After Aileen Apolo’s presentation to Davao’s SMEs on Google AdWords & Google Apps last Tuesday at DTI, I finally gave the latter a test run. So I’ve come to the conclusion that Google Apps is a web presence creator. It has, among other things, community-building tools for allowing all of your organization’s members to collaborate online.

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Yesterday Aileen Apolo, country consultant of Google Philippines met up with SEO professionals in Davao. (This was her second meet-up with them, the first being in November last year.) Aileen’s talk focused on Google AdWords. Simply put, it is an online service by which advertisers can promote and market their products / services via Google’s ubiquitous Internet presence.

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Right before the Davao Bloggers Party #1, Janette Toral, ever a huge supporter of Davao I.T., came back to Davao for another DigitalFilipino Club eyeball. There are currently only 6 members in Davao — but hopefully more will join us. This club is the country’s only e-commerce and technopreneurship private organization.

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No, I’m not talking about trapos here. There is much politicking within the IT industry, especially involving two camps: the pro-Open Source and the rest. Curiously, "the rest" don’t seem to give a hoot. Ok, let’s name them, shall we? "The rest" are the supposedly pro-Microsoft people. When I talked to some of them, they were surprised that they’d been categorized into such a misleading nomenclature. My bad.

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I am just like most IT professionals in the Philippines today: I make use of both Open Source and proprietary software. I have Windows XP running on my desktop, and I make use of MS Office applications. At the same time, I deploy Web applications built with PHP onto Apache-run servers. I love the productivity that Microsoft programs afford me; and at the same time I bask in the power of open-source when I delve into PHP and MySQL. The freedom (and responsibility!) that I have when coding for open-source platforms is exhilarating.

But, I categorically do not support the current form of the FOSS bill, otherwise known as the Free / Open Source Software Act.

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iThink Technologies, an IT training facility in Davao, launched its Microsoft training and certification program today at The Venue. Together with iThink was Microsoft Philippines and edupro inc., a Manila-based training institute and Microsoft-Certified Partner for Learning Solutions.

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I haven’t written about the upcoming blog party in this blog because the goings-on have mostly been more related to my Davao blog. But, aside from the first-ever blog party in town, there will be other activities around 17 March. Foremost, the event is a bloggers party. Non-IT for the most part. But the other activities do have a bearing on the local IT industry.

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Yesterday, after a curiously lengthy hiatus, the ICT Davao Inc. organization was formally established with the election of its first set of officers. Bong Tee, representing the Association of Computer Businesses in Mindanao (ACBM), was naturally elected president. The formation of this umbrella organization is his re-entry project after his educational stint in Australia c/o the PAHRDF. He carried it through, and now it’s a reality.

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