Tuesday, April 25, 2006
my first podcast
i just had my first podcast with janette this morning... and i was so nervous... no i cant wait for it to be uploaded!
When the Forces of the Universe Conspire
To realize one?s destiny is a person?s only obligation.
- The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
Someone told me year 2006 is a pivotal year for me.
A month ago, I wouldn?t have believed in it. But working with Pandora Squared, i?d say it indeed is.
So where the heck do I fit in with these bunch of passionate geeks who knows what they?re doing and what they know in life?
And how is Pandora Squared
affecting my life? I am a single mom with three children. I was a high
school scholar and got in in one of the toughest courses in the state university.
Irresponsibility, however, and maybe a little of naivety as well, got
me pregnant. And the usual thing happened, stopped going to school, got
married, had children and got separated. I decided not to finish my
studies anymore because I realized it really wasn?t my passion.
Computers and internet were. But raising three small children didn?t
provide me the luxury of choosing a job that I love. My career
objectives were set aside and I lived my life one day at a time.
Then
came web 2.0. As the internet evolved into a functional platform that
everybody can use, web 2.0 and its applications also changed my life
and rekindled my passion for the internet.
And meeting pandorasquared opened the box and presented the last thing that was left in the box.
HOPE.
And that hope gave me the will to decide to go where my heart is and follow my destiny.
One of my first assignment for the company was to organize a training.
And that training was a milestone for me and for the company as well.
Working together as a team has provided us a glimpse of our inner self
and has shown us the path to our destiny.
I want to touch lives the way technology or web 2.0 did mine.
I want to touch lives the way Pandora Squared touched mine.
And this personal vision is the same vision that Pandora Squared believes in passionately.
ENABLING, EMPOWERING AND ENRICHING LIVES.
Empowerment through training and education.
Enriching lives through Humanity 2.0.
Guided through the sea of digital information by the Navigator.
If
you are passionate about your work, you will be determined to succeed
in it. Skills or the lack of it does not matter. Skills are enhanced by
one?s passion. And this is a continuous learning process for me.
Sometimes my passion makes me impulsive. And I get the flak. But as they say, you learn your lessons from your mistakes.
And as long as you never forget that to realize one?s destiny is a person?s only obligation.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
$1.4 BILLION Invested in India
Firms Invest $1.4B in India
First-quarter investments by VC and private equity firms more than triple from last year.
April 10, 2006
Private equity and venture capital firms invested about $1.4 billion in 69 Indian companies during the quarter ended March 2006, according to a study released Monday.
every time i see news like this, it just gets under my skin. i don't know what it is but i think i am on my way to taking this on a personal level. okay. i admit. india has good, if not brilliant developers. i quit my previous job, which pays higher than what i am getting right now (well since i just started) primarily because this is what i love doing - and to have encountered this opportunity the second time would be like throwing my dreams away...
underneath my personal motive is i believe and i am in love in what my new company is doing. and my passion for our work is fueled by this drive to encourage and provide opportunities to our IT people and companies (i think i am giving up on the government institution in charge of IT development) because i see their or rather our IT sector's potential in taking the lead away from india.
do not get me wrong here. i am not being discriminating or something but we have brains, for santa's sake, we learn fast, we adapt easily, in fact we have proven that with our call center industry.
guys, come on! but i am happy to see that we are moving forward, albeit a little slow (or maybe because i just entered the industry recently). during one of our nightouts with my girlfriends in makati last week (or the other week) i met this indian who owns a bpo company here. and guess what company is that? call center!!! and i was like this close to swearing! what is happening??? do we just let indians come here and set up business for their spillovers? since according to him they have lots of clients they cannot handle it there anymore. he is also in fact hiring some developers. how would you feel about that? papayag na lang ba tayo na tapunan ng tira tira???
exhale.....
i m sorry... i just couldn't stop myself... we have all the capabilities... if its resources we lack, let's pool our resources and move ahead towards our goal as one... which is to develop and enhance our ICT/IT industry...
why are we just waiting for extras to be thrown our way? why do we wait until a technology becomes profitable then we follow and do the same?
WHY CANT WE MOVE FORWARD ON OUR OWN AND GO WITH OUR GUT INSTINCT? we are planning a national event for this... ill keep you guys posted...
it's time we take back what our government has thrown away before - we were the tiger economy back then, remember? - and show the world our resilience...
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Social Networks, Blogs and Beer
I was dumped with this list of links to read and browse my weekend away with. And it?s Sunday, 5 o?clock in the morning and my head is just bursting with information and data that are interrelated somehow and I just have to write it down and try to make sense out of it. Here goes:
David Hornik believes that the online communities we have now are Social Networks 3.0.
