How San Rafael Won the Webby Awards 2007
The idea of putting up our own website is the brainchild of two staffs of the Municipal Planning and Development Office, me and Hernando Vizmonte, Jr.(it is just unfortunate that Jun did not live to see it in the web, he died on a motorcycle accident last Sept 16, 2005).
His death made me more obsessed with the project I had only a little idea of what to do. First, we installed an internet connection in our office by subscribing to Smart Communication’s wireless broadband. Then in a monthly meeting of the Local Planning and Development Coordinators in Bulacan, a representative of Bitstop Network Services introduced their services.
With the flyers from BNS, where we found the contacts information, we started communicating with BNS, thinking that it is that simple to put up a site. It turned out to be a complicated procedure, but with the guidance of Ms. Jennifer Garcia, things started to fall into place.
Negotiations started in the early months of 2007, she recommended Mr. Reynante B. Salaysay as our website designer. With the blessing of our MPDC, Ms. Teresita G. Valero, I started negotiating with Mr. Salaysay regarding the design of our website. On our part, me and my co-employees in the Planning and Development Office, Mel Malvar, Mat Oliver Domingo and Celia Cruz, started gathering materials for the website, we did the researches and gathered pictures of establishments, historical sites, events, and all materials that will be interesting enough to our website’s viewers.
I did the write ups and information posted in the site. In between these jobs, I have to coordinate with Ms. Noli V. Boquiren with regards to the transfer of ownership of the site since the original website (www.sanrafael.gov.ph) was being hosted by the National Computer Center.
In doing all these, we encountered hardships, there is a time that we need to gather pictures but we cannot borrow a service vehicle from the municipality so we have to use own vehicle to complete the task. There’s also the issue of the payment to the developers of the site.
An oversight on our part due to eagerness maybe, we didn’t consider that there will be regulations that we might violate once we arrange the payment for the web development contract. The budget will only allow paying for half of the contract price. Since the site is almost finished, we are now on a dilemma on where we may source out the rest of the fund needed.
We even had to borrow from our Vice-Mayor Rino V. Castro (now it can be told) some money for the payment. An idea came to me one night while worrying about the payment; I suggested that we realign a portion of our fund for another office project provided that the realignment would not compromise it.
I humbly sought advice from our mayor’s consultant, Mr. Lito Yulo (now it can be told again). He said it is alright to realign some fund as long as the other project won’t be compromised and assured by the Budget Officer that it is legally possible. This ended the dilemma in our website.
Now comes our task of promoting the site, we used friendster accounts, yahoo messenger, yahoo!mail text messages and flyers and I even had stickers made that we pasted in our vehicles. We encouraged our friends and relatives to promote the site. A few hours before the awarding ceremony, as requested our former Parish Priest, Rev. Fr. Dennis Espejo and his assistant Rev. Fr. Melchor Ignacio to pray for our site.
Now that we have won the award, I would like to the first Our Lord, He is truly our King, our Mayor Ricardo Silverio, Vice Mayor Nono Castro, Ms. Teresita Valero, Nante Salaysay, Ber Rueda, Ms. Noli Boquiren, the late Jun Vizmonte, Mel Malvar, Mat Domingo, Celia Cruz, Jennifer Garcia, Gigi, Jenny and Ate Evelyn, Ate Emy Trinidad, all San Rafaelenos who served as our inspiration and my family for the encouragement and patience in me while trying to achieve what some think is next to impossible. Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat. Mabuhay ang San Rafael!!!
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