Attending Social Media Conference in Yogyakarta

The Conference was held on September 2011, in the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

A couple of reasons why I was attending this conference. My husband works in an industry with which social media is associated, and my own curiousity about Indonesia and her "cyber life" . The Social Media Conference was conducted by the Atmajaya University in Yogyakarta, an internationally accredited catholic university based in Jakarta which has expanded to several other locations in the country.

I was trying to look "local", but a bit hard to do for my hair was not the common color of hair for an Indonesian woman (especially of my age). Women in their 50s attending a conference in a university in the country would likely look more like a scholar, or a speaker representing the industry ..... which is a bit more conservative than otherwise. Since I couldn't hide my "blonde" hair, no matter how conservative and reserved I try to be, it was to no avail.

The attendees were mostly students in their early 20's ..... I shouldn't be so surprised. There were more than 10 speakers, some of who had come from outside Indonesia, such as Singapore, India, Malaysia, and Germany. They sat on designated row of seats. What surprised me was the number of people who were attending. Not so many. Perhaps 100 people max. My thought in this was that it was perhaps not very well advertised, not planned far enough in advance to reach the right audience, too expensive for students, any combination of the three, or the city was not quite ready for such type of conference. Sure enough, I later on learned that the university needed some international exposure to gain some rating. Among other things that I learned, I found out that Indonesia is the second largest Facebook users in the world, right after the United States.

During the break, I met with a faculty member of the university, who turned out to be the chief organizer of the conference. We had a nice chat, and he later introduced me to the speaker from Germany who is a professor from one university in Germany. Later on that evening the two gentlemen came to meet me at a friend's house where I was staying for 3 nights in Yogyakarta. I was very fortunate that the host and hostess were very accommodating and quite so generous to entertain the guests. We had a lot of interesting discussions and brain exercises, which I needed. We talked about culture, science, history, world politics, and a little bit of religion. For the sake of cultural adaptation, we knew just what we should serve to our German guest.

All afternoon that day after the conference, my hosts Laras and her husband and I went out shopping with one goal to find good beer. We came to find out that the huge supermarkets Carrefours are no longer allowed to sell alcoholic beverages in Yogyakarta. Not even beer. Disappointed, the three of us went to a smaller am/pm type store and found local beer, the famous Indonesian Bir Bintang.

Though we didn't consume BB very much, the evening became a bit 'more relaxed' and the discussions became less engaging, the topics were no longer important. Our smiles widened and soon turned to laughter. Around 11pm when I couldn't hold my yawns any longer, the guests excused themselves..... The hosts said 'selamat tidur' to me, and I said "mimpi indah ya?".

The night seemed so short. I woke up the next morning and checked my Google Talk. There is my husband Mitch asking me "so.... how was the conference?".