In this our January 2021 Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Bianca Welds and Lendon Telesford, the panel discusses digital transformation:  where do we see the future of digital transformation for Caribbean organisations and businesses this year; and have all of the movements that supposedly were made towards digital transformation, have they truly been fostering transformation?

 

This episode is also available in Apple iTunes, Google Play Music and on Stitcher!

As much as there was talk about digital transformation over the past few years, to the point where the term had lost its lustre from overuse, it became a concept that many organisations and governments began to take to heart in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the countrywide lockdowns, curfews, school closures and work-from-home measures being instituted over the course of last year, organisations and businesses that previously had not been leveraging technology, essentially, were forced to do so to ensure their survival.

At the time of writing, we are in the first month of 2021, and COVID-19 still rages, but vaccines have been developed and are in the process of being rolled out globally. In other words, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

However, cognisant of the dramatic shift to digital that was made last year – which for many organisations should be the starting point for implementation of a more comprehensive digital transformation exercise – there is a growing concern that the transformation effort will either not continue, or organisations will revert to their previous ways of working.

Furthermore, as much as organisations might have been quick to adopt new technologies and digital modalities, it could be argued that the associated physical and social environments in which, and for which, these adoptions occurred, may not necessary show or experience any marked improvement. For example, although there was considerable focus on securing computing devices for students, the learning experience might not necessarily have been made easier or as effective. Hence, while there might have been improvement in one aspect, such as in securing tablet computers for students, the wider ecosystem that also ought to addressed, such as to ensure effective digital learning, frequently is not considered, which consequently limits the transformation experienced.

The above considerations underpin our first Community Chat of 2021 and our first episode for the year. Some of the issues discussed included:

  • the importance of process review and redesign
  • the role of education
  • the dramatic, ‘disruptive’ and unpredictable nature of digital transformation on organisations
  • what services an organisation or business thinks it is providing to its customers, and what it is in fact providing, might be wildly different
  • whether politics in the Caribbean has been hindering digital transformation
  • whether we are asking too much of organisations when the wider environment is either not digital or not moving towards being digital fast enough.

 

Bianca Welds

Introducing our guests

Bianca Welds is a technology professional with a passion for innovation and entrepreneurial thinking and the heart of a creative. She has worked in the public and private sector in technology, business and the arts.

Bianca has brought a background working with entrepreneurs and start-ups in technology and the creative industries to her current focus on corporate innovation and digital transformation as Digital Innovation Manager for the Victoria Mutual Group. A creative thinker and passionate technology community leader, she has presented to local and international audiences on business model innovation, community building, and the intersections of the arts and technology.

Lendon Telesford

Lendon Telesford holds an M.Eng in Computer Applied Technology from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China and a B.Sc with Honours in Management Information System from St. George’s University, Grenada. Lendon currently serves as the Telecommunications/ICT Specialist at the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Grenada.

He has a special interest in national and Caribbean development, demonstrated through his work at the Regulator to promote the development and use of the .gd country code top level domain and Grenada Internet Exchange Point. Passionate about the application of technology, and its potential to affect social change. Lendon co-founded Sonover, a Grenadian-based technology/software development agency. He also serves as a committee member for the Universal Service Fund (Grenada), and provides advice on the selection of projects for the benefit of persons in unserved and underserved communities.

   

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Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode, or otherwise, might be useful:

 

 

Image credits: Gerd Altmann (Pixabay); B Welds; L Telesford

Music credit: Ray Holman