Entrepreneur's Pains

The "Great Disconnect". That is how I describe the relationship between technology entrepreneurs like us and the capital market. Entrepreneurs engaged in value creations are left to sweating in the sun compared to those businessmen involved in quick profit and instant wealth (but less value according to me) enterprises such as real estate and construction, trading and gaming, etc.

The technology entrepreneurs are at the bottom of the pecking order and frowned upon their visionary business ideas. Inspite of that fact, those entrepreneurs continuously maintain their businesses even if lead to postponing the roll-out of their innovative business creations.

Cultural Bias

Because of the cultural bias against the risky business proposals of technology entrepereneurs, most of them tap the capital market in USA. And they made good. What is left is for the Philippines is the backdoor business process components, giving away the intellectual property creations of brilliant Filipinos to foreign countries. One example is the Filipino initiated Gluecode which was developed in the Philippines, funded and IPed in US and later sold to IBM .

Silicon Valley

But it is not so in so far as Silicon Valley is concerned. The Silicon Valley's business model is to develop and nurture technology startups. Still in its pioneering stage in the Philippines, Dennis Posadas, Filipino wrote a book about it.

Enter "Rice and Chips".

The book explains how Asian countries are using the Silicon Valley model to develop technology startups. Dennis enumerates the unwritten rules of innovation that have worked in Silicon Valley since the 1930s based on the works of scholars and other seminal works on technology entrepreneurship. Using these concepts as a benchmark. Dennis points out similarities and differences between Silicon Valley and Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea. He discusses concepts like proximity, Schumpeter's creative destruction, intellectual property, the importance of universities, publications and patents, and the role of stock markets in encouraging venture capital.

Dennis, The Author

Dennis Posadas, has worked as chip equipment development engineer, technology/business analyst and venture capital scout with one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. Dennis received his BS Electrical Engineering degree from the University of the Philippines in 1991, was a sponsored Fellow of the Advanced Study Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Advanced Educational Services. He is presently a consultant to the UP-Ayala TechnoPark Business Incubation in UP Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

A much sought speaker on technology entrepreneurship, Dennis' schedule is quite full sharing his insights to students, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists.

(Source : Rice and Chips : Technopreneurship and Innovation in Asia, Dennis Posadas
http://ricebowlandchips.blogspot.com)

Labels: Ayala Technopark, Dennis Posadas, entrepreneur, Innovation, rice and chips, Silicon Valley, UP Diliman

 
Post a Comment

Last December, we experienced a warm holiday season after many centuries of cold northeast breeze. We went to bed without the thick blankets but with the electric fans whirling at top speed to provide cool air in our bedrooms. Well, blame it to climate change. And blame USA for causing climate change being the biggest contributor of CO2 and other green-house gas in the atmosphere.

Fifteen years ago, Makati to UP Diliman was a very cold place to travel during the months of December to early February. I had to wear a thick jacket while traveling in a red JD bus from Buendia to UP. And at 6PM, I have to wear the jacket again.

The classrooms did not have electric fans nor aircon. The northeast wind brings the smell of holiday season and some students doning turtle neck shirts.

Summer of this year was unusually hot. My indoor plants which has been very healthy since I bought them three years ago were wittled due to very hot weather.

Now, this unusual hot climate is a global phenomenon. In an article at truthout.org, United Nations Environment Protection warned over global ice loss. The summary of the findings showed:

• "Hundreds of millions of livelihoods will be affected by declining snow and ice cover as a result of global warming,
  

• The risks facing people included losing access to drinking water, and rising sea levels,

• Melting glaciers in Asia's mountains could affect an estimated 40% of the world's population, who rely on ice melt for crop irrigation and drinking water."

UN Warning Over Global Ice Loss
BBC News

Monday 04 June 2007

Hundreds of millions of livelihoods will be affected by declining snow and ice cover as a result of global warming, a UN report has warned.

The risks facing people included losing access to drinking water, and rising sea levels, the study concluded.

The findings were published by the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).

