Bonifacio Belen, organizing committee chairman, was in town last Wednesday for the Davao leg of the CEBU ICT 2007 Roadshow. He’d been to Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and other cities in order to invite and encourage I.T. organizations and companies to participate. During the Davao Roadshow, Belen gave a very rousing presentation of the Philippine I.T. industry’s present situation, vis-à-vis our Asian neighbors’.

According to Belen, the Fortune 500 magazine ranks the Philippines second only to India in terms of I.T. industry growth and development. Considering our comparative geographical size and population, this is indeed a remarkable piece of statistic. If Cebu’s local I.T. industry is any indication, our country’s being #2 is indeed credible.

The Philippine strength is in our highly-skilled, available and trainable manpower — and Davao contributes to this quite significantly. Knowing this, Davao’s own I.T. industry would do well to follow Cebu’s example, especially in the model of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (CEDF-it).

This Foundation has successfully synergized industry and academe, along with government, to ensure the future of the I.T. industry. And that future, as Belen succinctly pointed out, lies in human resources.

CEDF-it worked — and is now quite well-established — because of one simple fact: ALL key players cooperated. Belen, who is CEDF-it managing director, related how Cebu’s industry leaders, heads of universities and high-level representatives of government agencies themselves hunkered down to plan, create and sustain the Foundation. Belen was referring to the president of NEC Philippines, the dean of San Carlos University, even the mayor of Cebu City, among others.

Can this be accomplished in Davao? I sincerely pray that the past failed efforts at getting the local industry organized isn’t the answer. Truth be told, an endeavor along the lines of CEDF-it was supposed to have been initiated here several years ago. But in-fighting and politicking among those who were supposed to be in fact collaborating stopped it dead in its tracks.

Let’s shift our focus to the present and to the newly-formed umbrella organization, ICT Davao Inc. It is fortunate that the two strong academic associations, the Philippine Society of IT Educators and Council of Deans in IT Education, are enthusiastic members. Will it be successful in rolling out a long-term program similar to CEDF-it’s? Will it outlive its failure of a predecessor and manage to effectively represent and lead Davao’s I.T. industry?

What of the Mindanao ICT Summit? This column will endeavor to shed light on the developments of this year’s MICT, which — if the plan holds — will be held in Davao sometime in October 2007.