Bloggers Invited By Federal Government

Received an invitation from the Ministry of Federal Territories last week to be present for the Blog4FT campaign which was to be held at Pavilion KL on Monday.

I did question the person who invited me as I was wondering how did he obtain my email address and how did he get to know that I was a blogger. You know what I mean when you receive an email from the Federal Government people.

Found out that he was the Special Officer to the Minister too. A small world indeed when my colleague told me he knew this guy after reading the email invitation for this event.

Took leave on Monday and ran around to settle some stuff for the new house and rushed back to shower prior to departing for Pavilion KL. Quite a jam along Jalan Sultan Ismail after exiting Smart Tunnel. Arrived at the centre of Pavilion and saw that it was filled with chairs in view of the launching of the Blog4FT campaign.

The shopping centre was beautifully decorated with Kolam designs in anticipation of the forthcoming Deepavali festival on 17 Oct 2009.

Back to the campaign. What's the campaign about?

The Ministry is engaging bloggers and traditional media to write about stuff / happenings in the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan.

Browse through the dedicated website for this event itself, Blog4FT. Are you game for it? A blogging competition is being held and the Ministry actually encourages you to blog positively and promote FT indirectly.

It's opened to anyone divided into four categories, namely:-
* Malaysian Public - This category is open to all Malaysian citizens except those that fall under the Malaysian Media or the Junior Categories.

* Junior - This category is open only to Malaysian citizens below the age of 18 as at 31 December 2009.

* Malaysian Media - This category is open to employees of Malaysian Media Companies registered with the Malaysian Government.

* International - This category is open to non-Malaysian citizens.

I found that this is a good move indeed as this Ministry is trying to build good rapport with the bloggers instead of threatening bloggers as done by another ministry (which do not deserve my mention).

Registered my goodself upon arrival and was told that the event may begin around 3.15pm. My guess was correct. The little delay to the start of the event attended by big shots was expected.

Don't know how many bloggers were invited but felt privileged to be one of the bloggers.

While waiting for the event to begin, I dropped by at Dome cafe which was located just besides the event area. Made full use of the RM5 voucher (part of the door gift) and ordered a Tiramisu cake (a blogger has forgotten to take picture of his food?!?!??!). After deducting the RM5, the cake cost me RM9.95.

The arrival of the special guests was welcomed by a group of drum instruments performers. Can't take a picture as they were seated on the other end of the stage. You get to see different races playing their own drums (must learn the names of those drums) and they were able to rhyme it beautifully.

The Minister, YB Dato' Raja Nong Chik, gave a short speech telling us that he just got the hang of the internet and high technology era because of pressures from his kids.

After much persuasion from his kids (not those in kindergarten mind you but teens), he caught up with it really fast and is now known as the Facebook Minister in the Cabinet for having a thriving Facebook account.

Sadly and maybe unfortunately, the Ministry of Federal Territories' website is not updated and bearing in mind that the event was organised by the same ministry, they should have taken more responsibility in updating the name of the Minister. It's still showing the previous Minister's name and the previous organisation chart ......... tsk tsk tsk.

C'mon, please update your website.

At the end of the speech, a number of guests were called to the stage to press a button I supposed and it initiated a "biometric scanner". That's what it says at the screen behind them.

Thereafter, a short skit was presented by five individuals depicting how they were brought up in FT since young and what FT was to them.

At the closing of the event, representatives from the Ministry, organiser, sponsors stood at stage for a photo session.

The event (especially the blogging competition's prizes) was sponsored by some large Malaysian companies.









Walked up to the 4th floor to take this picture of the event area.















Could see a better effect of the Kolam design from up there.
Tags: Blog4FT, Ministry of Federal Territories, Pavilion KL, Kolam Design, Deepavali, Raja Nong Chik