July 05, 2008 - Saturday

8layer  sets off to Cebu City last June 23-25, 2008 to attend some Open Source Events.

CedfIT hails the prior event held at the Cebu International Convention Center to be the First Open Source Summit.  But in all fairness, there were already Open Source Events and Conferences held in the past years which had similar topics and numbers in attendance. And yes, pretty much they too had Microsoft as one of its Sponsors (maybe now the only difference is, Micrsoft is singing a tune supporting Open Source).  And so since Microsoft was among the Sponsors, registration booth was filled with workstations and monitors with Microsoft OS, not Open Source.  Though there was one booth distributing free Ubuntu CD's. Well, I have yet to see what a real Open Source Summit is in the Philippines.

Why was 8layer in Cebu then? For one particular reason. TO SUPPORT. To support our advocacy on Open Source and Support our product offering through our partners; PLDT and IBM. Yes, 8layer was not a sponsor nor a speaker for the Open Source Summit but 8layer assisted its partners in the booths that exhibited PLDT Snap and the other one for IBM's Lotus Foundation.

We were also quite delighted to see old friendly faces and colleagues in Open Source.  JR of Imperium was there, Patrick and his team or UR Solution, Holden Hao from Davao, Kelvin Chua of NextIx and Edwin Chua of RedHat Asia Pacific and some other interesting personalities.  We had brief but meaty chit chats on the ongoings of our businesses and sharing of do's and dont's; and our views on Open Source in the Philippines. Well the informal introduction and talks were really WHAT OPEN SOURCE should be; Open and Collaborative.

Particularly on June 25, 2008 at the Marriott Hotel, IBM Philippines had their Open Source Small Conference that housed nearly 60 attendees.  What was really notable was Iris Tan's 30 minute speed talk, (Iris is the Product Manager for the Lotus Brand in the Philippines) on IBM's newly aquired Lotus Foundation and the distribution and introduction of IBM Symphony. Symphony is like our regular Open Office suite and probably your Microsoft Office. The difference from Microsoft Office is Symphony like Open Office is free and downloadable thus you can share it.  The savings you get from no longer purchasing to do your document, spreadsheet and presentation can now be diverted to other productivity tools and probably training your staff to know more about Open Source Technologies and how it could help one's organization.

What 8layer did sponsor was Joomla Day Philippines held at UP Diliman on June 14, 2008.  And even though 8layer has its own CMS tool; 8layer WebCre8 v.1.0, our goal was to bring on more Open Source enthusiasts; newbies and practitioners to collaborate and have fun. And since the bigger events and organizers can pull advertisers and sponsors, we opted to sponsor the Open Source Practitioner's Joomla Day. It was daunting that the organizers had to close registration because they can only accommodate 250 attendees im sure it was not because of the free t-shirt. And though it was not all that we expected, the event and organization can still do improvements.

Then on June 17, Meric and myself conducted an intimate orientation to IBM's Telemarketing Group for the launch of the Lotus Foundation here in the Philippines. The orientation and Q&A's lasted for more than 2 hours, apparently due to the many features of the product and  its breakthrough offering to the Philippine SME's.

Overall, Open Source in the Philippines is gaining  some awareness and attention from IT Practitioners (who used to be closed) and from the Businesses (who thinks that free or comparatively lower in cost is likewise lower in quality).  However, this should NOT only be a fad or fashion or a bandwagon.  One must be OPEN and READY to adapt to it and adopt it.  Apparently, though there is an imminent growth of information and improvements available in the internet, Philippines has not very well adopted and taken advantage of this SPACE.

And as we say in 8layer, engaging into IT does not rid you of your values but rather you should have more of it all the time.  IT will not alone work for you unless you also change for the better.

This is the same principle we ought to have, when we adopt Open Source to our IT environment.  Open your Mind; unlearn the old ways, Open your Heart, believe it can work and give it your best; Just Be Open; share what you know and give back if you have taken something.  Open Source is about Collaboration.

Open Source Events are good things, and it becomes better if we do not only do it, because we are tasked to or we feel like doing one. It should be emanating from your principle as a practitioner and an advocate.