Ger­ard Best

The Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC) has an­nounced that Trinidad-born tech­nol­o­gy ex­pert Bevil Wood­ing is the 2013 re­cip­i­ent of a Life­time Achieve­ment Award.

Es­tab­lished in2009, the LAC­NIC award ho­n­ours peo­ple­who have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of the In­ter­net and the In­for­ma­tion So­ci­ety in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

"It's an ho­n­our to re­ceive this pres­ti­gious award from LAC­NIC. This was com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed. This recog­ni­tion strength­ens my re­solve to con­tin­ue work­ing to en­sure that our peo­ple, in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments are ful­ly em­pow­ered to use tech­nol­o­gy for the de­vel­op­ment of our re­gion," Wood­ing said.

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 an­In­ter­net 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 the in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it Con­gress WBN where he has pi­o­neered the de­vel­op­ment of In­ter­net stream­ing and soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions now used across the world. He has al­so worked with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) to de­vel­op the Caribbean's first-ever Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus.

In ad­di­tion, he is one of the co-ar­chi­tects and the Pro­gram Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union'sCaribbean ICT Road­show. The Road­show has helped em­pha­sise 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 am con­vinced that the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca has the cre­ativ­i­ty, and the ca­pac­i­ty to make a mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the In­ter­net and on glob­al 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 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 link­ing build­ing re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ties," said Bernadette Lewis, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union.

Lewis sat on the pan­el of judges for the award, along­side not­ed In­ter­net ex­perts such as Ida Holz, Rafael Ibar­ra, Car­los A. Afon­so and Ro­dri­go de la Par­ra.

Wood­ing is a found­ing mem­ber of the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG). Through his con­tri­bu­tion as­Pro­gram Di­rec­tor, CaribNOG has be­come a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty of com­put­er net­work op­er­a­tors and tech­ni­cal stake­hold­ers. The vol­un­teer based group now pro­vides a unique re­gion­al fo­rum for shar­ing tech­ni­cal ex­pe­ri­ences and build­ing hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty.

"It is an ho­n­our to have the sup­port and friend­ship of so many in­cred­i­bly tal­entedand ex­treme­ly com­mit­ted in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions from the re­gion and across the world," Wood­ing said. Wood­ing's Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters col­umn ap­pear­sweek­ly in Thurs­day's Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine.