Philippine Webinars

In partnership with ProFora Media, Digital Filipino is celebrating its 10th anniversary alongside with One Internet Day this year. As we empower more Filipinos globally with the Internet, it is fitting that webinars are introduced, not only to educate of the numerous opportunities that it can bring, but the benefits of how this platform can bring everyone together to collaborate.

The celebration will be a whole day event, starting from 9AM and ends at 8pm on September 17, 2009.  There will be 9 FREE webinars available from different industries.

This is not only a milestone for Digital Filipino, but for ProFora Media and the webinar industry within the country as well, as this is the ever first virtual conference to be done in the Philippines.  Be part of history and attend a Philippine webinar.  Share it to your friends and colleagues so they, too, can be part of this event.

To check on the list of webinars to be conducted live on September 17 and to register, you can visit ProFora’s events page.

Unproven assumptions can lead to major glitches down the road.

Murphy’s Law states that, “If something can go wrong, it is bound to go wrong.”  I never really believed in that before and thought of the cliché as a way for someone else to rain on my parade.  After all, mishaps and bloopers are things that great planning and endless rehearsals cure.  Besides, we’ve been doing the same things over and over for the last two weeks without any hitches, so I assumed that it was “just another day at the office”—was I in for a surprise.

During yesterday’s broadcast (a webinar on internet marketing), the audio was choppy, we experienced intermittent internet connection (thanks to our very reliable local providers), and at one point, the speaker was even heard screaming at the top of her lungs in horror saying, “Nawala ang internet connection ko!” [I lost my internet connection].
We found ourselves laughing about the day’s events afterwards, but two lessons became very apparent, especially since we were dealing with technology.  They are:

1.    Never ASSUME that things will work as they have before.  Assuming most often leads to one simple conclusion—I make an A** out of U and ME.  Not a very exciting situation to end up in with a live audience.

2.    Be Prepared.  The internet is an exciting arena to be operating in, but it is heavily reliant on so many other aspects.  Having a back-up ready to act as a fail-safe are sure ways to guarantee a smoothly running, seamless presentation.  Unless, of course, it’s already the hand of God Almighty that has put you into a corner with no way out.

I guess these lessons apply, not only to web-conferencing, but to everything else in life.  So the next time I get into anything (and I apologize for this in advance), I will keep on asking questions,  double check and run the risk of being tagged as a nuisance.   At the end of the day, no one really got killed because of these, right?

image source:  http://freedigitalphotos.net, Photo by Juan Gnecco

One might think that this is the worst possible time to leave the corporate world and a regular, monthly salary to start a business that offers a service unheard of in the Philippines.  Call us crazy, but that’s exactly what 5 friends and I did.  We officially incorporated ProFora Media Solutions last Sept. 15, 2008.

We’re a week away from our one year anniversary and during the 11 months, 2 weeks and 5 days that we’ve been in business, we went through every birth pain imaginable.  Chose the wrong tool provider, overpaid for accounting services, over-complicated our website design, wrong sales strategy, blablabla.  You name the boo-boo, we did it.  Our only excuse is that we believed in the concept so much that our eagerness to offer the service, more often than not, overshadowed rational thought.  We went back to the drawing board so many times that some people voiced the opinion that we should just close up shop.  Obviously, we didn’t listen…stubborn and pig-headed is a shared trait amongst the partners.

We’re still learning but as of today, I think we’ve got most of the major kinks ironed out because our September and October are fully booked with back to back webinars.  Renzie Baluyut has joined us as Managing Director for Marketing and we’re in the final stages of negotiation with several  learning content providers.  We’re also finalizing the training schedule for one of the top universities in Manila.  We have a presence on almost all the major social networking sites and we’ve documented and streamlined all our operational processes.  The wheel is turning…we just need a bit more elbow grease.

Virtual events IS the next step in the evolution of how we communicate with each other.  All that you need to do is let us, ProFora, show you how…

If you’re interested in taking those baby steps today, ProFora Media in partnership with the Digital Filipino Club will be hosting a series of online talks, in celebration of Digital Filipino’s 10th anniversary -The ProFora Media Lightbulb Sessions- on Thursday, 17 Sept 2009.

The webinars for the day include:
* 9AM – 10AM “Introduction to Software Process Improvement” by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 11AM – 12NN “The State of E-Commerce in the Philippines” by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 2PM – 3PM “Briefing on the 3rd Digital Filipino Web Awards (2009)“, by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 3PM – 4PM “Managing Training Effectively & True ROI“, by Karthik Subbaraman of ECC International
* 4PM – 5PM “Briefing: Philippine Schools Cyberfair 2010“, by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 5PM – 6PM “AEC Outsourcing in the Philippines“, by Gio Carino of Prodigy AE
* 6PM – 7PM “Video Editing for Profit“, by Mary Tolentino of ClientFirst
* 7PM – 8PM “Blogging For Money: How To Make Money From Writing Blog Reviews and News Articles“, by Janette Toral of Blog4Reviews

Contact us directly through:
www.proforamedia.com * info@proforamedia.com * +63.2.3767040 * Twitter@Profora Media * Facebook: ProFora Media

image credit: alucco7 on flickr