Splitting The Topics Of Owning A Café

When I started blogging in January 2009, I never thought it would last this long. I chose to blog about the Internet café business in the Philippines and aimed for the always online i-café owners as my audience. At first, I was grasping for topics to write on and was a bit tentative on many of them. I wrote about many subjects and there was a time a fellow blogger, whom I requested to review Owning a Café, made an advice to narrow down the topics of my discussions and just focus on i-café business. I took the advice and concentrated my blogging to topics about i-café business variables, computer software and hardware technology updates that apply to i-cafés plus news and events concerning the industry.

Sometime in the middle of last year, a move among i-café owners to form an advocacy group that would handle matters of national interest for the industry gave rise to the formation of I-Café Pilipinas. In cooperation with Mr. Gener Morada of Into the Digital Light, we created a free-hosted advocacy blog at WordPress.com for I-Café Pilipinas which was eventually moved to self-hosted site at http://www.icafepilipinas.org/. Finding the need to further differentiate and group the initiatives of I-Café Pilipinas, we shifted to the multi-user platform of WordPress (WP-MU) and came-out with the following sites and contents:

A) I-Café Pilipinas Main – The site contains the announcements of events, news about the i-café industry and statements of the organization’s positions on various issues affecting the business of providing internet access to the public.

B) I-Café Techniques – The rules and regulations in the registration and operation of an i-café, success stories of the players in the industry, briefs about local i-café associations and business tips and tricks can be found on this site.

C) Ang Digital Batang Pinoy – Containing article in Filipino, the site is the initiative of I-Café Pilipinas in advocating for the right use of technology through education especially the online protection of the young people accessing the web.

D) Usapang I-Café – Intended to contain the discussions among i-café owners, this Facebook look-alike site automatically have the excerpts of the articles from I-Café Pilipinas websites. Members can reply to the topics as well as post their own updates on their feelings and activities.

From the above, you would readily see that most of the topics that Owning a Café have in the past are now delegated to the above-mentioned sites. As such, this blog now contains only technology updates and my personal comments and opinions on current issues about the i-café business in the Philippines. I hope you will continue to patronize this blog as well as my other sites described above.