StartupWeekend received warm welcome from Filipino technopreneurs in the recently held Startup Weekend held at the MINT College, McKinley Hill Taguig.
Startup Weekend is one of the most successful start-up accelerator programs from the United States. The concept that quickly became a global movement to generate breakthrough ideas in communities all over the world, taking digital start-ups businesses from ideas to investment readiness mentoring from industry experts and access to mobile markets and investors across Asia.
On October 21, over 150 Filipino developers, designers, and technopreneurs experienced their biggest weekend as participants of Startup Weekend, an event where they gather together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startup businesses in 54 hours.
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| Jerome and Lorenze, participants of Startup Weekend Manila |
Veteran technopreneurs Jay Fajardo of Proudcloud, web engineering firm with a relentless passion for innovation specializes in Web Application Design and Development, Mobile Applications Development, Web Strategy Consulting and Enterprise 2.0 and Social Computing. Jonathan Lansangan of Dynamic Objx, a software development company specializing in the Web and Mobile applications utilizing cutting-edge technologies to create software products based on the highest and utmost software engineering standards. Arnold Alagar of Huwego and Michael del Rosario of Meridian International (MINT) College together with Globe Telecom and Microsoft Bizspark joined forces in the recently launched Startup Weekend in the Philippines.
There are many reasons why they joined the Startup Weekend. Learning and building strategies is one reason. Other benefits includes building a network and learning new skills.
How it works: Participants were given one (1) minute pitch their ideas, voting for the top ones and forming teams to discuss needed resources and skills to support the ideas and build products. Topics should focus on four(4) things; problem, solution, tool needed to solve the problem, what participant needs (developers, marketing etc).
On the second day, teams get into the nitty-gritty details if their ideas and start building product prototypes with the help of their respective mentors. On the last day, teams present their ideas in the form of a short pitch and demo, with a panel of judges evaluating their proposals to determine the winners.
I got the chance to interview one of the participant, Mr. Alvin Edward Chan and here's what he said:
Globe Telecom is one of the partners in launching Startup Weekend in the Philippines. For more information about the Startup Weekend Manila, visit http://manila.startupweekend.org/
The winning team from Startup Weekend Manila will participate in the JFDI-SingTel Innov8 Bootcamp in Singapore from January to April 2012, where they will be part of intensive product development training sessions for 100 days together with Startup Weekend teams from Australia, India, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. There, they will receive S$15,000 to help fund their startup projects.
For the winners of Startup Weekend Manila October 2011, visit http://manila.startupweekend.org/2011/10/26/announcing-the-winners-of-startup-weekend-manila-102011/
Contributed by Marjorie Pineda for Digital Manila
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