Global Voices » Brunei

Southeast Asia: ASEAN Committee on Consumer Protection Website

Mong Palatino — Sun, 20 May 2012 09:33:49 +0000

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations committee on consumer protection has launched a website to inform consumers in the region regarding banned or recalled products.

Brunei: Decreasing Population Growth

Mong Palatino — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:13:30 +0000

Emmagoodegg discusses Brunei's decreasing birth rate and shares some of the funny suggestions made by netizens on how to increase the country's population

Southeast Asia Digital Library

Mong Palatino — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 09:24:20 +0000

The Southeast Asia Digital Library provides educators and students with materials published in Southeast Asia. The online library contains digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, as well as multimedia materials and searchable indexes of additional Southeast Asian resources.

Brunei: Monitoring the Eight Legislative Council

Mong Palatino — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:17:59 +0000

Brunei twitterers are using the hashtag #legco8 for updates on the Eight Legislative Council of the government.

Brunei: Support Group for Individuals with Autism

Mong Palatino — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:15:42 +0000

The Society for the Management of Autism Related issues in Training, Education and Resources - Brunei Darussalam or Smarter Brunei is a family support group and association which was established to protect every individual member with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their family members.

Historical Link between Brunei and Nanjing, China

Mong Palatino — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:31:56 +0000

The Daily Brunei Resources traces the historical link between sister cities Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei and Nanjing, China.

Brunika: Brunei's Instagramers Community

Mong Palatino — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 09:29:04 +0000

Brunika is Brunei's official instagramers network whose vision is for each members to “Share, Good Communication and Own Creativity”

Movember Brunei

Mong Palatino — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 09:07:38 +0000

Delwin Keasberry blogs about the Movember Brunei campaign which asks twitter users to put a moustache on their profile in support of the campaign to raise awareness on men's health.

Brunei's First Social Media Meet Up

Zul-Fadly — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:42:30 +0000

The social media scene in Brunei has again made its presence felt. Bloggers and twitterers in the sultanate gathered to attend a historic event in social media to unite and bring forth the faces and people behind the screen of their PCs or Laptops or whatever device they use.

Last October 21 marked an important date in the local social media calendar when the big guns of the Brunei blogosphere got together and organised Brunei's first Social Media Conference: “That's where it's @”. The event was held at the Radisson Hotel in Bandar Seri Begawan and some 80 social media enthusiasts attended this half-day event. A #socmedbn hash tag was created by the organizers to allow tweeps to share updates and quotes from this historic event.

Photo from CandidSyndrome Brunei ·

Before the panel discussions took place, Mr Lim Ming Soon of Telbru started the event with a very enlightening presentation of facts and figures and how TelBru, a major local Telco company, is embracing social media and trying its best to support and respond to the ever growing number of internet users in Brunei.

The conference was divided into three sessions. The first session “Dude, Where's my traffic?” was moderated by @emmagoodegg and on the panel were Rano Iskandar @ranoadidas of ranoadidas.com - No.1 Social Commercial Blogger in Brunei, Delwin Keasberry @BruneiTweet of projekbrunei.com - Brunei's No.1 Twitter star and Dinoza Maruf @Dinoza of Breeze Magazine, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

Each panelist had expertise in different platform and spoke about their highs and low and how to get more traffic. Rano spoke about the number of hits and which news attracted a lot of hits. He also shared how he came about doing what he is doing now. BruneiTweet or also known as Delwin spoke about how his twitter persona as someone who has been away frrom Brunei wanted to bring together amazing stories about other Bruneians through his blog, but his main forte is his twitter presence. Dinoza hails from Sabah, Malaysia and his expertise is how he managed to get Breeze Magazine's existing 300 fans to more than 14,000 fans on Facebook. This came after their decision to shutdown their website and focus on their Facebook page. One of his pointers for generating follower was organizing competitions and giving way amazing and attractive prizes.

The second session was a much anticipated one because two prominent figures took center stage. The topic was “140 character or less: Why joined the twitter conversation?”. Moderating was blog hero, Tuan Haji Rozan bin Dato Paduka Haji Mohd Yunos of @Bruneiresources and Bruneiresources.blogspot.com and his panel included Dato Timothy Ong, Chairman of Asia Inc Forum, who recently embraced social media via twitter, @Timothy_OngTM.

Dato Timothy spoke so passionately about his decision to participate in discussion with the young people of Brunei. He wanted to engage them and listen to them because these are the people who will one day lead this country and he was able to do this via twitter. You may view the whole panel discussion that has been uploaded on Youtube. 140 characters or less: Why join the twitter conversation?

The final session after a short break was a session entitled: “From Idea to Enterprise: What does it take?”. Moderating the panel was Tom Bonius, Social Media Coordinator, Rapidea Solutions, Sabah, Malaysia and his panel were Keeran Janin (@keeranJ), Founder of MeSixty and Simon Soo, Director of Mint. Both the panelists shared their experiences in the ICT profession and how to deal with the ups and downs managing your own business.

One of the highlights of the conference was the use of Pigeonhole, a site where people can log in via Facebook or Twitter or Linked and direct questions to the panelist. It was a good platform but in the words of Dato Timothy, nothing beats human contact.

From @emmagoodegg, an assessment of the event

Aside from the social media angles, I personally felt that one more important aspect of events like these is to get off your backside and get involved in your community. As residents, we must take responsibility for our society and encourage the spirit of togetherness. And that is to me the beauty of social media, the general good that can be done by cultivating social networks, large and small, through IT.

The final word however, is that in spite of all of this IT, it is important to actually make human contact, to sit in a room, in a group and hear one another speak face to face. To paraphrase one prominent speaker, it is what makes us human; we are after all not robots.

