PhilWeavers · The Philippine Webdesigners' Network · Weaver Spotlight

Interviewed by Jose Illenberger / Published March 9, 2006

I still don't consider myself an expert in any of those languages though, but I do know enough that another developer wouldn't be able to intimidate me with geek-speak, which was the reason why I studied them all in the first place.

Tell us about yourself, slambook style.
24/m/qcph. trawling the web since early 95.

How long have you been doing webdesign and development?

For money, since 99, but I'd been goofing around with HTML and Photoshop since high school (circa 96). I taught myself ASP and PHP in 2000, and Actionscript the following year. My Javascript and CSS sucked until around 2004, when I started experimenting with DHTML interfaces. Lately I've been putting that Javascript to better use with various AJAX-powered interfaces, although I still use PHP for most of the heavy-lifting behind the scenes. I still don't consider myself an expert in any of those languages though, but I do know enough that another developer wouldn't be able to intimidate me with geek-speak, which was the reason why I studied them all in the first place.

Do you think your training and BFA in visual communications degree obtained from the university of the philippines prepared you to meet the challenges of your chosen profession?

This is an interesting question, because most Fine Arts students will tell you that they learned nothing from their time in college. And considering that my chosen profession requires me to stand with one foot in aesthetics and the other in code, it's hard to imagine a course that could adequately prepare you for both of those. Ultimately, I think the best way to learn about the web is to immerse yourself in it, because the best designers are the ones that are users themselves.

Being both a designer and a developer, which one do you find more satisfying, designing the frontend or developing the backend?

Definitely the front-end, because it's the only part of your project that the user actually sees and interacts with. Also, my definition of "design" is a lot broader than just "what the site looks like"; it also encompasses how the site flows and how it responds to user input. That said, I do kinda enjoy the "purity" of back-end programming, especially when working with datastores and the like. I think I love all of it, to be honest; the only thing I really hate is "quirks mode."

Most of your sites are owned by foreigners, are these outsourced gigs? if yes, how long have you been doing work on an outsource arrangements?

From 2003 to early 2005, I was working with a small local design house whose clientele were all offshore. We churned out about 16 websites in total throughout our relationship (mostly for law firms and medical schools), but ultimately I decided that I didn't like having to share over half of the project budget with them when most of the output was coming from my end (they were handling marketing and customer-relations). I broke off with them in early 2005 and started my own small company (http://www.thinkbnb.com) a couple of months later. I really, really suck as a business person, but I've been fortunate enough to work with people who have made up for my inadequacies in that area. Since mid-2005, B&B has done two projects for Ayala Land (one website, and one print omnibus), one web project for Red Ribbon, and one web project for the Philippine Ad Congress. We also maintain a long-term relationship with a marketing firm based in the United Kingdom, which is pretty much where our regular cashflow comes from.

Any advice for our fellow webdesigners planning on doing the same?

Look for partners. They don't necessarily have to be designers or developers themselves, because if you're just starting out, there won't be enough work to keep several designers busy anyway. In general, you want to: 1. Look for people that do things you can't. If you're a designer, look for a developer, and vice versa. If you can do both, look for a business manager. Look for a marketing person. Look for people who round out your competencies and tighten up your team. Try to look beyond the actual "design" part of the design business because there are so many other components to making a successful business. (Not that I'm saying my business is successful; many of these key components still elude me at this point in time.) 2. Look for people who have good attitudes. Generally speaking, you want to choose attitude over talent, every single time. No matter how good a person is, if you can't talk to him/her without blowing a gasket, there's no point working with them because they are not the sort of people that will help you grow a company. 3. Look for people with contacts. You can look at these people as informal partners, whom you would pay on a commission-basis per project. Whether you have your own marketing person or not, having an outsider helping you "spread the word" doesn't just help you meet new clients, but it validates your company as well. 4. Look for people who can do a couple of things, instead of just one. This might sort of contradict advice #2, but there's a difference between being talented and being well-rounded. Having a programmer that can attend interlocks and give feedback instead of clamming up the way so many programmers do would be invaluable. Likewise, having a marketing person that can turn around and help you with small design tasks would be extremely useful as well. The idea here is to keep the team as small as possible without missing deadlines.

How did u hear about philweavers and when did u join? why did u? and where do you think PW can help pinoy webdesigners?

I joined PW back in 2000, I think. I wasn't very active though, because I've never been a hugely social person (which is ironic because I maintain 3 community sites). I think that, as a design collective, PW is doing a pretty good job. One of the ways I was thinking that PW could possibly improve is by bringing in members that aren't necessarily designers; they could be high-profile bloggers or podcasters or entrepreneurs or analysts. The Internet is so much more than design and programming, and I think that it'd be great to have a community that reflects the total breadth of the web.

as contributing writer for philweavers, what other topics do you plan on touching in the near future and how are these relevant to your fellow filipino webdesigners?

I actually have 3 unfinished articles that I don't know what to do with just yet. The most "complete" one is called "Promoting Your Website" and is about some of the more non-traditional methods of raising awareness regarding your website. It's a pretty wide topic though, so I'm trying to figure out how to trim it down. The second article is about Web2.0, and what it means for a designer. The last article is about making money with contextual advertising, but it's a bit expensive to write because I'm using my own sites as a guinea pig, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish that one anytime soon. (As you can see, I'm really more interested in the practical, functional side of the web than with design theories and general practices.)

tell us about your online projects. what drives you to create interesting products and communities?

Well, the newest one is Gibbity, which is most easily described as "Friendster for gamers." Essentially, you rate and review a game, and discover which other members had similar opinions regarding that game. It's only a month old so it's on the modest side right now, but the game-review component works pretty well already. This is the one I'm promoting the heck out of, because it's not specific to the Philippine market. (I began writing the "Promoting Your Website" article as a direct result of the stuff I learned while plugging Gibbity. So yes, please do visit and join up.) Another community site which I debuted late last year was oKs.ph, which is a people-powered link-dump like digg.com. PW members can use oKs to plug their projects or link to news that they find interesting; as you can tell from the name, it's focused pretty directly at the Pinoy audience, and it's free for everyone to use. My oldest community site, and the one I cut my teeth on, is highfiber.org. Some of you have probably already heard of this site, so I won't go into the gory details. Suffice to say that highfiber is a hodgepodge of everything I've learned over the past 4 years: it's a group-blog, link-dump, forum, flash arcade, file-sharing hub and all-around time-waster. Highfiber is, btw, the only one of my community sites which I consider a "success," because it actually brought people together. The other two have a long way to go before reaching Highfiber's status, but that's also partially due to the fact that they're so focused. Highfiber has a very SM kind of appeal, in that it has something for everyone, as long as you're not too prudish and keep an open mind.

why do you think there's a local need for these products when some of these features are offered in other international websites?

Gibbity isn't a Pinoy-specific community site (so it has a distinctly international battle to face), but the other two definitely are. Regarding oKs, I basically built it because there's currently no other place for Pinoys to go to for general-interest news. I have no illusions about the fact that oKs is 90% a digg clone, but I also know that every country needs its own digg clone, otherwise our idea of "general-interest" will be dominated by what the US-based digg members find interesting. Regarding highfiber, well, let's just say that it's evolved in ways that are beyond anything that an international site might offer, and I wouldn't be able to convince the members to leave even if I banned each and every one of their user accounts.

any last words?

To go back to an earlier question: I think the reason why most of my projects are community-based is because I believe that connecting people is the single most important function that the Web fulfills. It's for sharing ideas and information, and there's no better format to do that than in the collaborative, social setting offered by a community site. The Web is about people, and finding ways to bring them together should be the fundamental task of every modern web-designer.