Is the Caribbean ready for the future of work?
Our Today | April 5, 2022
TechCon 2022, now five years running, to examine regional ‘digital readiness’
Jamaican IT services company tTech Ltd will host the two-day TechCon business and technology conference next week under the theme ‘INSPIRE: Accelerating your Digital Maturity’.
The event’s fifth edition, like its predecessors, aims to establish Jamaica as a regional leader in business and technology, and so the program will touch on a number of hot-button issues within those disciplines.
One of the primary topics of discussion will be the role of digital readiness in charting the Caribbean’s economic future, and how this affects the region’s businesses and consumers.
“The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 pandemic announcement in March of 2020 brought in many regulations like curfews and lockdowns in an effort to reduce the spread of the virus. These changes highlighted two sets of businesses—those that were in a position of digital readiness, and those that were not and had to find a way to pivot and meet the new needs,” Chris Reckord, CEO of tTech and founding sponsor of the conference, shared.
It should come as no surprise that this is a major topic at this year’s conference.
tTech Limited knows that the global financial crisis has driven companies to evolve at a rate that would have taken years in the past. With a low rate of digitisation and digitalisation across multiple industries in Jamaica, there was and still is a technological hurdle to overcome.
According to the company, this is also true for several Caribbean countries, particularly in terms of digital readiness, and if we are to meet global work standards and demands, this need must be addressed promptly.
Technology has definitely played an important part in the development of regional businesses and workplaces, and we must continue to adapt in order to compete internationally. Digital readiness is the key to unlocking regional growth on both a commercial and a broader economic scale.
What’s more, tTech has observed that the Caribbean is increasingly recognising change is not only unavoidable, but also essential in business and the workplace.
The future of work is, therefore, heavily reliant on technological agility and successfully managing change, both of which demand digital readiness. To achieve overall success, it is also necessary to value, nurture, protect, and properly upskill the people who drive these sectors.
With this in mind, TechCon will include open conversations assessing the region’s current state of digital readiness and technical gaps in the workplace and business sector operations.
This is to identify realistic methods for bringing the sectors up to speed. Among them are Minister Daryl Vaz’s address on ‘The Jamaican Digital Age: Emerging out of the Pandemic‘; Chris Reckord’s presentation alongside ConnectWise’s Vice President of Security Initiatives, Jay Ryerse, ‘Beyond Cyber Security: Advanced Security Solutions‘, and a panel discussion on digital readiness and the Data Protection Act, featuring Floyd Green, minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
These conversations will also focus on critical needs for the Caribbean, such as the most in-demand skills, hiring, automation, earning and payments, and sophisticated collaboration platforms needed to keep employees engaged, incentivised, and informed.
TechCon by tTech will take place on Tuesday, April 12 and Wednesday, April 13 online. Visit www.ttech.com.jm for registration and additional information.