Smart Barbados Week 2019 will take the form of a 4-day symposium hosted by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology (MIST) in partnership with the Barbados Chamber of Commerce (BCCI), the Barbados International Business Association (BIBA), Internet Society Barbados Chapter (ISOCbb), and the Small Business Association of Barbados.
It seeks to engage workforces and the wider Barbadian public with knowledge needed to support our transition to a Smart Barbados. This means adapting to new technologies, transforming traditional structures and working practices in our Public and Private Sector organisations to new digital standards.
Dr. Annalee C. Babb is an international consultant with more than 15 years in executive management specialising in international technology policy, innovation and management, telecommunications policy analysis, digital convergence, broadcasting, new media, entrepreneurship, branding, marketing, investment and export promotion.
She currently serves as Special Envoy and Special Advisor to the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology, Government of Barbados, where she offers strategic and policy guidance on national digital transformation, SMART Bridgetown, SMART Barbados, the University of the West Indies Innovation Hub, e-Government, e- Governance, investment climate efficiency, and the ease of doing business in Barbados.
From 2011 to 2015, Dr. Babb was a member of the International Advisory Board of The Research Council, Sultanate of Oman, where she provided strategic advice to foster innovation, leading-edge research, emerging technologies, and competitive advantages to help leverage the future development and prosperity of Oman.
Dr. Babb received her Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, where she wrote on “Small States, the Internet and Development: Pathways to Power in a Global Information Society”. She also holds the degrees of Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy, and Bachelor of Arts with honours in Mass Communications, Journalism and Political Science.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Claudette McGowan is a global information technology leader with more than 17 years of success leading digital transformations and designing new approaches that improve service experiences. She has worked in the technology industry for organizations such as Deloitte, Metropolitan Police Services, North York General Hospital and Bank of Montreal. Claudette began her career at BMO in 2000 and she is the current Chief Information Officer, Enterprise Technology Employee Experience.
Claudette is a published author of 5 books and founder of the Black Arts & Innovation Expo. Claudette holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Business Administration. In 2018, Claudette was recognized as Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada. In 2019, she was also the recipient of two prestigious awards: AdWeek Magazine heralded Claudette a Toronto Brand Star and the Digital Finance Institute honoured her as one of the Top 50 Canadian Women in FinTech.
Mark is one of those rare animals who’s developed long and successful track records at the highest levels of the digital and creative industries, in multiple disciplines – as a creative practitioner, as a business lead, and as an economic development strategist. With the ability to range from big visions to the tiniest detail, he couples strategy with successful, genuine and meaningful on-the-ground stuff.
He graduated from St Martin’s School of Art, London and became London’s [and probably the world’s] youngest commercials editor, then its youngest commercials director, making films across the world for clients including Coca Cola, Walt Disney, Volkswagen, Ford, Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Business-wise, he first took charge of the fortunes of a start-up at the age of 22, and helped it grow into one of the most successful commercials post-production companies around. He’s worked in, and with, start-ups pretty much ever since.
At the same time as working in film Mark took on many other creative challenges. In 1996 he became the world’s first Creative Head of a Premiership football club – helping to massively increase the brand power and commercial activities of [the then fashionable] Middlesbrough AFC. He was also co-founder and creative head of radical and highly successful training company ClickHere Ltd – sold to Tanfield Plc in 2003.
Mark has also sat on numerous advisory and regulatory boards at local, regional and national level, including Audiences North East, the Film and Television Skills Advisory Group, North East England [2003 – 2007], the Tees Valley Learning and Skills Council [2002 – 2006], and the Creative Industries Advisory Group Member, ONE North East [2001 – 2005].
In 2003 he took over DigitalCity in the Tees Valley, North East England: in the eleven years under his leadership it went from ‘troubled’ paper exercise to a fully-fledged and brilliantly successful creative and digital cluster initiative, acknowledged as one of the greatest projects of its type anywhere in Europe.
