Trinidad-born tech­nol­o­gy ex­pert Bevil Wood­ing is the 2013 re­cip­i­ent of a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (Lac­nic).Es­tab­lished in 2009, the pres­ti­gious Lac­nic Award ho­n­ours peo­ple who have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of the In­ter­net and the In­for­ma­tion So­ci­ety in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. The award will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the Lac­nic 21 meet­ing, to be held May 4-9 in Canc�n, M�xi­co.

"This was com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed. It is an ho­n­our to re­ceive this award from Lac­nic," Wood­ing said. "This strength­ens my re­solve to con­tin­ue work­ing to en­sure that peo­ple are em­pow­ered to take ad­van­tage of tech­nol­o­gy for the de­vel­op­ment and ben­e­fit of our re­gion."

A pi­o­neer in the de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions and ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources, Wood­ing wears many hats in his work across the re­gion and around the world.

As an In­ter­net strate­gist and Caribbean out­reach manger for the US-based re­search non-prof­it, Pack­et Clear­ing House, he has been the lead­ing ad­vo­cate for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of In­ter­net Ex­change Points (IX­Ps) in the Caribbean. His ef­forts have led to the es­tab­lish­ment of IX­Ps in Grena­da, the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Do­mini­ca and Bar­ba­dos.

He is al­so the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, a Caribbean-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it op­er­at­ing in more than 80 coun­tries. Wood­ing leads the or­gan­i­sa­tion's glob­al tech­ni­cal team and has pi­o­neered the de­vel­op­ment of In­ter­net stream­ing ap­pli­ca­tions now used around the world.More re­cent­ly, he has worked with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) to de­vel­op the Caribbean's first-ever Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus. He was al­so in­stru­men­tal in cre­at­ing CXCs first ever ful­ly dig­i­tal syl­labus ori­en­ta­tion train­ing.

In ad­di­tion, he is one of the co-ar­chi­tects and the pro­gramme di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union's Caribbean ICT Road­show. Through the Road­show, Wood­ing has helped com­mu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ments across the re­gion un­der­stand is­sues rang­ing from In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture and broad­band ac­cess in the Caribbean to cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and the im­pact of so­cial me­dia on par­ent­ing and ed­u­ca­tion.

Re­flect­ing on the award, Wood­ing said: "In spite of the many chal­lenges, I re­main con­vinced that the our re­gion has the cre­ativ­i­ty and the ca­pac­i­ty to lever­age the In­ter­net and re­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies to ad­dress our unique chal­lenges, but al­so to cre­ate unique op­por­tu­ni­ties for our com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es and so­ci­ety. I be­lieve we can and will take our right­ful place in the glob­al In­ter­net so­ci­ety."

A vir­tu­al tech­nol­o­gy am­bas­sador, Wood­ing reg­u­lar­ly rep­re­sents the in­ter­ests of the re­gion at in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra. He has al­so come in for wide praise for his in­no­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing Tech­Link, iCAN Mo­bile App De­vel­op­ment and eBook Pub­lish­ing work­shops, to in­tro­duce young peo­ple to dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation through his Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion non-prof­it.

"His ef­forts have been dis­tin­guished by a de­lib­er­ate com­mit­ment to col­lab­o­ra­tion and an em­pha­sis on build­ing re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ties," said Bernadette Lewis, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union. Lewis was on the pan­el of judges for the Lac­nic award, along­side not­ed In­ter­net ex­perts such as Ida Holz, Rafael Ibar­ra, Car­los A Afon­so and Ro­dri­go de la Par­ra.

One of the main fac­tors be­hind his suc­cess, Wood­ing said, was the part­ner­ships he has forged. In 2010, Wood­ing was ap­point­ed by the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers as one of sev­en In­ter­net gate­keep­ers, called Trust­ed Com­mu­ni­ty Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (TCRs), and as­signed a smart-card with part of a spe­cial code used to se­cure do­main names.

"It is an ho­n­our to have the sup­port and friend­ship of so many in­cred­i­bly tal­ent­ed and ex­treme­ly com­mit­ted in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions from the re­gion and across the world."A found­ing mem­ber of the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG), Wood­ing led the vol­un­teer-based or­gan­i­sa­tion to be­come in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised and trust­ed com­mu­ni­ty of tech­ni­cal stake­hold­ers.

"Bevil's en­er­gy, com­mit­ment to hu­man de­vel­op­ment and un­wa­ver­ing faith in the po­ten­tial of the re­gion has been an in­spi­ra­tion to the CaribNOG com­mu­ni­ty," said Stephen Lee, lead co-or­di­na­tor for CaribNOG.Wood­ing shares in­sights on the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor in Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters, a syn­di­cat­ed col­umn which has been pub­lished in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Be­lize, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia and T&T.

Lac­nic is an in­ter­na­tion­al, non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion es­tab­lished in Uruguay in 2002. It is re­spon­si­ble for as­sign­ing and ad­min­is­trat­ing In­ter­net num­ber­ing re­sources for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. It is one of the five Re­gion­al In­ter­net Reg­istries that ex­ist world­wide. It is man­aged and run by a board of sev­en di­rec­tors elect­ed by Lac­nic mem­bers who in­clude more than 2000 net­work op­er­a­tors pro­vid­ing ser­vices in 33 Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.