BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – Much fun, excitement and technology filled the Independence Square today (June 10) as the Caribbean Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Roadshow hosted an ‘ICT Village’.
The ICT Village was an exposition of ICT products, services and educational fora, and businesses in the realm of information and communication technology were able to showcase some of their products and services.
Some of the businesses that were on display included Advanced Vocational Educational Center (AVEC), which demonstrated the use of the Smart Board; Dancebeat Records, which displayed a variety of CDs that can be found on their website www.caribbeandownload.com.
LIME and Digicel both showcased a number of cellular phones up for sale, and persons were able to learn more about the services they provide, while Techsperts displayed some of their products that are available and persons with computers that needed repairing were able to get free assistance.
Presentations were made by ICT’s Business Development and Operations Manager Rodney Taylor and Trinidad’s Mobomess Managing Director Akhenaton LaBorde.
Taylor’s presentation was entitled ‘Cool Tech Tools’. In it he explained the significance and uses of a number of websites including www.googleearth.com, a world map where one can locate any geographical location; www.youtube.com, a website where persons can share or search for a wide array of music videos, movie clips, documentaries and educational videos; www.box.net where documents, media and all contents are stored online, so that they can be accessed, managed and shared from anywhere; www.skype.com, a free place to video chat with friends and loved ones.
LaBorde’s presentation was called ‘Power is in your hands’, and he explained some of the powerful applications that a BlackBerry Smartphone is capable of doing, most of which are unknown to many users.
Musical entertainment and refreshments were provided throughout the day and lots of giveaways were to the public’s avail.
Speaking with Rodney Taylor, he expressed that he was very pleased with the turnout of both the participants and the public, and that the ICT Village was a major success.
Chris Herbert of the National ICT Centre explained that, at first, he was very much concerned about how successful the ICT Village would be as many persons do not appear to have much interest in technology. However, his concern turned into amazement upon seeing the vast amount of people who not only showed up to view the products on display, but they also showed interest in learning about them.
Apart from the ICT Village, the Roadshow, under the theme “Harnessing the power of Innovation: the engine for ICT-enabled development”, provides a week of free technology training and educational activities as well as expert workshops.
Other upcoming events include an Internet Governance Workshop that will be held on June 14-15, where a wide range of schools, private and public sector personnel as well as civil society groups are expected to participate. Community outreach programmes throughout the Federation have also been promised.
The Roadshow will be travelling to Nevis on June 15.
The Roadshow is coordinated by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), in cooperation with the European Union-funded ICT for Education, Diversification and Competitiveness (ICT4EDC) programme and supported by the government of St. Kitts and Nevis.
The CTU is a regional inter-governmental organisation based in Trinidad and Tobago. It has designed the Caribbean ICT Roadshow specifically to educate, raise public awareness and establish strategic programmes to foster innovative and beneficial use of information and communication technology to Caribbean citizens.
