Join Open Hack Day 2009 – Southeast Asia!
Calling all Pinoy developers! Yahoo! Souteast Asia will be sponsoring a developer to the first Yahoo! Open Hack Day Southeast Asia to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia on November 21-22, 2009.
As mentioned in the site, the objective of Open Hack Day is to "push the envelope of web innovation and creativity to meet the needs of the developer’s itch." Simply put, this is a great venue for developers to come up their big idea using at least one Yahoo! tool, interface or API, create a working version of it and showcase it to the world. The event also highlights tech talks, hack-related presentations from some of the Web's most respected developers, and 24-hours of hacking.
Simply fill up the form and explain why you deserve to represent the Philippines in the Open Hack Day. The chosen applicant will be notified via email within 5 days after the last day of submission and will get an all-expense paid trip to Jakarta, Indonesia (return flight & 3 nights hotel accommodation). Closing Date for entries is 5pm, November 6, 2009.
Click here to join Open Hack Day 09 - Yahoo! Southeast Asia!
Flickristas Ikatlong Banat, Panalo!
To translate my title, what I just said is “Flickristas Third Hit, a Winner!” And indeed it was, last October 15-18, the Flickristas, the largest Pinoy group in Flickr, successfully held its third exhibit entitled Ikatlong Banat: Flickristas Shoot Eight” at the TriNoma Mall, Quezon City.
This exhibit was the off-shoot of their photo contest which challenged the photo community members to capture the essence of the number “8” in a photo. In their own words, “the number 8 is considered a perfectly balanced symbol. When laid sideways, it turns into the infinity sign. Its meaning to different cultures is just that—infinite. It can represent prosperity or wealth, but some also perceive it as an unlucky number. It means resurrection for others and destruction for some. Eight represents enlightenment, perfection, a day of rest or rock-and-rollin’ love.”
Fifty-two of their community members submitted photos and three of them were proclaimed winners. Here are the winning photos:
1st Place
2nd Place
3rd Place
Congratulations to the winners for your excellent entries and to the group, for everyone in the community who contributed in one way or another to make the event not just a reality but a success! Special thanks to the sponsors who made the event extra special and extra memorable. To TriNoma Mall of the Ayala Malls for providing the excellent venue, to Digiprint for printing the awesome photos, and to Toshiba for giving the really cool prizes to our winners. The first placer got a laptop, the second place an 8MP digital camera, and the third placer received an MP3 player.
I hope this gives companies something to think about. There are so many ways to engage various communities that will complement your product or service. Aside from throwing a party for bloggers, you can actually help organize an exhibit of photo enthusiasts (who btw also mostly blog), and so much more. Just look at the communities activities and find out how you can participate in what they’re doing.
Flickr Fanatics at the Trinoma! Visit the Exhibit!
The largest Flickr group in the Philippines, the Flickristas, are having an exhibit at the Level Four, Cinema Lobby of the TriNoma Mall in Quezon City this October 15 to 18, 2008
Aptly titled IKATLONG BANAT: Flickristas Shoot Eight (A Photo Contest/Exhibit), this exhibit is an offshoot of an online contest they launched a few months ago which challenged group members to capture the essence of the number 8 in a photograph. More than 50 photos will be showcased and on the last day of the exhibit, October 18, an awarding ceremony will take place at 6pm to honor the best and the brightest (so to speak) of the photos that were submitted. Really cool prizes are up for grabs (Flickr Pro Accounts, Yahoo! stuff, and a couple of secret but really cool prizes!).
If you’re into photography or simply appreciate beauty capture in film, do check out this event next week. It’s definitely going to be one exciting, colorful and artistic exhibit! Special thanks go to the Ayala Malls, specifically TriNoma Mall, for sponsoring the venue and for eLBC’s Digiprint, for sponsoring the printing of the photos.
See you at the Flickrista exhibit!
It’s The Customer, Stupid! – Viral Marketing and Engaging Your Community
One of the best things that can happen to you as a company or organization is viral marketing from your community. This can take in the form of video clips, images, e-books, Flash games, or even email messages. Bear in mind that when this happens, it’s usually initiated by your community – by themselves, without expectation of reward or compensation from you. The motivation for them is always personal, and the “campaign’s” growth is organic, spreading through word-of-mouth or click-of-mouth (more specifically, social media). The effect is definitely more brand awareness for you or your product which can lead to other results like more sales.
The best response when this happens is to engage your community. Engagement doesn’t mean interfering with what they are doing, it means being part of the conversation. Remember, you don’t control it, you just need to be part of it. Companies like Apple and Nike have successfully embraced the power of viral marketing and even Hollywood has learned how to leverage it effectively, as we have seen in movies like Cloverfield, Transformers, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, which have people getting excited about the movies, even involved with it, way before the film was shown.
Avoid the mess that happened with 3M, which just threw out the window the huge opportunity that came their way. What happened? Not too long ago, a practical joke which involved a car and couple of thousands of 3M Post It notes became a huge Internet hit, in short a viral activity. They were photos uploaded in Flickr that spread online through blogs, social news, and even became Yahoo!’s Pick of the Day. 3M, seeing the success of this viral activity, wanted to build on it through a marketing campaign. Instead, it resulted to an epic fail marketing mishap. What happened in short is 3M wanted to use the photos for a nationwide campaign, user who created them asked for a certain amount (which is really not big), 3M thinks it’s cheaper if they’ll copy rather than pay for the original, and the result was another viral activity but this time against 3M. For more of this, check out the article in consumerist.com and all-about-content.com.
Obviously, 3M’s emarketing supervisor doesn’t have a clue what it means to engage their community. In this day and age when your market expects you to have a presence in social media websites, it’s really going to cost you if you do not engage your community properly. But if you do know how, then it’s certainly going to pay.