Pandora Squared - Web and Business Architects, Consultants, Social Media Marketing, Software and Blogging hope not hype

Speaking very passionately last night at the Wifi Oyster Bar in Makati With Allan he drove home the two very things that burn so brightly in my chest.

1) Myspace and the other Big huge be everything to everyone YASN’s won’t and aren’t relevant to all individuals.

• We aim with the release of our next engine (code name Leviticus) to have a single digital ID across multiple sites.
• millions of markets of dozens not a dozen market of millions.

2) We need to get the tools we are building to market.

• We have nearly 450 builds of the Genesis Engine representing many man hours of work. We need to use this with more Passionate Communities.
• Our new engine (code name: Leviticus) needs to get out.
• Hunter has created Prometheus Fire our team of developers and innovators the sole purpose is to create and release these tools.
• Mybennu.com (a web 2.0 career and life management tool) development mashes we have the ability to create multiple log ins to multiple employment sites, so that a user can in effect search any job board in the world. Nothing too cool, we have had this for over 3 years now…its not the technology its the proper application.

Allan does what others talk about- he has his own web development team, they have built and delivered a complete set of tools, mashed with google maps for example letting property owners know where units are- (the other powerful tools that this can do are really mind blowing as we only see vast oceans of opportunity here)

Hunter is reading Good To Great, Hans is reading Execution The Discipline of Getting things done, I am rereading tipping point, and wisdom of crowds… anyway this trip has been one wrought with discovery, action, humility and crazy clarity.

what will next month bring…?

Today we are at Java in Manila Conference We checking out the latest happening in the Java world. The focus here is on innovation using Java and from the line up of speakers it is looking to be a great event. Held here at Kevin’s favourite Shangri-la (he ended up in Hospital with food poisoning last time he was here).

We have had the chance to meet with a few of the guys involved with Java education here. The JEDI group looks to be really pushing forward in education and training. There might be some joint training coming up in the future. (I secretly just want to join their group just so I can call myself a JEDI and maybe sneak in a few mind tricks and convert them to Ruby on Rails)

“Prometheus was a not a fool, why else would he rebel against Zeus? To steal fire from Zeus and empower man.”

Ideas are nothing without execution. Prometheus the god for foresight, gave man the most powerful of tools. With so much of the current Internet (and especially the so called Web2.0 companies) talking about the latest and greatest, we feel that it should be more than just talk. Thus Prometheus Fire exists. As an exclusive team to turn amazing ideas into reality. Not only as a think tank for the cutting edge but for the execution and delivery.

Too much focus is placed on technology. We are technology agnostic. Just as fire is purely a tool, our aim is to deliver the most suitable techology and tools but as Prometheus empowered man, at our core we focus on the most important part – the user. Delivering simple and effective user centric design along with a solid core of technology.

Fire has always been the enabler for human development, for life and for community. Prometheus Fire exists as the enabler. Our passion is to create the tools to enable and empower people in all aspects of their life.

Over the coming weeks we will be annoucing more about the exciting things coming with Prometheus Fire.

yup. we’re done.

pandora squared is done with talking about web 2.0.

we have now started on DOING things.

i guess as trainors, the greatest reward would be seeing our participants’ awesome ideas turn into a reality. and that is where our nurturing process continues. to see to it that their efforts will not just go to waste.

so what has the great web 2.0 have to offer to developing nations? we have started enabling and empowering some local developers and now comes the greatest challenge.

ENRICHING LIVES.

we have spent the past three days brainstorming on the company’s action plan and refining it to become relevant to our country’s current situation. as a company specializing in social softwares, our greatest challenge now is how to enrich the lives of individuals and/or societies.

digital information is already at its critical mass, or about to reach it, and somehow, social softwares must be able to integrate all these for it to become relevant and have an impact to an individual or a community.

as joel yuvienco puts it, it all boils down to knowledge management of folk knowledge. Understanding an individual’s or a society’s inner self will guide us in our path to creating a social software for enriching lives.

social development through social software.

reaching out to humanity as real people.

