How will 4G broadband boost Tech entrepreneurship in Jamaica, will be the focus of a townhall type discussion tomorrow at Kingston Beta at the Spanish Court Hotel, New Kingston at 6:30pm. It is free. A SiliconValley based entrepreneur Peter Rothman will be co-hosting the discussion with me.
Kingston Beta is the bimonthly networking event and Startup pitch platform where Jamaican and Caribbean tech/internet/mobile/business professionals, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts come To Learn. To Be Inspired.To Network.It is staged by ConnectiMass, the parent company of SiliconCaribe.com.
If You Want to know what Jamaican/Caribbean People and Companies are doing Online and with Technology-Come to Kingston Beta. The event is geared towards, 1. Helping Startups Get Exposure 2. Connecting Startups and Investors and 3. Connecting the Caribbean technology community.
We made the announcement on May 19th on the event blog for Kingston Beta. The headline read Marc Canter, Founder of Macromedia, creator of FLASH Media Player will speak at the ConnectiMass technology event Kingston Beta in June. The Jamaican and Caribbean tech and business community has been a buzz ever since.
And yes he will be speaking their via Skype Video/Ustream next week Thursday June 24th, 2010 to the Jamaica’s Kingston Beta community at the Spanish Court Hotel in Kingston.
Since we became Facebook friends, I took the opportunity to get a pre-event interview with him. So I sent him some questions and he answered them in a candid and direct way. Here’s the interview:
Kingston, Jamaica – Thursday, May 20th, 2010 - Marc Canter, Founder of Macromedia, the company that created FLASH Media Player, Dreamweaver, Shockwave; the video game developer; Social Networking consultant and designer; 25 year veteran and serial entrepreneur in the software business; now CEO of Broadband Mechanics – will be the International Guest Speaker at the Kingston Beta, the technology event to be held on Thursday June 24th, 2010 6:30 p.m. at the Spanish Court Hotel.
“We’re excited to have Marc Canter as our first international guest speaker. He’s a globally renowned tech entrepreneur and a keynote speaker with great influence and insight. So we believe the idea and information exchange that will happened between him and our community of technology entrepreneurs and business professionals will be invaluable,” said Ingrid Riley, Ceo of ConnectiMass and founder of the event.
It’s something you may have heard me tweet about, write about or talk about in the last few months- that this year is the tipping point for the Internet in Jamaica and the Caribbean. You can see the activity online – fresh blogs, new sites, niche social networks, more people and brands on Facebook, on Twitter, companies spending on Google Ads and Facebook ads. For those of us with service agencies, you can tell via the increased number of phone calls and emails. The marketing bubbling is real, very palpable.
…Yes it’s nearing that time again, where all of the entrepreneurs, innovators and creatives in the Jamaican and Caribbean tech industry meet to network, find out what’s new and of course listen to the startup pitches during the event’s popular PITCH THIS! segment. Kingston Beta, Jamaica’s Premier Technology Event is on Thursday April 29th, 6:30pm at the Spanish Court Hotel.
We have expanded our very popular PITCH THIS segment and haves paces for 4 more startups regardless of where you are in the world…we”ll video skype you to our audience as we have done. So if you are a Jamaican/Caribbean based, led startup send us your details for consideration to me at ingrid @ connectimass.com.
Keep track of what’s happening- Join the community on Facebook.com/KingstonBeta. We have the latest videos and photos from the last event as well as great startup information. You can also follow us on twitter.com/KingstonBeta. Kingston Beta is an event spawned by SiliconCaribe and ConnectiMass. It has sponsors like Jamaica National on board for the year with more coming on soon.
Get the 411 on the premier community for Jamaican web entrepreneurs, start-ups and enthusiasts from the lady in charge. Ingrid Riley, founder of Kingston Beta, talks to us about the event at its recent debut at new venue, Spanish Court Hotel. SociaLingua is the official online media partner of Kingston Beta. Be sure to check out our photos from the last event!
I welcome a long time friend and colleague Mark Allan, who was a partner in Net Vision Interactive, one of Jamaica’s the premier web development companies in the 1990s. He and his partner Marc Edwards at the height of the dotcom boom, were recruited by a Hong Kong based company. Mark Allan has been living, programming and being a club disc jockey between Hong Kong and Vietnam for the past 10 years and is the Ceo of One Studio. He was a speaker on the very first Kingston Beta ( by Skype Video) held in January 2007.
Kingston Beta is the event that is staged by ConnectiMass the Caribbean Digital Marketing Agency that I run and this blog. We’re happy to announce that we open the 2010 season with a new sponsor and a new location. The next Kingston Beta is Thursday, February 18th @ 6:30 pm. Here’s are the top 5 things that’s new with Kingston Beta.
Kingston BETA September Edition The place where the Internet Powerbrokers meet. Where Technology Means Business.
-Hear 4 dotcom startups PITCH their new businesses. ( Socialingua, Monagis.com, PlayJamaica.com and CaribContact)
-Get Your Free copies of College Lifestyle Magazine
When: Tuesday Sept 29th, 2009 What time: 6:30pm – 9:30p.m Where: Susie’s on the Terrace, Southdale Plaza.
It’s Free. Tell 3 Friends. Bring Business Cards.
———- KINGSTON BETA FACT #1
The Kingston Beta Community powers over 80% of the Internet activity in Jamaica and activity focused on Jamaicans at home and in the Diaspora.
When I watched this, my mind flashed back to Jamaica, the Caribbean’s Silicon Valley…a Silicon Caribe in effect and why our dot com industry has not grown as much as we’d like to in the past years. Randy Komisar, an American venture capitalist speaks to a culture of entrepreneurship and an attitude towards failure we are yet to achieve here in the Caribbean. Regardless of this, what I personally have been seeing and experiencing in the past 10 years- meeting, listening to the entrepreneurs who have created, launched and failed; the ones who have created and are growing slowly or stagnating because of lack of venture or angel funds, partners and expert guide- I salute you all.
You’ve been the ones tilling the soil, adding your ideas to what is invariably growing, maybe not as fast as we’d like, but nonetheless growing that culture of entrepreneurship, an understanding that technology has made it easier for us to create, launch, test,fail…earn our stripes and the right to try again and again.
We should embrace that, encourage that in each other. Funny, this was the very reason for me starting SiliconCaribe the blog 4 years ago(previously known as techwatchcaribbean) and then Kingston Beta- Caribbean entrepreneurs are just as bright and full of ideas as the next dude and girl in America or Europe, but our culture of entrepreneurship and attitude towards failure is not there yet. In my mind however, our shoes are pointed in the right direction. What do you think?