Mark was its ‘architect’ and champion, and with a mission to create and maintain a vibrant, successful and self-sustaining digital and creative supercluster. It delivered everything a regeneration project should do [which they often don’t], including massive company growth, hundreds of jobs, significant private sector investment and huge local economic impact. In his time there, Middlesbrough – the centre of the initiative – went from plumb bottom of over 400 areas in England to fourth place in terms of the proportion of high-growth-potential tech companies [Experian]; and in 2013 it was identified by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s digital hotspots – the only one in the UK north of Birmingham.
Mark’s history in tech has been a long one. The film industry has alawayds been an early adopter, and Mark ordered some of the first non-linear editing systems for the editing company he ran back in the 1980s. At DigitalCity he started his long association with tech accelerators: there in 2009 he co-founded The Difference Engine – Europe’s first true, intensive tech accelerator, and on moving to Scotland in 2014, designed and executed Scotland’s first accelerator – the UP Accelerator. And since 2015 he has been a major player at CivTech® – the world’s first ever public-sector focused accelerator: he’s currently its Programme Director.
He still walks the walk creatively, and is currently developing a potentially huge cross-gender, worldwide children’s entertainment franchise – a future-based action-adventure story universe with soccer, the world’s most popular sport, at its heart.
He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with his wife Janet Archer and a constant stream of visiting artists, performers and technologists. And when he has time he escapes to the wonderful, rugged landscape surrounding the city because he’s a passionate [but very slow] cyclist.
Julian is a best-selling author, serial entrepreneur and business consultant featured in Forbes, The Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Times and Huff Post.
Over the years he has launched award winning businesses, helped hundreds of startups raise funding and also worked with high profile brands including Virgin Media, the NHS, Transport for London and the World Bank.
In 2014 he founded Ultra Education – an organisation which teaches primary and secondary school children about business and entrepreneurship.
Since then Julian has worked with thousands of school children and is supported by 20 entrepreneurial ambassadors including Apprentice Winner Ricky Martin and Action Aid Chair and Non Exec Director of NHS England Margaret Casely Hayford.
He passionately believes if Britain is to safeguard it’s entrepreneurial future we need to take a different approach to entrepreneurial education and move away from the concept of the of the entrepreneur burning out for material gain and towards the idea that an entrepreneur is someone who does what they love and makes money from it.
This discussion addresses what is involved in building a national innovation ecosystem and the value of building one in a small, open economy such as ours. We are seeking to understand the role innovation can play in contributing to Barbados’ economic development, given that it does not have scale and maturity of other countries and cities that benefit from it. We want the perspectives of the various stakeholders who would be critical to the creation of such an ecosystem, including:
Some of the words used to describe Barbadian attitudes include “risk averse”, “inflexible” and “passive”. Those are not characteristics that one would associate with a progressive and innovative Barbados. What would we say are the characteristics of a “smart” Barbadian? How do we create an environment and culture in which innovation and transformation can flourish and those characteristics we desire are inculcated in all of our citizens?
This workshop will take into account the discussions around the components of an innovation strategy, the work that the various stakeholders have already started including CivTech and the culture change that we know needs to be addressed. The facilitator will engage the participants attempt to develop some next steps that begin to address some of the issues identified and to build on the work that is already being done in order to move Barbados in a more innovative direction.
This discussion attempts to bring together senior representatives of the government, private sector, academia, and civil society to get their perspectives on what they interpret Smart Barbados to mean and what their vision is for a “smart Barbados”. The discussion should hopefully move us in the direction of a national consensus on a Smart Barbados vision. Some questions to be answered include:
Many countries have embarked on smart nation initiatives, with varying degrees of success. Many people have heard stories of advanced services and technologies available in countries like Estonia, New Zealand and Singapore. People speak of “the Estonia model” and “the Singapore model” without understanding what these models are. This session begins with presentations about different transformation models and the Estonian experience in particular. It then evolves into a discussion which seeks to describe different models and initiatives used in transformation efforts in different countries. This should highlight what worked and what didn’t work, and how the local context shaped both the design and the ultimate success or failure of the initiatives.