we’re not yahoo who claims to help new orleans’ residents rebuild their lives by making websites with yahoo buttons on it.

with the recently concluded web 2.0 training workshop, our company had to catch up on its internal operations and meet deadlines. we’ve had enough time to bond… not just as a business team but as a family… in fact, i think im still hungover from the team building activities we’ve had… :) whew!

but seriously, integrating human element into our virtual office and the relationship we have developed now is what enables our company to move ahead and getting things done, rather than just yakking on and on about web 2.0. so as nike would say it, JUST DO IT. there’s just too many yakkers out there. it’s time somebody DO something and bring forward the essence of web 2.0. and that is

ENABLING, EMPOWERING AND ENRICHING LIVES.

and for now, that mission has also started here in the philippines. we started with the web 2.0 training workshop.

the 2nd iBlog summit and davao city councilor peter lavina’s participatory governance shows that filipinos are starting to acknowledge the powers of blogging. several filipinos have also made social communities like luis buenaventura of www.gibbity.com, www.oks.ph, www.highfiber.org, and www.filmcrowd.com, jason banico’s funchain and if there’s somebody i missed please feel free to add to this…

all these simply shows the filipinos’ ability in adapting new technologies and if harnessed to its full potentials, the philippines, does indeed, have a shot at becoming the center for software development and training hub in asia.

one of the gaps identified that needs to be addressed to is the lack of capability building opportunities for our local IT people. and conducting this training provided an insight as to what our developers really need.

enablement.

through

education.

a little push will go a long way. after three days of interaction, i realized by enabling our local IT guys, the philippines will not only emerge as asia’s IT hub for software and training development but the world as well. these guys that attended the training have fantastic ideas that if nurtured, will scare the hell out of those nerds and so-called innovators at san francisco and silicon valley. and we will make sure the nurturing process continues.

after the training was the pinoy web 2.0 chikahan. and we met some guys who, until the chikahan, we have been communicating with online. guys that are quitely making their own mark in the industry. and talking to them in person reinforced what i realized at the training.

and our hope for the philippines emerging as a leader in IT development is not just a dream. it is becoming true. and this is just a start.

Our hotel here in Manila is across the way from the water. Near the water their is a big strip called Bay View; with Karaoke, lots of food, and live bands.

The problem is someone keeps singing “I’ll Survive” and this song has been getting me out of bed in the mornings.

“At first I was afraid, I was petrified

Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side

Then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong

And I grew strong

And I learned how to get along”

Sounds like the bonding that has been happening here in Manila with the Pandora Squared team finally together. We work 98% online via email, Instant messenger, and skype. But nothing can replace team members by your side and the fact that eye contact helps us grow stronger. PANDORA SQUARED WILL SURVIVE!! Hey hey.

Manila is full of things happening in the internet community. Blog conferences, Java conferences, web training and a great community all around.

Today we have been invited to the Adobe User Group – Philippines to give a talk on Web2.0, Search and Ruby on Rails. An exciting chance to speak to another group about our passions.

One of the greatest points of the training at the The National Defense College of the Philippines was that we used our social software engine as a live collaboration tool, allowing each member of the class to Visually See each classmate- interact- blog, email, and store their notes on their private wiki.

This was our first major event where we used the engine as a tool for collaberation. I have to say it performed flawlessly.

So you can see how we used it even in our request for feedback…

This is my cut and paste of the Genesis Engine CSS and HTML – Will this work? will I think of myself as the coolest? or will this violate some sacred CSS law – I don’t know about… will I break the HTML again.

