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 9, 2016 | Headlines, Tech Talk
On March 27, 2016, the COMELEC website was defaced by Anonymous Philippines and then a second attack by LulzSec Pilipinas allowed them to leak the entire database of voter information online.
During registration, voters provide to COMELEC their full names, birth day, address, signature, picture and finger prints or their biometrics. These information are what your bank, phone company and credit card company use to verify you. Following the leak of the COMELEC database, malicious persons can theoretically pretend to be you.
An estimated 1.3 million overseas Filipino voters and 15.8 million fingerprint records are included in the leaked database. It is the biggest government related data breach in the world so far.
COMELEC stored the voter registration database without encryption so when the data breach happened, the leaked data is shown in plain text.
Voters should be vigilant in monitoring their bank, credit card and other financial and sensitive transactions. Any unusual activity should be reported to the bank or financial institution for review.
by admin | Apr 9, 2016 | Local News / Bohol Balita, Tech Talk
By: Zion Campo
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is coming!
Time is almost up and we’re getting pretty pumped up! It’s time for Boholano innovators to volt in. Startup Weekend Bohol 2 will sure be a whirlwind event with startup enthusiasts, aspiring entrepreneurs and established businessmen congregating to celebrate the awesomeness of innovation, tech and entrepreneurship!
Seriously though, a lot of things will happen this Startup Weekend Bohol 2. Ideas will get pitched, teams will argue, some might sizzle and others might triumph. The whole event will be chaotic for the uninitiated so here are some things you need to remember to stay sane this coming Startup Weekend Bohol 2.
1. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.
Before you drop by this coming April 15, be sure that you are all ready for war. Because it will be a battleground out there. You only have 60 seconds to for the firepitch round so you’ll need to prepare what you’ll say. Those 60 seconds are important to get your idea to the next round and convince others to join you.
Research your idea. BUT DON’T BUILD IT YET. Rehearse your 60 second pitch. Think of something that will make people remember you and your idea.
Don’t forget to book your lodging if you’re out of the area since it will be a long night ahead of you! Assemble your Startup Weekend starter kit a.k.a. whatever you need to do great work. Don’t forget to bring your business cards too!
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is a great avenue to connect with great people who do extraordinary work.
2. Shed Your Shyness
You’ll get the most of Startup Weekend Bohol 2 if you go out there and mingle. I know you’re scared, a little bit worried that you’ll embarrass yourself but what’s life without a little bit of hiccups.
Honestly, other people around you are probably just as scared as you are. Don’t be afraid to say hi, introduce yourself and connect. Hold a conversation with someone, hold a genuine conversation.
During Startup Weekend Bohol 2, if you’re working with your squad or team, we’ll most likely separate you from your buddies and introduce you to new people. We encourage you to expand your circle of human friends!
3. Listen to Your Customers
One thing you should be doing during Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is to validate your idea. How should you do it? Get out there and talk to your customers!!!
And we don’t mean, ask your friends to like your facebook page and consider that as validation. Ask people offline and do a survey online. Message your Facebook friends list. Leverage your connections. Don’t be squeamish about talking to your customers.
It’s hard to listen when the people you talk to tells you that your idea isn’t something they would use or pay for. But it’s harder if you build it, then nobody’s going to actually use it because you didn’t actually validate your idea. Don’t waste your time building something people don’t want!
Don’t make that mistake. Your customers are your lifeblood if you’re going to do a startup. Make sure you’re building what they want, what they really want. Ask them questions.
4. Work With Your Team
Your idea can only go a long way without a good team. Work with them.
Even though you might be complete strangers in the beginning, you’ll get to know each other much better over the weekend. Know what each member brings to the table. Is it sales experience? Tech development knowledge? Project management skills? Design prowess?
Get to know your people better. You’ll be spending three days with your team. Don’t just tell them to do this and do that just because it’s your idea. Work with them and make good friends.
5. Ask Help From Mentors
Don’t forget we have mentors!
These guys are experienced people who know their stuff. They are there during Startup Weekend Bohol 2 to share their expertise. Listen to them young padawan.
Exercise caution though.
