Today was a great day for connection as the Philippine Digital Convention 2021 called "REVOLUTION" has just officially started. It was hosted by ePLDT, PLDT Enterprise and Smart.
Jovy Hernandez the President and CEO of PLDT says "Strange are the things you remember, the people, the moment in time, that burns in your heart forever. Humanity comes in the event shaking the foundation of individual beliefs to help you discover a purpose, that there is something bigger than the reality. All it takes is one window, one brave selfless sacrifice to change history forever. COVID has disrupted lives, we take steps forward, it's a choice, it becomes our life. Let this be our REVOLUTION! Fire is a symbol of progress, purification, we find ourselves that cost us anxiety doesn't matter, family conversations have become bigger, more meaningful. We rise from the flames, redefine our businesses, this is our convention, this must be a revolution! We are in the middle of it, we must never leave anyone behind. To harness tech and use it for business, we need to rethink and rewire our mindset and attitudes. We need to change how we view things, reinvigorate our passions and we wish to fulfill this to provide real value to businesses. Now is the time to re-imagine the world of business the way we want it to be."
In the panel discussion, Nokia's John Harrington, Huawei's Nicholas Ma, Manuel Pangilinan of MPIC Group, Yasuo Suzuki of NTT Global Center and Dave West of Cisco was present. Suzuki san says "COVID 19 has brought a huge demand and working from home and school became normal. With it continue to grow, enterprise data is increasing and the need to scale is too."
Nokia's John Harrington says "It's an interesting start for the job and network connectivity has been critical. To keep us all connected to family and loved ones, the rollout of 5G is rising, what normally takes years took us months. It has not slowed down, different types of traffic patterns and demands have appeared and we had to make sure capacity in the networks have the right products. We see a lot of legacy of systems that need to be automated. The need for AI, to increase productivity, is especially needed on industrial tech and software. How can the next generation help with it? We've seen a lot take strides in manufacturing, mining, transportation, education, and in the advanced networks, there's a clear use of 5G, digitalization, and how agile it is, and how it hastens lower operation costs. Even before COVID 19, there was a desire in digital healthcare, to help with patient-centric care. We see a wide range industries, not just limited in healthcare but it's one of the industries that do."
Dave West of Cisco adds "Work is not a place you go, it's something that you do it with. People now work from home, return to office, and the office had to transform a bit because of security concerns. When everyone has to work remotely, people and IP's should be protected not only in the office, but also at home. Collaboration in WEBEX has seen growth, in school, office, it was in the forefront of growth especially in video collaboration. Connectivity is about how to ensure user experience is optimized to users and customers is supported in the business with the tech provided for them. We had the type of rich services, and the speakers in this session do the same. The shift in how people had to work had to cope with different tools, the models of what was going on in our employees lives. We had to understand, empathize. In the early days you would be embarrassed if your child would walk by. It was about people, our customers who had to deal with work life balance day in and day out. Enabling tech to support to balance all of these is important. For us, when we think about culture, as we deploy tech, we have to understand how it complements our goal during the pandemic, be 10 times easier to use. Now we can translate, catch notes, get questions, react, and WEBEX knows that. The tools can even tell you if you're violating social distancing. With regards to culture, we are sensitive how these type of tech and tools would know what they really want from us, even beyond the pandemic."
Nicholas Ma of Huawei says "The PH is still in the infancy of digitalization. PLDT has made good milestones and efforts. Our global and regional experience make us apt to support and deploy with tons of companies worldwide. We have established relationships with partners, PLDT can go to market and have real good partnerships."
MVP says "We are satisfied with Huawei and with the other vendors like Nokia and Cisco. We look at merits of the supplier and so far, we have been satisfied. It's revolutionary leadership, the shifting patterns of business is driven by tech and the pandemic. We had to adopt with the environment, social governance, and use that in the reports for sustainability. In many ways, we had to do revolution in leadership. We have to maintain values that PLDT does and MPIC. Given the circumstances now, companies outside of telcos we now have to invest in other things. In addition to metrics, sustainability is one, then the capacity to have digitalization. They have adopted to be driven to it, like what we need in the Philippines. We have to persuade senior management to adopt to it, otherwise, you will be obsolete. If you are a publicly listed company, you need to do it. Like PLDT and Smart you need to digitalize, it cuts across all types of companies and not just telcos."
Fireside Chat with Charlize Theron
Hollywood actress and producer Charlize Theron graced the event for a Fireside chat. A UN ambassador of peace, academy award winning actress from South Africa, she says "We've got our head above water, I miss the people. Not having access to that, to be in a room and hug, to share stories, the food, we can't have that. I think for us, we have really long standing relationships with partners in South Africa. We have to be able to hear what they need to say to us, meet them, find the resources they need. Having that is very important, in all fronts, there's a constant revolution in life and it's changing. When it's globally happening, it became clear that it's going to be a dire situation. We need to have a conversation about access to it, it will be marginalized groups that will be affected the most. Together for Her was done to ask women about leading an effort, gender based violence was at an all time high and the lack of resources wasn't helping. We know COVID has set us back in many ways, just like in AIDS, we're dealing with communities. The whole of South Africa had remarkable HIV/AIDS cases, who have immune issues, constant continued conversation around these issues put them out in the forefront. To share our feelings and experiences with each other in the last two years, looking at my business, we know great stories come from voices. We don't forget about this, there is systemic change that needs to happen. When we come together, that's where change would happen. Unfortunately there's no exact recipe to resolve things, there's tremendous amount of fear when there's no access to information and misinformation around it exists. I remember, experiencing that, I knew it was a very immediate need to be proactive with something preventable. Having access to knowledge was something that frustrated me, when the AIDS epidemic happened, we lost a generation of parents. I think it looked like a cycle, it's also not the only thing that would let us not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Women and young girls were inclined to have HIV/AIDS, it was hard to go to communities and them have no access to it. You have to stay in touch with the organizations, they're living it, they're speaking to communities, and who it affects them. They have all the answers, we are fortunate that we have access to it, we have to connect with them in a global stance, so bigger organizations would get to them, as fast as possible. That's our life force, that's where we need to zero in."
There's more things happening in the Philippine Digital Convention 2021. Register today and participate in the talk!
