Perfect match: Social media & the Philippines

When we proposed the use of WITCast, our social networking tool for events, for the Philippine national conference on MICE early this month, it was on a hunch that the Filipinos would take to it like ducks to water.

They did. It wasn't so much the ability to tweet during sessions that got most people excited, it was the fact that there would be wireless in the venue, and that you could therefore multitask.

As one tweeted, "pay attention and tweet at d same time. :) multitasking" while another said, "isn't it great being able to share your views realtime in this conference ..."

Some organisers have a problem with that. They are afraid having Internet in a meeting venue will distract delegates and stop them from paying attention to what speakers are saying, let alone allowing them to tweet comments and ask questions.

Truth is, even if you deny people the right to the net - and anyway, smartphones have changed that rule - you cannot force people to pay attention if they are not interested or if the speakers are not engaging enough. They can switch off mentally and you wouldn't know.

After this experience at MICECON, which was held in Subic Bay, I realise that the Philippines is tailor-made for social media.

It's got a largely English-speaking population - the fifth largest English speaking country in the world, according to Wikipedia.

Its people love to communicate - they also took to SMS like ducks to water. It is known as the texting capital of the world with 142 billion text messages sent a year.

Alexa now ranks Facebook as the number one site in the Philippines - it displaced Friendster which was now at sixth place. Yahoo! comes second, followed by Google Philippines and YouTube.

In a country that's spread out over 7,107 islands, the mobile phone has provided more connectivity than anything else has ever done. At the end of 2008, mobile phone penetration was reported to be 75%. Compare that to Internet penetration which is lower - of its population of 97 million, there are 24 million Internet users. (Internet World Stats)

Scanning the blogs out there, I learn that, as of December last year, 1.08% of Twitterers are Filipinos and the country has the 12th largest population of Twitterers.

Beyond numbers, anyone who's been to the Philippines know this is a nation of people who love to sing and dance. In other words, they are a very sociable and expressive people.

Attending a conference in the Philippines is like attending a carnival. Delegates come dressed for the part. On the first day, which was themed "Carnivale", we had an Elvis Presley-lookalike sitting among us. On the second day, themed "Theatre", we had clowns, jesters and ballerinas in the audience.

They applaud during speeches when the speaker says something they agree with. They cheer, clap and whistle in between sessions. It's like attending a political rally.

They place more priority on the "feel good" factor than on time management and organisation, which can drive event organisers from other countries up the wall. "If only they had a little more Swiss precision," said one delegate from Australia.

Guess we can't have it all but there's one thing that's for sure, give the Filipinos the social networking tools to communicate and interact at an event, and combine that with their natural, innate spirit for fun, and I reckon you've got the best of both worlds in a conference.