A few days ago, the organization upon which I hold a VP position for was featured in INQ7.net. MaPalad, the Philippine Palm OS user group was featured in article by Alex Villafania.
The organization was formed in 1998 by Jason de Villa, a local user looking for applications that will make him fully utilize his Palm device. After forming Mapalad, joined by a select group of people, the forum eventually grew its membership and now boasts of 6,000 registered users.
Currently, Mapalad is headed by Guthrie-Jensen Training Consultant Sharon Agoncillo, herself an avid Palm Treo user. She is also the second female to head the predominantly male organization.
In its eight years of existence, a lot of restructuring has occurred within the organization, mostly having to do with semantics – due to the way Palm, the company formerly known as pa1mOne, and also formerly known as Palm, that had acquired Handspring, whose founders were part of the original Palm, which had some relation to 3com, kept on changing names.
And it is with this post that I step down as VP of the organization. Sharon texted me this morning asking if we still want to “run for office” next year but I told her that I’d want to help out in other ways because of time and other commitments.
Several reasons really – to give chance to others for 2008, because it raises eyebrows that I do not use a Palm unit anymore (technically I still do – my trusty Visor Prism is still somewhere in the closet along with a Palm V in one of the drawers of my study), and finally because I don’t need to be Vice Prez to contribute to the org of which I have been a part of since the early 2000’s.
A fun group we are – MaPalad is currently involved in productivity seminars with MindShare with Luli Arroyo, a few outreach programs, the org’s band (we used to play at Conway’s in Shangri-la hotel), week-round “wala lang” meets. If you own a Palm-powered unit and would like to learn more about the organization, do visit our happy forum at Mapalad.org.
Pictures courtesy of the MaPalad photo pool.
3 replies on “Ending my term at MaPalad”
hahahaha… look at jed’s pose. she never stop to unleash her funny antics, yet remained enthrallingly lovely. hahahaha. endless laugh.
I’ve been a member of Mapalad forums for sometime, but I have yet to attend my first EB this Saturday. 🙂
[…] The org is raffling off a Treo 680 and Treo 650 for the grand prizes as well as several other stuff courtesy of Mobile1 and Airborne Access. MaPalad has been one of the most active organizations in the past years apart from PhilMUG and there are even rumors that MaPalad officers will be sent abroad to Singapore to touch base with other Palm OS user groups (a dying breed because of a not-so-widespread platform? Well, in union there is strength!) […]