ST JOHN'S, AN­TIGUA.The Gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has part­nered with Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion spe­cial­is­ing in tech­nol­o­gy train­ing, to host a Mo­bile App De­vel­op­ment Work­shop at the new­Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Tech­nol­o­gy En­deav­our (GATE)ICT Cadet Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty in St John's.

Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the work­shop, An­tiguan Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Dr Ed­mund Man­soor said, "I am pleased to have Bright­Path, the re­gion's lead­ing provider of mo­bile app and dig­i­tal con­tent train­ing to An­tigua for this his­toric work­shop."

"The over­whelm­ing re­sponse to the Mo­bile App Work­shop con­firms the high lev­el of in­ter­est and ex­cite­ment in learn­ing how to cre­ate mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions ap­plies in An­tigua," Man­soor said.

The two-week work­shop, which was over­sub­scribed just two days af­ter it was an­nounced, is de­signed to pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with the abil­i­ty to de­sign, build and mar­ket mo­bile apps.

Mo­bile pen­e­tra­tion ex­ceeds 100 per cent in sev­er­al Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. Busi­ness­es are wak­ing up to the im­por­tance of de­vel­op­ing lo­cal apps to tap in­to the po­ten­tial of the mo­bile mar­ket­place.

The Mo­bile App de­vel­op­ment work­shop is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Bevil Wood­ing,Bright­Path Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor,and a team of vol­un­teer in­dus­try prac­ti­tion­ers. Over the past two years Bright­Path has been suc­cess­ful at train­ing over 500 per­sons across the Caribbean in the fun­da­men­tals of mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment.

"Our mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment work­shops, much like our oth­er dig­i­tal con­tent train­ing pro­grams, are aimed at strength­en­ing the mo­bile app ecosys­tem in the Caribbean," Wood­ing said.

"Our train­ing places a high pri­or­i­ty on col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­ter­ac­tiv­i­ty and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Par­tic­i­pants are chal­lenged to think cre­ative­ly not just about their app ideas, but how they in­tend to help make the en­vi­ron­ment more con­ducive to mo­bile busi­ness."

He ex­plained that the avail­abil­i­ty of a high qual­i­ty train­ing fa­cil­i­ty, a struc­tured men­tor­ship pro­gram and a ready mar­ket for mo­bile prod­ucts, gave An­tigua and Bar­bu­da a dis­tinct ad­van­tage in build­ing a sus­tain­able lo­cal mo­bile app in­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Man­soor, the strong show­ing of sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor is an in­di­ca­tion of the im­por­tance of mo­bile apps to lo­cal and re­gion­al busi­ness.

"We ful­ly ex­pect this pro­gramme will en­cour­age lo­cal de­vel­op­ers to get ac­tive­ly in­volved in the cre­ation of an ecosys­tem of lo­cal apps in An­tigua and the wider Caribbean," Man­soor said.

He de­scribed the Mo­bile App Work­shop as part of Gov­ern­ment's wider strat­e­gy to use the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar GATE fa­cil­i­ty to bring prac­ti­cal train­ing in tech­nol­o­gy skills to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bright­Path is part of a long term part­ner­ship with the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion to de­liv­er dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation train­ing through the Gov­ern­ment's GATE pro­gram.

The work­shop, which runs from Oc­to­ber 8 to 18 at GATE fa­cil­i­ty in St John's, is be­ing sup­port­ed by Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and mo­bile providers Dig­i­cel, and LIME.