Davao City: The Philippine Silicon Valley
That’s the vision of one man, Jason Banico, a Stanford University fellow, former chief technology officer of Yehey.com, and a native of Davao City.
“The larger objective is to move forward the state of ICT in Davao City in two to three years in areas of job creation and innovation. The personal objective is to assist the government, the chamber, and one pilot school with activities that will help improve academe-industry collaboration, IT promotion and research and development activities,” he added, in an online chat with INQ7.net.
Banico is collaborating with Davao’s ICT Council, and hopes to involve the academe as well. He has a blog, Silicon Gulf, where he documents the process and his thoughts on the project. Here’s part of an entry on the blog:
For Davao City to be transformed into a “Programmer City”, it has to start at the high school level, when students will be starting to think about their careers.
Teaching programming in high school is critical. This is where students can learn the “fun” parts of programming and learn to love it without being pressured to make things perfect the first time.
It’s good that he has a broad vision that looks into the preparation of future Filipino programmers. A lot of projects that I have read about seem to be focused on infrastructure and luring foreign investors. These are certainly needed for any long-term economic endeavor to succeed. But Banico approaches the project both ways. The structure is there but the manpower needed for that structure is also being trained. All in all, an encouraging outlook for Davao, Southern Mindanao and, ultimately, the Philippines.
[Source: Inq7.net]
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[...] Davao City is groomed to be the Philippine version of Silicon Valley. [...]