My sinuses acted up and gave me a headache for the entire day. This post may be crankier than the two previous ones.
Got to Film Institute earlier today but still missed the beginning of the first keynote. Also, the place was “standing room only” by the time I entered the hall.
I’m no longer going to be complaining about run-of-the-mill Powerpoint presentations. Instead, I’ll just post a link to Tufte’s PowerPoint is Evil. :P
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Innovation on the Web
Mr. Jay Trinidad
Google Asia Pacific marketing dude. Masyado ata matagal nang nakihalubilo sa mga puti kaya di na marunong mag- code-switch.
To be honest, I don’t really remember anything from this talk aside from “Google search is actually very complicated behind the scenes” and demos of Google apps that most are familiar with (i.e. no Google Wave).
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Preparing for IT Security Audit
Mr. John Ruero
Accenture Security Audit dude. There was a break before this so I was able to get a seat near the front.
I’m supposed to be familiar with this, but I actually learned a lot of new stuff about security auditing (bakit kaya? LOL!).
Deming was also namedropped in the talk because of the Deming PDCA cycle. Wala lang.
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Education 3.0
Mr. Noel Feria
Educ dude.
I was disappointed about this talk. It was too short, the slides were not organized to convey ideas properly, and the speaker didn’t adjust the talk given that the entire audience was not even familiar with “Education 2.0”.
What was really disappointing was the way he answered the questions. For example, the second question from the audience was from a teacher who was concerned that students would be getting wrong/fake assignment answers in this age where Google has trumped textbooks. The speaker simply answered that the students should verify the data by checking the hyperlinks at the bottom of the Wikipedia articles — to put it bluntly, a lame non-passionate answer.
If I was the guy, I’d go on the offensive: I’d state that we are better off now that people are finally critical about the validity of data. Back when we were still relying on textbooks and encyclopedias, it is rare for a student or teacher to question the validity of data from those sources–sources that are sometimes already out of date, and sometimes even worse than the Internet (remember the various textbook scandals our education system has received in the past years?).
The answer to the next query was also disappointing. A teacher who had already started using technology in his course (the usual Yahoo Groups thing: a mailing list, a place where files can be uploaded, and an e-mail address to send assignments) was wondering if Education 3.0 allows more synchronous (his methods are asynchronous; actually his term was “decoupled”) ways of connecting to students like video conferencing.
The speaker’s answer was that Education 3.0 is just being conceived as an idea so he’s not sure if those are included.
My reaction: Uh… isn’t what he’s talking about already under Education 2.0?
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I transferred to the UP Theater after lunch.
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Web Threats Security
Mr. Rodel Villarez
Trend Micro dude.
I’d say this was a decent talk even though it was a pitch for their product line. It’s not as hardcore as the Security Audit talk, but it touched the key aspects of web threats that people aren’t really that familiar with e.g. social engineering, anti-virus software needs to be supported by other software and habits, etc.
Even though he doesn’t look or sound it, the speaker was actually pretty good at managing the audience.
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Global IT Certification Standards
Ms. Maria Corazon Akol
PhilNITS lady.
The talk was all about PhilNITS, a certification I passed three years ago. The talk itself was just about average, answering the five W’s and the How regarding PhilNITS.
What was impressive about the talk was the speaker’s ability in answering questions. I posed the “Certifications are ignored by companies that read Dilbert” problem and she was able to quickly respond by making it clear to the audience that certifications are not an “end” (i.e. pwede na akong mag-drop out pag nakakuha na ako ng PhilNITS certification), and that completing your course to get a holistic learning experience is still the way to go.
It was a valid answer and I applaud her for that. Her other answers also showed that she was familiar with all of the issues regarding PhilNITS. This, IMHO, made it clear how much she is devoted to her cause.
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Cloud Computing and SaaS (Software as a Service)
Mr. Jerome Gotangco
Morph Labs guy. They’re offering a PaaS.
He already gave this talk in DevCon. The main difference with this talk was that today’s audience was a bunch of notches lower in terms of technical knowledge than the DevCon audience. That meant that the former needs to be aware that PaaS ~= Facebook and SaaS ~= Pet Society, and that demonstrating creating 4 App and DB servers in a minute wouldn’t be as awe-inspiring.
The questions were hogged by a single audience member and they weren’t really that hard to respond decently so I couldn’t make a clear assessment on his answering ability (IMO, it was good).
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Animating “Dayo”
Mr. Patrick Anji Palanca and Mr. Whannie Dellosa
Animator dude and sound processing dude.
The talk was surprisingly engaging. When they showed the various WIP of a scene in the trailer of Dayo, from animated storyboard to finished product, in order to show the technology involved in the process, the audience got to memorize the lines by the 3rd step and was dubbing it until the last. :D
While the animator dude was somewhat serious about his craft (even as he was wowing the audience with his resume which includes “Smurfs”), the sound dude was more down to earth. I think the proper term for the latter would be “keepin’ it real”, but I try not to use that language on this blog.
Anyway, that combination paid off in the open forum. The animator dude answered indirectly while the sound dude answered directly; this provided both depth and a resolution to the answers. Usually the speaker would just be able to give one of those, either a deep answer that somehow doesn’t answer the question or a direct to the point answer that doesn’t care about the other implications.
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Dinner at Lutong Bahay. Glad to see my old night shift dinner combo, “1 bbq stick + 1.5 rice + vegies”, is still (relatively) cheap at 37 pesos.
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Last day tomorrow. Will spend the entire day at the Film Institute to avoid Dick Gordon and Imee Marcos.