Take advice and consider if it will work for your startup idea. Don’t just gobble up everything they say. Be smart with taking advice. They are there to tell you what they’ve learned with their experience. But what might have gone well for them, might not go well for you.
Ask help from mentors but don’t swallow everything. Consider what they say. Implement what you think will be good for your startup idea.
6. Practice Your Pitch
During the end of the weekend, you’ll get on stage again to pitch your idea in front of judges.
Be sure you’ve practiced your pitch over and over and over again. You’ll be given ample time to practice. It’s your chance to shine and sell your idea so do your best. Don’t worry about messing up.
Everybody is nervous. Just breathe in, calm yourself and get the ball rolling.
7. Enjoy!
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 isn’t just all work, there’s also some having fun here and there. Don’t be so focused on trying to win the first prize that you forget to enjoy working over the weekend.
As they always say, the best thing about going after success is the journey towards it. Be in the NOW! It’s the weekend. Have fun!
by admin | Apr 8, 2016 | Opinion, Tech Talk
By: Jerome Auza
I openly support Rodrigo Duterte to be the next president of the country. Together with my wife, our family, our friends and colleagues, we have come to agree that Duterte is the right leader at this time, to steer the country for the next six years.
We’ve spent quite a sum of time and money campaigning, buying t-shirts and giving them away to people, printing hundreds of stickers and distributing them to the public and frequently promoting Duterte to our friends on Facebook. I may have overdone the Facebook part already and I might be already a “Dutertard” to some of my friends. Who knows some might have already unfollowed, or worse, unfriended me.
As we did our part as volunteers in the past few weeks, I had that feeling of familiarity to what we were doing. Contributions from thousands, if not millions, of volunteers towards a common cause seemed to be something very familiar to me as if I had been doing it for a long time.
And one day, it dawned on me. Duterte’s campaign is like open source software: made of contributions from so many people in different areas of expertise towards a common goal. The best example of a very successful open source software project is the Linux operating system.
Conceived in the early 1990s, Linux made its way into server systems, had difficult time penetrating the PC market but lately, it has become ubiquitous after Google built the Android operating system for mobile devices based on Linux.
Linux and other open source software are released to the public including its source code. Any developer can scrutinize the code, learn from it, improve it and possibly get his improvements accepted into future versions. By making the source code public, more eyes can review and study the code and discover defects or bugs.
Linux and FreeBSD (another open source operating system) have started to dominate the market with Android and Chromebook based on Linux and the MacOS based on FreeBSD. They have become so successful that Microsoft, the company that was the “opposite” of the open source software, has started to embrace open source software and have themselves, released some of their development platforms on Linux and open source.
The one thing, among others, that the open source software licenses guarantee, especially if the software uses the GNU Public License, is the freedom to use the software as you like. But you can’t claim to own it. Violate the license and you will get vilified by the open source community.
Contribute to the open source project and thousands and maybe millions of other users will benefit from your contribution.
Duterte’s volunteers are like the horde of seasoned software developers volunteering their time and expertise for a common good: free software. Free to acquire and give, free to use, free to be scrutinized and free to learn from. Some developers create new features, others fix bugs, others improve existing features and others organize the whole flow of development work from around the world. Other contributors write the documentation, create graphics, promote the software, help other people learn to use the software and many more.
However, instead of free software, the common goal of Duterte’s supporters is to give back to the Filipinos many freedoms it has lost in the past decades. Artists come up with designs for campaign materials. Musicians come up with songs, dancers choreograph dance moves, writers come up with blogs, owners of printing shops allowing the use of their equipment for free, photographers and videographers covering his rallies and many more. All done to help convince the Filipino voters to choose Duterte to be the 16th president of the country.
The Filipinos have lost or about to lose their freedom to walk the streets unharmed, their freedom to to scrutinize public information to help ensure effective use of national resources, their freedom to raise the youth free from drugs and other forms of addiction, their freedom from poor government service due to incompetent and corrupt public servants, their freedom to live in a peaceful environment and many other freedoms the normal Filipino citizen has been gradually losing in the past decades. Heck, we do not even have the freedom to enjoy fast and reliable Internet at a price comparable to western countries.