Go on… Check out PinoyWeb2 for yourself. Play with it… see how you might possibly be able to enable your own organisation…

peachyherrin said 7 days ago:

TRAINING EVALUATION

as a final process, we want you to write a blog post and rate the training as to the following:

1. resource persons
2. mastery of the subject matter
3. communications abilitiy
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise
5. relevance of the topic
6. rapport with students
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities
8. training course content/relevance
9. expectations – were they met? if not, what needs to be done to

allanctan said 6 days ago:

My Feedback

1. resource persons 5 – You guys are cool!!! Manila, let’s rock the world!
2. mastery of the subject matter 5- Kevin, Hans and Hunter have their own specialized area of expertise and blends very well. Peachy provides good user feedback.
3. communications abilitiy 4 – Not a problem. Equipment was distractive.
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise 5 – Looks cool and authoritative. :)
5. relevance of the topic 5 – Exactly what I expected.
6. rapport with students 5 – couldn’t be better.
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities 4 – good food, lots of pictures, kinda hot and poor audio.
8. training course content/relevance 3 – The outline was not clear. It kept on changing until the actual training day. (e.g. group activity, order of topics). Also, the time was loose… would be better to specify exact start-end time with specific topic.
9. expectations – were they met? if not, what needs to be done to 5 – Exactly what I expected.

peachyherrin said 6 days ago:

training evaluation

thanks allan. will keep that in mind and we really appreciate your feedback/s. helps us do better next time. see each other soon. :)

rhodyl said 5 days ago:

my rating

1. resource persons – 5:talented tutors
2. mastery of the subject matter – 5:all ninjas on different ares of expertise
3. communications ability – 4 :just right sometimes fast
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise – 5:well poised, very confident, nice apprerance
5. relevance of the topic – 5 :Super
6. rapport with students – 5 :Super again
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities – 3 :hot, not so good sound system but delicious food, i like the coffee
8. training course content/relevance – 3 : time management is lacking
9. expectations – 5:just what i expected

peachyherrin said 5 days ago:

training evaluation

thanks rhodyl. hope you can re-echo what youve learned to your school. and we will be fine tuning our course outline – for developers and separate one for non-developers

Whenthesongbirdsings said 3 days ago:

Manila Web 2.0 Training Review

Here’s a long-ish evaluation of the training, which I hope you guys will find helpful. Sorry for the bit of delay. Just having a looooot of catching up to do outside web2.0.

EVALUATION OF PINOY WEB2.0 TRAINING – MANILA

1. Resource Persons

a. Kevin – Kevin as Pandora Squared’s Chief Courage Officer is the best person to give an overview of Web2.0 to the participants. His strengths play up to the requirements of being a motivator, such as his working knowledge of web2, his ability to articulate ideas in a way that ordinary people will understand and his academic approach to the strategy by sharing his knowledge sources.

b. Hans – I missed Hans’ session for search. It was in fact the part of the training that I was most looking forward to learn about since part of my current job is SEO and SEM. Hans is open to questions about search, and he answered my queries about the topic even at the “chikahan” session of the training.

c. Hunter — Sad to say, Hunter is the last person whose area of expertise I could relate to because I am not a developer. But by observing the RoR session, there is so much to be learned from this geek

2. Mastery of Subject Matter

a. Kevin – The most obvious guru in web2.0, the person among the three trainers who presents the bigger picture of the subject. His mastery of the subject comes from three areas: Communication, Sociology and Marketing, which he combines with network technology to enable him to deliver his knowledge to the intended audience.

b. Hans – Pandora Squared’s Search Guy. As I have stated, I missed his search session, but his training on Google Adwords proved helpful. It was only too bad that there wasn’t time at all for touching up onYahoo Publishers Network. I have been studying Google—the company and its technologies—for a couple of months now, and will soon focus on Yahoo!. Therfore, an introductory overview of what the next biggest search engine offers would have been much appreciated.

c. Hunter – Pandora’s Tech Guy to my opinion. I can’t make an objective review of how well he knows his stuff, but it was apparent that he established rapport with the developers among the participants. Not only is he open to questions from fellow developers but actually invites discussions about RoR.

3. Communications Ability

a. Excluding the fact that the ability to speak in English is a mark of a person’s communication skills in Philippine context, the trainers were able to communicate their ideas pretty well to the participants because of their knowledge of the respective subjects that they discussed. There were times when I had to ask them to restate their questions or instructions because the microphones were not working properly. I would like to suggest, however, that they speak a little slower next time.

