Opening Speech on Ecademy Chairman Thomas Power Visit to Manila

Chairman Thomas Power, Mr. Roger Hamilton, Ms. Maan Tolentino and Belen Balanqued, co - moderators of the philippine ecademy club, officers, members of the Philippine Ecademy, our overseas participants, good evening.

I am deeply honored to be delivering the opening for tonight's event. My task tonight involves setting the tone of today's meeting on the ocassion of Mr. Thomas Powers visit here in the Philippines . The objective is twofold -- first is to generate excitement on the new opportunities that networking presents through Ecademy, and second also to generate excitement particularly in growing also the Philippine Ecademy club not only among us Filipinos, but to all overseas friends who are interested in us.

I have only been a member of Ecademy for just well over a month, and I can say that I have immensely enjoyed the new friends that I have made in the ecademy. But not only in enjoyment, but the short experience have preempted me to change some of the business principles that I have hold dear, and in fact have build my business for the last 15 years.

Most likely not only for me, but also for many of us, I was brought up in the discipline of hard work as a requisite of success ever since I was small.

The following are the quotes that I grew up with and that I teach to my friends and colleagus:

success is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

The harder I work, the luckier I got.

In fact, I improvised my own saying which goes.... If you can consistently work 10 percent harder and 10 percent smarter than average, then in the long run , you will make twice as much money.

Then lately, I have been reading books about networking, most notably recenly Mr. Thomas Powers book on the Networking for Life And it gave me pause to rethink some of the things which many of my business principles were build, and my experience earlier this week gave me even more pause to think.

As you very well know, I came to Manila a few days ago to attend the 30th Philippine Business Conference. This is the biggest gathering of over 2000 of the top businessmen in the country. There was one thing you would notice in that --- the average age of the delegates were about 50 , and it was held in the GRAND Manila Hotel, which recently announced that it was now 96 years old. I guess I should have known what to expect, but this was what I got -- there was no internet access in the convention, there was no internet access in the room, and the only way to be in touch ( I have long stopped dialling up ) was to use the business center internet which was charging almost 10 dollars an hour.

So for the most time, I have to use my notebook computer without connection... And it give me pause. I have lots of processing power, it has lots of memory, and hard disk, but it was almost useless for many task because it was not connected. Then it dawn that it does not matter how smart my computer is, or how powerful its processor was, but it was useless if it is not connected. Its importance was only when it can connect and avail of the resources of other computers in the world wide web.

That basically is the thesis of Mr. Thomas Power s book, and his presentation for tonight. IN order for us to achieve our dreams, the most important thing is to get connected.

And thinking of it, there are many many incidents that prove it. So I now revise my own quote: The more I network, the luckier I got!

My second mission is to ask you to join the warmth and sharing in the Philippine Ecademy. For our overseas visitors, I am sure you have lots of Philippine friends. After all, there are over 84 million of us, with well over 10 million of them in all parts of the world, in South Africa, in Europe, in London, in China, in Japan, in the United States. Where the sun shines, the Filipino is. In fact, you can have a Filipino friend in every city in the world.

There are many things that are being said of Filipinos, but the one thing that people always comment is the smile, the warmth and the hospitality. We may not win awards for economic performance, but Filipinos consistently topped the charts for the Happiness Index Survey, which if you ask me, is the most meaningful survey of all.

So ladies and gentlemen, understand the power of networking, and make a friend in every city. And Make it a Filipino friend. And just in case, you can't find one in your neighborhood, you can always go to the Philippine Ecademy which is the fastest growing and most dynamic club in the Asia Pacific Region.