PhilWeavers · The Philippine Webdesigners' Network · Weaver Spotlight

Interviewed by Jose Illenberger / Published November 21, 2005

Despite the many un-wired users in our country, this same industry is heading to become mature with a good business sense. It will be the focus of many businesses and it will transform our culture to need "us" web soldiers more than the regular office workers.

Tell us more about AJ Batac?

It's really easy to describe AJ, he once struggled his way to working with the best companies and finally found a place where he can attain all of his passions in life. AJ's passions includes learning anything from the web - design, programming, usability, user interface and human experience. He can also be a competitive mind-game player who constantly thinks and speaks out loud what's going on his mind. He's a person who has lots of ideas on his belt (just like batman's utility belt), waiting for the right time to unleash them.

What does the initials AJ stand for?

AJ stands for Allan J, just like Steve J, Bill G -- you know. Kidding aside, the other J is not Jobs though, it's Joseph. :)

Do you still remember the vivacious AJ Abayari?

Oh yeah, of course! Who can ever forget her? Actually, she's one of my favorite actresses. Sexy, talented, beautiful and gorgeous! I don't know where she is now... But, I do hope she's enjoying life as I am.

How did you get into web design and development?

It was so fast I can't recall most of it, really. The earliest thing I remember was, in the middle of 1995 I came across a windows machine with a Netscape icon. Started to double-click the thingy and browsed a web page (defaulted to Yahoo.com). Then the more I use that site, the more I became curious. Curious on how people actually "how to build..." these kind of things - the web page.

Started to use the same search engine to search for howto's on how to build web pages, learned something in a few days and tried to create my first.

It was hosted in www.fortunecity.com (sadly, they don't give it for FREE anymore). They were the pioneer in free web hosting aside from www.geocities.com at that time.

All the rest was learning new cool stuff daily - up to this day. Now, it became a hobby more than a profession. Kinda fun learning and implementing it on the real world.

What was your experience developing Philweavers version two dot o?

The experience was both helpful and a mind-opener. The development of PW2 took almost a year to develop, mainly, because the PW V2 devteam (comprises of 3 guys and 1 gal) had daytime jobs and daytime pressures and had to quit as they needed to focus more on their profession. Overall it helped us to muster some caveats in coding and add that having a user base that keeps on pushing for features and functions just makes you more responsible and more involved.

What service do you think that did to the community, how did the group profit and what did u learn with the whole experience?

I think the most helpful part of PW V2 was the Job Section. It gave weavers a way to post and apply for a job directly specific to their niche which is web design/development. The whole experience having to create a job section from scratch wasn't easy but it was refreshing to know that when you have helped as well as set the motion for having a job section specifically for weavers - it's fulfilling.

Tell me about Halfproject. What was it all about and what was your role with it?

Well, I think everybody knows about Halfproject in the design world. Actually, it's not really my world. I couldn't really associate myself with them totally since I'm not purely a designer/artist. And I don't share the same talent as they have. I'm more of a junior hybrid, a cross in-between designer and a programmer. I was there to understand the work flow, the message that halfproject wanted send to the viewer and to implement the back end programming needed to achieve all of that. ;)

Can we expect a bigger, badder halfproject anytime soon?

Yes, you can say that. ;) As always, halfproject launches new surprises for the design/artist community.

How did u get involved with friendster?

It's quite a long story but to make it short, I've been with the founder of Pusit since 2004 developing a bunch of new ideas... from backup to archiving to structuring unstructured data and data mining, etc.

Anyway, Friendster was serious about the Philippine market and when they visited Pusit.com, they invested on the service. It has now become the landing place for Friendster members trying to use their trusted network to post classifieds, from for sale ads to job posting to business services.

What was your role in the development of pusit, the friendster classifieds site?

My primary role is to ensure the delivery of product features from inception to production. I also manage the look and feel as well as the usability aspect of the site.

Why do you think friendster is so successful in the Philippines?

Honestly, I don't really know exactly why but maybe because Filipinos wants to keep in touch, wants to have lots of friends thru their trusted network and maybe pinoys just really like the service than anything else out there. :P

What can we expect from friendster for the next few months?

A lot! We will be rolling out new products/features for Friendster in the coming weeks. You guys just have to stay tuned. ;)

What are your other projects you are most proud of?

Actually there is no specific project that I'm most proud of, but I can name a few interesting ones aside from Friendster Classifieds... They are Friendster Ads, Udeko, and Hoosaid. :)

Where do you think the philippine webdesign and development industry is headed?

With the advent of exciting new web stuff like Web 2.0, the industry has far become stronger than the previous years. There are competitions now. There are innovations with a good sense of business models. There are now more companies and new net ideas that presents and communicate value propositions.

Most businesses already figured out why this industry (the web) is so important to our digital future that they are to most likely tap the web soldiers as they try to bring their ideas to reality.

Despite the many un-wired users in our country, this same industry is heading to become mature with a good business sense. It will be the focus of many businesses and it will transform our culture to need "us" web soldiers more than the regular office workers.