His philosophy is summed up like this: “I may be a learned scholar, a successful businessman, or a good father and husband. But until I am all three, I have not succeeded.”

He was awarded the Philippines Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for 2005 for Small Business. He manages Ng Khai Corporation and headed the recently concluded Cebu Business Month, a yearly conference by Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He works, he writes, he gives back and is at the same time a family man.

Wilson Ng: Businessman, manager, father, blogger. He is the man behind BizDrivenLIfe.net, a blog about business, management, parenting, living, life.

His topics usually jump from management styles, business strategy, leadership, humor, current events and family life.

I could not recall how I got to his site, but it was about a few months after December 2004 (when I started blogging) that i found his site and his writing. Immediately, I made it a point to check his blog regularly.

His writing style is simple and a matter-of-fact, not “jargon-ish” and conversational. His musings, as he calls his work, are usually short and focused. Lessons are extracted from his everyday experiences. He is not preachy, condescending and critical. Sometimes, you might feel his disappointment with mediocrity but it always comes out like a teacher shaking his head toward his pupil.

With his definition of success in the quote above, it is quite expected that his posts would naturally blend these themes. One of his latest posts, Trading Places reveals much introspection, asking himself (and us):

Is that a worthwhile goal, - miss enjoying life and family so that you could accumulate wealth, and finding it too late that your health does not allow you to enjoy even a fraction of it anymore?

His insights about Time and Money:

“people who have less money use time to earn or save money, while people who have more money use money to save time, or at least enjoy more wasting it.”

“the potential consumer looks at his plate, sees that he has lots of time, but not lots of money, and is not willing to part with his money to save time. In contrast to a consumer in a rich country, he simply values his money more than his time.”

But nobody can ever say that they have reached a stage where they can afford to waste time!

A short lesson on parenting, Involve your Kids reveals that he values good advice and is not afraid to show he does not know it all. He also posted something written by his son, Sharing Together which is a testament to how he values his family.

I think his definition of a manager in To Manage is to be Responsible hits the nail right in the head. It’s all about responsibility. It’s not about perks, power and prestige. A lesson I hope we all learn.

Another post, Don’t have to BS is a good principle to follow: Giving it straight, no deceit, in a no-nonsense manner. People in sales and should heed this advice. I remember a company where the sales and marketing group regularly promised the moon just to get the customer to sign. When a deal was signed, they took it back and dumped the problem to their operations and service departments. Of course, catastrophe followed. There was infighting, and what resulted was utter chaos. What would you expect?

Among my favorites are his entries about goals and focus. In Rethinking your Goals, he relates his personal quest to become smart by reading. Eventually, he got caught reading one hundred pages a day—not in getting smarter.

The objective of reading that hundred pages a day became obsessive that instead of focusing on expanding my knowledge, I was more focused on the quantity of pages read. The sub goal, originally conceived to achieve the original goal became a goal on its own, and the main goal was forgotten. Even when I was tired, or the book was not interesting or particularly enlightening, I made sure I would keep that hundred pages. I read so much that I really did not have much time to reflect what I was reading. Worse, I did not even care whether what I was focused too much on reading was particularly worth reading at all. I was hitting my sub goal, but it did not get me nearer to my stated goal of becoming smarter.

He takes a shot at himself again in Its Just Focus and When All Else Fails. He accepts he has some weight issues he has to deal with and extracts lessons of “bulldog tenacity” and focusing. How can you not admire a person who turns losing weight into a post that teaches?

Finally, he takes the plunge. With all his experience in business, entrepreneurship, management and life, he will now affect minds by dipping his hands in the academe. An MBA under his belt, 15 years in managing his company, being in the thick of things in his industry, you could not ask for a better mentor of knowledge, of business, of life.

This is a too good (a beginning) to pass up.

Paypal is now available in the Philippines. I signed up and it was easy. You have to have a credit card though to be able to use it. And you have to have it verified which takes around 3 to 4 days.

This opens up a lot of possibilities even if we can’t receive funds from other paypal accounts yet. YET is the operative word. Let’s hope the government gives this a serious look. We should look forward to DOLLARS COMING IN with the introduction of Paypal.

This could generate a lot of businesses and spur economic growth. Some thoughts at Intourpreneur.com.

Philippine eLearning Society (PeLS) holds a two-day conference titled:

“Taking IT to the Next Level: The Team Approach to e-Learning Program Development”.

Date: November 28-29, 2006
Venue: NCC, C P Garcia Avenue, Quezon City

Below is the list of topics that will be discussed in the conference:

•      National ICT competency standards for teachers
•      Trends in elearning in Philippine schools
•      International trends in elearning
•      Courseware assessment and other tools for evaluating elearning practice
•      Pitfalls in elearning practice (and how to overcome them)
•      Best Practices in elearning – (including SCORM)
•      Charting school policy directions for eLearning
•      Planning for teacher professional development
•      Support services for e-learners
•      A Philippine eLearning industry?
•      Managing eLearning projects
•      An overview of learning management systems
•      Integrating educational software (courseware) into
•      the curriculum
•      Cheap PCs
•      A roadmap for elearning (workshop and consultations)
•      Presentation of plans
•      Synthesis and planning

The registration fee is Php 1,500 per participant to non-members and Php 1,200 for the early birds. All PeLS members will be given a discounted rate of Php 1,000 and Php 800.00 for early birds.

