Last day of Y4iT. I didn’t want to see politicians so I spent the entire day in UP Film Institute.

I missed the fist keynote speech again.

Kinespell: Kinesthetic Learning Activity and Assessment
Ms. Ada Angeli Cariaga

The talk is about an edutainment software for kinesthetic learners (i.e. those who learn better through experimentation and movement). The main difference between this spelling software and other similar software is that it’s controls rely on physical motion via Sun SPOTs (a Wii port is also on the way) allowing the learner to move more than just their fingers on a keyboard. There’s also an assessment feature for teachers to track the performance of the students, but I think that’s common to most edutainment software anyway.

As students, the audience got the point of the talk. The speaker was also clear in saying that the tool is still not ready for retail or deployment due to lack of resources. Overall, no problem with this talk.

To Tumble, to Twitt; to Twitt: Perchance to Plurk: Ay, There’s the Rub
Mr. Juned Sonido

This talk was boring. I’d blame it on the speaker’s tone: using a bedroom voice (not the “sexy” kind: the “sleepy” kind), it was as if he was only talking to himself the whole time. Sure, Luis uses a similar tone, but at least he was able to capture the interest of the audience via sex.

The presentation itself is not really that interesting. It was like your average high school report: introduce the facts, provide bullet points for analysis. It would have been much better if he included a screencast showing how Tumblr, Plurk, and Twitter are used, or at least tried to provide examples which would have engaged the crowd.

I wonder how Feria’s talk went.

Nah, who am I kidding. We all know his teaching style. :P

Making IT Work for NGOs
Dr. Giovanni Tapang

CP Union dude.

His talk about providing free IT services to NGOs through volunteer work was surprisingly interesting for the audience. I guess it had something to do with the fact that most of them came from the provinces and that they need all the support they can get in terms of skills.

I’m actually thinking of volunteering for NGOs for a couple of months (blame Dr. Alan Wiess) so this talk gave me an option on where to start.

Optimizing Websites for Search Engines: A Walkthrough
Ms. Fe Nuñez

IMO, SEO is overrated. There are many ways to make your site’s presence known without having to fine tune every part of your site to get higher places in search results. Besides, some SEO practices like link dropping are avoided by bloggers (esp. those with connections to the anime community) to avoid being likened to a certain notorious blogger. :P

That said, I still think the talk was okay in terms of providing an overview on the basics of SEO and why is it important when making websites. It didn’t delve too much in the part I hate about SEO (fine tuning) so that’s a plus. The speaker was also attractive enough to illicit shouts of “Yiheeeeee!” every time a guy asks a question in the open forum so I guess a good percentage of the male audience was paying attention.

As for the problems with the talk, there aren’t any major problems but there were a bunch of minor things that I could nitpick about it. First would be the “hook” of the talk i.e. “Retire Young, Retire Rich” through SEO. I know, no one is supposed to seriously believe that, but with that type of audience, I’m pretty sure a couple of people misunderstood it. (As a side note, buti na lang di nagpa-raise ng hand kung sino sa audience ang nag-retire young, retire rich na. Baka na-tempt ako mag-raise ng hand. :P )

I could also nitpick about the answers. The question about how to pay for hosting in dollars should have been answered by giving the option to look at local hosting companies which allow peso payments. The question by the guy who wanted Google to refresh its cache of his school’s website with up-to-date information doesn’t need to wait for months for it to happen: just slap on an XML site map and submit the site to Google. The cache should refresh in a few days.

Aligning Your Social Network Assets with Your e-Portfolios
Mr. Joel C. Yuvienco

This talk explains the lesser known fact that a diploma and a transcript isn’t enough to land you a good job nowadays. At first glance, you might think that the talk is just about uploading the typical portfolio stuff on the net e.g. art in DeviantArt, photos in Flickr, but the real main message of the talk is “don’t do stupid things on the ‘net that could be Googled by prospective employers”.

I definitely agree on this advice given that most of the audience are college students and college students are prone to doing stupid things on the ‘net like uploading scandalous pictures. On the other hand, one part of me just wants to say “FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

But then again, I already have the skills and the experience so my advice probably won’t work for the other people in the hall.

Spring Roo dude was late and this screwed up the schedule. The organizers decided to go with the last speaker in his place.

Imagine an Election System Without Precision: What Can the Youth Do?
Mr. Nelson Celis

With the exceptions of the start and the end of the presentation, the whole talk was a lot more suited for big wigs in suits than college students. Run of the mill PowerPoint presentation, legal jargon that kids don’t care about… no wonder 60% of the audience was already gone by the end of the talk.

