Time for some fun! Here is a pic taken during our bowl and dine activity.

Highest scorers were Philip and Beth garnering scores of 146 and 135, respectively.

Today, Jaycobb and I attended the Google Techtalk at AIM Conference Center. Like Jaycobb said, “it’s good to know that Google employees are human after all - and not androids”. Sure it was fun meeting Jay and Franklin, Google engineers from MountainView, but what catches my attention is that these 2 guys are Pinoys and they spent their “20% time” to fly here and share their Google experience - quite encouraging… this shows that Filipinos can really make it to world’s best. I hope they come back more often and share knowledge with us. I’m sure there are lots of local talents that are just waiting to be discovered - like us [ideyatech] and what we’re doing in the open-source area.

They talked about Google Gadgets, Summer of Codes, OpenSocial and Android, certainly lots of cool activities going on at Google. One insight I had from the talk is that “gadgets can be used to promote contents and to increase traffic”. Certainly worthwhile to do a couple of gadgets for our existing projects.

Here’s another picture taken during the chitchat after the seminar, from left: Franklin, Hans (syndeomedia), me and Jay.

BTW, thanks for Hans for pulling some strings to get us into the seminar.

We had fun at J2EE training today, JM talked about YUI, prototype, Script.aculo.us and Dojo. These javascript toolkits surely know their way around the javascript quirks that’s been perstering lots of developers with browser incompatibilities. I agree that these toolkits help a lot in making more stable javascript codes.

Some pictures taken from the training:

Some of our observations are:

1. Lots of these toolkits do the same functionality (e.g. String utilities, Ajax calls, Animations). Is there any standard body that is defining the new sets of javascript features? So we all live in one common world of javascript coding? Or is it a battle of the best platform?
2. Seems like we’re going back to the world of client-server days. As rich-interface becomes popular, will thin-clients begin to disappear? And what’s with Flex, Silverlight, JavaFX?
3. When prototype popularized Object-Oriented approach, they made a good point about the power of Javascript… but still, the flexibility of javascript codes make it difficult to standardize. It’s more of a developer’s conscious effort to create cleaner code.

One neat thing I learned about prototype is that it has a method “Try.these{…}” where all the statements within will be evaluated until one actually works. Sounds useful when making your javascript methods work across multiple browser.

Today is the first day of our J2EE training. Everybody’s excited to become the first batch of the 3 months extensive training program. The training will cover open-source Java frameworks such as Spring, Struts, Hibernate, iBatis, etc. We will also cover newer technologies such as YUI, DWR. It’s going to be a tough but fun training for everyone. At the end of this training, we’ll get everyone at speed with the latest technologies on Java.

I’m happy that everyone in the team share the same passion on software development. With a little kick here and there, I’m sure we’ll get the core team in sync towards building creative software applications.

To give a preview of what’s up with Day 1, here’s a podcast on the introductory session. Unfortunatey, the audio isn’t good as I’ve placed the Macbook at the end of the room. I’ll try my Jabra tomorrow, see how that goes…

Although, the workstation didn’t arrive, the trainees were quite busy setting up the network.

ideyatech - where ideas and technologies meet.

It’s clear from our tagline where the name comes from - idea and technology. Idea is formally defined as “a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action; an opinion or belief” while technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes”. When combined, these two words synergize to build a stronger meaning - “to revolutionize an industry through technology by executing brilliant ideas.”. It’s a dream many of us wanted to achieve, but only few dare to take the challenge… and we are one of them - ready to take the challenge.

Now, what’s with the ‘y’? Well, ideya is the Filipino translation of idea. A part from being bold and revolutionary, we wanted to be known as a Filipino company - founded, managed and executed the Filipino way. We are here to be a living proof that the Filipinos can compete globally and surpass technologies from more advanced countries. We believe that this notion of technical superiority is a product of non-action to take the challenge… and that’s what we are - a Filipino managed company ready to take the challenge and revolutionize the world.

While I can describe ideyatech as a company by what we do, what we specialize and who among the Fortune 500 are our clients, it doesn’t give justice to the people who committed themselves and worked hard everyday to satisfy our clients and bring us to where we are now.

Instead, I’d like to describe ourselves on what we believe in and what we practice - our core values. Now, let me describe it one by one…

L eadership. We are the best in what we do. I always tell my team that “You have to believe that you can change the world!”. I know it sounds ambitious, but ambition is what drives people; it gives motivation for people to excel and become a leader in what we do. Moreover, we promote individual leadership; we know for a fact that every individual has their strengths and we provide the support needed to enhance them by making them acknowledge and focus their strengths. This way, we are able to get the best results from every team member.

Another thing I have to add is that we value collaboration and communication skills. Individual leadership needs to be supported by good communication in order to achieve teamwork and synergy.

E xecute. We deliver. We believe with the saying “A simple idea with execution is better than a brilliant idea with no execution”. While I like to get along with people who talks about ideas, I’d rather stick with the ones who executes them. Great ideas burn into ashes when they are poorly executed.

