Thursday, April 05, 2007 Influencing the next generation By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
ARE we growing?
Last March 24, the Philippine Schools Cyberfair awards ceremony was held and I’m glad there were winners in all eight categories. It was hard to complete a winners’ roster in the past, as entries must be presented in English and Filipino.
You can view the complete list of winners at http://digitalfilipinowebawards.blogspot.com.
Having organized the Philippine Schools Cyberfair for the past six years, I got asked if the appreciation of local content development is growing. It is growing, although the growth is very, very slow.
Like policy lobbying, advocating for something new takes time before the desired results can be achieved. Understanding how our system worked had taught me to be calm, patient and persistent.
Of course, whenever the opportunity presents itself, you can escalate your style from calm to aggressive.
What delays things is partly influenced by timing, stakeholder readiness, personalities involved and resources on hand.
If there’s one area where growth is demonstrated and can be seen, it is the Philippine blogging scene.
Back in 2003, efforts for a humble Philippine Blog Awards emerged with three winners recognized and simple tokens given.
Last February, the Philippine Blog Awards emerged again with the most popular bloggers, led by Abraham Olandres, taking on the challenge of mounting one.
It was a success to all the winners, such as Sun.Star Cebu’s very own Max Limpag and co-columnist Wilson Ng.
Looking at the entries in 2003 and this year, a lot has indeed changed.
Blogs, being informal and personal, are quite hard to sustain as the bloggers themselves change in terms of perspective as the years go by. Their blogs then may no longer be suitable or representative of what they are today.
This is no exemption to websites, as most can use a makeover every few years to reflect the changes and growth as time goes by.
As the Internet will outlive all of us, it may be true to say that no one will dominate the Internet scene.
Although some of us may get our moments of fame, but all of these are short-term.
With that in mind, all of us have the capability to influence the next generation Internet, whether in content, technology and culture, among others.
Whatever we do online today can set the trend of things to come.
Our past actions can also be analyzed as there are Internet sites, such as www.archive.org, that can allow Internet users to go to back as early as 10 years ago and see how websites looked back then.
