Are you in favor of a National Bloggers Association?

I am often asked if we are ready for the formation of a National Bloggers Association that shall interact with policy makers, both government and private groups, who are interested in crafting guidelines that will have an effect to the blogging community.

This includes:

1. Freedom of expression in blogging about politics and court cases.
2. Protection from threat and harassment.
3. How should Philippines-based advertisers deal with bloggers? 
4. Copyright protection and dispute process.
5. Improving the Philippines broadband Internet infrastructure
6. Common online audience measurement (metrics) for blogs
7. ...among others

Bloggers interested in joining are ideally those who can:

1. Allot time to review proposed policy papers and give their opinion. 
2. Blog their thoughts about proposed policies and seek opinion from fellow blogging peers.
3. Help write position papers.
4. Attend meetings organized by policy makers when necessary and speak out.

On decision making, position shall be:

1. Draft version to be posted on the web where member bloggers can comment.
2. Majority vote to prevail.

Who can become members? 
At present, perhaps members can be in the field where there is interest among government and private policy-makers to craft guidelines that includes:

1. Bloggers who write about the elections, government activities, and court cases.
2. Bloggers concerned with the quality of broadband Internet in the Philippines
3. Bloggers concerned on copyright protection.
4. Bloggers who earns from Philippines-based advertisers.
5. Bloggers interested in having a common online audience measurement standards. 

As not all fall to the above, perhaps a Professional Bloggers Association will suit #4 and #5. Although some may say that this can be a subset of a National Bloggers Association.

Should this be of interest, kindly post a comment and share your opinion. 

What's next? 

It will depend on the kind of response this blog post will yield. 

Perhaps an online meeting can be set-up where bloggers anywhere in the country can join to discuss next steps.

The next step can possibly come from you as well reading this blog post.