Cebu ICT 2007

The Cebu ICT 2007 has been another landmark event in the island. For the second time, Cebu hosted an international conference and exhibition in the fast-paced field of information and communications technology (ICT). The objective was to provide a venue that will bring together significant stakeholders from the ICT capitals of Asia --- Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China and India – to discuss their vision for sustaining and accelerating the transformation of Asia into the world’s premier IT investment destination and global outsourcing center.

The conference featured top executives from the world's leading ICT and BPO firms, suppliers, and associations as speakers and panelists in plenary sessions. It provided a unique opportunity to interface with a cross section of international speakers from business, government, education, and media to discuss the ICT/BPO vision of each of the participating Asian countries; their experiences in the past decade of ICT promotion and development; and, the innovation model from which they base the advancement of their ICT industry.

The sharing of information and consequent understanding of where each participating country is "coming from and going to" - as well as the industries they host enabled the delegates to better appreciate and craft agreements based on common areas of concern. Participating Asian countries were able to examine how to strategically harness individual strengths for improved global competitiveness within the context of a knowledge-based Asian economy.

I learned from the gathering that there is a website on business and economics that has good downloadable books: www.mises.org And that the book “The Mystery of Capital” by Hernando de Sotto should be an interesting read.

As expected, the two-day Tech Jobs Expo was there. The career expo was held on June 26 and 27 at the Cebu International Convention Center.

The growing demand for professionals in the IT and IT-enabled services sectors continues to open up opportunities both for new graduates and working professionals. The career expo was meant to highlight these opportunities and facilitate the screening and selection of applicants for Cebu-based companies and other companies outside Cebu.

There are, of course, the ubiquitous exhibits of various IT and BPO companies at the Cebu International Convention Center from June 25 to 28, 2007.