Why I Will Think 10x Before Attending Another Philippine Internet Congress

This is how PowerMax Consulting Group‘s event was for me and since we don’t have a Yelp for conferences, I will write my “review” here hoping that at least one person will read this and be more discerning when it comes to conferences they choose to attend and pay for. (I’ve also written about last year’s Search Engine Marketing Conference, if that’s something you want to check out.)

I found out about this event through a friend’s forwarded email. The email didn’t look professional but I thought it sounded pretty interesting anyway so I bookmarked it. I am not even going to say anything about their email and how it looks like. Not even their website, which got this response after I gave someone their website link:

Very legit comment btw.

To be extra clear, I only attended the morning session of the Philippine Internet Congress‘ 2nd day schedule. If you’ve attended both days and feel that my review is inaccurate, feel free to write your comments below. I am basing my post on the 4 hours I spent at the Megatrade Hall.
 

1. They tried to rip us off.

   Here’s the conversation I had with them (I went with my co-worker):

   Lady at the registration booth: Have you registered?
   Me: No, not yet. Do you accept credit card payments?
   Lady: Yes. *a couple of seconds after she uses her calculator* That would be 19,000+ (I forget what the exact amount is but it was 19k something for 2 people)

   Nineteen thousand? Did I hear that right?

   Me: I’m sorry, what?
   Lady: You can’t just attend one day, you have to pay for both days.
   Me: Uhh. I got an email from your co-worker that I can attend just one day. Let me look for it.
   Lady: Okay ma’am. That will be Php 9,850.40.

   Uhh, what was that? I didn’t even get the chance to show her the email.

   Had I not emailed someone from the company, would they have charged us Php 19,000+? Did they do this to someone else? Even if this wasn’t intentional, this is still terrible because that means their staff are uninformed and will end up making their attendees pay more than what they have to.

 

2. They had singers… and dancers.

   So we walk in and there are about 15 people in the room. It’s 8:45 AM and their schedule says it will start at well, 8:45. Nuninoo. Nothing. 5-10 minutes later, I hear a voice. It sounds like I’m at a wedding. Where am I?

   Then he says something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, while waiting for our speaker, let’s listen to [insert name] as he serenades us with his rendition of ‘Breakeven’ by The Script!”

   No one claps.

   It’s about 9 AM… and we’re listening to someone SING. I look around and no one seems to be reacting and by that I mean they’re all poker-faced. I look at my coworker and we both end up looking like this:

   

   He sings again before Jim Ayson speaks, this time doing an Adele cover and eliciting this tweet from a participant:

   

   We obviously didn’t get the memo that this was a variety show slash conference because before the lunch break, about 3-4 guys in plaid shirts start dancing to a mix of Teach Me How to Dougie and other pop songs.

   Here’s a picture I took of them:

   

   Sorry but I came here to learn. Not be entertained. Also, I really think that there is a more appropriate type of venue for these types of performances.
    

3. They had tons of technical difficulties.

   Ear-splitting mic feedback, videos not playing properly, speakers having to use a mic so they can use it as their laptop’s speaker. Why are these things happening when it’s already their second day?

   See it’s fine if only one of those things happened but all of them? That just tells me they didn’t prepare for this. That, or they don’t mind that they’re getting a significant number of technical issues.
    

4. Their conference kit is terrible.

   I’m really beginning to think that conference sponsors/advertisers here like to waste paper. I did not keep a single flyer nor did I look at one for more than 5 seconds. They were photocopied fliers on green and yellow paper. I suppose I should return them to the organizers next time. Also, why force participants to poke holes on their shirts by giving them button name tags?

   

   Well, at least I’d be able to use 3 items here: the free 20 sheets of bond paper I got, the Philippine Internet Congress notebook which has photocopied sheets that I can write on (also comes with photocopied ads on the last 10 pages), and the canvas bag. Oh but wait… while taking pictures of the notebook… the sheets came apart.

The Verdict

We left after that as we had other plans. I am not going to go into their line up of speakers anymore. Just know that I loved Janette Toral and Jim Ayson‘s talks. If they didn’t have them, I would have definitely asked for a refund.

If you encounter any of their events in the future, my advice is to make sure that you know at least 2 or more speakers in their line up and that they’re worth going for.

