Brain Gain Network

The Brain Gain Network (BGN.ORG) is an organization geared towards building a community / network of Filipino IT professionals worldwide to help develop the IT industry in the Philippines and combat the forces of brain drain.

The project undertaken for the 2005-2006 RDVP fellowship is an enhancement of the current Brain Gain Network website that covers matchmaking services between a graduating CS/IT student in a Philippine academic institution with a potential sponsor or mentor.

The vision of the Brain Gain Network is to be the most widely used social networking / online community platform for addressing the problem of brain drain.

The mission of the Brain Gain Network is to provide a facilty that will meet the knowledge, collaboration and project management needs of potential partners, stakeholders, sponsors, investors, entrepreneurs, knowledge workers, volunteers and students, by leveraging technology and the power of networks to achive their individual goals that are in line with brain gain.

The objective for this project is to deliver a prototype of a modular enhancement to the Brain Gain Network (BGN.ORG) portal that provides academe-industry matchmaking services, as well as project management tools.

The social issue being addressed by this project is the exodus of skilled workers, in the ICT space in particular, weakening the country's capability to leapfrog from being an agricultural nation to a post-industrial one.

The general solution to the problem is to develop technopreneurial ventures to spur new economic activity that will generate local jobs. Technology's power to bridge physically disconnected people will aid in making this solution a reality.

This solution, once implemented in a particular territory, has the potential to provide a global connection between industry/private sector anywhere else in the world and local academic instutions, in such a way that these entities contribute to local economic activity.

Brain Gain Network, supported by Narra Ventures, a Philippine-based VC with ties to Silicon Valley
Filipino Business Association - an association of entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley
Hubport Interactive - a Davao City based IT firm that specializes in web and applications development.
Ateneo de Davao University - a university well known for its quality of CS/IT students

The resulting organization will be leveraging online technologies to accomplish its task. Manpower resources required to accomplish the tasks required will be mobilized with the incentive of partially owning ventures that have resulted out of the use of the site. The same goes for the organization that supports the platform, which, in this case, is Brain Gain Network.

The near-term impact is to see a handful of potential ventures being incubated with the help of the new BGN modules. The long-term impact is the blossoming of a technology cluster that emulates the academe-industry relationship of Silicon Valley in building innovative hi-tech ventures.

TBA

TBA

The major challenge of this project is engaging with volunteerism to get it off the ground. The challenges are not unique to the Brain Gain Network, as it shares with the same dilemma as found in other cause-oriented community websites, such as getting them to be active in the site.

The project of developing an enhancement of the site is still in its early stages. Meetings are being conducted with the various actors to make sure that their participation won't be difficult to solicit for.

September 20, 2005 to June 15, 2006 - 79 Finger Ave., Redwood City, CA, USA
June 16, 2006 onwards - 2nd Floor, Technotrade Building, R. Castillo Street, Davao City, Philippines 8000