First Y4IT Cebu Congress & MozCoffee Cebu II

I am both humbled and honored to be invited as one of the speakers in the recently concluded Youth for IT (Y4IT) Cebu Congress — the very first time the event is brought in the Visayas Region. So I tagged along Mozilla Philippines Community Manager Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, Jr. for a late night flight to Cebu City last Thursday, 22 Nov 2012.

Y4IT Cebu was a 2-day affair, and my speaking slot was last Friday — the last day of the Congress. I was told that there were around 1,200 attendees from all over the Visayas and Mindanao regions who trooped to the Cebu Trade Hall inside the SM City Cebu. I gave my presentation about Mozilla’s presence in the Philippines and the Challenge of the New Web. I also discussed the upcoming Firefox OS and how everyone will be of benefit from it.

Among the notable speakers at the event were:

• Prof. Ariel Betan – University of the Philippines (Manila – CAS)
• Gregg Victor Gabison – Dean, College of Information, Computer, & Communications Technology — San Jose Recoletos Cebu
• Wendy Gorton – Google Certified Teacher, Google Apps Edu Certified Trainer
• Lawrence Hughes – IPv6 Forum Gold Certificate Engineer
• Kevin Leversee – Founder & CEO of iGo2Group
• Aquilino Pimentel III – Senator, Republic of the Philippines
• Jerry Rapes – President & CEO of Exist
• Earl Martin Valencia – President & Co-Founder of the IdeaSpace Foundation

With IdeaSpace President & Co-Founder Earl Valencia.

As promised, here’s a copy of my slide deck (in HTML5).

Since Jun and I were already in Cebu, we thought of hosting a MozCoffee last Saturday 24 Nov 2012 (of course, this was planned weeks ago; sign-up form was done via EventBrite).

Eleven out of the 15 who signed-up for the event showed up at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (CBTL) Ayala Terraces. Jun and I gave a briefing of what Mozilla is, what are the programs that we have right now, and how one can contribute to the organization. Some of the attendees are interested in Localization, while others are keen in staging events down south of the country with Mozilla as their partner.

Group Photo courtesy of Ms. Joie Ann Waga Maghanoy