According to him, the foundations of social networks were started in the late 1990s with the likes of eGroups/Online, ICQ, Evite and many more. These networks weren?t explicitly described as such back then but they were the underpinnings of these communications platforms. In early 2000, as developers and entrepreneurs began to comprehend the nature of these networks and the power it could generate by fully and clearly defining or formulating its structure, Friendster, Tribe, Orkut, LinkedIn, Spoke emerged and thus began the era of Social Networks 2.0. These services allowed users to organize their recreational and business networks. The primary focus of these services then as they were first built was to enable the creation, growth and management of an explicit social network. As the excitement and energy around pure play social networks began to wane, it became clear that the building and management of a social network was not, in and of itself, a compelling consumer experience. Even Dana Boyd wondered whether MySpace is just a fad as Friendster has lost its steam. This now posed another challenge to entrepreneurs as they came to recognize that users and their interests or desires are significant and important considerations in building social networks.
The power of the individual user has never been magnified with yet another tool, blogs. The phenomenal surge in the number of bloggers has taken the internet by storm. Blogherald?s count as of July 2005 was at least 70 million blogs. Worldwide. And nothing is more powerful and effective than word of mouth and blogs has now become a voice and a force to reckon with as proven during the last US Presidential elections.
Stephen Baker and Heather Green of Business Week Magazine had the right idea when they said Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later? No wonder everybody?s scrambling to jump on the bandwagon.
Glenn Reynolds has made an interesting analogy between journalism and making beer to demonstrate the power of blogging and how it has shaken the mainstream media. Even without formal training and using cheap equipment, almost anyone can make beer. The quality may be variable, but the best home-brews are tastier than the stuff you see advertised during the Super Bowl. This is because big brewers, particularly in America, have long aimed to reach the largest market by pushing bland brands that offend no one. The rise of home-brewing, however, has forced them to create ?micro-brews? that actually taste of something.
And in every region in the world, home-brewed beers are the ones that get the largest slice of the cake. Here in Manila, Heineken, Budweiser and other brands have tried to get their own slice of the cake too but they just couldn?t compete with our San Miguel and sister brand Red Horse. So is the case in China. In Germany. Or anywhere for that matter. The thing is, home-brewed beer has the inherent and distinctive taste that is and will always be preferred by any local community.
I think I have to sample different kinds of beer to discover the compelling reason behind a community?s loyalty to their own beer. And see if the same can be applied to online communities. San Miguel anyone?
2006: My Pivotal Year
i am a single mom with three children - a 12-year old son and 9-year
old twin girls. i am smart, i was a philippine science high school
scholar and was able to make it to one of the toughest quota courses in
the University of the Philippines Diliman. irresponsibility, however,
and maybe a little of naivety as well, got me pregnant. And the usual
thing happened, stopped going to school, got married, had children and
got separated. Even though my parents supported me financially in
raising my children, i decided not to finish my studies anymore because
i realized it really wasn't my passion. i started then takling up short
courses on computers but that also didn't went through and i was only
able to finish one short course.
as my children were growing,
i worked at whatever job is available since i really didn't have that
much choice, being an undergrad. And somewhere along the way, my career
objectives were set aside and i started living my life in a que sera
sera way. it was enough for me that i am able to feed my children and
send them to school.
then i met Pipay. Let?s just say she?s my
life coach. meeting her made me stop and rethink about what i want to
do with my life. i realized i was just living it like a robot. yes i
was working, earning more that what i was doing. but my heart wasn?t
really into it. i performed well, worked hard but i realized, i wasnt
into it.
and came web 2.0.
as the internet changed and evolved into a functional platform that
everybody can use and made their life mobile, web 2.0 also changed my
life. it rekindled my passion for computers and the internet and its
applications. and where i am right at this very moment, glued in front
of a pc, is what i want. meeting pandorasquared
opened the and presented the last thing that was left in the box.
HOPE. that hope gave me the will to decide to go where my heart is from
the beginning. and in retrospect, i believe it is also what pandorasquared
saw in me. i am not a programmer. i am not a web developer. i am not
even a salesperson. but my love and avidity for the company's services
and internet/computers showed through. a friend of mine told me that
what is important in a business is passion.
and now i know
what he meant. if you are passionate about your work, you will be
determined to succeed in it. skills or the lack of it does not matter.
skills are enhanced by one?s passion.
four or five years ago, i
wouldn?t have taken this gigantic leap and take such risk. but it is
never too late to pursue your dream. and i am going to do just that.
i
dont understand why so many students are taking up nursing just because
of the high demand in other countries, nothwithstanding the fact that
our local labor wages can barely make ends meet. ironically, there's
also quite a number of doctors who went back to school and study
nursing to be able to work out of the country.
with so many
filipinas working all over the world, all i can say is that if your
heart is not into whatever you're doing anymore, then you have to make
a decision on what you really want to do. doing something you are
passionate about does not equate the renumeration of a job your heart
is not with.