The Internet's 10 Most Influential Filipinos

Ken Ilio

Profile.
Ken Ilio is known as a Web pioneer, having created the content for the Philippine community since 1994, specifically the multi- awarded mega-site Tribung Pinoy (http://www.tribo.org), and the first Philippine Web directory, Tanikalang Ginto (http://www.filipinolinks.com). Ilio actually works as a urologist at Chicago's Northwestern University Medical School. It's a wonder he was able to put up so much content doing this alone and on a part-time basis - Ilio himself searches high and low for anything related to the Philippines. He has done a project for PBS called Shattering the Silences and has since designed web pages for Filipino artists and photographers like Santiago Bose, Larry Alcala, and Ronald Soliman.

Why he's influential.

The Internet's 10 Most Influential Filipinos     The Survey Manny Amador Jim Ayson Fernando Contreras Joel Disini Willy Gan Ken Ilio William Padolina William Torres Leandro Verceles Jr. Rodolfo Villarica

Long before Filipino surfers logged on to Yehey and EDSA, they were already checking out Tanikalang Ginto to look for Filipino-related Web sites. To this date, it has remained one of the most comprehensive Filipino Web directory. He was also since 1995 giving out his Sigay icon award to the best site of the day. The directory is the Yahoo of Pinoys - it was there at the infancy of Philippine Web content. In this sense, Ilio has helped promote Filipino Web sites. Just as important, he helped create a Filipino community on the Net. He speaks of the Filipino diaspora throughout his site. Filipinos who were brought up abroad find solace in the pages of Tribung Pinoy, which is littered with all aspects of Filipino culture - his popular sections are The Filipino Gallery and The Filipino Cuisine.

Vision for the Net.
Since the early days of the legendary soc.culture.filipino newsgroup, which inspired his sites, Ilio already understood the importance of creating a community of cyber Pinoys. Having established content and community successfully, he plans to moce on to the next wave - e-commerce. His site is an affiliate of Amazon.com and CDNow, and has set up Made in the Philippines (http://www.madeinthephilippines.com), his own online store.