Mars Cacacho on IT Professionals, Tuguegarao’s Potential, and an Imagined Conversation with Steve Jobs
This is the final article from our weekly series featuring IdeaSpace’s five brand ambassadors.
Mc Allen Reonel Sebastian “Mars” Cacacho is an IT security professional who founded HackTheNorth.ph, a non-profit organization that organizes tech conferences, hackathons, and workshops in the northern Philippines. A shaker of the IT community, Mars helped IdeaSpace bring its technopreneur bootcamp to Tuguegarao City last year. Besides being an IT officer for the Department of Education and a professor at St. Paul University, he is now an IdeaSpace ambassador for Cagayan Valley.
I interviewed Mars to learn more about how he wants to connect IT professionals to students, why he sees potential in his local community, and what he would talk to Steve Jobs about if he were still alive.
Why did you decide to become an IdeaSpace Brand Ambassador?
To meet new networks, to learn from Startup Founders, and to create links for startups in my community.
What role do you think technopreneurship plays in the Philippines?
Technopreneurship is both a challenge and an opportunity in our country. We have the human and physical resources, we just need proper mentoring and partners from the industry and the government to help us get to our grails.
How did you get involved in your local community?
I’ve been a leader since campus days; I grew circles in my community across fields and nurtured them. While away for work in the IT Security industry in Manila, I found the needs of my community (in Tuguegarao) — things we can’t give. We have college instructors who teach entrepreneurship who aren’t even entrepreneurs, teachers teaching business who haven’t even put up their own sari-sari stores, professors who teach systems administration who don’t have experience handling computer servers, and more. That pain in this locality became a bridge for IT professionals to conglomerate and help bring industry knowledge to college students as well as upgrade skill sets of young professionals.
What’s the best thing about your local community?
There’s a rich potential in our place when it comes to human resources. We have produced rockstar programmers and hackers who build systems of SMBs and SMEs across the valley. We have graduates who excel in the industry. We have the talents. It’s just a matter of time before we can push them to cross the line and become technopreneurs. For me, Tuguegarao is a living startup timebomb, and I’d like to be one of the bastions for it to be triggered.
How would you like to contribute as an Ideaspace Ambassador?
Create our first locally grown Startup Success Story.
What advice do you have to technopreneurs just starting out?
Be relentless!
Now onto a round of quick-fire questions. What inspires you to get out of bed in the morning?
The thought that no two days are the same — doing something new for the day. Creating ripples and touching more lives.
What business would you love to start?
A co-working space or training center.
What crazy new invention do you want to see built by the year 2050?
Portable poop machines — they turn your poop to chocolate bars! Oh yeah!
If you could have a conversation with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Steve Jobs. I love to hear his revolutionary thoughts on the ideas that I’d present him. My researches, my inventions, my plans for my community and the future of HackTheNorth.ph.
