MY TWO CENTS’ WORTH - By DICKSON CO (DFNN.COM )

Window of hope

Do not lose hope my fellow Filipinos. There are people out there who are doing something about I.T. and the Philippines continues to have a window of competence.

A few people from the private sector are doing something about getting us into this game. I was recently a fly on the wall at the ITECC meeting hosted by Jaime Zobel de Ayala of the Ayala Corp. ITECC stands for Information Technology Electronic Commerce Council, a private sector group formed to help this administration in developing a blueprint for growth in the global I.T. field. Present were among the best and brightest of the I.T. private sector, among them Paco Sandejas of H&Q, Gus Lagman of PhilBx and Dr. Bill Torres of Mozcom. (Ricky Banaag of Intel and Ramon Garcia Jr. of DFNN were both out of the country). JAZA invited Jimmy Ayala of McKinsey to guide the group through the session. My take was here is a group of private sector representatives volunteering their time, checking their battleaxes outside the room and putting on their country hat to see what the private sector can do for Mother Philippines. It was a very positive feeling.

Window of Competence. The Philippines is still a good source of English-speaking programmers, giving the Philippines a window of competence for call centers and other remote access shared services.

According to Frankie Naranjilla of Nokia, the Filipino as the world’s top users in SMS (short message service) with approximately 45 million text messages a day and soon WAP, the Philippines has become a test-bed for mobile commerce.

My Two Cents:The enemy is out there! The Philippines needs to compete globally and not fight among ourselves. This window is closing soon.

China

My wife and I went to Beijing and Xian recently. So if the next few articles include references to this trip, please forgive this writer (since I joined DFNN, I don’t get out much).

China is impressive. When you arrive at the brand-new spanking airport, you are greeted with banners of Olympics 2008, for which China is bidding. The drive on the highway to Beijing took about an hour with hardly any traffic and hardly any potholes. The main avenue (Avenue of Heavenly Peace, in front of Tiananmen Square) is five lanes each way and the sidewalk is about two cars’ width, imagine that. I guess you need that many lanes when you parade your missiles every year. (Hmmm, maybe we need missiles to have good roads, logical?)

Except for a few Red Guards and a few pictures of Mao, you could not tell that it is still a communist country. There are a lot of McDonalds and KFC outlets. Gladiator was showing at the local cinema at Xian. (But do not be fooled, you are still being watched, we were told, they still had quite a few plainclothes police and snitch squads deployed).

Most noteworthy were the billboard ads, most of them had URLs (uniform resource locators), from travel billboards to basic clothing. I would say half of the billboards had URLs. People in China could hardly afford the PCs nor the Internet access but they have Internet access at work. IBM and Legend were the biggest brands I saw.

China is fast becoming an I.T. nation. China’s share of the global programming market is getting bigger, faster. I would imagine with the recent trade agreement with the US, this would increase a lot faster. And watch out if and when they join the WTO. Their share of global manufacturing will increase as well as their share of global programming.

My Two Cents: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if we do not get our act together, we, as a nation, will always be second-class. I believe we still have a window, we still have our highly educated and English-speaking programming workforce, but this window will not be there long.

Red tape

Red tape will always be there whether it is in a corporate scenario or government. As soon as I have enough stories, this will become a regular section of this column. My goal is for some smart entrepreneur to be able to read this section and develop a business-to-business (B2B) or a business-to-government (B2G) solution, or just have fun. (I am hoping to replicate Dilbert’s success but cartoons are not my forte).

In this regard, I am asking you, my dear readers, for your own experiences with red tape, and how we can solve it with I.T. (Note: we need solutions, not just whining). Of course, the funnier, the better. Also, you have to tell me if your name should be anonymous or not. Some of your bosses may not have the same sense of humor.

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Dickson Co is CFO (C is for Cheap) of both Dfnn.com and HatchAsia.com. For comments and suggestions, e-mail HYPERLINK mailto:[email protected].