VISIT SECONDMONDAY

ANOTHER information technology buildup is taking shape via a discussion group site. A new virtual meeting place in cyberspace composed of IT professionals, entrepreneurs, investors and IT executives held their first "Internight"-cum-launching March 16 at the Enterprise Center, Makati. Dubbed secondmonday.com, the site is an online forum that allows Internet, IT, telecoms, and politically related issues affecting the IT industry to be discussed and debated.

The seven-day-old site, which has currently 200 members, will meet once a month, face-to-face, to continue their interactions over free cocktails in an event they call Internight where they can chat, exchange calling cards, talk and listen to invited speakers from different countries to share their ideas and success stories.

There are color-coded name tags that will identify which type of profession each member is in: Green for IT professionals, orange for members affiliated with institutions engaged in relevant technologies, blue for venture capitalists and red for entrepreneurs. Members are entitled to a free web-based e-mail (yourname@secondmonday.com), and a free weekly newsletter.

"So far the niche is there. They're looking for a venue where people who are involved in the different aspects of IT can get together, and we divide them into subsections," said Briccio G. Santos, CEO and chair of Znet Cyberworks Inc., the proponent of secondmonday.com.

Santos hopes there could be more members who would subscribe. Secondmonday.com aims to establish a new awareness that will form a common vision regardless of ethnicity, nationality, economic background and educational and ideological differences, since this objective has begun to take form in the Internet.

Secondmonday.com's next goal is to create "business matching" in the future between entrepreneurs and investors. A short list of entrepreneurs who will indicate what they are looking for will be available for investor members. The software for this will be launched by May or June.

Secondmonday will also have a jobsite for IT job hunters, companies looking for IT professionals, office spaces, or apartments. A barter system exists, aside from straight cash transactions.

Revenues for secondmonday will come from sponsorships. Santos said that secondmonday.com will be quite selective with the kind of advertisers since he will not encourage advertisers to sell their products on the site.

"They can link their sites but as far as selling the products, we feel it will ultimately influence the vision of the site," he said.

Santos added that gradually the country will be integrating itself into the new digital economy. All institutions, he said, will have an Internet angle to their operations. Secondmonday's goal, he said, is to generate that awareness.

"We have to have an Internet angle all the way from institutions down to the family level. We don't want to be left out because when we transact things, everyone in the world will start transacting over the Internet. Why should we stop the whole trend? We'll just make our lives miserable," Santos said.

He added that not only stocks are getting into the Internet, but also other companies that wish to be at par with the new economic evolution.