Women in the PH Tech Scene, Where Are You on Twitter?

I know there are already a number of Filipino women in the tech scene out there (e.g. awesome Ms. Myla Villanueva) but for this post, I’m talking specifically about those who are active on Twitter or who blog often. I’m obviously not looking for a PH counterpart of Meg Whitman or Marissa Mayer as I don’t think they will have time to tweet or blog, but perhaps someone like Alexia Tsotsis, Sarah Lacy, or in Asia, maybe someone like Vanessa Tan.

Okay fine, so the last three names I gave are all writers. But maybe that’s a sign? Look at some of the popular tech blogs in the Philippines… YugaTech, unbox.ph, pinoytechblog, are they represented by women? Do they have women contributors/writers?

Is it safe to say then, that Filipino women are just not inclined to writing or talking about tech? That they’re not interested in it? Or is it just because the tech industry here is still really small? I will leave that question alone for now.

What I did end up doing was bugging Francis Tan, asking if he knows other women from the Philippines who like blogging or tweeting about tech-related, even social media, topics. Like me, he was only able to give a handful.

But a handful is better than nothing! Here’s the list:
 

1. Alora Guerrero
   

Alora Guerrero used to be the Managing Editor of techie.com.ph and is also the lady behind TechLokal.com. She tweets daily and shares interesting articles. She also seems to have a very bubbly personality!


 

2. Anne Jacobe

I didn’t know about Ann until I discovered Shoephoric just recently. She’s the founder! Her company was also just recently showcased by Smart in the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.


 

3. Marga Deona

Marga is a PR consultant and a digital marketing strategist for a mulitnational software company. I obviously just copied that from somewhere. Ha! But in all seriousness, you’re sure to get not just tech news commentary but also thought-provoking tweets from her.


 

4. Katherine Pe

Kat is one of the more “social media active” female Ruby on Rails developers here. I don’t know if there are others out there but if you ask me to give you a woman RoR dev, her name is the first one I’ll give you. While I don’t understand some of the things she tweets about (I’m no developer), it’s always good learning something new. She also tweets about non-dev topics of course.



5. Ros Juan

I met Ros last year at Twestival MNL – she was one of the event organizers. Ros is an internet marketer and a heavy social media user so if you need to stay updated with the latest social media trends in the Philippines, be sure to include her in your to-follow list.

 
I know my list is extremely short so if you know someone who fits the description of what I’m looking for, please let me know! I’m not going to stalk them or anything (or maybe I will…), I just want more Filipino women (in the tech scene or someone who just appreciates it) to look up to and be proud of. :)

I’m a huge fan of Sheryl Sandberg so I will end this post with this (really short) video:

Watch Sheryl Sandberg on PBS. See more from Makers: Women Who Make America.

Hashtag Marketing: #Magnum vs. #ChowkingChefBowlSpecials

I do not work for Magnum nor Chowking. I also am not a fan of either. What I am is an active Twitter user who has seen both brands do “hashtag marketing.”
 

#Magnum Trends on Twitter PH

If you’ve been on Twitter a lot the past couple of weeks, you might have seen the buzz on this Magnum ice cream bar. February 28 was when they had their press event and had their brand ambassadors, together with food bloggers, tweet about how ridiculously delicious this ice cream is. Of course, the #Magnum hashtag had to be there.

Yes, I will admit, I was one of those who got suckered by this marketing tactic.

To be fair, I wasn’t alone in this.

There were a lot of other tweets but I won’t include it here anymore. I’m thinking you’ve already seen a lot. But yes, #Magnum trended for a few hours that day and even my Facebook newsfeed picked up on it.

Of course, you can’t please everyone and so naturally, Magnum also had some people feeling they were ripped off or that this is a ridiculous campaign that just used celebrities and food bloggers. I’m not here to judge the product as I am by no means an ice cream connoisseur.

If you appreciate marketing or you’re a marketer though, you’ll know that if brand awareness was your objective for this product, then this campaign truly succeeded. I don’t know just how many of these things were bought that day but based on the number of people I’ve seen tweeting that they’re going to Ministop, the 7-Elevens that “ran out” of Magnum bars, and the number of people I’ve seen walking around with chocolate popsicles, I’d say they’ve sold a significant number.

