We just turned 6!

DigitalFilipino.com just turned six (6) years old this September. This website was conceptualized after reading the book, Digital Darwinism. Most of my friends were fearful and doubtful when I was planning about this project. As I believed so much in it, this book project pushed through.

Despite the delays, my 1st book, The DigitalFilipino: An E-Commerce Guide for the eFilipino, was launched a few days before the passage of the E-Commerce Law or Republic Act 8792 in June 2000. There was no turning back since.

This advocacy enabled me to spread the word on e-commerce to nearly 40,000 people in more than 300 events from 1997 to date.

The site’s growth in terms of having a regular reading community is also something that we took very seriously up to this day. Our newsletter mailing list hosted in Yahoo Groups has 2428 members as of this writing. As our early readers have overgrown us, much more joined the list to benefit from what we have to offer.

1999 – 1%
2000 – 4%
2001 – 11%
2002 – 15%
2003 – 28%
2004 – 23%
2005 – 17%

In 2001, our advocacy for software process improvement began and allowed us to train nearly 500 individuals from almost 200 companies to date. Along with it, PH-Outsource started and served as one of the local outsourcing community pulses.

At the same time, the Philippine Schools Cyberfair Competition empowered us to reach out to primay and secondary school teachers and students, giving greater meaning to our continuous advocacy. Every summer, since 2003, we’ve been conducting a 5-days e-commerce training to teacher participants of the project.

I must admit that I never expected this book project website to have gone this far. We have published 11 research reports, 2 books, 3 e-books, and 1 Philippine Internet history documentary. Our paid club membership program has nearly 100 members.

There were a lot of unexpected turnouts. Where book, research reports, and membership sales have failed to meet original expectations, opportunities in training and consulting have kept us ok.

Where do we go from here? There’s much work to be done. Less than half of Philippine enterprises today have embraced e-commerce to its fullest potential. We will continuously collaborate with true e-commerce practitioners, in encouraging more entrepreneurs and businesses to taps its power. Concurrently, develop more trainers who are passionate and creatively excited to this cause.

For the growth of e-commerce in the Philippines!