St George's–A new ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tive is seek­ing to change how In­ter­net users across the Caribbean take ad­van­tage of tech­nol­o­gy. Tech­Link, an ini­tia­tive of the Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, in part­ner­ship with Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, kicked off in Grena­da with the goal of in­spir­ing more in­no­v­a­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy in the re­gion.Par­tic­i­pants at the in­au­gur­al Tech­Link event in Grena­da came away en­er­gized with new ideas about how tech­nol­o­gy can be used in their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es.

From stu­dents want­i­ng to ap­ply new tech tips and tricks, to build­ing their own gad­gets us­ing a low-cost, cred­it-card sized com­put­er called the Rasp­ber­ry Pi, par­tic­i­pants at the youth-fo­cused seg­ment of the pro­gramme were left call­ing for more. Sev­er­al young par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed an in­ter­est in learn­ing more about mak­ing dig­i­tal mu­sic and cre­at­ing ebooks and mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions.

Small busi­ness op­er­a­tors al­so ben­e­fit­ed from the ini­tia­tive. At a spe­cial half-day Small­Biz Tech­Link ses­sion, pre­sen­ters shared prac­ti­cal in­sights in­to how tech­nol­o­gy can be ap­plied to in­creas­ing per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy and im­prov­ing cus­tomer ser­vice us­ing so­cial me­dia.

One busi­ness own­er in the ser­vice sec­tor said: "I re­alise I need to ad­just some things which I start­ed, such as launch­ing a Face­book page for my busi­ness, but not in­vest­ing prop­er­ly in sus­tain­ing it. I've come away with a use­ful check­list of tips that I can im­me­di­ate­ly ap­ply to my busi­ness and to my per­son­al tech us­age."An­oth­er at­tendee, a graph­ic artist, said he learned some new things about an­nounc­ing and search­ing for on­line busi­ness which he can ap­ply di­rect­ly to his work.

Bevil Wood­ing, ar­chi­tect of the Tech­Link ini­tia­tive and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion said: "In­creas­ing the Caribbean's dig­i­tal foot­print de­pends on how well the re­gion builds the tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty to cre­ate dig­i­tal con­tent."

He added: "But it al­so de­pends on how well we un­der­stand what is at stake. In an age where the In­ter­net is play­ing such an im­por­tant role in so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, we have to make the shift from mere­ly be­ing con­sumers of some­one else's tech­nol­o­gy to be­ing pro­duc­ers of tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal con­tent that is rel­e­vant to our needs and our as­pi­ra­tions as Caribbean peo­ple.

"We need more Caribbean con­tent on­line whether its im­ages, text mu­sic, mo­bile apps or Caribbean prod­ucts; the In­ter­net is for every­one. It's time to start a rev­o­lu­tion in Caribbean dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation!"Wood­ing point­ed out some of the ob­sta­cles to tak­ing full ad­van­tage of In­ter­net op­por­tu­ni­ties and high­light­ed the im­por­tance of ac­cess to af­ford­able high-speed band­width as crit­i­cal for in­di­vid­ual and busi­ness users across the re­gion.

Rhea Yaw Ching, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing at Colum­bus said: "This month Colum­bus launched up­grad­ed speeds in Grena­da in­clud­ing its much an­tic­i­pat­ed 100megs to the home, mak­ing Grena­da part of an elite group of on­ly five coun­tries in the Caribbean to boast such speeds.Af­ford­able high-speed In­ter­net ac­cess is be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty across the re­gion, and Colum­bus is lead­ing the way."

She said the part­ner­ship with Bright­Path is new to the re­gion and slat­ed to ac­com­plish great things for the tech­nol­o­gy as­sist­ed-ad­vance­ment of Caribbean peo­ples and al­so part of Colum­bus' wider com­mit­ment to in­vest­ing in the com­mu­ni­ties it serves.For the Bright­Path and Colum­bus teams Grena­da is just the start.

CMC