The Duterte supporters will put in the leader who they believe has the will and capability to give back to the Filipinos the many freedoms it has lost or about to lose. They have seen through the facade of traditional politicians who are backed by oligarchs. They will not be fooled again.
However, Duterte is not the long term solution. He will be running the affairs of the country for just six years. The Dutertards like me, and the rest of the Filipino people, will still be responsible for the long term success of the Filipino nation.
A Duterte presidency will just be like a new Linux version. It will be the 16th version of the Philippines. Hopefully, this time, the bugs of this country will get fixed or at least mitigated significantly. Corruption, incompetence of public servants, too much red tape, loopholes in the law, rising drug trade and crime. They are like persistent software bugs that bother you everyday and prevent you from being productive, from living life in freedom. People who keep creating bugs will get their butts kicked until they behave or leave or die if they violently resist arrest.
Just like the open source software community continuously contributing to Linux, the Filipinos need to continue contributing to the progress of the country, doing their part, disciplining themselves, following the law, paying taxes and staying vigilant in case any public servant tries to enrich himself. Some of us will be scrutinizing our systems looking for bugs and inefficiencies.
Lastly, many of us will keep an eye on Duterte and make sure he performs as mandated. Rest assured, we the Dutertards, will also be the ones to make sure that he delivers. Collectively, we have spent millions, if not billions campaigning for him. We will not let Duterte get away with lackluster performance. We will be a demanding horde of contributors.
All these going towards a much improved next version of the Philippines six years from now.
by admin | Apr 3, 2016 | Opinion, Tech Talk
By: Jerome Auza
The 2016 national elections is developing into an unprecedented event in the country with social media harnessed heavily for campaigns aside from traditional media. In the 2010 and 2013 elections, social media was also used but this year, the difference is that we have one presidential candidate who has limited funds for ads but is doing very well in the surveys.
Currently 2nd in a formal survey but almost always 1st in various mock elections and informal surveys nationwide, presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has appealed to supporters to help him with the campaign as he will not be accepting donations from big businessmen. The response is an overwhelming support and a real grassroots initiated campaign for Duterte. In social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, there are hundreds of comments, photos, stories and expression of support for Duterte every day. These help his name recall.
Of course, Duterte also has some TV ads but the exposure time pales in comparison to that of most other candidates. Duterte’s campaign has been aided by volunteers who believe in his platform and leadership capability to lead the nation. These volunteers post updates, comments and pictures and graphics to help promote Duterte on their social media accounts. The volume of such posts overwhelm the paid ads and show of support for the other candidates.
Outside the digital domain, the volunteer support is also evident. Free T-shirt printing is being provided by supporters. A friend of mine who prints stickers for his business would utilize the waste cutouts of the stickers and print Duterte stickers. Brochures, banners and tarps are printed and paid for by the volunteers and are distributed around. Many of these are coordinated on Facebook.
Will Duterte’s non-traditional approach to the campaign prove to be the winning move in his bid for the presidency? Would the incumbent advantage of the LP party enough to propel Roxas to victory? Can Poe’s name recall from her adopted father’s fame in the movies do the trick of getting the most votes? Will Binay’s Makati convince the voters to let him run the country? Can Santiago’s brilliance get her on top?
It still remains to be seen.
The campaign strategy of the other candidates seem to be dictated from the top down to the front liners. Duterte’s campaign is simply coordinated by his campaign manager, Maribojoc Mayor Leoncio Evasco, Jr. The volunteers have a loose structure and there is no formal organization imposed on them.
While the public is bombarded with the political ads of the other candidates on TV, the grassroots support and volunteerism is being concocted on social media.
Is this the new form of People Power? 30 years ago, the warm bodies that showed up in EDSA booted out a dictator. Back then there was no social media.
At present, there’s no need to go to EDSA to change the leadership. The click of the send button after tapping words using two thumbs on a mobile device might be enough to start a peaceful revolution that brings positive change to the way things are run in the status quo.
by admin | Apr 2, 2016 | Local News / Bohol Balita, Tech Talk
Still on the fence about joining Startup Weekend Bohol 2? Worried that it might just be a time waster? Curious if is it really for you?
