Social Media Festival Shows Indonesian People's Love for the Internet

Last week, more than 40 thousand visitors thronged Social Media Festival which was held for three days in Jakarta from 22-24 September 2011. The event organized by internet media companies SalingSilang and DailySocial took over all eight floors of fX Lifestyle X'nter in Central Jakarta. This event recognizes and celebrates the adoption and influence of social media by individuals and organizations in Indonesia, which is known as a country with the adoption of social networks and services online such as on Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, Mig33, and so on.

The event brings together dozens of communities who are leveraging the internet, social media and technology to help their cause, raise awareness, and organize their activities. Musicians, filmmakers, actors, comedians, bloggers, presenters, and other professionals take part in the festival, meet face-to-face with community members and engage directly with offline in a way that may not be executable online.

RollingStone Magazine for example showcased their campaign to instill music appreciation, skills and nurture musical talent across the country by giving away a thousand guitars, as well as running workshops for disadvantaged children so they can express themselves through music.

Indonesia Berkebun takes up a large space inside the building to showcase the various kinds of urban farming activities that are currently taking place in various parts of Indonesia. Their activities are also included in Google's promotional program as one of the web heroes in Google Chrome campaigns.

The town's farming activities started less than a year ago and spread the word via Twitter and Facebook to encourage people to join and participate in their activities. About ten cities in Indonesia are now involved in their urban agriculture. Google itself has a stand inside the Indonesia Berkebun exhibition room and took the opportunity to talk directly about the web and its possibilities to broaden horizons and distribute information.

Lentera Indonesia is a group that aims to raise awareness about sexual harassment and torture and explain what it means, the consequences, and how to handle such cases. They bring private discussions to a more public space by holding talk show at festivals. Previously, this group was known only through word of mouth and through its Twitter account. Lentera Indonesia realizes that although this issue is sensitive and very personal, the public needs to recognize that sexual harassment is not a laughing stock.

Twitalk is talk show what happens on Twitter every Thursday night, where the host conducts interviews with various interesting figures on social media, it could be a celebrity or anyone with an interest or insight into a particular topic, or the person behind a Twitter account that is popular in Indonesia. This event claims to be talk show the first to use Twitter as the only discussion medium. Twitalk is currently in its third season, and for the second time their show is being held online offline and for the first time held during the day.

Acer is also holding a competition event hacking for 24 hours to find the app developer mobile devices talented people who are interested in creating applications on their Android tablet, Iconia, which runs the Honeycomb operating system.

Even the Indonesian police hold sessions to talk about how they use social media in dealing with city traffic and informing the public about what is happening on the streets of different cities.

A number startup also participated in this Social Media Festival and some of them said this event increased their membership numbers. Location-based game Bouncity, traffic information service ViaMana, then bidding site NawarTrus, social sharing sites Rockto, and the digital greeting card site Kartumuu are some of the profiles startup who feel the impact of the Social Media Festival event.

The event also has multiple stages set up on each floor to hold multiple sessions simultaneously as there are about a dozen events scheduled to take place each day. A number of musical performances are also held every day in various locations throughout the event.

Shafiq Pontoh, spokesman for this event said that the Social Media Festival opened up opportunities that would not have happened or would have been difficult to run and manage between the participants. He cites an example, Indonesia Berkebun and Jalan Sutera, a group with an interest in culinary arts, which can collaborate in creating an activity that involves several types of food and plants grown organically.

He also said that unlike other conferences or events, the Social Media Festival is a community driven event, where participants decide what they want to do and how they want to do it at the event. The Organizer facilitates and manages requests from all participants and works to ensure those requests are met. This is an event held to show the strength and bonds of each community.

According to Shafiq, the Social Media Festival was originally intended as a community gathering after Eid celebrations, an extension of the traditional family gathering after Ramadan for a month, but the level of interest of the participants took it to a higher level and ended up becoming a fairly large public event.

The organizers plan to make the Social Media Festival an annual event. Although there have been requests by those living outside Jakarta to hold similar events in their cities, plans for next year's events are still in the drafting stage. This event can be held in other cities, but it is possible for communities outside Jakarta who want to hold events that are not related but similar.

Certainly, the Social Media Festival shows how connectedness between communities can occur and how these communities exist not only on the internet but also in physical form. The use of social media and the internet plays a big role in bringing the members of this community together and as such, is an important factor in any study of how Indonesians take advantage of the world wide web.

Song credit: "Love Saturday" by bottlesmoker.