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I am very proud to announce that, in coordination with Outlook, AUB’s official newspaper, Mind Soup is hosting the first Lebanese Bloggers Convention at AUB.

During the convention/workshop, Lebanese guest bloggers will introduce the world of blogging to students and encourage them to express their ideas and opinions using personal blogs.

Also on the agenda is discussing the impact of blogging on the freedom of speech in Lebanon and the effect of blogging on the Lebanese society and culture.

Everyone is welcome to attend! If you are a non-AUB student and would like to attend, please send an email to moudz.mindsoup@gmail.com so that your access to AUB’s closed campus can be facilitated!

If you are a blogger and would like to be featured in this convention, please fill in this form: http://www.jotform.com/form/1200341481 after reading the rules below.

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Rules for applying (as guest speaker):
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- You should be a Lebanese blogger or an Arab blogger operating in Lebanon and can attend the blogger convention in AUB (Beirut)
- You should be 18 years of age or older.
- You should own a self-operated blog.
- Your blog should be at least 6-month old (updated on a weekly basis) or 1 year old (updated on a monthly basis).
- The convention is probably going to be in the English language, so you should be fluent in English.

Event’s page on Facebook

Update (05/07/2010):
The event has been rescheduled to May 19th 2010 at 5:00 PM

Update (05/18/2010):
The event has been canceled due to the tuition increase protest.

It’s all over the Lebanese blogsphere now… Yesterday night I went to T-Marbout along with several Lebanese bloggers to meet with Philippe Couve, Pierre Haski (www.rue89.com), and Eric Scherer from Radio France Internationale.

The meeting purpose was for the French journalists and bloggers to get to know more about the Lebanese blogsphere and its status. We discussed several issues such as why blogging isn’t very popular here in Lebanese, and why do some bloggers post very frequently when things heat up in Lebanon and then dump their blogs when everything calms down. They were also interested in knowing if anyone of us had a problem with the authorities because of some content (I wasn’t surprised with that question, at the end we’re an Arab country!).

In addition, while discussing the Lebanese people in general, we all agreed that they hate to read and write, they’re just good at grasping already processed information. Which explains why they’re all active on Facebook, and very few of them thought of starting a blog. Lazy nation!

w heik..! by the end of the meetup I was glad I had the chance to finally meet Maya Zankoul & Tarek Chemaly.

Here’s a list of the bloggers who were there:

20minutes.fr
beirutntsc.blogspot.com
choueichoueibeyrouth.blogspot.com
qussa.nl
diaryofahalfandhalf.wordpress.com
mayazankoul.wordpress.com
29letters.wordpress.com
klekeesh.blogspot.com
hanane.me
onoffbeirut.com
rue89.com
atelier.rfi.fr
kibot.blog.com
bloggingbeirut.com

And finally, here’s what others have posted about the meeting:

Maya Zankoul
Tarek Chemaly
Samer Karam
Pierre Haski
Hummus Nation (a blogger I really would like to meet someday!)