Last Saturday I held a training session on blogging and new media in Karaganda, the largest city in Kazakhstan after Almaty, also called a “capital of coal miners”. This city is famous for the high level of educational capacity - the State University and the medical academy here historically are ranked among the top higher educational institutions in Kazakhstan. Surprisingly, the weather in Karaganda, which stands alone in naked steppes, was much milder and warmer than in Almaty. Although, it didn’t help me to avoid a horrible flu, which I am currently fighting with.

The interest in the seminar (which I deliberately - in order to put it less formal - identified as a friendly meeting of those who are already blogging and those who only want to) was shocking - I really didn’t expect much attendees simply because Karaganda is a quite “pro” city in terms of digital readiness. Moreover, I saw some skeptical and condescending comments to my announcements on the city’s online communities: like “What is he going to tell there - how to insert tags in the posts?” Thirteen participants were very diverse - some schoolchildren, two students whose graduate papers are about blogs, their professors, journos and actual bloggers.

All in all, the meeting was nice, if not to consider nasty coolness in the conference hall and my cold.