But yes, whether or not you liked it, if you tweeted/Facebooked/Instagrammed your experience, you just helped them create even more buzz.

As for reaching 10 million tweets, I wonder if they included all the other non-ice cream Magnums out there? I actually had a friend from the US ask me why I was tweeting about condoms. LOL. Turns out Magnum is also a well-known condom brand. Interesting.
 

Spotted: A Copycat?

5 days after the #Magnum tweeting first started, I see around 2 tweets for this Chowking Chef SuperBowl Specials promo. I do a quick Twitter search and find the following: (I am not even going to comment on the #ExtremelyLongHashtagThatTakesUp1000Characters)

1. They used Twitter bots.

I’m not sure if this is something they’re proud of but the way I see it, it just looks… sad. If you don’t believe me, check out this Twitter user named Andre Pitt. In case he deletes his account, I also took a screenshot.



They spammed users.

Obviously, they have not heard about what happened to Ragu in the US. This tells me they don’t care whether people get annoyed by what they’re doing or if they’re labeled as spammers. As long as people see this #superlonghashtagabouttheirbrand, they’re fine.



2. They don’t even understand what they’re talking about.

How exactly do you trend on a Twitter fan page? I suppose if it’s your fan page, you’ll be trending on it 24/7?

I understand Chowking may not have the same budget as Magnum in that they couldn’t afford to have brand ambassadors or have nice press events but I really think this could have been done way better. You know, without the spamming, the bots, or the #extralonghashtagyesishouldprobablystopdoingthis.

Got unfollowed, unfriended… rejected? Don’t feel bad.

Unfriending and private profiles are the new trends on social networks. I thought about this some more and realized there are 2 main reasons why people are doing this. Now I know this isn’t mind-blowingly new and there may be other reasons as well but I figured I’ll make a quick list out of it anyway.

Let’s say you’re the person who was unfriended. Painful and perhaps slightly embarrassing to realize but read up, it’s not that  bad. They most likely did that because…

1. They’re just trying to protect what they’re posting or will be posting.
• If you’re paranoid, they’re probably going to start bashing you. Dundundun.
• They’re just trying to downsize their friends list.
2. They are now questioning your “friendship level.” (Notice that I didn’t use “circles”) This is what happens after people realize the consequences of going on a Facebook friend adding craze.
• You barely know each other. You can’t even remember the last time you guys talked.
• Or you post things that make them question if you should still be their friend or why you’re even friends in the first place.

Whether you’re the one unfriending or the unfriended, understand that it’s… for the best. Maybe you’ll be friends again one day. Ha!

But seriously, now that you know why they’ve unfriended or unfollowed, is there really a reason to feel bad? Would you have wanted that person to keep seeing your posts even though it irked them? Clearly that person is just opting out.

Maybe there’s a good reason, maybe there’s not. Either way, no need to feel bad. Granted that you weren’t close anyway, look at it as just a “trend.” :)

Philippine Companies and Email Marketing

Let me start by saying I am not an expert email marketer. I also don’t offer email marketing services, I am not affiliated with any of the companies I will be mentioning, and I don’t work for an ESP. I am just your regular hater email marketing recipient.

I’ll be showing you a couple of emails I have received from companies here in the Philippines. I’m not sure they did email client testing or if they did research as to what email marketing best practices are.

Here are the 2 things I’ve noticed:

1. They don’t use recognizable “from” email addresses.

The email is from a certain Grethel Almazar. How in the world am I supposed to know who that is? And what a catchy subject line! Pizza Promo! WOW! Let me read this! I don’t know who it’s from but it says Pizza Promo so I’ll read it right this very second! NAT.

Only after I click the email will I see that it’s from S&R. This is a big company, why can’t they invest more time in figuring out how to properly send emails to their customers?

Globe Telecom, I am also looking at you.

Who, or what is talk? Also, calling me “Valued Subscriber” really makes me feel “valued.”

2. They send purely image-based emails.

S&R did this. As you can see up top, it’s just an image that they attached as if it were an internal email sent to their coworkers.  The problem with this is, well, it’s an image. Which means… 1 – If they have 2 or more items in there that looks “clickable”, I can’t click it because it’s this one big chunk of image. 2 – I can’t read the text if HTML is disabled which means when I first open the email, I won’t see anything. I will just see a big empty box and Yahoo or Gmail asking me if I want to display the image. Lastly, if I want to copy and paste the text, I also can’t do that.

