Engineering Marketing Congress 2009

Overview: The Engineering Marketing Congress

EMC is a SIMULATION of the corporate world. It is a step-by-step introduction to the language of marketing as for engineers to package their ideas and articulate their minds with much competence.   First, the participants identify a research project of the college and  then  present a marketing strategy for it. To give them the training vital to market their project, they will be guided by a series of seminars, as well as workshops about significant aspects of marketing and communications

Presenting EMC 2009: BE THE 100th: Local Engineers To Global Pioneers

As we pay tribute to our 99 world-class  UP College of Engineering alumni, EMC 09 challenges every student to Be the 100^th local engineer to soar high as a global pioneer.

Through this event, we aim to:

• Equip the Local Engineer.  Harness the ability of engineering students in relaying their bright ideas through effective communication, presentation and marketing skills.
• Inspire the future Global Pioneer.  Highlight innovative research works of UP Engineers that could create potential breakthrough in a global scale & develop marketing strategies feasible to overcome pressing  global concerns.

The Events

    GRAND OPENING

              August 4-7                     Grand Launch of EMC 2009

                                                        Exhibit of the 99 Outstanding Alumni  Engineers

                                                        Registration of Competing Teams

                                                        Thesis Presentation

SEMINAR SERIES

Competent and eminent speakers provide the participants with advices, guidelines, workshops and motivations before venturing into the actual marketing.

August 11       INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING

        August 13       BASICS OF BUSINESS WRITING SEMINAR 

        August 20       INDUSTRIAL DESIGN & PRODUCT PACKAGING SEMINAR             

        August 27       GLOBALLY COMPETITIVE MARKETING IDEAS AND STRATEGIES

        September 3  COMMUNICATIONS, ETHICS, SELF PACKAGING SEMINAR

COMPETITION PROPER

Teams shall be composed of 3-5 bonafide undergraduate students of the College of Engineering, UP Diliman. All members of a team or at least majority of them should be under the department/institute where the Engineering output (product/design/thesis) is taken from. Only the 10 teams who have best demonstrated superb marketing potentials among others shall have the prestige to advance to the FINALS  and compete on:

              September 7                       Mock Marketing

              September 14-18              Exhibit of the Participants’ Works

              September 18                    Oral Presentation and Final’s Night

The REWARD

              1st Prize:                             PhP 30,000 +  plaque             

              2nd Prize:                            PhP 20,000 + plaque             

              3rd Prize:                             PhP 10,000 + plaque

I love CVMIG

Wow, this day is quite a relief. The very first hurdle of our thesis life was over after weeks of researching and summarizing related literatures and brainstorming frameworks and methodologies. We are seven teams in CVMIG - Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence Group and all of us passed. Thanks to Sir Mike and Sir Pros for the pizza party at the faculty lounge, eight boxes of pizza were on the table! Thanks to my thesis-mates for understanding my esc life and thanks for joining me in my lunch hunger strike before i took the limelight. Ace, Pau you’re the best! I’m now more excited to go on with iSENSE: Intelligent Search Engine for News Broadcast Using Content-Based Indexing. CVMIG teams see you in Davao next year! I know we will all make it. The reason why i love CVMIG is because we, undergrads, grads and advisers, are one big happy family. Did you know that Sir Pros likes parties? Now you know! he might organize a party one of these days with the ob jective of helping up students develop their social skills, not bad, right? And Sir Mike was so “makulit” haha

Java chip frappe on a relaxing conversation completed my day. TechnoHub is really a nice place to unwind with pals. Great landscapes, interiors, man-made river/pond and green grasses make you feel that you are out of a polluted city. Timezone is indeed fun! Pang pang paradise is our favorite but nothing beat the karaoke, it’s the first time I heard Ace and Pau sing! Red box is now officially on our must do list. Too bad Vinz and Mae weren’t there, they missed the fun. 

Up close and personal with Mr. Johnip Cua

Yesterday was very remarkable, I had a once in a lifetime experience at The Podium. Karen, Nats, Mia and I had the privilege to meet Mr. Johnip Cua, P&G’s first Filipino General Manager. He’s a great man and very inspirational. We arrived at Podium exactly 5 o’clock i think, he was already at Delifrance then. He offered to treat us anything we wanna eat and so we ordered frappe, he insisted to buy us pizza but i thought it’s all in our consciousness that we will be uncomfortable eating while talking with him. While waiting for the food and drinks to arrive, we chatted about how UP was during his time and compared the past and the present College of Engineering. He mentioned that he never got any programming class then because it was only an elective and it’s really a hassle then to deal with punchcards and find a computer to use and so i remembered sir Quiwa’s story about punchcards, funny. It was a very casual conversation, he’s not intimidating to talk to, maybe because we share something in common - the alma mater or he’s just really a nice man. 

Before he came to meet us he went to play golf, he said that he don’t wanna work anymore! -> this statement was Nat’s fave. Indeed, he earned the right to relax and enjoy his life. After he finished his food, we started our presentation. By the way, the reason why we met him was to present the specifics of Engineering Marketing Congress 2009, we invited him to be our speaker for the first seminar: Orientation and Basics of Marketing. I was assigned in the introduction part, i got nervous at first, but who wouldn’t be?! Nats in Event, Karen in Seminars and Mia in Competition. When we told him what we want him to tackle in his speech (basics of marketing, four Ps of marketing, marketing and engineering correlation), he said that it’s too basic. What he wanted to talk about was P&G’s local and global branding, it focuses more on the advertising, he will show several commercials, he will discuss which products hit the market and which products flunked and the story behind them. Well he’s right, it’s too basic for him and so we allowed his request to change the nature of his talk, it’s also in line with the theme “Local Engineers To Global Pioneers” anyway and who are we to reject.

After the presentation, we started to ask questions about the company. He told us about his leadership experience, the character a leader must possess, the Es of leadership, the values of P&G and what struck me the most was when he told us that the moment he stepped in his position and realized the mission of the company: As the company grows, the community around us grows with us (not certain if it’s the exact phrase), he said that he must adhere to and live with that. The hardest job for him was to fire employees which really is tough. He emphasized that the leader is the perpetuation of the corporation. Under his leadership, P&G went to broader horizons, created more jobs to Filipinos through outsourcing and helped the sari-sari store owners to survive and earn more by repackaging products into smaller ones to become more affordable. He’s a genius. He strengthened my desire to work in P&G. He told us that if you get accepted in P&G you must be very smart and this is my favorite among his quotable statements: “I haven’t met any UP student who did not excel.” He said that we should have very good leadership skills, we should be active in our organizations, we should have experience handling events and projects like this which I’m proud i have and should have very good grades which i doubt haha but i wont give up, i still have a year in UP! I even asked him if there are career opportunities for CS grads and he said there is at GBS! 

It was indeed an unforgettable two-hour experience, to be able to have met him, talked to him and heard of his experience was very empowering, we all consider it a once in a lifetime episode. The only regret we had was we didn’t take a picture with him! we’re all too fascinated with his stories and his presence to the extent of shouting OMG after we get past the exit of the mall and took off. If there’s a JC fans club, i’ll definitely want to apply! The College of Engineering got the privilege of having him in the Engineering Marketing Congress 2009’s Seminar 1 on August 11, 5:30 pm at the Eng’g Theater, be there. 

Entry point

Finally i got a blog site. I’m not really a writer but i want to challenge myself to make an archive of my everyday experience. Many good things have happened and i think it’s best to save them. I hope i can post entries on a regular basis despite a toxic schedule.