Nuffnang Awards – A View from Serge

Recently Nuffnang who can be considered the leading weblog advertising company in Asia-Pacific held their inagural Asia Pacific Blog Awards at Pan Pacific, here in Singapore. Serge here was one of the lucky few who attended this monumental event in the eyes of Nuffnang and in some specific areas of the blogosphere. Before we begin, let us tell you that we the Malaysian convoy left from Heritage House in Kuala Lumpur around 0900hrs. This was already a one hour delay and was then delayed once more for thirty minutes at the Singapore Customs, due to some negatively smart person bringing something taxable but did not declare it.

Anyway, we arrived at our Link Hotel roughly around 1500hrs and only entered the room at about 1600hrs as the staff was trying to sort out our rooms. From what he knows, about 100++ rooms were booked by Nuffnang for us and us comprises of blogger delegates of Malaysia, Singapore, Phillipines and Australia; inclusive of those has been nominated for the awards

Serge believes it was around 1730hrs+ that all of us gathered down stairs to wait for our chartered bus to go to Pan Pacific. While waiting he fired his trigger of some bloggers who he knew and some unknowns. The citizens of the blogosphere which he knew comprises of Jackie Loi, Kristine Thong, Yee Hou, Zoe Yve (who was whom Serge brought along), Wei Wei, Chris Thoo, Samuel Chew, Simon Seow, KY, Sixthseal, Gareth ShaolinTiger, Kimberly,Ginny Yap, Jenkin Yat, Adele Chow, Cherlin Tzia and many more.

Arrival to Pan Pacific was around 1930hrs++ and the crowd that was were busy mingling about. Even from this view point, the attendance was something and at the same time there were more people coming in. Serge chatted with a few people here and there and exchange name cards. After drying his throat out, he went and registered and sign their guestbook before heading into a new crowd of bloggers and chatted with them. For Serge it was quite easy to tell the difference between a Filipino and another Asian as he had once worked with them before.

Now we enter the grandball room of Pan Pacific. The stage design backdrop was done by Ripple Werkz, which to Serge was rather bland and did not have enough kick to it. With that said, the event started probably around 2030hrs++ and the emcee of the night was Allan Wu (host of the Amazing Race Asia). We now come to the first peeve of Serge and that is of course Allan Wu; as much as he tried to get the crowd to clap and cheer, he did it quite badly. Honestly he is a good host for other things but this particular night.. he did not do well.

In the course of the event we were presented with an excellent video that chronicle the 2.5 years of Nuffnang and nearly through out the whole night, it was probably the only time that the crowd clap and cheered the loudest. One of thing can be said, the future of Nuffnang is bright. The food that was served was good and yet it did not have the kick he would expect from Pan Pacific. Serge now comes into the second part of his peeve of the night and that relates to the guest arrangement on the table.

Nuffnang is a community of sorts and Serge saw the reason they mixed us all up at the table. That is to get us to know more people. Unfortunately they did it wrong, what they could have done is to give us name tags with our names and blog urls. With this we can talk to each other easily. Some of us are introverts whilst others are extrovert, it was kind of hilarious to see the reaction of some guest at other tables looking at other guest and waiting to see who will be the first one to strike up a conversation. It would have been good if the officials could walk to each table and introduce themselves and try to icebreak for us.

The award giving went on rather smoothly and who ever did the music planning needs to be congratulated as the songs chosen for each category fit perfectly. The magician duo that gave us a splendid performance J C Sum & ‘Magic Babe’ Ning, should learn a little bit more showmanship. The illusion is good, the showmanship was rather bland as their facial expression was really really bad. Well the group Electrico was a welcome relieve from Allan’s emcee-ing.

At the end of the event, photos were taken, people camwhored and they laugh and they joke and had a good after-event time. We all probably got back to the hotel around 0030hrs++. This end the Nuffnang Awards post and Serge will write about his Singapore tour thanks to Uniquely Singapore on a later date and we of the Broken Mirror would like to thank the Nuffnang Singapore crew for making Serge rich !

Nuffnang Awards Full Photo Album