I had the chance to attend Blogout! 2009 organized by the good folks of The Digital Movement. It was indeed an eye-opening experience for me learning about all the different tools available to connect, work, play and conduct business online. We heard from Joel Postman, author of SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate, web producer Jon YongFook, as well as many of the talented individuals who are shaping the social media scene in Singapore, like Claudia Lim and Lester Chan.

The one thing that struck me most was how instant communications has become! While seated there, I checked my Facebook and Twitter accounts and was flooded by a word-for-word summation of each of the key points of the key speakers by my friends who were just sitting around me. I realized that even if I didn't attend, reading the tweets would give me a pretty good idea of what the contents were. (nothing beats being there in person though).

The attending bloggers were tweeting and updating their Facebook and Twitter accounts any way they can, or prefer. Via the mobile phone, netbooks and notebooks. Of course, everything was collated real-time and trickled via Twitterfall - a little distracting, but you get the idea. Everyone was literally trying to get the last word in!

What really thrilled me was how technology was used to make it happen. It was so second nature to the many young attendees there. Give them a netbook or a notebook and WiFi connection and watch the magic happen.

While I am not that old, I certainly did not grow up with the Internet. SMS to me then was Twitter to many now. My point, how accessing technology has made us accessible in more ways than us...and probably more communicative than we have ever been.

Everyone who attended left with some good insights. I left with the strong view on how technolgy has truly changed our lives.