by admin | Apr 16, 2016 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita, Tech Talk
The local tech community in Tagbilaran City and Bohol held the Startup Weekend Bohol 2 (SWB2) event at the Bohol Island State University on April 15 to 17, 2016. The winning teams of the competition will be announced on April 17.
Startup weekend is a 54-hour event that promotes the spirit of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and innovation in its affected community. SWB2 is sponsored by PLDT SME Nation, Auza.net, ANDAKIDZ, Virtual Innovations, Gwion, Savenearn, Alturas Group of Companies, LiveLingua, Spanish 2 Go, PrintBit, Nelson Buena, Tarsier Times, Dumaluan Beach Resort, Geeks On A Beach, Google, .co and Eventbrite. It is co-presented by Bohol ICT Council, Bohol Investment Promotions Center, TechTalks.ph Bohol, and FabLab Bohol.
Fellowship dinner with the judges, mentors, organizers and sponsors.
Voting for the best ideas
Pitching an idea in one minute.
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 Facilitators Angel Abella (L) and Goldy Yancha (R)
During the opening program on Friday, April 15, the participants came up with about 15 ideas and eight were selected for the competition: E-tricycle, Click Prio, Auto Feeder, Traveling Pants, Book Trade, Bohol Easy Realty, Nice Cat and Quick Cart. Teams were form for each selected idea with 3 to 5 members each. Each team is composed of both tech and non-tech participants.
On Saturday April 16, the teams worked on their ideas to come up with a minimum viable product to be pitched to the judges the next day. The teams were advised by the following mentors: Robin Gurney of ANDAKIDZ, Thomas Ridenour, a React Native Mobile Developer, Dan Pantinople, a Creative Lead of Symph, Paolo Rigotti of Gelateria Milano and Sharon Sesaldo of TechTalks.PH.
The judges for the competition are as follows: Albert Padin, Chief Technical Officer of Symph, Pip Cimafranca, a Senior Ops Manger, and Aimee Lim of Gerarda’s.
The event lead organizer is Ashley Uy of Symph and Jay Paul Aying of Bagol Labs, and were assisted by Jane Alcantara of Auza.Net, Ben Skelton, Charles Barette of Fab Lab, Ms. Lai Biliran of The Bohol ICT Council and Zion Campo of Tarsier Times.
The facilitators of SWB2 are Goldy Yancha of Ideaspace and Angel Abella of TechTalks.PH.
The sponsors, organizers, judges and mentors had a fellowship dinner at Gerarda’s after the mentoring activity on Saturday.
by admin | Apr 16, 2016 | Local News / Bohol Balita
A Provincial Convergence of Women Micro-Entrepreneurs was recently conducted at JJ’s Seafood Village, Tagbilaran City.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and its partner agencies, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Agriculture (DA) launches the Gender Responsive Economic Actions for the Transformation of Women (GREAT) Project 2.
The activity was attended by 48 women entrepreneurs from different municipalities of the Province. (Photo by DTI-Bohol/MTT)
by admin | Apr 16, 2016 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
TAGBILARAN CITY, April 16, (PIA) —With a new 100 kilowatt solar energy facility capable of, Holy Name University (HNU) in Bohol now holds the country’s record for the biggest thin-film-solar module technology.
HNU, an educational institution run by the Societas Verbi Divini (SVD) or the Society of the Divine Word, said that the facility stands as a testament of their environmental concern as well as their commitment to the advancement of green technologies.
The new power generating facility produces an estimated combined energy to run about 120 air conditioning units however covers only 1/6 of the schools requirements, according to Fr. Francisco Estepa, SVD, school President.
Solar facility installers, ORION group International Incorporated said HNU is the first institution in the country to use cutting edge 100 kilowatt photo-voltaic solar technology to tap and harness the solar energy for school use.
The facility uses 1080 photo voltaic cells which is now line up at the roof top of HNU’s Scanlon Building, in their Dampas Campus.
HNU, a school which has always impressed and advocated for clean energy said the use of clean energy that reduces carbon footprint contribute to the universal effort to minimize the threats of global warming.
During the project launching at the HNU Scanlon Building, April 15, HNU trustee and nationally acclaimed physicist, electronics expert and school administrator Dr. Christopher Bernido called the SVD achievement as pioneering in the country’s solar energy advancement.
He also detailed how people have been consuming energies from the earth and then from the sun.
ORION group president, Engr. Rynor Jamandre said that the HNU facility saves the world 11,251 gallons of gasoline, or some equivalent of 48 metric tons of coal.
In modern waste recycling facilities converting for energy, the HNU facility equals the energy generated from burning 35.8 metric tons of weight, he illustrated.
This, he pointed out, redounds to an average of 109,000 monthly savings in power bills for the school as it is capable of producing 145,000 kilowatts annually.
Well beyond the usual solar energy harnessed for stand-alone lighting and minimal industrial use, the HNU solar energy facility however is tied to the local grid, as the installation of battery banks holding the generated power proves expensive, Engr, Jamandre said. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)
by admin | Apr 14, 2016 | Editorial
President Benigno S Aquino is not just becoming a lameduck president. He has just shown to us that he is not just lame; he is also a duck.