Unep chief Achim Steiner said the report showed that time was running out for political leaders to reach a global agreement on curbing emissions.

Mr Steiner made his call for action at the launch of the UN Global Outlook for Ice and Snow report, which was being held in Tromso, Norway.

"The report underlines that the fate of the world's snowy and icy places in a climatically challenged world should be cause for concern in every ministry, boardroom and living room across the world," he said.

"The missing link is universal political action. Today's report should empower the public to take their leaders to task [and] should empower them to ask how much hotter it has to get before we act."

"Feedback" Fears

The study warns of a range of threats that could destabilise ecosystems around the world, with potentially devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of people.

Melting glaciers in Asia's mountains could affect an estimated 40% of the world's population, who rely on ice melt for crop irrigation and drinking water.

It added that rising temperatures were already resulting in the thawing of permafrost in places such as Siberia. This was leading to the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The fate of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which hold almost all of the planet's freshwater ice, needed to be better understood, the UN publication urged.

It said that if emissions of greenhouse gases continued unabated, the massive ice sheets were likely to become unstable as the world continued to warm.

Without taking measures to mitigate sea level rise, an estimated 145 million people, primarily in Asia, would be exposed to the risk of flooding.

The UN said that the International Polar Year, a 24-month global scientific study of the polar regions, would help shed light on how climate change is altering the ice dynamics in these regions.

The authors also warned that less ice and snow cover was leading to more of the Sun's energy being absorbed by the land and the sea, rather than being reflected back into space.

They said this "positive feedback" could accelerate global warming and result in more abrupt shifts in the climate.

Norway's Environment Minister, Helen Bjoernoey, said the comprehensive study into the state of the world's snow and ice presented a bleak prognosis.

"To me, it is particularly alarming to realise climate change can be a reinforcing process - global warming results in further global warming," the minister observed.

"As documented in the report, melting of snow and ice will in itself have severe consequences on nature and society."

Source: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/060507EB.shtml,

Labels: Climate Change, global warming, UNEP, UP Diliman

 
Post a Comment

On a clear day, the sky is blue.

Every afternoon, it was customary that we would report the weather as we observed the sky from the window of our Grade V Section 1 classroom of the the Rafael Palma Elementary School, located at the corner of Vito Cruz and Zobel Roxas.

In 1965, we have a clear view of the western sky from the vantage point of our room at the second floor. So, we had reports on the type of clouds, direction of wind, temperature and breezy or humid. For the whole school year June to April, we were able to report cirrus and towering cumulus clouds during summer, dark skies with threatening nimbo-cumulus clouds during early June and July and totally dark skies during the storm season months of August to September. And of course, the overcast skies of December and cool weather of the Christmas Season that extended well up to Valentines day.

But we never explained why the sky was blue on a cloudless day. It was just blue, that's it. Almost three decades later, an answer arrived when I went back to school for graduate study.

At our MS Remote Sensing class in July 1994 , GE 202 - Introduction to Remote Sensing, conducted by Professor Ping Lopez of the Department of Geodetic Engineering at UP Diliman, he explained just as why on a clear day the sky is blue. From there on I liked the subject because it was so close to of one of my favorite activities - Photography. Only it discussed the science of light, reflection, absorption and dispersion among other subject matters. Obviously there was no composition.



The sky is blue due to Rayleigh Scattering. This occurs for atmospheric particles that are 0.1 times smaller than the radiation wavelength. Mathematically, scattering is inversely proportional to the wavelength raised to the 4th power. So, the sky is BLUE because the blue wavelength are scattered more than the longer wavelength of red.


I got that correct in my exam! The blue book showed it all.

Labels: blue book, GE 202, MS Remote Sensing, Ping Lopez, Rafael Palma, UP Diliman, Vito Cruz

 
Post a Comment

Upon the invitation of Noel and Angge Soriano, I attended the retreat at Eliazo Hall, Ateneo de Manila University during the Holy Week of April 1995. While some of the participants stayed in, I did not.

