it is time for new blood

Photo courtesy of Abe in his blog

A few days ago, I was invited by a friend to observe a workshop on blogging and podcasting on the subject of politics. This two day endeavor was sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) and had prominent internet personalities such as Manolo Quezon, Angelo Racoma and Abe Olandres give talks on the art of political blogging, podcasting, and the technical science behind blogging respectively.

The end-result of the workshop were actual podcasts and blogs set up by the participants from scratch. New blood. Fresh thoughts. From average joes like you and me, but know a little bit more about politics.

On a very personal level, I feel that local politics has been saturated with the SAME hulabahoo from the SAME people who have been in politics for the past 10 years or so. It is time for new blood. They used to say that Math is the great equalizer. Times have changed – it is the Internet that gives people opportunities to be heard by anyone around the world. Thank God for this. And thank God that not a lot of these politicians that say the same thing have online journals. Manolo says it better,

“All bloggers compete in the free market of ideas”

The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Ronald Meinardus, the resident representative from FNF. I was also shocked to hear (in a very good way) that FNF (liberal democrats are now sexy in my book!) buys mPH and made reference to the January-February ’06 issue because it had the collectible on ‘podcasting in 5 easy steps.’

You can view more pictures here.