THANK YOU…CHIN BAUTISTA JOSON, AAA’S TECH GURU!
By Ana de Villa-Singson
CHIN BAUTISTA JOSON
It’s hard to miss Chin…she towers at 5’10” and when she joined the AAA Board 4 years ago, she was our youngest and tallest ever Trustee. Her entry into the AAA is a funny story. Celebrating their Silver Velada, her batch needed a representative to run for the AAA Board. Arriving late for a batch meeting, she was “awarded” with the task of running for the AAA Elections! And are we glad that she was late, that she ran and that she won; because Chin leaves an indelible mark and huge shoes to fill in the AAA.
Chin is a “techie!” and soon she found herself in most of the AAA’s committees: she co-headed the Database and Website Committees and played prominent roles in the Magnificart Online Auction Committee, Nominations and Elections Committee and the Batch Representatives Committee.
Chin… AAA Trustee, 2020 – 2022. Co-Chair of the Database and Website Committees, IT head for Magnificart Online Auction, Committee member of the Nominations & Elections, Batch Representatives Committees
I got to know Chin well because of the Magnificart Online Auction. At the height of the pandemic, badly in need of funds to help our Mission Schools, I suggested an art auction and was quickly corralled to head the committee and make it happen. The first person I asked to join was Chin. I had no clue about putting an auction online. Happily, Chin is a quick study. She quickly scouted available auction programs and chose one. We spent countless Zoom nights, sometimes ending at 4 a.m., designing the auction’s platform. I would draw scribbles on papers which I would hold up for her to see, some sort of page design…and she would somehow make it happen on the computer. She did the heavy lifting, all the while drinking tons of coffee and munching, munching, munching away (Chin thinks very well when munching….a happy discovery, since I do too!). I learned too that Chin is very frugal. When I would request a design add-on which we could buy online for a few dollars, Chin would refuse to spend. She would spend hours tinkering with apps rather than pay for the upgrade…and figured everything out for free! She works hard too…juggling motherhood, business owner, a full house ( literally a full house, since she had over 20 ++ programmers living in their office, close to her home), plus Velada! Despite the many roles she juggled, she was generous with her time.
The Magnificart online presence was beautiful! Almost 400 items for auction were categorized into books whose pages would flip and whose images you could zoom into. There were even video tutorials on how to easily navigate the auction pages. It was so beautiful that I had 2 inquiries, one from a trustee of a venerable auction house and another from a biz magnate, asking who had designed the Magnificart platform. I proudly said it was in-house, created by one our very own! That’s Chin…impressive all the way!
Chin’s teaching skills and patience were much tested. When we launched the Website in September 2021, she held a Zoom tutorial on how to layout the articles. For Magnificart, she taught Pilar Villanueva (co-AAA Trustee and our Magnificart collaborator then) and me to upload and paginate hundreds of pages for the auction flip books. It’s a testatment to her teaching skills that her students were able to do pretty layouts for the Assumpta magazine and that Magnificart’s pages were successfully loaded by non-techies!
Chin’s imprint is found in many of AAA’s big projects. For AAA Club-bing, she put together the AAA Organizing Club and invited the much sought after Konmari consultant, Christine Dy Chiao, as our club’s instructor. Chin also invited Rea Gomez to teach alumnae Crochet 101 for the AAA Crafts club , one of the most successful, fun and prolific clubs of AAA. For the Database Committee, she extracted historic data which we are now trying to update. For the Nominations and Elections Committee, she designed the election voting platform which was intuitive and easy to use and which helped us to successfully hold online elections. Just last week, no longer a Trustee, she was still in the AAA office, instructing me and Mariana Lopa, one of our new trustees, on how to navigate and unify the data base. That’s Chin…generous to a fault, giving time even past her Board tenure and bringing loads of coffee and donut munchies to pass around.
Chin…we’re not saying bye! We wish you all the best with your many roles and say…see you next time…till the next meeting…till the next munchy session!
From all of us…the biggest heartfelt THANK YOU!
From me…thank you for being a friend!