@marg was impressed with the conference

Another thing that thoroughly impressed me was how unlike normal conferences, where people just sat, listen, took notes and asked questions, this conference was where most sat, eyes on their smart devices (laptops, phones etc), tweeted what struck them throughout the sessions and asked questions ONLINE!

Oddly enough, on this day when everyone had their fingers glued onto their keyboards/keypads/touchscreens, they weren’t being anti-social! In fact, it was pretty interactive as the questions posted and the number of votes were projected for all to see

Protecting the Beaches of Brunei

Mong Palatino — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:17:35 +0000

The Beach Bunch Association was established to “sustain and protect the beaches of Brunei from pollution.” Some of the activities of the group include the following:

We organise and conduct cleaning campaigns regularly on Brunei beaches

We organise and conduct awareness programs on waste management on the beaches

We promote reduction in waste generation in particular plastic bottles and plastics bag

We provide environmental education programs through public, private and educational institutions

Beach Bunch also taps the power of social media to gather more support from the public. Aside from its website, it also has Facebook and Twitter accounts.

One of its projects include a mapping of Brunei beaches:

Google Map of Brunei Beaches

Another mapping project involves the identification of the location, services offered and situation of the beaches in the country.

A coastal clean up was recently organized where 150 volunteers from various schools participated. According to the organizers, “a total of 418.5 kilogrammes of waste were collected, out of which 100 kgs were plastic, one and a half kgs of aluminium and 317 kgs of non-recyclable waste.”

The volunteers wrote about their participation on Facebook:

Harold Raps: Yeah! Had a great time! Helped with something good and met some great people! Best thing was that the beach looked so much cleaner afterwards!

Anthony Er: Well Done, BB. It only takes a spark to get this fire of cleanliness going. Impressed with the big turn-out. Congrats also to Rizan Latif and the rest of the BB organizers. Bravo !

Beach Bunch Clean-up event

Volunteers in the beach clean-up drive

Jan Shim was one of the participants of the clean up event:

I think you would have a lot of fun as I did covering this international anniversary beach clean-up event. I cannot imagine how this much crap could end up on the beach and how, evidence from photos, fishermen could leave nets conveniently washed up to the beach to be cleaned up by others.

Beach Bunch collected the photos which will be part of an international database:

We believe that no matter where we live, the ocean is our life support system. That's why we're teaming up with Ocean Conservancy, Project Aware and Clean-up the World to help keep our ocean and waterways clean. The data collected will be uploaded into an international database. This is the 2nd time Beach Bunch participate on such a world event.

Brunei: Promoting Health Consciousness Online

Mong Palatino — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:50:08 +0000

Brunei's Health Promotion Centre taps the power of social media to advocate a healthy lifestyle among Bruneians. Its latest campaign is Diabetes Awareness.

Brunei International Defence Exhibition 2011

Mong Palatino — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:29:42 +0000

EmmaGoodEgg blogs about the Brunei International Defence Exhibition or BRIDEX 2011, a bi-annual defence exhibition. It's also the premier defence and security event in Southeast Asia

Brunei: E-government portal launched

Mong Palatino — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:34:43 +0000

The e-Darussalam website was launched by the Brunei government. It's a single web portal where Internet users will have access to all of the government's online services.

Introducing Brunei's Most Popular Blogger

Zul-Fadly — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:20:30 +0000

When Brunei social blogger RanoAdidas celebrated his eight year anniversary last month, it was an event which was well-covered by the mainstream media. It's an indication not only of his popularity as a blogger but also his success in promoting social media in Brunei.

The Brunei Times recognizes the popularity of the blogger whose blog traffic is an average of 5,000 to 6,000 hits per day and 20,000 to 25,000 hits per month

Ranoadidas has over 6 thousand followers on twitter (@ranoadidas) and his facebook fan page is less than 200 clicks away from 8 thousand likes.

Last month, Brunei's celebrity blogger, hosted his 8th year anniversary in style. He rented out one of the halls at the International Convention Centre and had booths set up for clients and sponsors to partake in the event.

Ranoadidas with young fans

The four day event was launched on Thursday 26 May, 2011, and was packed with performances and contests. Everyday Mr. Rano was giving away vouchers and gifts and balloons for kids and adults alike.

Ranoadidas balloons

A special hash tag was created on twitter #ran8adidas and featured a photo contest for Instagram and MyTubo.

Local blogger, emmagoodegg or known on twitter as @emmagoodegg, who is a weekly columnist at local newspaper The Brunei Times, paid tribute to Rano's success by doing a feature on him,

When we think Bruneian Blogger, we think Ranoadidas. And you'd be lying to yourself if you thought otherwise.

Another local Blogger, Nonnie King or known as @kisich on twitter, blogged about one of the highlighted events, The Food Eating Contest, hosted by two local food outlets, @kapowburger and @kitarojapanese.

Live streaming of the event was also possible with the help of the guys from @CornerGeeks who helped set up live video feed via UStream.

Ranoadidas has proven that blogging is not only a potential source of income but a viable platform to influence public media as well. He faced many struggles in the past 8 years but he didn't lose his belief about the power of blogging to become an important social empowerment tool in Brunei.

Aside from covering various events sponsored by private and public institutions, he also gets involved in charity whenever he can. He recently partnered with another celebrity blogger Reeda Malik of anakbrunei.com.bn and raised money for a charity event hosted by HSBC.

Earlier this year the two of them were also invited to attend the first ASEAN Bloggers conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Indeed, Ranoadidas' success is an inspiration to many bloggers in Brunei.

Brunei: Largest solar power cells in Southeast Asia

Mong Palatino — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:48:03 +0000

Jan Shim blogs about the installation of solar panels in the Seria Power Station at Tenaga Suria in Brunei. The equipment is said to be the largest photovoltaic system of its kind in Southeast Asia