The son of a president who took over after evicting a dictator, Aquino should have all the time needed to conveniently and permanently scuttle the dream of the Marcoses.
After all, in totality, he and his mother have a combined rule of nearly 12 years, and within that time succeeded in burning the house to scoot out the rats.
Then President Corazon Aquino, mother of this lame duck president, took the helm of power and enjoyed the push of the wind of change in her sails. It should have been that easy.
But when she immediately set her prow to go after the ousted leader and his family, including erasing what was left of their memory because of what she said is grave plunder of government, she only managed to tilt the Marcoses head.
At least, Cory Aquino, whom historians wanted to project as a saint, lightly pressured the judiciary to hand her the Marcoses’ head. But she could not do that even if she wielded all the power.
Not only was she a failure in mustering the government assets to force the Marcoses to return their alleged loot, she also failed in permanently shutting the door for their return to power.
Aquino’s cannons for the Marcoses spewed nothing but smoke grenades when the big guns could do sufficient damage. The smoke of vilification and demonization were shots fired across the Marcoses bow, it did stop one Marcos dead on his track.
And then like a deadly virus, the Marcoses developed a certain kind of immunity that even the harshest of the Aquino’s barrage using the Martial Law had no effect.
The campaign against the Marcoses however, did not stall the family’s cruise to return to power and expose the Aquino government’s hypocrisy.
Aside from Imelda, the wife of the strongman winning a seat of power, daughter Aimee and son Bongbong tauntingly managed to grab key seats in the Aquino government.
Now that Bongbong runs the risk of winning the country’s second highest seat, and racking in on this government’s inutility, the dirty campaign took the young Marcos’in stride.
But the bombardment soon sounded as laughable: either Pinoys found it a bore or took it as a parody against this government.
In the recent surveys, we saw how those opposed to Senator Bongbong are unleashing their deadly arsenal of hate campaign and bashing which borders the toilet kind.
Instead of burying the man’s dream for good, this government watered it instead, the seed of hate grew and grew in to pile heaps of support for the strongman’s son in survey approval ratings.
Why? What has happened?
When this government hoisted Martial Law and the worst of the Marcoses to fool the millennials, they did come with dirtier hands.
With a reign seen as more diabolical than the repressive Martial Law, with the horde of salivating cabinet more known for their characteristic ineptness supporting a three-day president, when the country is sailing into rough waters, there is the rub.
For the older generations, they still see the Marcos years as a country sacrificing to get the infrastructure that pitted the country among the best.
For a lame duck administration whose political endorsement is a kiss of death because all it could boast of, are accomplishments better remembered as monuments of stupidity, would one ever wonder why a vote for Marcos is better?
by admin | Apr 14, 2016 | Headlines
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will consult stakeholders on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the ASEAN – Hong Kong, China FTA (AHKFTA) on 14 April 2016.
“Our goal is to help our country maintain its competitive advantage among ASEAN member states. One way to do this is to raise awareness on our trade engagements and engage our stakeholders to take full advantage of the vast opportunities arising from further regional integration in the Asia-Pacific region,” DTI Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo said.
The proposed RCEP, which is composed of ASEAN and its dialogue partners (Australia, New Zealand, India, Korea, Japan and China), accounts for nearly30 percent of the world’s trade, and is projected to have a combined gross domestic product of about $21.2 trillion. On the other hand, AHKFTA, which refers to ASEAN’s engagement with Hong Kong, China, offers the Philippines market access to an estimated 60 million tourists a year.
The RCEP and AHKFTA consultations fall under the One Country, One Voice (OCOV) program. The government’s consultative mechanism for stakeholder participation in trade policy formulation. OCOV engages stakeholders to identify policy gaps and relevant interventions and support the development of government’s positions and appropriate strategies for negotiating current and possible future trade engagements.
Rodolfo said that the consultation would likewise be a venue to urge the private sector to maximize the gains provided by the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).
The AEC aims for free flow of trade and investments in the region. AEC is a regional market of nearly 600 million people with a combined gross domestic product of USD 2.4 trillion. To date, the Philippines has managed to achieve a 92.1% implementation rate by complying with 466 out of 506 measures in the AEC scorecard.
Rodolfo said that while the country is generally making good progress in increasing country competitiveness, the consultation is necessary to communicate both the opportunities and challenges of our trade engagements in ASEAN. “Our role is to further guide businesses, government agencies, and civil society in analyzing and strategizing their business directions and initiatives in ASEAN,” he added.
Since 2010, the DTI has been undertaking a number of national and regional consultation sessions on key and pressing trade-related issues such as preparations for the review of the Philippine-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (PJEPA), the proposed Philippines-European Union Free Trade Agreement (PH-EU FTA), the Philippine – European Free Trade Association FTA (PH-EFTA FTA), the European Union’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences (EU-GSP+), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
For more information on the services of the DTI, log-on to http://www.dti.gov.ph
