Ubuntu Love Day Manila 2008 and BarCamp Manila 1 – Huge success!

What a week it was for the local tech scene in Manila, Philippines. We had 2 user generated events happening on the same week – what more can geeks ask for?

BarCamp Manila 1 had around 80+ participants with 17 topics ranging from the Boost C++ libraries to thin clients and iPhone app development. Pizza, beer and soda were aplenty and everyone had a rocking good time. We started the 7 minute topics around 7:25PM and upped the ante by reducing the presentation time to 5 minutes an hour after. The last topic ended past 10pm and people still stayed an hour for more high-bandwith networking and discussion.

You can check out more pictures with the tag “barcampmanila” on Flickr. We also have videoclips of the event from BarCamp Manila Ustream.tv channel.

2 days after BarCamp Manila 1, we had the first Ubuntu Love Day Manila 2008 at the University of the Philippines! Initial registration was sold out so we expected people coming early on. But since the venue was a bit hard to locate, we didn’t start on time as the speakers were also looking for the venue (lesson: create maps). When we had 4 of the 6 speakers at the venue, we started and couldn’t ask for more.

50+ people came in attendance and we had some prizes and was even able to treat everyone
for lunch thanks to the Department of Computer Science and the Y4IT organizers.

You can check out the slides of the presenters at http://www.slideshare.net/jgotangco/slideshows and some video clips at BarCamp Manila Ustream.tv channel. I have 9GB worth of video of the whole event, but that would take time for me to edit and place somewhere. Ben Canlas’ has some pictures of the event.

I thank the speakers of the event: Charo Nuguid, Wallen Tan, Rowen Remis Iral of OLPCPH, members of UP Linux Users Group (UnPLUG), Aileen Apolo and Jay Aguilar of Google, and Juan Carlos Torres. I’m sure you guys have more fans now than ever before.

Finally, many thanks to Myra Jill Siason of UP DILC for leading in the organization of this event. Without her, there would be no Ubuntu Love Day Manila 2008 (it was her idea in the first place), as well as the members of the UP Association for Computer Machinery for volunteering on the logistics and organization of the event.

Organizing the two events was well worth it. Unfortunately, I have worn myself out and didn’t took notice of what I was drinking while speaking, so I now have pharyngitis at the moment, but on the way to full recovery.