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Thursday, July 28, 2016

One Month to 10!

In a month I will be celebrating my tenth year at work. It's been an awesome journey and I'm really happy that I have been given the opportunity to work at such an awesome company. I never dreamed to work for a global company, I was quite happy with my work back then. Circumstances though forced me to try other things and I ended up for the one company I blindly sent my resume to.

2006

I still remember the feeling I had when I flew to California in 2006 to attend the training. It was the first time I flew to the US by myself and I felt so overwhelmed. I was really nervous because I didn't know what to expect.


The tension eventually eased when I met the other scouts from Asia and Latin America. Found out everyone was feeling nervous too. I was quiet most of the time whenever we had meetings because there was so much to absorb, but I had a great time, learned a lot and bonded with new friends from other countries.


I had no clue that many people were looking forward to meeting me back home. I started to get invitations while I was in the US. Good thing we were briefed about it and I saw it as an opportunity to understand my market better. I also realized during that time that I had to learn more about the tech industry in my country. 

So I started to attend some community meetups, starting with Digitalfilipino. I have been a member of Digitalfilipino since 2003, but I never had the chance to attend any of the meetups. I went to the October 2006 meetup in Makati and guess what... met my future husband at that meetup haha.




And then I went to the SEO Philippines Beercon on October 28, 2006 meetup and met many more folks active in the industry like Marc Macalua (he was one of those who emailed me while I was in the US), Erwin Oliva and other Inquirer people, Edna Belleza, Mon and other PICS people etc. and this is where I met Koya Andrew too. This night eventually led me to meet more bloggers in Manila. 


And then I went to Davao, Cagayan de Oro and Cebu to be a speaker at the Digitalfilipino Women in Web roadshow. I still remember those roadshows because that's where I met a lot of friends from Davao, CDO and Cebu and a few months after I went back to Davao for the Davao bloggers party.




I was alone in my country, but the community adopted me so I was never really alone. I made many friends across the industry and the local search engine, Yehey!, back then took me in as if I was one of their own (thanks to Donald, Jonas and Eugene!).



My first few months was spent learning more about the industry, meeting people and becoming part of the local tech community. One thing surprising though, I did not expect to meet my future husband at the first meetup I went to after coming home from the US!












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