The content of the talk was well-intended, though, asking the youth to be more vigilant in making sure that the Automated Election System can’t be manipulated. But that can’t save the talk from being boring.

Spring Roo
Mr. John Paul Alcala

Spring Roo: the answer of SpringSource to Rails and Grails.

While the technology itself is very interesting, almost all of the members of the audience aren’t familiar with Spring. Heck, I believe that I was the only developer in the room with extensive enterprise application experience aside from the speaker himself.

Simply put, the talk’s format was not suited for the audience. Instead of spending 20 minutes explaining the background of the code-generation tool (making a lot of people’s noses bleed in the process), it would have been much better to go the Ruby on Rails demo approach. That is, spend around 5 minutes running through the background of the tool then spend the rest of the time showing the audience what you can do in that span of time with Roo.

Seeing a site with CRUD functionality built from scratch in a matter of minutes should be enough to drop a few jaws.

I am familiar with the tool so I didn’t really have a question for the speaker. Instead I merely pointed out that EJB is the worst thing that happened to J2EE, not AppFuse the presentation didn’t say what a developer needs to study before building apps with Roo. Given that the actual requirements are pretty daunting (e.g. knowledge of Spring MVC/Dependency Injection, Maven, etc), this is a pretty big oversight from the speaker.

Final Words

Being a retired software engineer, I didn’t really learn a lot of stuff from Y4iT. Fortunately, I traded off my SE hat for a teacher’s hat early on. Instead of focusing on the lessons taught by the speakers, I focused on how they tried to convey their ideas to the audience i.e. what approaches are effective, and what approaches are not. These past few posts are basically my “notes” on that topic.

Still, the low ROI and diminishing returns means I probably won’t go back for Y4iT 2010. (unless I get invited as a speaker, of course. :P )

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36 Responses to Y4iT 2009 day 4

  1. Shanti says:

    A very unorganized Day 4…
    Selling tickets even if there is really no room for the attendees…

    What is this? UPITTC people?

  2. Shanti says:

    A very unorganized Day 4…
    Selling tickets even if there is really no room for the attendees…

    What is this? UPITTC people?

  3. Roar says:

    that is true… we are from Bataan. we waited for hours to get there and then a crowded and unmanaged seen…whew! they flew away my 600p.

    Tsk, Tsk, Tsk

  4. Roar says:

    that is true… we are from Bataan. we waited for hours to get there and then a crowded and unmanaged seen…whew! they flew away my 600p.

    Tsk, Tsk, Tsk

  5. Bry says:

    While I agree that the event was crowded and a bit mismanaged, you two seem to have the same IP address… same Smart Bro connection, perhaps?

  6. Bry says:

    While I agree that the event was crowded and a bit mismanaged, you two seem to have the same IP address… same Smart Bro connection, perhaps?

  7. Roar says:

    yup. SMART BRO me…i dont know with the other one..

  8. Roar says:

    yup. SMART BRO me…i dont know with the other one..

  9. Bry says:

    You should know: both of your comments came from the same Google Chrome 2.0 browser running on the same computer running Windows XP. :D

    If you’re going to fake a discussion, at least switch browsers to make it more difficult for a professional software engineer to detect. :P

  10. Bry says:

    You should know: both of your comments came from the same Google Chrome 2.0 browser running on the same computer running Windows XP. :D

    If you’re going to fake a discussion, at least switch browsers to make it more difficult for a professional software engineer to detect. :P

  11. Roar says:

    i dont know what u’r talking about. for rent kase gngamit ko.
    i am not faking a discussion.

    dont u wori i jst post the comment and nothing else.

  12. Roar says:

    i dont know what u’r talking about. for rent kase gngamit ko.
    i am not faking a discussion.

    dont u wori i jst post the comment and nothing else.

  13. Bry says:

    Look kid, I’m not bluffing here: the evidence says that both comments were made on the same browser/computer within 4 minutes of each other. Your statement “i dont know with the other one” can’t be true.

    As I said, your comment is fine and I do hope the organizers take it into account, but to tell you frankly, you don’t need to fake stuff to get things across. It’ll just backfire in the end.

  14. Bry says:

    Look kid, I’m not bluffing here: the evidence says that both comments were made on the same browser/computer within 4 minutes of each other. Your statement “i dont know with the other one” can’t be true.

    As I said, your comment is fine and I do hope the organizers take it into account, but to tell you frankly, you don’t need to fake stuff to get things across. It’ll just backfire in the end.

