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HWZ Forums Moderators’ 2009 Annual Meeting

July 15, 2009 – 11:34 am

HardwareZone.com held its Forum Moderators’ Annual Meeting on 17 June 2009 at the SPH News Centre. This initiative, now into its second year, is aimed at keeping in touch with the HardwareZone’s many Forum moderators, identifying areas of improvement and growth to keep the forums appealing and relevant to its large but growing community of 353,000 members and counting.
The meeting kicked off with a short welcome note by Vijay Anand, Editor of HardwareZone.com. Following that is SPH Magazines’ New Media Branding & Promotions team who gave a presentation on the forum’s growth over the past 3 years and the projected challenges ahead.

Ending the presentation segment was a round-table discussion led by Vijay and the B&P team where moderators were encouraged to contribute opinions on how to tackle these challenges as well as identify forum growth areas to capture new audience groups by expanding its offerings. With the administration and moderator teams’ intimate knowledge of HardwareZone Forum’s community fabric from years of moderating, many interesting ideas were raised and discussed.

Moderators who attended all felt that it was a good experience. “It was very productive and constructive. Many good suggestions were heard,” said Zorrus, one of the volunteer moderators.

Having also led the previous year’s discussion group, Vijay also mentioned that these yearly meetings are a vital link between the publication, the moderators and the community. “The moderators are an important group of individuals who help facilitate and regulate their assigned forum sections so that the forum runs smoothly and serves its purpose of information exchange. However, all of the moderators are helping out on a voluntary basis to upkeep the community and there’s little chance of face-to-face interaction. While HardwareZone has its PlayTest session to interact with its readers and members twice a year, the yearly Moderators’ Meeting is a great chance for the administration team and the rest of the moderators to get to know each other better, exchange casual views and most importantly, steer the development of the forums for our readers in the right direction with a collective understanding.”

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HardwareMAG.com Conducts First-Ever Live Coverage Session of CommunicAsia 2009

June 23, 2009 – 12:52 am

HardwareMAG.com, a five-country regional portal for readers of consumer tech magazine HWM, held its first-ever live blog and coverage session of CommunicAsia 2009 at the Singapore Expo on 16 June 2009. Using software that integrates the world of live blogging, video posting, Twittering and up-to-the-minute polling, the session started at about 9:45am and ended before 3:00pm.

The session kickstarted with a recap of the previous day’s announcements by Nokia and Samsung, before moving on to the showfloor coverage of the various mobile phone booths. As readers from various countries began posting comments, the team on the floor visited requested booths, twittered and posted updates, while remote editors answered queries and offered their viewpoints.

The session was lively and by-the-minute, filled with photos of key products, showgirls, a poll session and comments from key people the team interviewed. There was no denying the euphoria that readers felt as if they were right there on the showfloor themselves. When the session finally ended with an LG Press Conference, readers were able to get a taste and feel of what the show felt like, even if they were far away in Malaysia or the Philippines.

Of course, the live blog session will be supplemented with comprehensive articles, interviews and videos by the end of the campaign.

There are plans for the team behind the live blog session to venture further into this medium, as there will always be readers in the technology field clamoring for up-to-the-second announcements, especially for new products at major tradeshows. There is nothing much more enriching for any tech consumer than being able to participate in a live event (be it online or physical), what more with editors and writers as their tour-guides.