Leaving Bucharest soon…I already left, back in Istanbul

[I will probably update this post- and now updating 2 days later:)]

last updated: 17 November 2009: 20:00

I cannot escape from Atatürk. He is everywhere:)

ASLS people did a great job, we have finished a very well organized conference thanks to Mihaela and her friends. And how hospitable they were! Among the people I met, Onnik (Armenia) and Jacop (Poland) has to be mentioned particularly but I was also excited to meet people from Azerbaijan (Emin and Parvana) and Georgia (especially Dodie!). Although Turkey is very close to Azerbaijan through national ties and all, I don’t think I have had made any intelligible conversation with any Azeris before.So this was the first time.

Thanks to David Sasaki who mentioned it and who will show in Istanbul soon, I began to use Productivity Monitoring and Time Management Software | RescueTime which seems to be another cool toy to play with… I had also made my way into TweetDeck through which I hope to use Twitter more efficiently…As of now, I use tweetdeck regularly and RescueTime is in my arse, asking how I use my time constantly…

Well, let me pack up because I have limited time and Carmen volunteered to guide me in downtown… I will be back, you know it…

Yes, Carmen showed me around a bit until noon and that was what I needed: Talking to a native, hanging out at where people actually hang out. Cafes, University of Bucharest campus etc. I had bought Romanian dailies and was ready to go back.

This was my first visit to a post-Socialist country…

As I had previously noted, I would argue that there were two lines of work in the Forum: a) Citizen journalism in countries where freedom of though is strictly limited (China, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iran etc) and b) Use of social media in marketing and personal branding and ways of monetizing the effort (!). I think both lines are necessary and intertwine at some moments. Of course, networking itself is important. I am so excited to meet with people with quality. Apart from whom I already mentioned: Dvorit Shargal (Israel), Ritchie Pettauer (Austria), Matthias Lüfkens (Switzerland). (I had asked Matthias to invite me to Davos: “Matthias, I am from Turkey, too. I can make a scene there and thus Davos will be more colorful, newsworthy like PM Erdoğan did last year:)”

My speech video is here. Thanks to Iyli, a dear Romanian blogger.

All WBF09 tweets can be found here. A nice chat with Loic . (Loic Le Meur, LeWeb and PR)
Sum up in Georgian http://dodka.ge/2009/11/14/sumup/
another sum up:
another sum up: http://danucblog.wordpress.com/
A final post:
iyli: privilege to make an interview with Wael Abbas.

Photos:

374 photos on Flickr titled #WBF2009:

http://w2.ro/uploads/2009/1... more photos on http://z.pe/CPc
http://bit.ly/6bKiF

Ashley covers the event brillantly:

Day 1: Three countries, three airports, four currencies, three taxi rides, two bus rides, two metro rides, one boat ride, one Starbucks drink and a partridge in a pear tree.

Day Two: Not your typical conference

Day Three: Final Thoughts