  15. Roar says:

    its not fake…we have wi-fi in the area. i dont know if somebody commented also…
    the point here is the Y4IT event…

  16. Roar says:

    its not fake…we have wi-fi in the area. i dont know if somebody commented also…
    the point here is the Y4IT event…

  17. Bry says:

    Kagabi “Smart Bro”, kanina “for rent”, ngayon naman “wi-fi”… ano ba talaga?

    The point here is that this is my blog, and if people see I tolerate liars, they will abuse that fact in the future.

    Please stop contradicting yourself, mas lalo ka lang mapapahiya.

  18. Bry says:

    Kagabi “Smart Bro”, kanina “for rent”, ngayon naman “wi-fi”… ano ba talaga?

    The point here is that this is my blog, and if people see I tolerate liars, they will abuse that fact in the future.

    Please stop contradicting yourself, mas lalo ka lang mapapahiya.

  19. hidden says:

    payabangan ba dito sa blog mo. SMART bro configured as wi-fi and that is for rent. pare posible un, sa subdivision namin ganun ang connection…

    Roar, i was there also sa Y4IT, nagsend na kami ng letter sa organizer. we are very disappointed.

  20. hidden says:

    payabangan ba dito sa blog mo. SMART bro configured as wi-fi and that is for rent. pare posible un, sa subdivision namin ganun ang connection…

    Roar, i was there also sa Y4IT, nagsend na kami ng letter sa organizer. we are very disappointed.

  21. Bry says:

    Kung ganun nga, dapat pinaliwanag niya sa umpisa pa lang na ganun yung setup niya…

    Pero wala parin yun, sabi kasi ng Apache logs, nagmula sa iisang computer yung dalawang comment. Kung ayaw mo maniwala, subukan natin sa iyo “hidden”:

    – you entered my site via Google using the terms “Y4IT day 4 forum”
    – this was the only page you viewed before posting your comment
    – you’re using Windows XP and Google Chrome 2.0.
    – you’re using the internet connection of University of Batangas

    Hindi ito payabangan, naninita lang ako ng sinungaling.

  22. Bry says:

    Kung ganun nga, dapat pinaliwanag niya sa umpisa pa lang na ganun yung setup niya…

    Pero wala parin yun, sabi kasi ng Apache logs, nagmula sa iisang computer yung dalawang comment. Kung ayaw mo maniwala, subukan natin sa iyo “hidden”:

    – you entered my site via Google using the terms “Y4IT day 4 forum”
    – this was the only page you viewed before posting your comment
    – you’re using Windows XP and Google Chrome 2.0.
    – you’re using the internet connection of University of Batangas

    Hindi ito payabangan, naninita lang ako ng sinungaling.

  23. hidden says:

    pre ndi XP gamit ko…
    not the only page i viewed.
    University of Batangas connection is correct

    maybe ndi cya aware that somebody uses that…(well, i dont know) im jst being fair with them. kase nga ganun connection namin. and sa logs if its is smart bro, its the same wherever you go.

    anyways, im sure ndi cya sinungaling. kase nga there exists such connections.

  24. hidden says:

    pre ndi XP gamit ko…
    not the only page i viewed.
    University of Batangas connection is correct

    maybe ndi cya aware that somebody uses that…(well, i dont know) im jst being fair with them. kase nga ganun connection namin. and sa logs if its is smart bro, its the same wherever you go.

    anyways, im sure ndi cya sinungaling. kase nga there exists such connections.

  25. Bry says:

    Sige, yung XP, posible na mali yun. Malay natin may topak yung Chrome magbato ng HTTP header.

    Pero “not the only page I viewed”? Nope, sabi ng logs wala kang ibang binisitang page (comment portion does not count) pagkatapos mo pumasok dito sa page na ito bago ka nag-comment. Bumisita ka ng ibang pages tulad ng “Daily Entry” category at “Y4iT 2009 day 2”, pero pagkatapos na yun ng comment mo.

    Hindi IP address ang basehan ko kung bakit ko nasabi na iisang computer yung galing yung dalawang comment kungdi sa visiting tracks niya. Kung ganun (i.e shared connection) nga yung nangyari, makikita ko yun sa mga site na na-visit niya, tulad ng ginawa ko sa previous paragraph.

    Kung gusto mo parin siyang paniwalaan, e di sige, bahala ka.
    Basta ako may ebidensya na nagsasabing nagsisinungaling siya.

  26. Bry says:

    Sige, yung XP, posible na mali yun. Malay natin may topak yung Chrome magbato ng HTTP header.

