In this Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Melissa Farara and Oshane Bailey, the panel discusses: What will it take for the Caribbean to become the next Silicon Valley? And what should be the starting point for regulators/competition authorities in this digital age?

 

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

When we share our aspirations with others, we may find that quite regularly, we are prompted to provide updates on whether or not we have achieved what we have set out to do. In Caribbean societies, policymakers are known for sharing various aspirations for their countries. However, it is not always clear whether they expect the populace to hold them to account for whether those aspirations come to fruition.

In this the March 2021 Community Chat, our guests are asking us to confront some of these ‘lofty goals’ that that policymakers have been proclaiming over the past several years:

  • becoming the next Silicon Valley; and
  • 5G.

However, let’s introduce our guests, and the specific questions we will be discussing in this episode.

 

Introducing our guests and topics

Oshane Bailey

Oshane Bailey is an experienced Full Stack Engineer with several years of experience in the tech industry with the aim of digitising and automating business processes and workflows. He recently co-founded Osoobe Ltd, which is a venture studio that designs and develops strategies and solutions to problems through the means of AI, automation and digital transformation.

Oshane has participated in Google Summer of Code both as a student in 2017 and as a mentor in 2018. Today, he continues to contribute to the open-source and various tech communities both locally and internationally through the Jamaican Developers Community, with which he is also a co-founder. Through the Jamaican Developers Community, he has organized a multitude of events, training and workshops, which includes Careers in Tech, WordPress, Cybersecurity and Testing Workshop, Google Summer of Code Meetup and Build-it Workshops.

With regard to the Caribbean region becoming the next Silicon Valley, it is vision that Caribbean policymakers have been espousing for at least a decade. However, from all observations, we are nowhere near to achieving that. As a software developer himself, which tends to be a sought-after skill in the ‘Silicon Valleys of the world’, and the Co-Founder of the Jamaica Developer Community, Oshane is concerned that the effort and focus needed for the Caribbean tech space to truly live up to its potential has not been applied. Hence, using Silicon Valley as a metaphor for realising the region’s tech potential, he is thus prompting us to examine, What will it take for the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, to become the next Silicon Valley?

 

Melissa Farara

Melissa Farara is the Economist at the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) in the British Virgin Islands, where she works on market analysis, competition assessments, policy and data analysis relating to the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors, assisting the development of the Commission’s position on key regulatory and competition issues. She is a member of the Future Leaders Network of the International Institute of Communications (IIC) and a Founding Member of the Academy of Regulatory Professionals at the Public Utility Research Centre (PURC).

Melissa has over 10 years of experience in regulation and has a passion for regulatory and competition issues and practices relating to small island nations like those in the Caribbean, particularly covering the digital economy. She holds a MSc in Specialized Economic Analysis: Competition and Market Regulation from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics) in Barcelona, Spain, and a BSc degree in International Economics and Business from Mary Baldwin College in the United States of America. 

As a regulator, Melissa is aware that across the Caribbean, the regulatory frameworks are dated, and so can hamper not only technological advancement in the region, but also innovation, which tends to precede regulation. Recently, an important tech development has been 5G (fifth generation mobile/cellular technology), which to varying degrees, Caribbean countries are eager to see implemented. However, several challenges are beginning to emerge, including the willingness of the telecoms companies to deploy the technology in the region, and whether current regulatory frameworks can capably manage 5G, and its attendant services and requirements. Hence, Melissa asked the question and was prepared to share her personal views on, What should be the starting point for regulators/competition authorities in this digital age?

 

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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: M Farara; O Bailey; ADMC (Pixabay); Free-Photos (Pixabay)

Music credit: Ray Holman