By Lorie Ann A. Cascaro
A representative from the Silicon Valley Science and Technology Advisory Council (SV-STACS) from Silicon Valley, California, USA was one of the coaches and judges of the ON3 Pitching Competition held at the Brokenshire College here last March 24-25. SV-STACS is a non-profit company that has made tycoons of Facebook and Paypal, and is committed to helping promising tech startups in the Philippines to become world-class companies.
Organized by the ICT Davao, Inc., this competition was in cooperation with SV-STACS, Plug and Play Tech Center, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Davao City Field Office, the Department of Science and Technology and the Davao City Investment and Promotion Center.
The representative, Jojo Flores, is a board member of SV-STACS and co-founder of Plug and Play Tech Center which provides, among its services, funding for those who start up businesses through space lease, hiring and mentoring.
He said this kind of event aims for Filipinos to be more globally competitive by tapping brilliant ideas on how to utilize information technology (IT) to bring quality life. The competition, he added, was a search for hidden talents in Davao City, and later nearby places, who are IT entrepreneurs so to that his company can tap their ideas and share them with the whole world.
Among who submitted proposals and presented their concepts were Easy Clinic Software, Entreprenurse, Greppoo slims, Segworks Technologies, Suncooker, picLyf, and RAD Green solutions.
Philippine Consul General in San Francisco, Marciano Paynor, Jr., who was part of the working group of the SV-STACS, said that for the Philippines to be globally competitive, “we have to concentrate on science and technology. We have to put action where our mouths are.”
Teolulo T. Pasawa, city director of the Department of Trade and Industry, Davao City field office, said the pitching competition was also a way of helping small and medium enterprises to find capital for their ideas of business.
Sam Matunog, executive vice president of ICT Davao, told reporters that they want to make Davao City an ICT destination in the Philippines. “We will grow our products locally, but compete them globally,” he added.
Although the competition is not limited to a particular industry, most proposals were focused on science and technology. A member of the panel of judges, Federico “Dickie” Gonzales, mentioned that there was a proposal that will help doctors maintain records of patients electronically by using iphones. Patients, he continued, will be filed according to type of illness, and that they can avail of online or by remote consultation.
Gonzales is an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a veteran of corporate world who advocates and practices technology entrepreneurship. Head of the Philippine Emerging Startups Open, Inc., he has organized the PESO Challenge Business Plan Competition, and teaches at Asian Institute of Management, De La Salle University and the University of the Philippines.
Another proposal was a technology that allows disposal of hospital and medical wastes without the unwanted emission through pyroclave, a non-burn waste disposal system. There was a suncooker, which replaces the wood-burning stove with the aid of sunlight to cook dishes. Another was an IT application for social networking through sharing of photos describing one’s life by putting them on a particular wall for people to comment on, he said.
Assistant regional director of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Elsie Mae Solidum, said the government is pushing for science and technology manpower development in the country. Hence, the Balik Scientist program was implemented which pays for the airfare and accommodation of Filipino scientists abroad who will return and work in the country. This, she said, is a reverse brain drain, as the opposite has been experienced by the DOST.
Solidum mentioned the need for more innovations “the Filipino way”– a mixture of different cultures. “We can easily blend with other races,” she said, referring to the experiences of overseas Filipino workers.
“We’re smart people,” she said, adding that Filipinos passed accreditations and international standards, keeping abreast with other nations.
Paynor said, “The rules of the game we should know are the global rules.” With technology, he continued, Davao City is now part of the world. He said SV-STACS will continue this kind of competition “on a yearly basis to catch five brilliant youngsters and bring our country back on the map.”
Estonia, Flores noted, is a small country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe covering only a land area of 45,227 square kilometers, but, it is already recognized in Skype.
“Science and technology affects the economy of the country. If Estonia can do this, why the hell can’t we? Let’s have our own Skype, Googles on the map. Put Philippines on the map in terms of science and technology,” he said.
Educators’ challenge
Emphasizing the need for more brilliant Filipino minds as a total of eight proposals in such pitching competition was a depressing reality, Flores mentioned about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He said a trace study of MIT graduates in the last 20 years discovered that 27,000 companies in the world had been created by only one school.
Only eight teams submitted proposals. An exasperated Gonzales asked, “Where’s the rest of them? They have to get out from their little rooms and join in events like this. They have to take advantage of this.”
“We don’t have a good harvest as yet. The engine of development is the human resource in science and technology,” Solidum said.
