As blogging becomes more popular in Indonesia, bloggers and blogging has become a larger force in society. Currently, there are more than 300,000 bloggers in Indonesia, almost double from the estimated 150,000 recorded about the time of last year's Pesta Blogger. This shows the rapid growth of blogs and how significant the development of blogging has been.
According to Wicaksono, Chairman of Pesta Blogger 2008, in Bali, Makassar, Jogjakarta, and Jakarta, for instance, bloggers' community in these area have begun social outreach activities involving schools, mental hospitals, and collecting books for unfortunate children. "This is a very promising and positive development," said Wicaksono.
On the other hand, The Minister of Communications and Informatics of The Republic of Indonesia, Muhammad Nuh, said that Indonesian government and Department of Communications and Informatics firmly believes in giving as much freedom as possible for bloggers to voice their thoughts, feelings, and opinions through their blogs. Freedom is one of the conditions needed to let creativity grow.
"We believe that bloggers have a positive contribution towards society, thus, to us, the most important thing is to support any form of positive activities conducted by bloggers that can have a wide impact to the society," said Nuh.
Pesta Blogger itself is a forum for bloggers in Indonesia to interact directly with each other, exchange information, discuss and to build their networks. In this way they can work together and launch more positive activities for their society more effectively in the future. |
