In this Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Nerissa Golden and Steven Williams, the panel discusses:  leveraging technology to increase job opportunities; and the opportunities and threats to the Caribbean ICT skills market, given the dynamics of a Big Data-driven world.

 

This episode is also available in Apple iTunes and on Stitcher!

For those who regularly listen to our monthly Community Chat podcast episodes, you may have noted that our guest panellists tend to be diverse characters. Although part of the regional ICT/tech community, typically, they are from different Caribbean countries, and have different professions and specialties.

Further, each panellist is invited to submit a topic for discussion in the episode, which on the face of it, may appear to have no relation to each other. However, for our February 2019 Community Chat, the topics were submitted on the same theme: jobs.

As technology continues to advance, and the way we live and work also changes and evolves, there has been a growing fear about how the workplace, and correspondingly, the job market is also changing. Computers, robotics, artificial intelligence, etc., are performing many of the tasks that human employees used to do, leaving the latter feeling displaced and uncertain about their future work prospects. However, more importantly, there is also a concern that societies – and in our context, those in the Caribbean – have not devised any strategy through which to manage the changing workplace, and/or to better position their citizens to take advantage of new and emerging opportunities.

However, it must be emphasised that devising a “strategy through which to manage the changing workplace”, does not necessary mean a strategy to deliver better employees: i.e., worker bees. It is essential that such strategies also focus on areas such as innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation, and on creating a more enabling environment for those elements to flourish.

So let’s introduce our guest panellists:

Nerissa Golden

Nerissa Golden. If Nerissa seems familiar it is because she was on one of our Community Chat episodes last year. Nerissa is based in Montserrat, and is the CEO of Goldenmedia, the Managing Editor of Discover Montserrat, and the Founder of Maverick Endeavours. At the core, Nerissa is a storyteller, and much of her business is about creating content for multiple platforms, along with helping others to tell their own story using technology.

Nerissa submitted the topic, “Leveraging technology to increase job opportunities”, which may have been prompted by the changing paradigm that has been occurring, However, instead of just despairing about the fact that the workplace is changing, she is challenging us to ferret out the opportunities that are emerging, thanks to ICT, and leverage them for our own continued development.

 

Steven Williams

Steven Williams. Steven is new to the ICT Pulse Podcast family. He is the Executive Director of Sunisle Communications Inc., which does business as Sunisle Technology Solutions, and was one of the first Internet consulting firms in Barbados. Steven is also a Microsoft Certified Professional, a Microsoft Small Business Specialist, and a Fortinet Security Analyst. He is also the first certified “e-Commerce architect” in Barbados.

In a similar vein, Steven’s topic was “The opportunities and threats to the Caribbean ICT skill market, given the dynamics of a Big Data-driven world”. Ironically, there is a demand for data analytics skills worldwide, and insufficient suitably-qualified individuals: so it would appear that Big Data is awash with lucrative job opportunities. However, by nature of his topic, Steven is concerned about the readiness of the Caribbean ICT skill market, which we discuss in the second half of the episode.

 

We would love to hear your thoughts!

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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:  neetalparekh (flickr);  N Golden; S Wiliams 

Music credit:  Ray Holman