2008 : The Year I Returned to IT

When my family transferred to Davao year 2006, I temporarily hibernated from the IT industry, where I worked for more than 12 years. In that span of time I got to experience and manage different aspects on an IT company, e.g. Software Development, Project Management, Offshore Assignment (IBM Japan), Quality Assurance, Recruitment and Training.

Year 2008 marked my return to IT. It was kicked-off by a 5-week training in Japan for "Bridge Systems Engineer," (click here to read a previous post on this) wherein I confirmed I still had what it takes to lead and manage SW development projects, particularly focused on offshore contracts from Japanese companies. It was good to be able to visit Japan again after some time. Aside from the very good technical learnings I got, it also provided me with a good opportunity to plan my return to IT.

Upon my return I discussed with PhilNITS for a possible tie-up to conduct some IT trainings here in Davao. PhilNITS Foundation president, Ma. Corazon M. Akol, was very kind to accomodate my ideas. Our first collaborative activity was a PhilNIS-FE review program. We found it hard to gather interested participants (our target were Davao IT professionals) for the review. But I guess the timing and situation was just right, as PhilNITS was able to secure a sponsor which allowed us to accomodate several participants for free. We even got more sponsors to be able to to offer the same review programs to selected Davao students. I think the outcome of the review was decent enough, producing all 5 student passers from Davao for the October 2008 exam. (click here to view October 2008 results for Davao)

November of the same year I got another chance to visit Japan, this time for a 3-week training on "Software Design and Development Engineer." (click here to read previous post on this) I learned many valuable information about the PhilNITS exam on this training, which I would later use to improve my PhilNITS review program. The time spent in Japan also gave me the chance to reflect on how successful my return to IT is for the year 2008. Although actual activities done were not many and only occasional, I think I was still able to lay down a good foundation for my plans for 2009.

Hopefully year 2009 would be a much busier and much fruitful year for me, for PhilNITS and for the IT engineers of Davao...