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	Friday, July 01, 2005

The Philanthropy of Microsoft Philippines  (mycebu)   My Wired desktop article on Sunstar Daily, Cebu  June 30, 2005   This year is the 10th year of Microsoft doing business in the Philippines.  I have been fortunate that I was a partner with them ever since they set up the office here to launch what was then Windows 95, which was a revolutionary advance at that time compared to then Windows 3.1.  At that time, the launch was greeted with great welcome, and people actually lined up at midnight to be one of the first to buy copies, much akin the anticipation that awaits a new Star Wars movie or the next Harry Potter book.  Now, Windows has matured, and while the new versions have better features, most customers now prefer to wait and see before they buy.   Over the last 10 years of working with Microsoft, I have also learned a lot.  Many of the principles I use to manage my own business were also insights that I gleaned with my observations on how they manage their company.  I also learned a lot from their community work.  Bill Gates, the founder and chairman is not only the world's richest man 10 years running, but is also now on world record as the man who have given the most wealth to philanthropy works, over $30 billion dollars.   Microsoft Philippines has continued on this tradition of giving.  Since about 7 years ago, Microsoft regularly donates computers to the elementary public schools, normally on a place that is remote and of the school that would normally never have had computers if not for the donation.  They called it the Connected Learning Community Project, and over the last few years, have donated well over hundreds of computers to schools nationwide.  Of late, they have embarked in a series more events, one of them the Partners in Learning Project which is headed by their Academic Director, Sam Jacoba, together with Fr. Jomar Legaspi of the Learn .ph which also focuses on teacher empowerment.   This comes from the notion that merely donating computers, even with great software is not enough.  The main impetus to make people become better is still really the teacher, and the appropriate training and motivation has been found to have the most profound effect on the success of computerization.  This was attested to also by Ms. Lulli Arroyo, director of the FIT-ED project, which is also embarking on similar projects of donating computers, and of late also focusing on teacher training.   I am sure that these events are well covered and documented in the press, so I will focus my comments on two main issues which I feel are not appreciated by many people, as I did not appreciate it at first:   a.) Lately they have been embarking on  a new project which is called Tulay.  This aims to establish centers where Filipino overseas workers can get training.  These centers are located in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and also in the Overseas Workers Administration office in manila and Cebu.  These are computer laboratories equipped with broadband and software where overseas workers can aggregate on holidays and weekends or at off work hours to learn skills, or simply to chat with their relatives back home, or do video conferencing if it is available.  I was honestly skeptical at first.  Why the overseas workers?  Aren't these people well off?  They are earning dollars, and certainly much more than what local people are earning.  Can't they afford to pay for a decent computer education?   However, I was able to see the wisdom later.  The truth is that most overseas workers are not that well off.  Many endure loneliness, and also discriminiation, and perform lowly work just to earn some amount to bring back home.   Many of them do earn some, but most of them send the money back home and ask their family and relatives to invest the money hoping that it will earn enough to allow them to come home, and have their own small business, but many times, we also hear that these money was lost due to improper management, or lost to scams.  By  giving them an opportunity to upgrade their computer skills, there is effectively a mechanism that allows these people to not only allow them to do better work, but also gain the respect of their employers and co-workers, and hopefully increase their employability value.   b.) I also heard Fr. Jomar Legaspi spoke as one of the panelist in the Cebu International ICT Conference, and one of the things struck me which I think we should take a second look.  According to Fr. Jomar, 70% of public high school students never get the chance to go to college.  However, they are handicapped by a school system whose main purpose is to train people and prepare them for college.  Which means the majority of the subjects is actually on reading, science, history and the like.  This means that if they drop out, they effectively don’t have any skills that will get them gainfully employed!    Why not make sure that we teach them the proper skills.  We have a system to train people skills if they cannot go to college, called the out of school training program.  But, as Fr. Jomar aptly asked, why wait until they are out of school before we teach them practical skills?  Why not do curriculum reform so that we can teach them real world skills while they are still inside the school?  I feel his observations are very relevant, and I am glad that Microsoft is providing the support and forum to allow these issues to be considered when we evaluate the proper curricula.     5:38:46 PM     comment []   trackback []

Cebu ICT 2005    (mycebu)   My Wired desktop article on Sunstar Daily, Cebu  June 23, 2005     By the time you have read this, it will be the second day of the 1st International ICT  Exhibit and Conference which is currently ongoing at the Waterfront Hotel in Lahug. It has been several months in planning, and it was great to see it very successful – and this accolade did not come from local people, but rather from the top guns from Manila.  The Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, informally is already planning to make this a yearly event.  Kudos to the chairman of the Cebu Business Month, Francis Monera, and the chairman of the Cebu ICT, Bonifacio Belen.   All the big brands in ICT were not only here, but actually the names behind the brand as well.  Seen participating in the convention was not only President Gloria Arroyo, Senator Mar Roxas,  DTI Secretary Juan Santos, all commissioners of the CICT which is headed by Virgilio Pena, but also the chief executives of almost all major IT companies.  Seen participating were IBM’s Jajo Quintos, HP’s Nilo Cruz, Cisco’s Luichi Robles, Sun’s Cynthia Mammon, Avaya’s Ed Doctolero, Oracle’s Yashi Kant, People Support’s Bong Borja, SPI’s Ernest Cu, and Innove’s Gil Genio, among others.  All major CIOs of major government agencies were also here, and the city mayor, Tommy Osmena and governor Gwen Garcia will also be speaking in the event. Although the convention was a paid event, and there was some amount of hesitation because the conference fee was set at a relatively high price which was a source of a lot of debate, but nevertheless, there were over 500 delegates, including well over 100 from Manila.  And the exhibit is open to the public, so if you still haven’t done so, drop by to the computer exhibits.   I would like to summarize some of the statistics that DTI Secretary Juan Santos has been able to enumerate.  Currently , the Philippines now count over 45,000 people employed in call centers, 3,000 doing medical transcriptions, as well as over 10,000 employed in software development export services.  These IT and IT enabled services are said to be generating almost a billion dollars in exports, although there is still a long way to go.  India is said to be approaching 15 billion dollars in software and services export.   But what I would like to put some time on was the excellent  speech of Senator Mar Roxas which he delivered extemporaneously.   Mr. Roxas has been the champion of the positioning of the Philippines in the IT enabled services sector, and the other monicker he has other than Mr. Palengke, is also the father of the E-service sector.   One of the points the senator put forward, which I have actually thought about, which is that while we concentrate on ICT as a business, we should concentrate also to focus on ICT as a business enabler for those that are not in the IT business.   One of the statistics that he gave was that there was a total of at least 870,000 businesses registered, but the fact is that 99 % of this are micro-enterprises.  Thus, you are looking at this over 850,000 businesses that are very local, and most of them are still not using IT.  One of the fastest way for the economy to grow is if there is a conscious program to increase the competitiveness of these businesses.  They cannot grow their market or participate in the global market unless they can increase their competitiveness and effectiveness by using the proper technology, or they are able to have access to finance, operational processes, or markets that are available through the use of technology.   There were also other excellent presentations, and I will report more on it next week.     4:54:49 PM     comment []   trackback []