Ger­ard Best

With so much dig­i­tal me­dia con­sump­tion now tak­ing place on mo­bile apps, it's no sur­prise that many tech in­no­va­tors are fo­cus­ing not on desk­top com­put­ers but on small­er, do-it-all, hand­held de­vices. You could say small is the new big.

The East­ern Caribbean is­land of Grena­da is keen to join coun­tries around the re­gion in help­ing its youth par­tic­i­pate in the lu­cra­tive glob­al mo­bile-app in­dus­try. Thir­ty ea­ger par­tic­i­pants rang­ing from sec­ondary stu­dents to civ­il ser­vants and sea­soned tech prac­ti­tion­ers re­cent­ly took part in Bright­Path Foun­da­tion's App­Mas­ter mo­bile work­shop, held as part of the coun­try's Na­tion­al ICT Week ac­tiv­i­ties.

The App­Mas­ter Work­shop is spe­cial­ly de­signed by Bright­Path, an in­ter­na­tion­al tech ed­u­ca­tion non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion tha­ten­cour­age de­vel­op­ment and up­take of mo­bile apps in emerg­ing mar­kets like the Caribbean.

"I nev­er thought I would be able to turn my ideas in­to mo­bile apps, un­til this work­shop," said 22-year-old Clevon Joseph, one of par­tic­i­pants at the one-day work­shop at the Grena­da Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in St Georges, last week.

"I have a whole new un­der­stand­ing of the app de­vel­op­ment process. It was an ex­cel­lent work­shop with great prac­ti­cal ex­er­cis­es," said Cher­ry-Ann Lewis, one of sev­er­al young ladies tak­ing part in the event.

The work­shop tar­get­ed the coun­try's tourism, agri­cul­ture, health and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor­sas po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a Caribbean mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment thrust.

"At a time when the re­gion is look­ing for new ways to spur eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, en­cour­ag­ing in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty of youth is key," said Bevil Wood­ing, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path.

"Tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides a nat­ur­al at­trac­tion point for the youth but by it­self it is not enough. Train­ing pro­grams have to al­so im­part a sense of mis­sion and civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if they are to be ef­fec­tive in mak­ing a na­tion­al and re­gion­al im­pact."

The App­Mas­ter mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment course was de­signed by Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an in­ter­na­tion­al tech ed­u­ca­tion non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, toen­cour­age de­vel­op­ment and up­take of mo­bile apps in emerg­ing mar­kets like the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to Em­manuel Si­mon, a Bright­Path vol­un­teer fa­cil­i­ta­tor. Si­mon, a Har­vard-ed­u­cat­ed mo­bile app de­vel­op­er, is co-founder of Reela, a mo­bile com­merce tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny based in New York.

At­last week's work­shop, Si­mon was busy help­ing the en­thu­si­as­tic­par­tic­i­pants nav­i­gate the process of build­ing cus­tomised apps that fo­cused on solv­ing spe­cif­ic lo­cal prob­lems.

Make­va Lewis, a work­shop par­tic­i­pant said, "I didn't re­alise app de­vel­op­ment could be so much fun. I have a much clear­er pic­ture of the im­por­tance of team work, and the role I can play. Do­ing the App­Mas­ter train­ing has made me re­al­ly ea­ger to find and solve prob­lems from my own com­mu­ni­ty!"

The­ICT Week in­clud­ed a se­ries of tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives, held through­out the coun­try over five days.

Er­ic Nurse, Grena­da's Na­tion­al ICT Co­or­di­na­tor, said, "This mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion train­ing has been the one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed and en­gag­ing ses­sions at our ICT Week 2015 event. It has been amaz­ing to wit­ness the lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the fa­cil­i­ta­tor and the par­tic­i­pants. The Bright­Path team's prac­ti­cal ap­proach and fo­cus on iden­ti­fy­ing lo­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties re­al­ly im­pact­ed the par­tic­i­pants and made this work­shop a suc­cess."

Since its launchin 2012, Bright­Path'sApp­Mas­ter pro­gram has touched more than 800 par­tic­i­pants in nine Caribbean coun­tries. Di­rect­ly ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges of the re­gion and high­light­ing the lo­cal, re­gion­al and glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to Caribbean app de­vel­op­ers, Wood­ing said, was key to the pro­gramme's con­tin­ued suc­cess.

"From the in­cep­tion, there has been great par­tic­i­pa­tion in all our dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation pro­grams. We have been work­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ments across the re­gion to de­liv­er train­ing, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, that com­bines tech­ni­cal know-how with val­ues-based prin­ci­ples. Par­tic­i­pants of­ten tell usthat they feel more con­fi­dent and em­pow­ered to start tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es or seek em­ploy­ment in the re­gion's grow­ing IT in­dus­try."

Over the com­ing months, Bright­Path plans to host sim­i­lar work­shops in St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

In Sep­tem­ber, a re­gion­al App De­vel­op­ment hackathon will give par­tic­i­pants from across the Caribbean a fo­rum to ful­ly de­vel­op their mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions for pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Apps will tack­le re­gion­al prob­lems in ed­u­ca­tion, health, tourism, cul­ture, agri­cul­ture and civic ser­vices.

More in­for­ma­tion about the Bright­Path App­Mas­ter Ini­tia­tive is avail­able from Bright­Path's of­fi­cial web­site www.bright­path­foun­da­tion.org and on Twit­ter @bright­pathorg.