at work

well you may be wondering why its been so long since i posted, you can ask mr dividina and he'll tell you all about it. anyway another reason, aside from the play fest is that I now officially have work!!!! Home radio has taken me in to become a newscaster and they want me to start waaaay before graduation- next tuesday that is.... well i've been training and im finding it ia bit hard not to sound too young and create a style of my own that fits the easy listening format of the station.

i would just like to share something i have read from team asia:

Attracting Foreign VisitorsBy Michael Alan HamlinFebruary 21, 2005

For the first time since the Asian Financial Crisis and the election of former president Joseph Estrada, we're seeing a spate of large business conferences taking place. The fact that conference producers are again willing to take the significant financial risks associated with organizing a meeting suggests new optimism in the Philippines in general, the Philippine economy, and, yes, the Philippine government in particular.
You may understandably wonder how this can be so in the aftermath of recent downgrades of the Philippines' credit rating. In fact, Moody's not just downgraded the Philippines, but slapped the country down two notches. But the truth is that credit rating downgrades - like business news - generally trail reality, often by substantial gaps. Paco Sandejas, a venture capitalist, is fond of saying that by the time you read the news in BusinessWeek, it's old news. He was implying that venture capitalists and other investors want to act before an opportunity becomes generally known. Investors want to come in on the ground floor of opportunity.
So do analysts. But they don't. Analysts at rating agencies like Moody's base their analyses on a number of factors. They spend time "on the ground" in the country being evaluated, talking with government officials, economists, bankers, businesspeople, academics, and other influential publics. They sample the sentiment of these publics through formal surveys. They evaluate economic and fiscal indicators of the country's health. And they read reports in the business literature, like BusinessWeek, and they watch CNN.
The problem with all of these sources is that they report history - with varying degrees of accuracy. And on the basis of that history, ratings agencies like Moody's make predictions about the future. The thing to note here is that the present essentially is ignored. It's ignored because no one, in reality, knows what present conditions really are other than in an anecdotal way. So the supposition is that if historical data appears dismal, the present must be more so, and the future, well, it looks bad.
One reason that analysts believe this history, and in the Philippines' case, assume the worst, is that there is no credible information available that suggests otherwise. Senior government officials from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Department of Finance go on road shows and undertake other communications efforts in an attempt to sway analysts' views. But to analysts, these officials have an obvious and natural bias, and therefore lack credibility. Especially given all the negative news that's available.
One way to address such negative perceptions is to push positive information - such as business and investor success stories - to analysts, media, and other influential individuals. Success stories in which foreign investors, for example, discuss how well their organizations are doing in the Philippines, are credible because the source of the good news is not employed by the government. The story becomes even more credible when it is picked up by a credible media outlet, like our favorite business magazine, BusinessWeek.
Is this news any less historic than the other sources of information analysts base their analyses on? No, it's not. But it is positive news.
This is important for obvious reasons. But it is worth remembering that in the absence of news, people assume the worst. And, when all the news is bad, people assume it's going to get even worse. In reality, the Philippines has many, many success stories. In the IT-enabled services sector alone, many of these stories were on display at the e-Services 2005 Exhibit & Conference recently. They included animators, software engineering firms, design engineering, medical transcription, contact centers, and others.
Unfortunately, there were few foreign visitors (Those that were there were very high quality guests, and pleased with what they saw.). And the reason there were few foreign visitors to view and hear these success stories is that perception outside the Philippines of the Philippines is very negative. When one foreign analyst invited to speak at the conference was asked how the Philippines can improve its image, he responded that the country needed to do whatever it took to attract a big brand to invest here.
When it was pointed out that there are many big brands here already, the analyst was stunned. Because it is his business to know what's going on in the Asia Pacific, including the Philippines. But he didn't. The truth is that the Philippines can't sit around waiting to be noticed. It needs to proactively communicate the happy reality that many big brands invest and operate here extremely profitably, as well as local corporations and entrepreneurs.
It will take a strategic, coherent, meaningful, and credible communications program to alter perception of the Philippines. And it won't happen in a day. But it can begin to happen over a six-month period. In a year, perception can be dramatically changed. But not unless the Philippines begins to communicate now.