    Pero “not the only page I viewed”? Nope, sabi ng logs wala kang ibang binisitang page (comment portion does not count) pagkatapos mo pumasok dito sa page na ito bago ka nag-comment. Bumisita ka ng ibang pages tulad ng “Daily Entry” category at “Y4iT 2009 day 2”, pero pagkatapos na yun ng comment mo.

    Hindi IP address ang basehan ko kung bakit ko nasabi na iisang computer yung galing yung dalawang comment kungdi sa visiting tracks niya. Kung ganun (i.e shared connection) nga yung nangyari, makikita ko yun sa mga site na na-visit niya, tulad ng ginawa ko sa previous paragraph.

    Kung gusto mo parin siyang paniwalaan, e di sige, bahala ka.
    Basta ako may ebidensya na nagsasabing nagsisinungaling siya.

  27. Roar says:

    hay nako. my only concern here is the event.
    so please dont accuse me.

  28. Roar says:

    hay nako. my only concern here is the event.
    so please dont accuse me.

  29. Bry says:

    My blog, my rules. That, along with the solid evidence I have on hand, gives me the right to accuse you of lying.

    If you don’t like it, then get out. If you want, I could delete all of your comments.

    Sa maayos na usapan, madali akong kausap. Pero di ko papalampasin mga lantarang pangloloko tulad nito.

  30. Bry says:

    My blog, my rules. That, along with the solid evidence I have on hand, gives me the right to accuse you of lying.

    If you don’t like it, then get out. If you want, I could delete all of your comments.

    Sa maayos na usapan, madali akong kausap. Pero di ko papalampasin mga lantarang pangloloko tulad nito.

  31. nuebe says:

    Hola! Nandun ako… Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!
    At first, I’m so happy when I saw the kit from the other student… so cute. Pero di ako nakakuha. Haaizz… Di rin ako nakapasok sa kahit anong theater. Daming tao! punta kami ng Bahay ng Alumni… Wala namang laman…. Balik uli sa theater, dami/haba/tagal ng pila. (What the ep?!?!) Umulan pa. Yung adviser namin kunot na ang noo. Pati yung mga kasama ko. Bad trip na… Pangit na ang timpla. Ayawan na.
    Na appreciate ko naman yung paglalagay ng TV sa lobby/waiting area… Kaso, hindi yun yung inaasahan namin kasi nakatayo kami habang nanonood (buti di kami inugat dun!). Hindi rin namin masyadong marinig ang sound – yung sinasabi ng speaker. Kasi nasa pila din kami nun, umaasa pa ring makakapasok. Pero, hilo na ako….
    May y4it pa next year?!?!
    Sana di katulad this year….panget.

  32. nuebe says:

    Hola! Nandun ako… Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!
    At first, I’m so happy when I saw the kit from the other student… so cute. Pero di ako nakakuha. Haaizz… Di rin ako nakapasok sa kahit anong theater. Daming tao! punta kami ng Bahay ng Alumni… Wala namang laman…. Balik uli sa theater, dami/haba/tagal ng pila. (What the ep?!?!) Umulan pa. Yung adviser namin kunot na ang noo. Pati yung mga kasama ko. Bad trip na… Pangit na ang timpla. Ayawan na.
    Na appreciate ko naman yung paglalagay ng TV sa lobby/waiting area… Kaso, hindi yun yung inaasahan namin kasi nakatayo kami habang nanonood (buti di kami inugat dun!). Hindi rin namin masyadong marinig ang sound – yung sinasabi ng speaker. Kasi nasa pila din kami nun, umaasa pa ring makakapasok. Pero, hilo na ako….
    May y4it pa next year?!?!
    Sana di katulad this year….panget.

  33. L.A. says:

    Somebody got pawned! Owning!

  34. L.A. says:

    Somebody got pawned! Owning!

  35. Jonn says:

    I attended the first 2 days along with this one last week. 4th day turned out to be the worst. I really learned a lot from the first two days. Hehe..
    I could only imagine why a software developer like you didn’t like Y4IT. As a student though, ready to graduate and wanting to see what’s in store for me in the real world and beyond the convention was very helpful.

    On a side note, I admire your principles and not having to put up with liars even here in the internet.

  36. Jonn says:

    I attended the first 2 days along with this one last week. 4th day turned out to be the worst. I really learned a lot from the first two days. Hehe..
    I could only imagine why a software developer like you didn’t like Y4IT. As a student though, ready to graduate and wanting to see what’s in store for me in the real world and beyond the convention was very helpful.

    On a side note, I admire your principles and not having to put up with liars even here in the internet.

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