Ambassador to the Nokia Philippines Embassy

At one particular conference, host Art Ilano introduced Senator Loren Legarda as the keynote speaker. I forgot most of what she said but it did have something to do with the Internet and development and well, you get the drift. But that’s not what struck me. After her speech, she produced a seedling from out of nowhere and handed the plant to the amused Art explaining that it was her duty as ambassador to … was it Greenpeace … I forgot — to help the plant a tree movement.

Wow, an ambassador. It always made me wonder how organizations choose evangelists and ambassadors. In the blogosphere, luminaries such as Guy Kawasaki and Jason Calacanis have served as evangelists at several points in their careers.

Michelle, Jenna, Cheryl and Tammy

In the interest of disclosure, I have signed a four month contract with Nokia Philippines to serve as a brand ambassador for the Nokia N82 and their Soul of the Night Campaign which will take place between now and the better part of the first quarter of 2008. I decided to take this on for several reasons: first and foremost, I like the product. The N82 brings forth new technologies (like Xenon flash and motion sensor) and marries them with great productivity plugins in Nokia’s new software package. I wrote about this several times during my trip to Singapore where the Ovi brand was revealed. More on this as the days pass.

Second, I felt that the “amazing race” campaign that Nokia did with the N95 last year was a great success – congratulations to Cat Juan (our dogs are family) for winning by the way! There is talk of a similar event next year. Stay tuned!

Third and I feel that this is rather personal – I’ve been reviewing phones for more than four years. 2008 marks my fifth year as a technology writer and I’ve always been enthusiastic about great products – recommending (as well as bashing) all sorts of gadgets and accessories to friends and my readers. I guess this is something different – finally being an ambassador to a product I like. It’s like signing a contract to doing something I’ve always been doing (i.e. my Macintosh obsession).

Now it’s my turn to shoot Daniel Tan for a change

I must note well that the Cellphone9 blog I write will still remain the same in terms of content and will not be influenced by this status. I’ve cleared this with my editor and she’s excited for this development in my personal career. I will keep the ambassador position to my personal blog and to the Nokia “Soul of the Night” photo site that will be put up very soon, as well as my presence at certain events. I had agreed to the terms and condition because the contract was very friendly towards the ambassadors – a lot of us are from the media. I met them today – you might know them – Michelle Katigbak, Jenna Genio, Cheryl Tiu, Tammy David, Raffy Paredes, Daniel Tan, GP Reyes, and Ipe Cruz.