It’s so simple. If there’s text in your email, especially if it’s long, don’t embed that in an image.

You would think that a publication for an advertising and marketing community would know this but check out their last email:

You’ll see blue in there because I highlighted it and I wanted to show you that if I tried to highlight say, a specific name in there so I can Google it, I can’t because it’s one. big. chunk. of image.

Here, I’ll show you how the entire email looks like:

See how long that is? I can’t even click on their sponsors.

Speaking of long emails, here’s another one from Enjoy Philippines. I’m not even going to add it on this blog post because it will take way too much space.

How About Good Emails?

I won’t include emails from daily deal sites anymore as I’m sure they follow email marketing standards – after all, they rely heavily on email marketing. Segmentation is where they need help but I don’t really feel like showing you an email from Groupon or Ensogo. I’m pretty sure you also get that daily or have already unsubscribed.

Now here’s an email from The Green Grocer. I love this because they’re not a big company, yet they already have something like this in place. (Disclaimer: I know the owner because I’m a customer and a big supporter of her business)

Another email sender I like is Wunderlist. I know they’re not a local company but their emails are just so simple and beautifully designed. They don’t use any special ESP either. They use MailChimp which anyone and everyone can use now.

Are there any other Philippine companies out there that send good marketing emails? Or if you’re a hater like me, really bad ones? Ha!

Why I’m Tempted to Unfollow You on Twitter

People like reading tweets that make them learn something new: a good article, a new perspective, an interesting photo – anything that adds to their current “knowledge base.” At least that’s how I use Twitter.

To come up with this list, I just had to think of what other people share that 1) doesn’t add value and 2) even blasts negative energy out to whoever reads it. If you haven’t done any of these things, you’re awesome. Give me your Twitter username!

Now for my list.

I’m considering unfollowing you because…

1. You’re constantly being passive-aggressive.

   Your hobby is to hate on someone (whether IRL or online) and tweet about it without identifying them. You usually make it really vague and specific at the same time. As in “You are so annoying. Stop acting like you know everything!” (That’s a crappy example but you know what I mean) I don’t know what or who you’re talking about (vague) but you’re talking about someone who did something (specific).

   If I don’t really know you and I read this tweet – what value do I get? I just know you’re hating on someone and you’re telling the whole world. It makes me wonder if you’ve actually told the person involved (the decent thing to do) or I end up asking myself why you’re even telling us in the first place.

   Has social media turned us all into a bunch of cowards constantly asking for sympathy and attention from our friends/followers?

2. You like to whine… a lot. That, or you’re too emo.

I don’t think I need to explain this one. Who likes seeing multi-tweet rants? You whine about your job, your friends, the weather. I don’t know if you’re trying to make me feel better since I’m not complaining about any of that, or if you just want to share your misery… Eeyore.

Emo tweets are even worse. If you’re lucky, it could even be a combination of being passive-aggressive and ridiculously heartbroken/sad/lonely.

3. You talk about yourself 99% of the time. You even retweet compliments about yourself.

Do we really need to know that you have followers who think you’re the best this or that? If you think we absolutely must, here’s a meme that really captures how I feel for you:


I say I’m tempted to unfollow because I probably haven’t unfollowed you yet. I have hope that one day you’ll share something really interesting, or funny at least. If not, maybe I’ll just use it to my advantage. A Twitter friend once told me this when I told her I use the mute function on Twitter:

@Skushno ignoring & being tolerant is better practice. But mute helps us focus.

— Katherine G. Pe (@bridgeutopia) November 15, 2011

It’s tough being tolerant but I like the idea. Not trying to be cheesy here but it does teach us how to be more patient and understanding. Not everyone will behave the way we want them to. Besides, it’s Twitter anyway so if you still don’t share anything interesting and continue nurturing your Debbie the Downer side, then I’ll just hit unfollow.

No one should take being unfollowed personally. Twitter lang, walang personalan. :)

P.S.
I now use Tweetbot for my phone.

