palestinian video blogger who lives in Jeddah, studies in Malaysia and is the founder of Arab Video Blogging Community, blames a lack of communication among bloggers for the poor response from Arabs.
“That’s why I am promoting awareness through my blog,” Badrah said. “Unfortunately, Arabs are not that active in sharing this event with the world; I don’t know why. I think maybe because the event itself is not known to Arab bloggers. Earlier, I checked if anyone had written about the event, and I found no one had. Hence I posted an article in Arabic to create awareness, and the result was good.”
Another effective promotion has been word-of-mouth advertising of the event. That’s how Essam Al-Zamel, the 28-year-old CEO of Remal Information Technology Company, got to know about the Blog Action Day. “I knew about the action day through a blogger friend of mine,” Al-Zamel said.
He added that through his participation he hopes to shed some light on the root causes of poverty locally and internationally and how to eradicate the causes or alleviate the suffering. “I will also write about the lack of real action from the wealthy nations because I can find no excuse for them for not acting effectively in solving poverty around the world,” he told Arab News.
Badrah, meanwhile, said that after posting the event on his blog he received good responses from bloggers.
The organizers have invited bloggers from all over the world to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives. The Blog Action Day is organized as a nonprofit activity by a group of volunteer bloggers and the staff of Envato (http://envato.com), which has donated their time and resources.
Currently registered to participate until yesterday were 7,644 sites and 8,447,030 RSS readers.
“I hope there will be a lot of Arab bloggers who want to make an impact on society and bring about change in the region,” Badrah said.
Blog Action Day is an annual event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about a select issue on the same day. The day started last year with environment as the theme.
According to the website administrators and creators, global issues such as poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple, clear answer. The main aim of this action day is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion in order to find and enhance solutions.
“By asking thousands of different people to give their viewpoints and opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens through which one can view these issues. Each blogger brings his or her perspective and ideas, each blogger posts relating to their own blog topic and each blogger engages their audience differently,” said one blogger. “By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the Web and focuses audiences around the globe on one issue.”
Laura Bashraheel I Arab News
The Article link