4. Overall Appearance, Confidence and Poise

a. Granted that the training was an informal one as most tech- or web-related training-seminars go, there was no need to dress up too formally for the occasion. The trainers who donned on corporate (Kevin most of the time) to smart casual (Hans and Hunter) attires commanded respect on the strength of their knowledge of their respective topics and rapport with the jeans-clad participants. I assume that we participants already knew that it would be an informal but very informative training right from the very beginning so we dressed for the occasion as we would for our daily jobs.

b. As far as poise and confidence go, I think that Hunter will benefit from doing exercises in public speaking (uh-oh…Hunt, don’t kill me!). While he’s the guy who speaks most clearly (could it be the accent?), he seems too shy to stand in front of a dozen and a half wide-eyed web2.0 enthusiasts.

5. Topic Relevance

a. Not sure if by topic relevance, it means the relevance of the entire training to the participants. To me, it is. I have been reading up on Web2.0 since October last year while preparing a business plan for a website. I think that web2.0—both the enabling technologies and as a business and marketing approach—is more relevant now than ever. From a personal perspective, I feel that now I am given a platform from which I could share to the public my messages. As web marketer, web2.0 is an approach which enables me to communicate about products and services, and research about what my end-users want, cost-effectively on a global basis. Whereas I used to feel disenfranchised by traditional media who think less of the normal citizen who may or may not have a valuable opinion, web2.0 empowers me to communicate and gives me new options for pursuing my interests.

6. Rapport with students

a. There is no doubt that in spite of the cultural differences, everyone at Pandora Squared established rapport with the participants. This is a testament to what the group promotes: it does not matter who you are or where you are, as long as you have something of value to share, people will listen.

b. Keep up the PinoyWeb2 site because this is where the participants should converge to discuss ideas, share updates about web2.0-related developments and provide knowledge and information related to their interests. The site is an essential ground to establish Pandora Squared’s relationship with current and future clients. It is also important for individual members of the team to be in touch through the site and start discussions and topics that people will talk about.

7. Venue and Facilities

a. The sound system also needed a lot of improvements. Mics should be replaced. In some events I’ve attended, there were mic stands at the back of the training room for people at the other end of the room to use for asking questions.

b. Computer and Internet worked okay. Internet was reliable.

c. Camp Aguinaldo is accessible although one needed to walk from the gate to reach NDCP. It is still a very good training venue and the staff is very friendly.

8. Training Design

a. My understanding is that the purpose of this training is to present Web2.0 as an enabler. I think that a more effective strategy in conducting a web2.0 seminar is to create specific trainings for specific groups. Most of the audiences are developers and so they see the topic from a different point of view. Most of them looked forward more to the RoR training than social networking, and that was only natural for people who are in their line of interest or work.

b. I suggest that there be follow-up trainings on individual topics that we touched on: Search Engine Marketing, Social Networking/Computing, Web2.0 as a business strategy, RoR for developers at various levels, Usability. I haven’t heard of any trainings related to these topics conducted in the Philippines and Pandora Squared had better work on it soon. Better establish Pandora Squared’s presence on each of these areas if the company wishes to gain more ground in the Philippines.

9. Expectations

a. Not sure if expectations were set at the very start of the training because I missed the morning session of April 17 when Web2.0 overview was supposed to be discussed briefly. In my past training experiences, trainers asked for expectations from the participants (sometimes along with their own suggestions) at the start of the training. At the end of the training, both trainers and trainees check if their expectations were met.

10. Use of visuals and other training aids

a. The use of internet helped a lot in training delivery since most of the topics are web-based. On the other hand, there should have been a few other materials provided to the trainees, such as schedules, training outlines, and resources, print outs of reading materials such as book pages, web articles, web addresses that we could access after the end of the training.

b. On top of web-supported hands-on exercises and discussions, a PowerPoint presentation would definitely have helped in further explaining web2.0, search, social networks and RoR. PowerPoint presentations help with definitions and instructions, and provide visual cues and interpretations of topics. This is also a good backup should the problems with the network occur.

pitalow said 3 days ago:

Feedback

On a scale of 1 to 5

1. Resource persons—5
2. Mastery of the subject matter—5
3. Communications abilitiy—5
4. Over all appearance, confidence and poise—5
5. Relevance of the topic—5
6. Rapport with students—5
7. Physical arrangement/venue/facilities—5
8. Training course content/relevance—5
9. Expectations—5

Were they met? If not, what needs to be done?

