DAVAO, Philippines, August 2, 2012 - Over 150 aspiring start-ups, students and professionals from all over Mindanao participated in the first technology entrepreneur bootcamp held in Davao City recently. The activity, which marked the end of the week-long Smart Technology Festival, came just a few weeks after the telco’s completion of its network overhaul in Davao.

Held at the University of South Eastern Philippines, the one-day IdeaSpace: #Technopreneur Bootcamp @ Davao event featured technology talks from industry experts and start-up founders as well as a mini business pitching competition.

The event was organized by Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) and IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc. (IdeaSpace) with the support of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), Davao ICT and Davao Bloggers.
 
Local developers Constantino Siocon, Rolly Rulete, Christian Cuan and Jay Rodrigo Albano bested 24 other teams with their mypawn.ph, a pitch for an online web and mobile portal for pawnshops and consumers. Their team also won the Youphoric Top Prize chosen by judge Anne Villar-Jacobe, founder of shoephoric.com and CEO of Striker Mobile.

Two student teams from USEP went home with the 2nd and 3rd place. These were SGDCC for Dr. Banana, an image processing app that detects banana defects in farms and Genre for Eyecreate, a collaborative literature website. Meanwhile, Bizcon won the Best Youphoric Student Team Prize.

“This is our first bootcamp outside Metro Manila and we’re happy with this great turnout. It just means that the technology start-up scene is growing here in Mindanao. We need more young people to get interested in science and technology entrepreneurship and we need to build the local ecosystem with support from business and government,” said Earl Martin Valencia, IdeaSpace president and Smart’s head for corporate development and innovation.

Davao ICT vice president Bert Barriga provided the context for the event with an overview on the technology scene in the region. He noted that the regional tech scene is bustling and has strong private public partnership support.
 
Other speakers and judges for the event include Ann Villar-Jacobe, president of Striker Mobile and founder of the shoe lovers social media site shoephoric.com, Davao-based Eric Clark Su of Piclyf.com whose team was one of the winner in last year’s ON3 National competition, and Paul Pago, Smart’s developer evangelist who discussed opportunities in the mobile industry.

Participants were given four hours to brainstorm and refine their technology business pitch. Each team was given just three minutes to present and another two minutes to answer questions. Industry and start-up mentors were on hand to provide support.

“This is part of our advocacy of sharing the spirit of technology entrepreneurship to more people, especially those in the regions. It’s a free event, done with support from local partners. It’s a good opportunity for all to learn, network and get exposed to the start-up community.” said Valencia.

The bootcamp is part of a series of events for IdeaSpace to bring down to the community level the advocacy for successful technopreneurship and as preparation for its multi-million peso national competition that will commence in August for start-ups that will get incubated by IdeaSpace.

IdeaSpace is a non-profit foundation supported by the largest and most diverse group of companies which include PLDT, Smart, First Pacific Investments, Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC), Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation (MTPC), MPIC hospital group, Meralco, Digitel, Sun Cellular, SPI Global, ePLDT, Indofood, Philex Mining, Maynilad, MediaQuest and TV5.

The Davao leg of the IdeaSpace bootcamps capped off the week-long Smart Technology Festival in Davao, the first such event of its kind which featured the DevDay Davao HTML5 hackathon, student events and seminars on technologies such as mobile Internet.