Gaspar Vibal

Gaspar brought Wiki to the Philippines by the creation of his WikiPilipinas which introduced the 'copyleft' IPR model of Wikipedia.[8] The WikiPilipinas team, headed by webmaster Richard Grimaldo (internet and telecommunications administrator of the Vibal Group of Companies) and Alfred Ursua as its managing editor , were responsible for Gaspar's initial Project Wikipiniana.[9][10] Gaspar projected for the long tail phenomenon or effect (Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson) of this Philippine Wiki encyclopedia to give more prominence to Filipino culture on the Internet.[11] Vibal complained that "almost all the articles in Wikipedia are written from a Western point of view". But aiming not just for balance, Vibal opted more for "a national campaign to foster nationalism". And like many local editions of Wikipedia, Wikipilipinas already suffers from the "frog in the well" syndrome: a regional ghetto of interest only to angry nationalists protesting that the Philippines is doomed and that it's all someone else's fault.[12] On March 15, 2008, Vibal's WikiPilipinas created WikiFilipino, for Filipino culture and information. It is managed by Alfred Ursua, with web support by Richard Grimaldo, and guidance by Roberto T. Añonuevo.[13]

Gaspar's Filipiniana.net is a digital library and online research portal "that houses the most comprehensive collection of Filipino- related documents that are in the public domain, from letters from Spanish Governor-General Pedro de Acuña to King Philip III to an obscure 1933 Philippine romance novel entitled "Ang Magmamani", and makes it all available to the public at no cost at all".[14] Launched on November 23, 2006, it was Richard Grimaldo's web development and applications expertise that was crucial in the development of Filipiniana.net to spearhead Vibal's vision "of democratizing Filipino access to information about the Philippines through the internet." It digitized rare and out of print books, documents, and images and publishing them online without any cost to the readers.[15] VIBAL Publishing's 1980 Educational Service Program (ESP) was a brainchild of Gaspar Vibal, and has "evolved to become a full-scale teacher-training program with year-round seminars and workshops to help teachers and school administrators nationwide meet the increasing demands and challenges posed by their profession".[16]

Vibal stated that: "Today, it (Filipiniana.net) has one of the widest and most comprehensive collection of hard-to-find Filipiniana books and documents categorized under history, geography, culture, government, and society. It also features photographs, maps, paintings and illustrations, the Virtual Philippine Revolutionary Records, 100 Nobelang Tagalog, Virtual Blair and Robertson, and the Master Union Bibliography of the Philippines, 100 Pinoy Komik Serials, Premio Zobel.org, and Archivo General de Filipinas." Vibal also announced the forthcoming birth of his brainchild e-turo.org.[7]

On June 12, 2008, the 110th Philippine Declaration of Independence day, e.turo.org was created by the Vibal Foundation, (owned by Gaspar Vibal and his family) a nonprofit organization which previously launched Filipiniana.net, and WikiPilipinas.org (a reference guide on the Philippines). Tin Mandigma, editor-in-chief of E-turo.org explained that it is an e-learning portal which "seeks to provide free and quality learning materials online to teachers and students; it gives teachers access to lesson plans and modules based on textbook materials published by Vibal Publishing House, Inc. amid plans to offer Department of Education-approved content from various learning institutions as supplementary teaching materials. One of the most common complaints of teachers is that while the Internet has so much information, most of it cannot be adapted to the local classroom. With this project, we hope to help teachers sort through the clutter and give them quality information that would be useful for their students."[17]

Vibal's partners in the industry were Jeroen Hellingman (Dutch director of Project Gutenberg Philippines, the world's first and biggest provider of free Philippine electronic books); Isaac Donoso, Spanish historian in Manila; Dr. Lloyd Espiritu, former dean of the De La Salle College of Computer Studies; University of the Philippines-based historian Grace Mateo; and Georgina Padilla Zobel of Premio Zobel.[7]