It is envisioned that with a better understanding of different models and the environments that enabled them to be successful, as well an appreciation for the Barbadian context after 2 days of discussions, participants will begin to develop ideas for what models and initiatives might work for Barbados’ transformation.
In this discussion we will attempt to learn of some of the smart initiatives in progress or planned by the various national stakeholders (government, academia, private sector). Some of the questions posed include:
This workshop would seek to take into account the discussions from the both days of the Smart Barbados Conference. The facilitator would guide attendees to begin to fill in what some of the components of a national transformation strategy might look like.
Attending members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) will be provided with 5 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credit hours.
Panelists: Ms. Keeley Holder (Agriculture); Mr. Mark Young (Banking/Financial Services); Mr. Jeremy Foster (Retail/wholesale); Gabriel Isiae (Tourism), Manufacturing
Panelists: Ms. Keeley Holder (Agriculture); Mr. Mark Young (Banking/Financial Services); Mr. Jeremy Foster (Retail/wholesale); Gabriel Isiae (Tourism), Manufacturing
Panelists: Charles Cyrus (Public Sector); Dr. Annalee Babb (CivTech); Dr. Curtis Gittens (UWI); Mr. Michael Forde
Before citizens are willing to support any Smart Barbados transformation initiative, the government needs their trust. In order to gain that trust, it needs to demonstrate that it has the technical capabilities and legal and ethical frameworks to ensure that the data it collects cannot be lost, stolen, corrupted or misused. This discussion seeks to understand the level of trust that citizens have in the government in relation to the implementation of advanced technologies. It also seeks to give the government a platform to address citizens’ concerns related to issues such as:
In an age where information and misinformation is pervasive, is it time for Barbados to move beyond its traditional definition of literacy as being able to read and write? The internet enables the rapid dissemination of information without regard to its accuracy. This places the burden of separating fact from fiction on the user. We pose the questions:
While passing the Data Protection Act is a step in the right direction, the Act alone cannot guarantee the safety and security of citizens’ data. The discussion centers around:
Digital technologies have radically transformed education around the world. The rise of online learning platforms like Khan Academy and Massively Open Online Courseware (MOOC) providers like edX and Coursera have made it easier than ever to gain access to knowledge. As Barbados seeks to build a smart nation, we need to ensure that our people are being prepared to contribute to the digital economy. With that in mind we ask the questions:
The Data Protection Act has been passed into law, yet many citizens and businesses still do not understand the implications of the law for them. The goal is to discuss the implications of the Act, especially as it relates to:
According to the Nielsen Normal Group “Digital products are competing for users’ limited attention. The modern economy increasingly revolves around the human attention span and how products capture that attention.” Is the race to capture and monetize greater amounts of attention in an increasingly competitive marketplace giving rise to addictive platforms either actively or inadvertently? This discussion attempts to explain the workings of the attention economy, internet addiction and how they might be related. It also seeks to understand if internet addiction is becoming prevalent in Barbados and to understand how we might go about controlling our use of our devices so that they do not control us.
As more government and private sector services go digital-first, how do we ensure that persons who are traditionally “digitally disadvantaged” (older persons, the less fortunate, the differently able, and others) have access to these services? Questions to be discussed include:
Like those that went before it, the 4th Industrial Revolution is producing a seismic shift in the world of work. By some estimates 40% or more of the jobs currently being carried out today will not exist in 20 years, as advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) enable machines and computers to carry out many of the functions that currently require a human being. Conversely, it is also estimated that as many as half of the children now entering school will graduate and be employed in jobs that do not currently exist. Against this backdrop we understand how the government, private sector, and the labor movement are grappling with these issues.
The Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre is a conference centre facility on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Owned by the Government of Barbados, and managed by the government agency Barbados Conference Services Limited, the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre is just outside the capital city of Bridgetown, in St. Michael.
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