About
The Official Version. Silicon Caribe- We’re the first two words on technology and the Caribbean. It’s the Caribbean Guide to Your World Online. The site for Caribbean tech news, trends, lifestyle and information. We cover the people,places, products and companies that are defining our dotcom and telecom worlds.
We have a large and influential readership of curious and interested consumers, bloggers,industry professionals, executives, entrepreneurs and media people. It has a fast growing reputation of being first to break news, providing useful information, meaningful trend analysis and success stories that inspire. SiliconCaribe.com was officially launched on September 7, 2007 as a reinvention of the two year old TechWatchCaribbean.com, by Ingrid Riley, award-winning investigative journalist and publisher turned Caribbean blogger and tech evangelist, Internet marketing consultant and entrepreneur.
The Dubplate. I started a site back in 2005 called TechWatchCaribbean.com, because I loved the idea of blogging and Blogger.com made it easy for me,since I was not a code monkey. It was an easy decision to focus on technology news,trends and info because it’s what I’ve always loved and what I left mainstream investigative journalism for. Plus there was too much of all that floating around in my head, coming daily to me by way of questions in emails and through phone calls. I was also damn curious about the World of the Web, how Jamaica, the Caribbean was gonna play their part and how I could find my own place online.
In just three months I had over 500 people visiting the blog every day, now what was a surprise! I continued for about a year and a half then I stopped. I got caught up in running a web development company. I started up the blog again this time going for a name I had registered, developed an idea for but put on ice.
I reinvented the blog as SiliconCaribe.com to share again all the news,trends and information that never stopped flowing to and around me and to feed an insatiable curiousity that was now at a record fever pitch. The Web became not just a place I was trying to encourage Jamaican companies to go, but a place where I wanted to unleash my own ideas, experiment, share, have fun,talk to people from all over the world again. SiliconCaribe.com is how I’ve made the Web mine again and I hope you’ll be inspired to find your own place online.
Why the name SiliconCaribe? SiliconCaribe is a hub of news and information for all things high-tech in the Caribbean all within a Global context. I believe that even as we are small as a region, we’re quite powerful in terms of innovation and influence, so I created the Caribbean’s own derivative from the legacy that is Silicon Valley, which is a global synonym for all things high-tech. Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The term originally referred to the region’s large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of engineers and venture capitalists.
About Ingrid Riley
Ingrid Riley is a Caribbean blogger, Internet marketing consultant, content developer, tech evangelist and entrepreneur. She has over 10 years local, regional and international experience in advertising, media, web development, internet marketing, mobile marketing and communications. She has worked with emerging and major Jamaican, Caribbean and Global brands such as Island Outpost, JMMB, Jamaica Stock Exchange, Digicel, Smirnoff, Blogoria.com and Caribbeanbuffet.com.
Ingrid left a fulfilling career as an award-winning investigative reporter to follow her love for the Internet. She then created Jamaica’s and the Caribbean’s first Internet Guide, that went on win a Press Association of Jamaica Award for Innovation in Media. She was courted and hired by a New York-based dot com company, HomeView Media as Chief Content Officer. There she part of the founding lead team that created community sites for 17 countries and also streamed their local radio and TV stations. Ingrid was also responsible for creating the global content template as well as hiring, training and managing the content development team.
While living in Boston, she maintained a web consultancy that catered to Caribbean Diaspora entities and has been involved in the development of Internet startups in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and St Kitts. Ingrid has written for all major Caribbean newspapers and magazines; was a Dow Jones syndicated technology columnist and also created and produced Tech Talk Live, a weekly Technology radio show. She currently has equity stakes in three Internet related businesses and now serves on the executive board of C.I.T.O- the State owned, Central Information Technology Office.