Most of them were met but this has been better than most of the seminars I’ve attended. Geez, I could’ve just given one big 5 for the rating. I learned a lot from this seminar and even got me inspired to start some projects. Thanks guys!

the past three days have been a whirlwind of activities. but i’d say it was also the most productive and enlightening week on my part. and a milestone for Pandora Squared.

for a company operating on two different continents, simply getting work done is a big challenge. yes we have all the technology that enables such operations or businesses to function but it does not provide team building exercises amongst the members of the company. having everybody in Manila, Philippines for the Web 2.0 Training Workshop provided the opportunity for Pandora Squared to gather the team together and work as a team – in person.

i believe no technology can ever replace the kind of relationship or bond forged with human interaction. nothwithstanding the training activities, we also had the opportunity to bond in a personal level that gave each of us insights about our team mates.

!

and coming from the philippines and being the only female among these geeks – meeting them in person added human value to names and faces i’ve been working with over the net. and no social software can provide that. More about this later on.

Whew! uhm, no one blogged today- it was a very late night that ended with me uhm doing karaoke at the hotel alone with an young Philippine DJ drinking ice cold San Miguel singing sad love songs with everything from Chris Isaak to U2. He kept trying to throw on 80’s hair bands, which I of course had to help you know nail the notes. I thank God, no one witnessed that. Web 2.0 meets Karaoke the innovation er training coming to a city near you.

What an event. Of course it ended with a wonderful presentation set by the teams, I had goosebumps as each group took the microphone and presented their concept.

The entire message of Pandora Square and the only one I wanted to translate into act was enable, and empower individuals to do.

we did this through three days, first was search, then was showing it was more than technology, then how business today is succeeding by applying these concepts of user centric business and marketing models, how trust, desire and conversations are the real drivers.

The focus always on understanding the whole, and using the technologies to enable really got through.

Day one was Hans explaining search, search marketing, how everything is navigated by search. Hans is deeply rooted in google analytics, and any other metric you can imagine. He explained click fraud, its relevance and why PPC really can drive revenue.

Hans shared his “Original Recipe” for Organic Search. I keep telling him to podcast it.

I arrived right off the plane Monday and spent 90 minutes Monday afternoon explaining the movement, the shift that is much bigger than Web 2.0. How media, business, government, technology, knowledge and culture are shifting.

Day two was all about Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing, and business solutions

Web 2.0: It’s a school of thought… The web as we know it is dead.

We removed in excersizes the Web shell, the interface, its container and released the content, whatever it maybe. I showed how users want to receive information when they want it for example Blogs, RSS, and Podcasting. We delivered even a Webcast of our entire training event showing how easy it is to use Web solutions to reach your business objectives.

We divided the class into teams, instructed the teams to concept a Web 2.0 business or tool, and explain to us and deliver what it would take to make it happen in terms of resource and requirements.

Then I had them include ten points that they would do to ensure their project was a success.

Communities of Interest (COINS) Communities of Interest are socially networked communities of people who share a common interest or passion, such as Pinoyweb2.com or participatory journalism on malaysia.net. These networks are powerful, visible and open. We consult with, and deliver social software technology around these conversations.

Day three focused on the deep technical prowess of Hunter Nield who is expert delivering Agility. Agility is defined as a company whose business processes—integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers—can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat. An Agile business has four key attributes: it is responsive, variable, focused and resilient.

With Agility in mind we segmented the class into the teams they had formed the day previous. I instructed them to now place themselves in the situation that they had decided to build the solution.

So, would they quit their job, get a loan work double? What would they do to get this off the ground. They had to do it, now explain how you would build it.

The winner Pandora Squared would enable 110% by the use of our engine, technology and support. Each team would also recieve our support in the form of a consulting and toolset package worth a little over 100K.

more on all of this later…as its ongoing.

Our purpose: enable and do.