Well, worry no more. We’re compiling a list of a couple of things you’ll learn and pick up during this intensive 3 day weekend event.
1. Validate your idea
Now, most of you probably have ideas that you want to pitch during Startup Weekend Bohol 2 and that’s great. Startup Weekend is a good platform to get a chance to see if your idea is really something people want. The fire pitch is the first stage of Startup Weekend and it’s where your idea either gets voted and validated or shafted and forgotten.
Congratulations!
If your idea gets pass the voting stage then your idea is a little bit closer to being validated. But you still have a long way to go and the 3 day event will be stepping stones to taking that idea from just an idea to something people actually want. During the event, you’ll get the chance to get out and get customer feedback from your prospective customers and see if they are really willing to pay for your product.
Startup Weekend will provide you a chance to test that idea you’ve been cultivating in your head into something more than just idea. After all, ideas are dime a dozen. Execution is everything.
2. Learn
Startup Weekend Bohol isn’t just an event, it’s like an educational camp too. You learn by doing and not just theory alone. You only have 54 hours to work on the startup so you’ll get pushed to do more than you think you’re capable of. You’ll be able to challenge yourself and discover skills that you might not even know you have. You’ll be able to wear many different entrepreneurial hats.
Startup Weekend Bohol will allow you to create your own plans, formulate a strategy and test it. What better way to learn something than to dive head on.
3. Step Into The World of Entrepreneurship
Startup Weekend Bohol isn’t just an ordinary event. It’s an event that will give you a chance to see if entrepreneurship is your piece of cake. Many people want to start their own businesses but most people don’t understand how hard it is to start one. Startup Weekend Bohol will help you decide if entrepreneurship is really for you!
During the 54 hour event, you’ll get to taste the different flavors of the entrepreneurial world. You’ll get the chance to validate your idea with customers, figure out your business model, develop your business strategy and execute it.
You won’t only learn the skills needed to start a business but you’ll experience the many emotions an entrepreneur goes through. You’ll get high from happiness because people say they love your idea, but you’ll also get stung by sadness when you realize that people only like your idea but don’t really want to pay for it. The painful love affair will be too much for some and they will end up giving up along the way. But there will be a few who are willing to endure the heartbreak and continue.
Entrepreneurship isn’t for the weak hearted. It takes guts to work hard for many years despite the numerous number of people telling you your idea won’t work until you prove them otherwise. Startup Weekend Bohol will help you decide if being an entrepreneur is what you really want or it’s just a fleeting fancy that you’re just interested in but not passionate about.
4. Find your people
Aside from the education, Startup Weekend Bohol will give you a chance to connect with people who have the same interests as you.
Entrepreneurship is a lonely road. But when you know that there are people out there going through the same things as you are, you’ll feel a lot better knowing that you really aren’t alone after all. They say entrepreneurships are a crazy bunch and they probably are right. What Startup Weekend provides is a way for you to connect with other crazy individuals who want to start a business or probably change the world. It’s great to know you aren’t the only crazy guy out there. A support group, a community, just something that will provide you with comfort that there are other people out there experiencing the same things you’re feeling.
Aside from a support system, Startup Weekend is a great way for you to find a cofounder. It’s a good place for cofounder dating and finding your team. Even if the startup you worked on over the weekend, falls apart, being able to network with many awesome people isn’t that such of a bad deal.
5. Have fun
It’s the weekend! Don’t fret too much. Don’t focus all your energy on winning. Focus on enjoying the experience. Startup Weekend isn’t all work. There’s free flowing coffee. Good food. Great people. And an infectious electrifying energy that will get you riled up and pumping.
Don’t go into Startup Weekend thinking that you’ll create a billion dollar startup out of the event. It’s like a teaser trailer for a movie. The real work is what happens after.
Startup Weekend is held on the weekend so you won’t have to worry about work too much. Instead, you’ll get to work on something you love, express your creative juices and mingle with likeminded people.
