OUR annual business guide, the best (and I think only) one of its kind in the Philippines, The Manila Times 500 (And the next 500) finally hit the street this week. This is the 8th edition of the guide; I’ve been involved one way or another in seven of those, and Editor for the past four. That simply makes me the slightly louder voice in a very large choir; it takes a big team to put this together, and if it were not for their hard work and long hours, it would never happen.
The theme for this year is “AI integration, workforce transformation,” since one can’t turn around these days without tripping over someone talking about AI. Whether they are talking about it with enthusiasm or fear depends on their point of view, but they are talking about it. From a personal perspective, having this as the theme challenged me to critically examine my own perceptions of AI. An indicator of how difficult that actually was to do is that my thoughts on the matter (which appear on p. 4 and begin with, “I am not comfortable with AI.”) went through four drafts before I was satisfied with the article. That is rare; most of what I write for daily publication comes straight out of the gun. My special thanks to my Associate Editor and sherpa Raymond Gregory “Tribs” Tribdino for being my badly needed second pair of eyes in this instance. Tribs also contributed a compelling, more human-centered viewpoint for the magazine.
You can obtain your own copy of The Manila Times 500 (And the next 500) by inquiring through The Manila Times’ various digital and social media platforms; it will also be available through National Bookstore, or through our ‘official’ Lazada online store (search for “The Manila Times Publishing Corp.” in the Lazada app), although it may be a few days until it reaches those outlets, as it only came out of the printing plant about three days ago.