A key criteria to execution is to know your priorities. Our basic principle is to prioritize time, quality and budget; then negotiate the scope. In this era of Google and YouTube, nothing is more important than time and quality. Also, we prefer to simplify things, stick to the absolute essentials and make sure it works. Finally, everyone needs to be decisive and make timely decisions… because you know what!? - It’s not the end of the world.

A gility. We love change. Face it - “The only thing constant in this world is change. ” Even the best project manager cannot make a perfect project plan. There will be deviations and variations from plan during execution… but what makes a plan successful is its ability to adapt to change (and what makes us better individuals is to accept change). A few implementations points to be agile:

• Release early, get feedback and improve…
• Work in iterations; prepare mockups.
• Reduce the cost of change.

P assion. We believe and love what we do. One thing I always ask applicants - “What is your passion? “, “What do you like to do? “. If it takes them more than 7 seconds to respond, chances are - they don’t know the answer and is making it up. We believe that people who has passion in their work has greater chance to succeed. Between someone who is very knowledgeable, and someone who is very passionate - we usually go with passion. Knowledge can be learned with passion but passion can’t be learned with knowledge.

While I can talk for an hour more about this topic, I’d rather simply things - if your work doesn’t excite you, something is wrong and you’ll probably need soul-searching.

To end, this is how we perform great LEAP s…

In case you didn’t notice, our core values form the word LEAP when taking the first character of each of the values.

When looking for a developer, would you consider the certifications he/she earned? Does the title MCSD, SCJP, SCEA matter? I’d like to say “no” because I’ve seen great programmers who are not certified and doesn’t value certifications. Moreover, I don’t want to discredit good programmers who doesn’t have this piece of paper.

But then again, why did I have to bother getting SCEA and PMP myself? Well, what really drives me is the “proof” that I am capable of passing the tests. These tests are developed, reviewed and improved by industry experts to measure individual skills and knowledge. I took the challenge because I believe I deserve that title.

While real world experience is good, you’ll only learn things that you do and you’ll never get the change to learn other things until you encounter it. When I took my certification, it is not like I just have to go to the testing center and pass it. It took me sometime to study, analyze and even memorize to prepare for a certification. This may not be something valuable at work, but it proves that I can understand the concepts well. More importantly, it shows that I’m disciplined and diligent to learn new things.

So does certification matter?

Yes. When choosing between 2 developers with same experience, I’d prefer someone who is certified. I’m also encouraging people to take their certifications.

Here are some useful links that you may find interesting:

• Philippines Best of Blogs
• Listed in Web Designers Directory under Large Business Web Designers
• Pandora Squared - Web 2.0 and Business Architects
• Rico - Javascript for Rich Internet Applications

I started the vision of my first lame attempt to build the next generation software last 2004, after 7 years of getting bored from corporate pressure of delivering enterprise application. I realized that working hard for 12-16 hours a day does not fulfill my needs. So to start off, I did some consulting for a friend until I had enough money to join this premier online project bidding website. After a few tries, I got into my first major project for approximately $1,600.00. This kept me afloat for a while and I started to build my profile and credentials. After a few months, I had several clients that comes back to give more work… so, I tried balancing client requests with my next generation software.

I was working with freelancers and part-time developers to get things done. For half their time, I get half the product and eventually have to complete it by myself. I control the cashflow $$$ like freak using a simple rule - all expenses should have concrete deliverables. I choose to work on projects that we specialize - Java. I took advantage of the Internet and ran a remote development team using 3 basic tools: forums, issue tracking and cvs. Finally, I make sure client expectations are well set. So far, these basic principles help me maintain perfect feedback and ratings. Cool.

By end of year 2005, I didn’t have my next generation software - someone did it already. So all I have are several pieces of reusable codes and $2,000 at my disposal. I decided to hire and train 2 full-time staff in my native town, Bicol. With my existing clients, I can pay my staff to keep the business going. As for me, I’m back at the drawing boards for yet another next generation software but this time I have reusable codes and a stable business foundation. Its a slow start but considering that I started this company by doing consulting work with no available capital… I am quite fulfilled.

Well this is not my success story… but a story of building something out of nothing. Caio!

Ideyatech has recently launched its new website. Visit us at http://www.ideyatech.com/.

The site is a showcase of our website design and development skills. All pages complies to web standards and has been designed to be search engine friendly. In the next couple of months, we will continuously improve our site with more contents and functionalities. In the meantime, you can find information about our company including our products and service offerings, metholodogies, and client testimonials. The site also includes a customized version of WordPress for dynamic contents such as News, Blogs and other useful resources.

Ideyatech is a web development and SEO outsourcing firm in Manila, Philippines. The company started last Nov. 2003 serving a limited set of clients. After 2 years, we have increased our workforce and started to be involved in more projects. Now, we are ready to serve more businesses.