Instead, I passed by UP Diliman, visited the Chapel of the Risen Lord and meditated near the Main Library. An excellent place to reflect, UP campus then was almost deserted except for some Ikot jeepneys.

In effect, it was two retreats in one. On the last day of the retreat, a Saturday April 15, 1995, while meditating and preparing for the evening mass at Eliazo Hall, I wrote a poem. My first.



To God, My Father

In silence
I turned to my inner self
There was nothing but emptiness;
I looked deeper still
And saw nothing but darkness.

But as I continued gazing
At the void
I saw myself mirrored
In stillness.
Before me was a child
In a frightening wilderness.

And lo, a ball of fire
Appeared in blinding brightness
That seared me with the
Truth of consciousness.

It was then that I
Communed with you, my Divine Highness,
My Highest Self
Reverberating in peacefulness.
At last, in this silence
My quest for everlasting life begins.

Labels: Angge Soriano, Ateneo De Manila, Chapel of the Risen Lord, Eliazo Hall, Holy Week, Ikot, Noel Soriano, UP Diliman

 
Post a Comment

Out of the many JPGs I received, the Windows Filipino version is the most interesting and amusing. Unfortunately, I could not anymore track down the source of the images.

The translation reminded me of my ES11 class under Dr. Pacheco of College of Engineering, UP Diliman. Well, he conducted our class in Filipino.

So, a traditional mechanics book describes an object in equilibrium as :

"Summation of vertical forces is equal to the summation of horizontal forces".

Then he described that state of equilibrium in Filipino as :

"Ang suma ng mga pwersang pababa ay katumbas ng suma ng mga pwersang pahalang".

Who says Filipino is not an effective language to develop the nation's competitiveness!

And what about those who read Liwayway, Kislap, Ang Taliba, and Bulaklak, took Speech 1 in Filipino...?

Well, I am sure they are not contact center agents.

Labels: Dr Pacheco, ES 11, Pilipino, UP Diliman

 
Post a Comment

On my junior year at UP College of Engineering at Diliman, one afternoon after collecting the book allowance from GE Scholarship fund at UP Admin building, I took a DM bus in front of the Oblation, got off at Raon and walked towards Claro M. Recto. There, on the strip between Avenida Rizal and FEU are second books for high and college students.

From a pile of second hand books mostly medicine titles, I chanced upon an easy to recognize title - it hase "IBM 360" on its spine. Excited, I pulled it out and browsed through its contents. Jackpot, it was one its kind in the Philippines - "Programming the IBM 360" by Clarence B. Germain, copyright 1967 and published by Prentice-Hall.

Lifting from the Preface, the books contains "As far as practical, the coverages of PL/I, COBOL, and Assembly Language are independent of each other so that the reader may omit topics at will. The book is written for 360 Models 25, 30, 40, 50, 65, 75 and 85."

Its maiden journey in the academic world was at my ES26 (Fortran Programming) class at UP Engg. The machine problems solution in Fortran IV are punched on 80-column IBM cards and processed on an IBM 360/40 of the UP Computer Center beside the chapel.

After which it has gone a long way. After UP, I used it to assemble lessons in teaching Basic Computer Systems (BCS) at Data Center in Avenida and also computer school of Vince Vargas and Dr. Paul Aquino. Teddy Tiu, my former champion at IBM now with AutoCad was one of my COBOL students at a special computer class from Dr. Aquino's office.


During an interview in January 1981 for a designer/programmer post at Brunei Shell, the book was an excellent material for the Programmer Aptitude Exam. Then in July 29, 1981 it was in a check-in box full of books on a PAL flight to Brunei Darussalam. For eight straight years, it stayed with we in several company houses in Panaga, Seria and W51/2, W21 Kuala Belait.

Today and forever, the book will now be part of the digital world - in my blog.

Labels: brunei shell, CEO blog, COBOL, COBOL. FORTRAN IV, IBM 360, Programming the IBM 360, UP Computer Center, UP Diliman

 
Post a Comment