Posted on Jan 29, 2012 in Social Media, Thought Posts, Twitter | 4 comments
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NowShowing.ph iPhone App Review

You don’t have to think hard about what this app does as you can tell by its name but to be extra clear, this is an app that you use to check out what movies are (surprise!) now showing.

NowShowing is a Days of Thunder project by ProudCloud, a Manila Ruby on Rails shop. (I once asked what a dev shop is so if you’re asking the same question, that basically means they do dev work, in this case RoR, for clients.) Days of Thunder happen every Thursday and Friday at Proudcloud when engineers get to work on what I call “side projects” that are not for their clients. This one is from their website:

Thursdays and Fridays are Days of Thunder at Proudcloud dedicated to internal projects, dangerous experiments, and building stuff we can contribute back to the community.

Giving back to the community is a cool idea that somehow reminds me of Taxikick and TrafficDito. (Disclaimer: I work with the team behind TrafficDito so you can consider this as my mini-product placement for the 2 readers of this blog.)

NowShowing the iPhone app isn’t the first movie guide app in the Philippines. I, together with a couple of iPhone-using friends, have been using ClickTheCity to check movie schedules. So when this came out, my first question was, “How is this different from CTC’s app and why will I add more apps to my phone when I already have one that does the same thing?”

Ask no more! Here’s a quick list of things I found more interesting about this app:

1. Movie reviews come from Rotten Tomatoes. I like this because I trust the Tomatometer and that’s how I decide whether I should see a particular movie or not. I know that CTC also has their own “Critics Rating” by Philbert Ortiz Dy but yeahh… Not a lot of people know him. Plus points for integrating Rotten Tomatoes with the app. But wait, what is this I see?

   

   How can there be zero ratings for those 2 really popular movies in the US? A quick look at RottenTomatoes and I see Alvin and the Chipmunks got a terrible 13%. Not sure what went wrong here but there goes their first advantage.

2. You can watch movie trailers within the app.This is something CTC doesn’t have and something that’s really useful. This is actually how I saw the trailer for A Mother’s Story and thanks to this app, I have decided I will not watch it.Except for that minor issue with the message that tells me I have to watch it on YouTube (I thought it will launch the YT app), everything was okay.

   

3. You can access the map for mall addresses right from the app. CTC doesn’t have this either. Some people might not find this too useful though since it’s likely that you already know where all the malls are but for the noobs out there, it’s a pretty cool feature.

   

I downloaded this app a couple of weeks ago and so far I have been using it mainly because CTC’s app is annoyingly slow (they show you their mobile ordering ad first before allowing you to access the app). Only then do I remember I have a faster loading app but then I see the faulty RottenTomatoes review rating so I end up going to RottenTomatoes.com to check. Aside from that issue, it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a good app for movie buffs. :)

If you’re interested in the nascent “tech scene” we have here in Manila, I found out about NowShowing from an article on StartupPhilippines.com. You can also check out StartupDigestPH headed by John Arce.

Why Scheduling Tweets Sometimes Sucks

I discovered tweet scheduling  early last year thanks to Flowtown’s timely.is followed by buffer a couple months later thanks to some Twitter friends.

For those clueless as to what these things do, they basically just schedule tweets so that even when you’re sleeping, sick, or working (you can’t after all, get shee done if you’re tweeting the entire day – unless your job involves tweeting), you still seem like the ultimate Twitter pro… or addict – awake and active all hours of the day. (You can now use the motto “Sleep is for the dead.” on your Twitter bio although I realize some people really just don’t sleep.)

If you’re wondering what the difference is between these tweet schedulers and popular Twitter tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck, the latter two are not only social media dashboards, they also allow you to schedule individual posts to be published to whatever social media account you have at whatever time you want.

Buffer works the same way in that it allows you to schedule your tweets (or Facebook posts) but  with this one, you only tweak your “tweet times” once and after that, your job is to just keep feeding it tweets then it queues them for you.  The only downside is that you can only add 10 tweets per day. If you want more then you’ll have to start paying $10/month to get 50 tweets.

Timely on the other hand schedules them for you based on your “best” tweeting times.  It analyzes your past tweets (199 to be exact) and determines when you’re most “retweetable” or when your Twitter audience responds to your tweets the most. And while you can feed it as many posts as you want, it can only tweet them out as much as 9 times per day. Timely also does this for your Facebook posts.