Last Saturday was a milestone achievement for the bloggers of Pakistan as the Information Technology Ministry, Government of Sindh organized the National Bloggers Conference 09. This is the first time in the history of our region that a government has not only recognized the importance of blogging but had also gone a step forward to appreciate and support the bloggers community without attaching any strings to undermine or restrict their right to the freedom of expression.

The conference held at a local hotel here in Karachi started off with great energy and enthusiasm, two of the front tables hosted a number of bloggers who meticulously covered the event live using a live blog applet, tweet feeds, and photo inputs trying not to miss out even the even the slightest bit of the details while battling a number of jittery but yet working wifi connections provided by the organizers.

The honorary guest, the IT minister Raza Haroon, started the event with a bit of a speech praising the role of bloggers and later presenting a DEL laptop to the youngest MCP, 11 year old and class 6 student at Mama Parsi school Umaima Adil.

Also present at the conference were Mr. Andersher Cowasjee and Dr Farooq Sattar. Amongst the key speakers were Jehan Ara, Dr. Awab, Mr Chawla, Urdu blogger Ammar, Asghar, Raja Islam and Ramla Akhtar .

Although the conference adopted too formal a tone, it was overall not only a successful event but also a very positive and plausible effort to recognize, promote and support the blogger community by the government

The full proceedings of the events which is the replay of the live feed cane be read here and another follow-up post by Dr. Awab can be read here and yet another follow-up post here.