As I’ve announced at I.T. Talks!, we will be holding the 1st Mindanao bloggers summit sometime in October 2007, in time with the 6th MICT Congress. This was proposed a few months back by Councilor Pete Laviña, and is now finally going to happen. [read on]

I’ve been tagged again, this time by Aileen. Three things that make me proud to be Filipino:

Filipinos are highly adept in languages. I personally know of a number of Pinoys who can speak at least 4 languages. And a lot of us speak three tongues with ease: Pilipino, our own regional language or dialect, and English. Put a Pinoy in Japan, Saudi Arabia… and he’ll soon be speaking the local language in no time! [read on]

Bob Martin has tagged me back, this time for a meme game on 5 revealing things about yourself. I suppose these are stuff that not many people know about you…. About me, that is. Bob actually tagged my Ang Dabawenyo blog, but I’d rather play these blogger games right here. So here goes. [read on]

Just now I realized that I’d been inconsistent about where I post when I blog about blogging. I’ve used this blog to talk about, for example, blogging convictions. And I’ve used Ang Dabawenyo when I was blogging about the 1st Davao Bloggers Party. And I’ve also posted blogging-related stuff at I.T. Talks!

So now I’m finally deciding to keep blogging topics right here at Blogie Blog. This is, after all, my blogbase.

[read on]

Janette Toral has embarked on an ambitious writing project called Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007. Janette aims to collate the blog picks of her extensive network of colleagues, friends and fellow bloggers, and subsequently come up with the top ten. This is my contribution to this worthwhile undertaking.

[read on]

It’s 2:30 in the morning, and I’ve just come from the Namfrel Davao computer center, which I’ve been managing for three days now. So far we’ve been able to encode and transmit election returns from over 250 poll precincts — not a bad feat, considering we only have less than 10 volunteers at any given time. Most of the volunteers are assigned in the field and in headquarters. Davao has more than 3,000 precincts, by the way.

I’m proud of the computer encoders I’ve been working with. There’s Rowena, who always volunteers with Namfrel, each time we hold elections. There were four students from AMA Computer College last Tuesday; and accountants from PICPA chipped in their time and energy as well. Wednesday early evening till the wee hours I had nine students from John Paul II College. This last batch was very impressive — they finished in one sitting more than half of the total output so far! Credit goes to Lawrence, the center’s appointed systems administrator, who rounded up these guys for us. [read on]

For those of us who’ve been online since way back when, we’ve seen an exponential increase in the number of social networking sites (SNS), such as Friendster and MySpace. In other languages, as well, this type of community-based online service has proliferated all over the Web. And all of them pretty much offer the same basic services: building a group of friends, online dating, even blogging. FYO1 is different. In fact, it’s the first of its kind that I’ve seen so far.

[read on]

Yesterday I had a chance to meet up with my opposite number from the Mango Industry Cluster. Tony Teh is the private-sector chairman of the said cluster, which was put together by the National Economic Development Authority and the Department of Agriculture - Region XI. Yours truly is with the ICT Industry Cluster, which is being overseen by the Department of Trade & Industry - Region XI.

[read on]

I just want to share a great new idea I’ve found at a fellow blogger’s site. It’s about “blog convictions“, as coined by Jayvee of A Bugged Life. The excerpt below is particularly evocative, in my opinion.

This got me thinking about how blogs are extensions, or manifestations rather of our own personal convictions. Thus, I’d like to ask you to sit back from your computer monitor and think about your personal BLOG CONVICTIONS. Why did I start this blog? How has this blog evolved through time? Am I still on track with my original vision?

Why don’t you check it out? Who knows, Jayvee might be right about becoming a better blogger if you define your own blog conviction.

I’ve been tagged for this meme by Misterhubs — a new blogger friend whose acquaintance I’d like to make but whose services I hope I’ll never need.

Apparently, this game is all about four play….

[read on]