Ingenuity has had a full several years in this regard. Let us share with you our little achievements that hopefully, in their own little ways, contributed to the success of the IT industry as a whole. The following feature the team's collective effort to help the IT/Tech community and the academe and also to spearhead the promotion of innovation and technopreneurship, and inspire more people (not just the young) to pursue IT-related careers and livelihood.
I. OJT Program
Within the curriculum of IT Studies here in the Philippines is the requisite 200-500 or so hours of On-the-Job Training (internship). Most just spend this time interning for the run of the mill corporate-type or government companies that delegate tasks to them that have little or nothing to do with their college course. The rest may be a little bit more lucky in that they can intern with a legit IT company which would, hopefully, teach them a thing or two about the real world. But as IT companies are few and the available internship slots fewer, successfully securing an IT-related and IT-relevant internship is difficult to come by.
In this vein, therefore, we devised a program that would be beneficial to both us and the interns. Enrich the talents of the talent pool, as it were. Patterned after a modular training we have developed and improved over the course of 4 years of continuous OJTrainings, we are proud our special OJT program where we train interns in the basics of Python-django and allow them to apply their new learnings in developing their own projects that they could market after (if they choose to do so).
Based off from this idea, we even had a 5-week training especially for graduating students of the University of the Philippines Mindanao using the same module of training.
Ingenuity's first ever batch of OJTs - who later became Ingeneers :) Jasper, Aljohn, Joseph, Kevin G, Pat, Roy, Andy with their mentors Mancio and Chester (2011)
The 2nd OJT Batch were a more quiet and pensive group - from UP Min: Jen, Bash, Chez, and JM (both not in pic); from STI Davao: Jan; from Ateneo de Davao University: RK and Sean; from UIC Bonifacio: Faith and Kevin, with mentor June Millan (back to the camera) (2012)
The Batch 3 guys are fun-loving, outgoing, and hungry for french fries (our little inside joke): Marga, Roddiek, Erik, Hitesh, Ray, Nap (covered), Jason, Georgi, Hans, Jessie, Nonoy, and Kevin (2013)
And our mid-year interns from 2013: from ADDU Jan & Felicia; from MSU-IIT Kim (2013)
Presently, we are thinking about devising a way to train the professionals: IT faculty from the academe, IT practitioners, and other web/mobile developers to learn more skills that will enable them to enrich their knowledge as well as cascade this knowledge to others. We will be rolling out a training on this as soon as we sort out the details so watch out for that! :)
a. Speakers
Organizations, schools, and other institutions request us to send over our people for IT workshops, conferences, or other meets. We are very glad that most of our developers and designers gamely volunteer their time and effort to this end. Rather than keeping the knowledge to ourselves, the thrust of our team is to share it so that the Davao IT scene will be richer with talents that have a varied and globally-relevant skills. Truly, giving back to the community is one advocacy we are so lovingly invested in.
Our dev Jefford (in purple) as the speaker and workshop lead at the Computer Literacy Advancement Program of the Mindanao Institute of Computer Engineers, Inc.-Student Chapter (Venue: University of Immaculate Conception-Bonifacio, 2014)
And here's Jefford again, presenting the Raspberry Pi demo to the DurianPy group (2014)
Mobile Development Team Lead JA talks about the Basics and Overview of iOS at the Ateneo de Davao University for Campus DevCon (2014)
More photos here: JUMP!
b. Sponsorships
We are also very supportive to various activities of various organizations and institutions in the IT industry here in the city, that is why we never fail to sponsor or support in any way that we can all activities that aim to push forward the academe and the industry as a whole.
These are a few of the activities that we have sponsored throughout the years:
Mindanao Conference for IT Students 2010
BizBoost Entrepreneurial Talk 2012
PSITS XI Grand Assembly
Google I/O Extended by GBG Davao 2014
DevCon Code Camp 2013
Ingenuity is a Bronze Sponsor at PyCon Philippines 2014
In order to put emphasis on Ingenuity's thrust for community awareness and development, we are also helping out the IT/tech community to organize activities that support this goal. One of the most notable activities that we have helped organize is the Startup Weekend Davao. Members of our team are also volunteering their time and effort in the support of SW Davao, which is now on its 3rd year, and going stronger.
d. Joining in other IT/Tech related Activities
CEO John at the Japan IT Week as one of the country's delegates (2014)
Ingenuity Team was part of the 1st ever Geeks on A Beach at Boracay Island, Philippines (2013)
and again at the Geeks on A Beach 2 at Movenpick Hotel, Mactan, Cebu (2014)
III. Consulting for the IT Academe
Just recently, we were contacted by the Dean and key faculty members of the University of Southeastern Philippines Computer Studies for a dialogue. They wanted relevant, real-life input from the IT industry as to the needs and skillsets that prove to be useful to their graduates in the real world. Ingenuity was one of the few IT companies in Davao that they approached for help. The outcome of these dialogues will be the university's basis in the revision of their curriculum. This was one memorable encounter that we had, and it deserves another blog post altogether, so keep posted!
So you see, above are just a few of our efforts in keeping not just our company, but also our community globally-competitive and up to date with the latest in the IT/Tech industry. As always, we make use of our Filipino ingenuity, our street smarts, our resourcefulness, and creativity in helping each other out so that we may push the boundaries of Davao City talent to the forefront. Slowly, but surely, we are getting there.
