Last week, I was thrilled to attend the Th!nk3:Developing World launch event in Brussels.

Firstly, let me say that it was incredibly nerdy. I mean, a blogging conference on international development. Pretty nerdy, but it was nice to be among my own kind. Being in a room full of bloggers meant there was always someone take film or photographs – I felt very observed.  (Speaking of, there is a mortifying video of my reactions somewhere out there. Thankfully, I can't find it. Kudos to anyone who does.)

Brussels is a great city. I was here for European Youth Media Days in 2008 but only got to see the inside of the parliament. This time I explored i.e. I got hopelessly lost EVERYWHERE I went. There are lots of cobbled streets so heels were not a wise choice.

The conference  kicked of with an insightful speech from Marina Ponti of the UN Millenium Challenge. Her CV is very impressive, and her speech gave a solid foundation for development, touching on many key issues such as governance, democracy, gender equality etc. Having worked in development, I didn’t get anything new from her speech although her passion and commitment were palpable.

The European Commision failed to provide a speaker, something which Wilfried Ruetten  (the Director of the European Journalism Centre) was very critical of. “They are the largest donor in the world and  they could not provide a speaker capapble of answering our questions or criticsms”.  We did however have a provocative contribution from a Belgain politician (where I got this post’s title): “If there are dog droppings outside your house, you call a politician to fix it. If tens of thosands of Africans are dying, you don’t bother.”

The afternoon session consisted of a panel of  journalists who’ve worked overseas.  Interesting contributions from Linord Moudou (who  works with the Voice of America Television in Washington DC) who spoke of how she’d been personally touched and blessed by her work and Thomas Seifert (of Die Presse) who reminded us how lucky we are to be a part of this generation. “Journalism used to be the first draft of history, now, blogs and twitter feeds are the first draft of instant time history. I would love to be sitting in your seat.”

Later, we had journalism training with Oliver Wates. Having never had any journalism training, I was looking forward to it and he was a dynamic and engaging speaker.

Here’s what I learned:

Be motivated by passion, but don’t write let it colour your writing excessively. The more passionate you are the harder it is to understand people who don’t care. Too much passion and you forget your audience, they become caricatures of apathy rather than people with difference interests. There’s no value preaching to the converted – understand what matters to your audience.

Talk to the ‘enemy’ – understand opposing views. Read people you disagree with.

Serve your audience – show them both sides of the argument.

Remember the difference between important vs interesting. Interesting will always win.

Never blame your audience for their apathy– it’s your job to make it interesting for them.

And with that, I departed with renewed enthusiasm for blogging. Welcome aboard.