Technology, a tool to redefine Montserrat’s position, says IT strategist

BRADES, Montserrat – Bevil Wooding, Chief Knowledge Officer and Project Director for the Caribbean ICT Roadshow says he would like to see Montserrat and the rest of the Caribbean use technology to redefine our position in the world.

Speaking during Wednesday’s Executive Lecture Forurm at the Montserrat Cultural Centre, Wooding explained that new technologies through the years began not with the technical or the gadget but with a human need. The plow, the steam engine, computers were created to solve human challenges and limitations.

“Today’s technology allows us to redefine Montserrat’s position. Social change is inextricably tied to technological change. Ultimately we cannot be just a region of consumers. We must begin to create our own products to serve immediate needs but also innovate new ways for moving forward,” he encouraged the audience of business leaders, educators and government officials.

The IT strategist laid out the numbers which show that Caribbean nationals are contributing the largest labor force to the OECD Countries. “Our tertiary educated professionals are the ones making the technological breakthroughs in other nations, yet the region cries for no resources. We are literary feeding the developed world.”

He said the region was hemorrhaging its best and brightest and the questions must be asked of our regional leaders what are the causes, can the problem be effectively treated and can the knowledge gap be closed.

Wooding said there was a “vision gap” between the perceived potential of the region and the sense of the efforts being made to realize it. He said the real constraints are: insularity rather than a singular Caribbean vision; inadequate commitment and conviction; insecurity at the operational leadership level; and inadequate exercise of political will.

“The challenge thrown down to the Caribbean in this season is for regional leadership to: articulate a compelling visionary definition of what the Caribbean as a region can become; develop strategies that make more effective use of the skills acquired by its professionals abroad in sectors relevant for the advance of Caribbean; and provide the region with a hope for the future that is more compelling than the one offered to them in foreign nations.”

He said our people must be made to see that we can “impact the world and transform societies from right here in the Caribbean.”

Denzil West, Director of the Department of Information Technology and E-government Systems (DITES) said we must use today’s technology such as web television to leverage the island’s content and send it to the wider world. “Technology allows for a two-way flow of information and it is time that we begin to do this.”

He encouraged the general public to avail themselves of the three-day conference from April 21 – 23, 2010 to learn about the possibilities but also what many on Montserrat are already doing with the available technology.
More information on the ICT Roadshow Montserrat is available at www.ictroadshow.ms.

ENDS