For confirmation and other inquiries, you may contact Mr. Nijel Ratonel or Ms. Mary Grace Simplina, at telephone nos: (02) 893-8501 loc 258/ (02) 812-2286.

This seminar is sure to benefit school administrators, subject teachers, and IT educators. We hope to see you
there!


Concept

This conference targets schools and universities which aim to setup or improve their elearning operations and services.  Institutions will be encouraged to send a team composed of teachers, administrators and ICT personnel.

A great majority of educational institutions, even in the private sector, have little or no involvement at all in e-Learning. This year’s National e-Learning Conference aims to address some basic concerns in increasing awareness of the benefits of e-Learning and most importantly, creating a road map towards its actual implementation.

The goals of the conference are to:

•     Validate the need to use accessible, appropriate,responsive and effective educational technologies, and discuss current practices
•     Encourage the adoption of a team approach to the development of an elearning system
•     Provide a framework for developing action plans for initiating and implementing workable elearning systems
•     Enable exchange of experiences among e-Learning practitioners and advocates

Call for Papers

The Philippine eLearning Society invites paper presentations on the topics listed in the program. Paper presentations may be in the form of case studies, project profiles, action research reports,
and critiques/analyses of existing national or institutional policies and programs.  The organizers expect presenters to emphasize the need for a team approach in planning for, developing, implementing and evaluating elearning programs and projects.

Abstracts must be 300-400 words in length, in .doc or .rtf format.

Email abstracts to pelsconferencepapers@gmail.com before October 30, 2006.  Authors whose papers will be selected for presentation should submit full papers and/or presentation slides by November 10, 2006, for inclusion in the conference CD.


Please visit http://www.elearning.ph

Invitation: http://www.elearning.ph/2006/Invite_5th_eLearningConf.doc

Program: http://www.elearning.ph/2006/5th_eLearningConf_Program.doc

(Note: People in the Pacific.Net  network have problems seeing the new site, so if you are affected by this problem, please email us for your copy of the documents.)

After the BlogCon, what’s next?

It has been some weeks after the 1st Philippine BlogCon. Milenyo came and went; power and internet connection got cut and was restored; the billboards flew and were torn down; and Sorsi started blogging with Wordpress.

There remains in me the feeling that it is the Tipping Point. Like the First Contact in Star Trek, where the Vulcans detected the first warp signature from Earth thus paving the way for the first extra-terrestrial encounter of earth. I may be biased since I was there, but still, I believe that history happened right before my eyes and that I was part of it.

And what would be the effects of this momentous event?

Overall, it will have established blogging as the new media in the Philippines.

Some points:

2007 is an election year and i think we will see more candidates using blogging as a tool to reach out and get votes. At the moment, I only know of a few local leaders use like Alvin Fernandez, (my high school classmate), now Vice Mayor of Dagupan (though he has somebody who manages it for him) and Peter Lavina (who does the blogging himself I think). Especially for first time candidates, this is the time to put up a blog and post credentials, activities and platforms. The new political party of Nap Pacheco, Ang Kapatiran also has one. It opens up a lot of possibilities such as interaction, candidness as well as information, contact details, platform, 24×7. Besides, it’s easy and cheap campaigning. You can even start now without fear that it is illegal campaigning (though you better read Comelec’s guidelines on this).

Knowing that there is money in them blogs, more writers will jump to the blogging bandwagon and make a name (and life: read money) for themselves. With the successes of the Probloggers and the others who remain in the shadows, more names will make it big.

MySpace and Friendster blogs will become more popular, as well as Blogspot and Wordpress. So what? My guess is that tweeners, teeners and yuppies will comprise about 90% of these blogs. These market segments are the goldmine of advertisers. We will see more local ad agencies dipping their fingers in the blogging-advertising jar.
SEO will be a standard requirement for local blogs (as well as non-blog websites).

Small business owners will now have a cheaper alternative to having the “corporate” websites through plug-and-play engines like Wordpress.

Local Webhosting services such as Ploghost and Pinoywebhosting will now include setup of blogging sites and will team up with graphics artists and SEO wizards in offering websites to candidates and small business owners and whoever is interested.

Local academe and business will see blogs as educational and communication tools. Teachers can create a blog about his subject and have the students react or comment, bringing the learning out of the classroom into cyberspace. The local corporate environment will use this as a tool to get in touch with their customers better and have a better feel of their business.

Those who can blog in Chinese will have an advantage as the world looks to China as the world’s biggest market. And we already have Chinese-speaking and writing bloggers. (offshoot - blog management/translation).

Many countries have established blogging as a the new media, creating several industries directly or indirectly connected to it. It’s only a matter of time before we catch up.
It’s Blog Time, dear reader. Will you be leading the pack or be content with getting left behind (again)?

One of the best books I recommend is The Success Principles, How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be by Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer. It is practical, down-to-earth, motivating, inspiring, filled with memorable stories of success and just enough oomph that will make you re-think your life and make the changes necessary for success.

As proof that I liked it so much, I bought both the ebook and the paperback version (and won/took the hardbound version from Jack’s hands.. Read on to find out how this happened.)

Today, 2 October 2006, I met, shook hands, got photographed and asked for Jack Canfields signature twice. But these were all just icing on the cake. Read more