It’s Feb 28, 2006. I thought Philippine Internet Commerce Society 1st General Membership Meeting will be postponed due to National State of Emergency declared by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Anyway, the 1st GMM pushed through and I had the pleasure to meet once again Director Sonia Aquino. That’s one of the reason why I wanted to attend the GMM.
Director Sonia Aquino discussed about APEC Trace. She discussed with us a program by APEC together with UP-ISSI (Institute for Small-Scale Industries University of the Philippines) The program is a training for business counselor. For more information, I suggest you to visit UP website
In order to take part in the program, the following are the basic qualifications:
1. College degree, or
A successful Entrepreneur at least 3 years or
A college degree holder senior executive for three years or
more and
2 Have completed 400 hours of counseling/consultancy work to at least 10
clients for the past 3 years
If you satisfy the above qualification we will give you the forms as
listed in the attached Entry application package after payment of an
application fee.
Upon acceptance you will prepare your learning plan together with the
manager of the Learning Delivery Center. In the Plan we will
determine your counseling competencies and identify skills for
development
The program is divided into two delivery modes. Six self-directed
modules by
distance learning and 5 through workshops. The workshops are held at the
UP
Campus in Diliman and are usually scheduled on Thursdays and Fridays.
Experience shows that if the learner has many good experiences, the
training component is done in 6-8 months because you pace the
completion of the modules.
According to Director Sonia Aquino, the application fee is P800.00 and the course/module fee is P100,000 when the modules is about to be taken. This is not an upfront payment.
Hmmm.. I’m interested.
Another interesting talk that night was that of Mr. Ben Colayco, president of Level Up. The company that popularized online gaming - ragnarok. He shared with us some marketing strategy of Level Up. I learned a lot from his talk. And, I amazed at how Level Up marketed itself and has successfully reached the market.
Here are some of the marketing efforts
- printing collectible prepaid cards
- typing up with fast food chains - bundle jolli meals with cd and ragna items
- coming up with an album containing ragnarok songs - Rok On
- comic strips - inquirer and manila bulletin
- billboards
Beat that!
Lastly, PICS is coming out with a handbook for SME on e-commerce - softbound - for only P195 to be released on May 2006.