Co-Speaker for Past Forward: A Heritage Blogging and Social Media Workshop

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Hi, I'm back from my hiatus. Stopped for a few weeks as I badly needed a break from all the information overload. A good time to think about future directions for the blog too. Recently I received quite a few emails regarding the blog, which shows despite the site being stagnant for a while, the blog has not faded into oblivion. They woke me up from my slumber, and made me feel those past efforts have been worthwhile, so I obliged their requests whenever possible.

Few days ago, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow contacted me to ask if I'm interested to share my work at her workshop organized as part of the Singapore Heritage Festival 2012. The name is a mouthful but not unfamiliar; I have read her book Singapore: A Biography co-authored with Mark Ravinder Frost, which is kind of a running commentary on the exhibits in the Singapore History Gallery of the National Museum. I accepted the invitation since the title of the session is "A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words" - I'd let the pictures do the talking! It is a joint session with Zakaria Zainal, a creative photographer with an outstanding portfolio that includes overseas assignment. Since the topic is on Singapore heritage, I guess he will touch on his work documenting old playgrounds and gurkhas; and probably his work in GE11: We Were There, a 60-page magazine on photos of General Elections 2011.

The workshop is this Saturday, July 14 (see website and facebook event). My session is from 3.45pm to 4.30pm. Concurrently there is another session "Balik Kampung: Blogging about Your Neighbourhood" by more esteemed bloggers Victor Yue of Bullockcartwater fame and Kwek Li Yong of My Queenstown blog. In fact, after the workshop at 4.45pm, the two gentlemen are leading their special tour (separately) to Chinatown and Queenstown. When I saw the programme for the first time, I was delighted to see some old friends - take this literally, no joking - Chun See and Andy Lim also speaking in the workshop. Two other FOYers Georgiana Glass and Ivan Chew will also share their work. Ivan will probably touch on the Singapore Memory Project.

While I try to second guess what other speakers are going to share in the workshop, it is kind of ironic that I am not prepared myself on the things to share for my session. Yu-Mei has given me some suggestions, and I have decided to follow the spirit of the session and "let the pictures do the talking". It is only 20 minutes per speaker at most; and from past experiences, time seems to be never enough. As the session is back to back with the earlier one by Andy and Georgiana, expect changing of audience and equipment to eat up time.

All workshop participants must be registered, as there are limited seats and they are allocated on first come first serve basis. See this website for the registration link.