Reflections

The eLawyer – Exabytes Penang Bloggers & Law Forum 2009 held on 28 june at USM see about 50 people in attendance. Citizen Journalists Natasja, Lilian Tan and Lim were there. Met a number of my blogger friends there like Richard Loh, Romerz, Masterwordsmith. Daniel. Chandra from Bangasa Malaysia Penang (Richard is also a Bangsa Malaysia Penang member) came late, just as the last speaker finished speaking. The last speaker was Mr Stephen Tan Ban Cheng, a journalist turned lawyer. I met him before twice at our Bangsa Malaysia Penang meeting (more than a year ago! and I was pleasantly surprised he can recognise me, even remember my name.

At the registration desk, manned by Exabytes staff, we received a nice orange ‘recycling’ bag,’ which contain a pen, a notebook, 2 desk calendars and of course Exabytes pamphlet announcing its latest promotion.

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attended the ‘right to information’ forum at the caring society complex, penang, yesterday. about 30 people were in attendance. it was organised by transparency international malaysia (TI) and centre for independent journalism. (CIJ)

usha from transparency international was at the registration desk. on registration, we were given some pamphlets and this cute badge, as seen in the picture here.

the moment i saw the badge with the words ‘journos’ on it, i think of my fellow citizen journalists (CJ) comrades. (a group of us who were trained by malaysiakini to be citizen/video journalists). some of them had already been ‘on the job’ going around as citizen journalists interviewing people and making videos. as i thought each of us only get one badge, i ask usha if the badges are on sale as i thought of getting some for the penang CJ. usha said not on sale but was kind enough to give me more of the badges. well i hope the CJ will like it.

the forum, or rather the ‘dialogue on citizen’s rights to access public information’ as stated on the banner, carried the theme ‘transparency of information for government with integrity’. i could not really understand the theme at first but after the dialogue, i was very clear of the theme and fully agree with it.

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