8th Philippine Web Awards

Now I finally know what it feels like to say, "Can I have the envelope, please?" With no less than the charming Ms. Joan Miller as my co-presenter, to boot! We were at the Meralco Theater for the 8th staging of the Philippine Web Awards, organized by MediaG8Way Corporation. Congratulations to all the winners, especially my college classmate Jim Ayson, whose PhilMusic.com was one of the websites inducted into the Hall of Fame, and also to my good friends Danny and Marilyn Montano, whose Holy Cow Animation won Best SME Website!

The director gave me a set of cue cards, but I threw caution to the wind and ad libbed about the Webby acceptance speech of Al Gore (of Presidential recount fame), and the demise of the Chinese TV show "Super Girl" (scroll two-thirds down this Newsweek page to read about it). At least in the Philippines, we can still have People's Choice Awards!

Congratulations to the MediaG8Way team, especially Bombim and Delia, and we're certainly looking forward to the 2006 Philippine Web Awards!

*Photo courtesy of Maan Tolentino

Speech: BSA Regional Innovation Forum

Today's speech was entitled "Competitiveness through Government Policy", presented at BSA's Regional Innovation Forum at the Shangri-la Putrajaya in Malaysia. The forum was attended by over 30 policy makers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines. The forum agenda included keynote speeches from Robert Holleyman, CEO and President of BSA, and Dr. Stan Liebowitz, noted autor and professor. The objective of the forum was to gain insight into strategies that can be adopted to bolster the growth of the IT industry in the region.

My speech consisted of two sections; the first half presents the job generation goals for the ICT industry in the Philippines, the second half briefly outlines policy initiatives aimed at achieving those goals. For a copy of the presentation, send an e-mail to dondimapa @ gmail.com with "BSA Forum" as the subject.

Workshop: BPA/P Strategic Planning Workshop

Today's workshop is the Strategic Planning Workshop of the Business Planning Association of the Philippines, facilitated by Dr. Ed Morato, professor at the Asian Institute of Management. Congratulations to Mitch Locsin, BPA/P's Executive Director, for a well-organized workshop!

A significant milestone was achieved when the BPA/P officers agreed to align with the job generation target of 1 million by 2010! Another exciting news item was the revelation that Euromoney Institutional Investor Conferences would be holding the 1st Asian BPO Conference in May 2006, and that they had selected Manila as the site!