Albert Padin | Prepys' Homepage

Share on Facebook Retweet this

THE day after super typhoon Yolanda battered Cebu, developer Albert Padin of Sym.ph went to their office on Escario St. to play games and work on some personal projects. Saturdays, Padin said, are days when their team does hackathons on projects that do not involve their day-to-day jobs.

While combing through news and social network updates, Padin read a call on geekli.st for developers to pitch in coding skills to build a system to help in relief efforts. Since he already had a team that was ready to build things, Padin said they decided to hold a hackathon to build a website to help in relief efforts.

They started the hackathon at 2 p.m. on Saturday with the goal of wrapping up by 5 p.m. They finished at 10 p.m. instead because they worked on 2 things: 1) a system that can help track the search for missing persons and 2) a site that can centralize relief and rescue information in the different areas ravaged by super typhoon Yolanda.

They later closed the person finder service and redirected people to the Google People Finder website. Padin said the Google system was better and the people running it had experience using it in previous disasters.

Cebu-based developers work on a website to centralize Super typhoon Yolanda damage and relief information.

But the team was able to deploy the Bangon Philippines website at bangonphilippines.appspot.com by Saturday night: providing a dashboard to the grim statistics of missing persons, casualties and destruction while offering data and links to relief efforts. (Note: I was told rebuilt site will be available soon. Link will be shared here once the website is live)

The team continued working on the system but another developer, Caresharing Mark John Buenconsejo, sparked a discussion on Facebook about setting up a system that will allow people to organize their own relief efforts and plug into a system that will centralize data and help guide people into pitching in contributions. Padin volunteered to turn the Bangon Philippines website into such a system.

The group then organized a hackathon and issued a call for volunteers to go to the Sym.ph office inside the building beside Capitol parish church.

Albert Padin talks about their plan for the new Bangon Philippines website.

Instead of improving the Bangon Philippines website, the group decided to rebuild it. Padin said they chose rebuilding because of the expanded needs for the system’s backend – which will now offer APIs that will allow people to grab data the project will generate and build apps and services on top of it.

After a discussion over pizza and coffee, the team of hackers decided to focus on the following problem: “Not everybody knows what everybody else is doing so relief efforts are not evenly spread out.”

Padin said efforts were concentrated on Tacloban and people did not know the situation in many other areas on Yolanda’s path.

The group’s solution? “Find out what everybody is doing and put it online.”

Padin said in an interview late Tuesday that they aim to gather as much information as they can on damage reports and relief efforts and would need “a lot of volunteers.” When asked for an update tonight, Padin said it will likely be up in a few hours.

During the interview, Nicole, Padin’s new wife and his co-founder of SpellDial, along with Paola Galan and Vicky Saguin were scouring online news reports and social media postings for information – any tidbit of information – on relief efforts. People’s generosity was overwhelming, the online spreadsheet containing the listings refused to add more cells to contain data during the interview.

Padin said they would need a lot of volunteers to collect information. Those who want to help can send an email to nicole@sym.ph or text 0932 605 8175.

Share on Facebook Retweet this

The post Cebu developers harness tech to help in Yolanda rescue, relief efforts appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.

Share on Facebook Retweet this

They were at a “really low point,” SpellDial founder Albert Padin said in our interview. After two years of chasing their startup dream to make the world dial names instead of numbers, Padin had to look for a job.

Padin said he could no longer stretch funding for his startup and decided to look for money. He linked up with Dave Overton of Symph, a technology solutions provider.

But weeks ago, SpellDial got a much-needed boost. It was picked by the Science & Technology Council as one of the 2012 ON3 pitching competition winners, along with Payroll Hero and NEXTIX, another Cebu start-up.

The teams will be brought to Silicon Valley for three months of immersion at the Plug and Play Tech Center, a business accelerator.

Like second wind

It’s like a “second wind,” Padin said during our interview with co-founder Nicole Macarasig. There’s still hope, we’re inspired to work again, Padin said.

SpellDial. Albert Padin and Nicole Macarasig are on their way to Silicon Valley for a 3-month immersion program.

The SpellDial team is among the first to emerge in Cebu’s start-up community. Padin said they started with a big team of 10 to 15 people looking to “change the world” by simplifying communications. At one point, they invaded the IT Park with a group of teenagers, friends of friends, asking businesses to sign up and then putting up SpellDial stickers. That was their “high point,” Padin recalled wistfully.

Everything unraveled with dreams of money and funding.

“We realized we could get funding,” he said. The group became excited. “We could get a million dollars for this. We forgot we were in the Philippines.”

“We saw people getting funding of one million dollars, five million dollars, idea stage 10 million dollars and we were like ‘oh we have a very nice idea, we could get at least a million dollars,” he said.

Writing proposals

Instead of working on their app and getting more people to sign up, SpellDial wrote proposals.

“Instead of trying to change the world here we were writing proposals and executive summaries and we had no idea what these were. A pitch deck, pitch presentations,” he said. “We stopped working on our product and convincing people to use it to focus on building an awesome presentation to pitch to investors, to pitch in startup competitions.”

Padin said that changed the team dynamics and some members left because they were offended by the shift in focus to making money. “We were supposed to change the world and it’s now a job.”

Padin said the biggest lesson he learned in building a start-up in Cebu was to always understand context.

Different culture

“Reading so many things online, it’s like I’m living in Silicon Valley, with the thought culture there and I forgot that I’m living in the Philippines and the culture here is different,” he said.

“For example, in Silicon Valley they say quit your job and work on your start-up and focus…I think that can apply in Silicon Valley because people who quit their jobs can live off something for the next five or six months and have enough money to do that,” he said, “But not all Filipinos have that kind of luxury to quit their job. If we quit our job now, we won’t have food tomorrow.”

Padin and Macarasig are leaving for Silicon Valley in June. Padin said he will focus on getting feedback on SpellDial and network with people during his stay there.

Share on Facebook Retweet this

The post Silicon Valley calls SpellDial appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.