Category: Events

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Digital transformation: My takeaways from #DigiCon2017

For three days last October 11-13, 2017, the largest gathering of marketing practitioners came together for the Internet Mobile and Marketing Association of the Philippines’ (IMMAP) second digital congress named DigiCon DX. This year, the congress focused on the culture envisioned to aid marketers in adapting to digitalization as reflected by its theme “DX: The Culture of Digital Transformation”.

Eduardo Mapa, Chairman of #DigiCon2017

So what was I doing here? Well, thanks to friends from the industry, I was invited as part of the media pool — which meant that I could attend sessions as a delegate and get some media access to boot.

This was a change I would not miss. As a blogger usually at the other end of the marketing campaign, I only experienced campaigns from the receiving end. At #DigiCon2017, it was actually a great chance to observe and listen to talks designed from the perspective of brands, advertisers, marketers and PR guys.

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iCon 2016: Investing is for Everyone

The biggest annual investment conference is back and is now on its 4th year with a brand new roster of speakers known in the Philippine financial industry. Among them are my good friends Randell Tiongson (the organizer of iCON) and Marvin Germo, an expert in stock investing.

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Last year, I was able to bring two of my kids and a friend’s kids to the conference. Usually kids get impatient with long conferences but my kids listened till the end. Now, they are more confident and manage their own savings with increased knowledge.

To read about our iCON 2015 experience, click here.

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ICON 2015 – Learning how to invest from the best

The word “investing” can sound really complicated and intimidating. Maybe that is one reason why so few Filipinos are actively investing in different investment instruments. I personally know many who think keeping money in savings accounts is the way to go, not realizing that inflation alone is eating up whatever interest is generated from savings deposits.

There are financial advocates who are now bringing the message of investing to the public with clarity and simplicity, but with a strong message. I call them financial evangelists and they have been giving workshops and going on speaking engagements for many years now. Their dream is to get more Filipinos into the investing mode. One of them is a good, good friend of mine – Randell Tiongson — who I consider a pioneer in this field, a columnist in his own right, and author of a best-selling book “Money Manifesto“. Randell is an original force behind ICON, an annual gathering of the best and inspiring speakers and advocates in the field of investing. I missed ICON 2014 last year because of time conflicts but I’m really happy to be able to go to ICON 2015 which will be happening this May 30, 2015 at the SMX Convention Center, Pasay City.

ICON 2015 speakers
ICON 2015 speakers

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Creating a Mom Manifesto with the help of Mommy Mundo

I’m already a mom of 4 adults who are almost independent of us. I’ve also worked on corporate strategies in the past. But guess what. I never thought of combining mommyhood with visioning and coming up with a statement on life for myself. I guess I really never had the time back then, what with 4 kids to raise.

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I can relate when young Moms share that their waking hours are for the kids, the hubby and the home and very little of it is for themselves. In fact, as a young Mom then, I learned to sleep late because that was my ME time (a book, a facial, watching a rerun of the night’s news on TV,  — when all the kids, including the hubby, were already asleep.

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IdeaSpace announces ten tech startup winners for funding (UPDATED)

(UPDATE: The winners are in BOLD. The remaining 7 teams will undergo a second screening to see how IdeaSpace can continue to support them.)

IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc. (IdeaSpace), the Philippine’s largest privately funded non-profit incubator and accelerator, headed by Marthyn Cua, is about to announce tonight the 10 (out of 17 competing teams) winners in its technology startup competition program. The winners will each receive at least PhP 1 million worth of seed funding investment, training and services.

IdeaSpace Finals Night

More than 600 entries were submitted for this competition, involving 3 rounds of judging and a two-month intensive incubation program where the 17 finalists received an initial grant worth PhP 100,000 including PhP 50,000 outright cash grant to work on their product. During this period, they were also mentored and trained to build their entrepreneurial skills; they also got assistance for business incorporation and intellectual property filing support.

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Watching the 2012 U.S. Elections and the role of social media

Tomorrow, the United States will choose their President for the next 4 years. Will it still be Pres. Barack Obama for a second term? Or will the next President be Gov. Mitt Romney?

Together with a few other blogger friends, Noemi and Juned, I got a sampling of activities and issues in the run-up to the November 6 U.S. elections when we attended the “Kapihan sa Embahada”, the second in a series of coffee talk and open fora organized by the U.S. Embassy of Manila.

U.S. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, Jr. opened the Kapihan by describing this election as something you would not have seen in his childhood days. He specifically said that back when he was a child, no one would ever have imagined someone from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints going up against an African-American for the Presidency. He calls this a “positive change” and wished his father was still alive to see the state of U.S. elections.

Another change, Amb. Thomas said, is that there are many Filipino-Americans in California and Hawaii who are running for office. In fact in Nevada, where there are very large Filipino communities, he said you can find ballots in Tagalog (a major Philippine national dialect)! Filipinos are the 2nd largest Asian-American group in the U.S. Imagine the kind of influence they wield!

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