By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

FROM WRITING about showbiz to politics to Davao City and even the whole of Mindanao, Maria Jose has been making the virtual rounds among Mindanao’s growing blogging community. She’s also become popular among Manila’s blogging community, even representing herself during the recently held iBlog4 conference at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Jose, known as Ria to her friends and the blogging community, holds the distinction of having such a diverse string of blogs covering politics, lifestyle, entertainment and even gaming. The young Davaoeña, who works as a staffer for Davao City councilor Louie Bonguyan, still has time to write for her various blogs and even organize events for her colleagues in the blogging community as well as her gaming group. Her blogs include Alleba Politics, Chikadora.com, Shopchicks.com, Shoppingera.net, and the DotA Blog, among others.

Surprisingly, Jose said her motivation for blogging was to combat boredom. As a student of Environmental Science at the Ateneo De Manila University in the late 1990s, she had too much time on her hands. She started writing essays and posting them in a mailing list. Some of the her friends started commenting on her essays, so she moved to posting them on her personal website. Jose credits her knowledge in web development as well as her entry into the blogging community to Andrew de la Serna, a search engine expert working in Davao City.

In the early years of 2000 Jose wrote more about politics. She also wrote a piece that landed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Youngblood section sometime in 2003. Jose’s online posts got the attention of many bloggers in the Mindanao area, and even that of Davao councilor Peter Laviña, who has his own blog and is probably one of the most prolific politician-bloggers in the country.

Jose and De la Serna, with the help of some Manila-based bloggers, organized a small gathering of bloggers in Davao. Though they expected only 20 people, the event drew about 50 other bloggers in the same area, which she said goes to show that there is a healthy community of bloggers in Davao. Later on, the group held the first Mindanao Bloggers Summit last year to help strengthen their community in the south.

Jose said that she’s turning her eyes now towards promoting the cultural aspects of Mindanao and Davao City. While much has been written about Mindanao, Jose emphasized that much has not been spoken about Mindanao and Davao. In fact, many of the articles written about Mindanao are negative, pertaining to the insurgency in the area, as well as the Abu Sayyaf.

“What other people think about Mindanao and Davao is that it’s a war-torn place. In reality, there are only small places in Mindanao where violence occurs and most of it remains intact. There are so many things other people don’t know about us that I think that perception should change,” Jose said.

Editor’s note: Video taken by INQUIRER.net community evangelist Alex Villafania.