Sabbah comment the 2nd Aljazeera Forum

Now that I’m back from Doha after attending The 2nd Aljazeera Forum, and after swallowing all the sweet and the bitter of such a huge gathering, I can share with you some of my views and conclusion.

Three things that I would like to talk about mainly:

1. Aljazeera and the Arab media
2. The Forum
3. Blogging in Arabia

First of all, the Arab media:

Honestly, first impression I got about the Arab media was a disappointing one. The first person I meet was a Chief Editor of an Arabian newspaper. We arrived at the same flight, but we never met before, so we only came to know each other while we were leaving the airport together when we were escorted by some nice people from Aljazeera PR to our limousine.

Later that day at the hotel, we sat and talk. When I explained what I do as blogger, his first response was that he “heard” about blogging, but never actually known much of what it is all about and why is it related to the forum which we are going to attend.

Surprisingly, he didn’t know that he was supposed to be one of the panelist in the same panel which I’m also joining (The New Media: Bloggers and Participatory Journalism). In fact he got worried when he heard the confirmation that he is one of the panelists of the blogging panel. He declared that he will ask the coordinators to change his participation to some other panel, since he does not know anything about blogging.