[OLPC-Philippines] ZDNet Asia: Open source adoption 'anomaly' in Philippines

[Jerome Gotangco]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 6:56 AM, Mel Chua<mel at melchua.com> wrote:
> Interesting - not particularly actionable, but here are some things I
> think it could mean for eKindling other OSS-in-education projects in the
> Philippines:
>
> 1. If the private sector is indeed ahead of the education sector in OSS
> usage, this represents a potentially *great* situation in terms of
> corporate sponsorship of small deployments (single-school, say - as
> opposed to "200,000 children in this region"). Let companies turn their
> usage of OSS into a "social good" by "sharing" the OSS-way with local kids.
>
> 2. If penetration is indeed 45% (someone may want to look more deeply
> into those statistics), getting student volunteers for projects may
> benefit from the "it's useful vocational training - look at the
> percentage of jobs out there using OSS!" angle.

I believe we have a good local ecosystem for open source. But the
problem is that it is very centralized in NCR in terms of skillsets
and experience. This is not uncommon though. The number of developer
communities and interest groups as well as activities are good
indicators that there is an ecosystem. I recall last year when I
started an OLPC booth at SFD 2008, it was well received and I got to
meet potential organizations that can benefit educational programs
based on open source.


> How's eKindling doing these days? I don't see a lot of discussion on the
> mailing lists, which makes me curious whether there's another place I
> should be listening in.

We've managed to carve a speaking slot at Y4IT on September. Y4IT is
like the JavaOne of Technology conferences here bu with a unique
audience because it only focuses on the youth, those graduating from
high school and starting up college. Will be talking about the Sugar
Learning Platform in particular and other stuff we're doing and
planning with ekindling. I think its a good opportunity to seed
interest to students. Details at http://y4it.up.edu.ph


-- 
Cheers,

Jerome