Jamaica's Team Node420 wins regional code sprint in Suriname

A group of Jamaican developers won top regional honours in a regional hackathon, held as part of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Suriname.

Team Node420 beat seven other teams of young developers in the #agrihack, held in Paramaribo from October 5 to 9.

Their winning app is designed to give farmers real-time weather analysis, allowing more efficient agricultural planning.

The Guyanese Minister of Agriculture presented the 5,000 Euro prize.

A team from Barbados walked away with 4,000 Euros—presented by the Director General of  the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture—for their app. Called Crop Guard, it aims to enhance food security by helping farmers to protect their crops through pest diagnosis, monitoring and control.

Third-place winners Unicode of Suriname received a 3,000-Euro prize from Michael Hailu, director of event organisers, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA)​.

Contestants presented their products before a regional panel and an audience that included participants of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture.

Each team competing at the regional event worked with a tech hub, an organisation that gave the team advice and helped them to fine-tune the apps they developed.

Node420 was supported by SlashRoots, Crop Guard were supported by the National Council for Science and Technology of Barbados, while Unicode  got help from Telesur Multimedia Innovation Laboratory.

Those tech hubs also won 3000 Euros each, to facilitate business incubation for the top three winners.

The AgriHack Talent Caribbean was organised by the CTA and various partners to support youth ICT innovations and entrepreneurship in agriculture. This activity is supported by the Agriculture, Rural Development and Youth in the Information Society (ARDYIS) project of CTA.

Eight teams from six Caribbean countries were at the finals. In addition to the regional prizes, each won 800 Euros, as the national-level prize.

The three regional winners are now looking forward to six months of business incubation, also part of the prize-package, during which time they will have access to guidance and support to develop their winning business ideas.

From T&T Guardian

Partnering for greater good at CaribNOG 8-LACNIC Caribbean 6

Dozens of technology professionals from across Latin America and the Caribbean are gathered in Curacao for one of the most highly anticipated gatherings of the region’s technology community. The opening day of the event attracted over 50 attendees.  And more are expected to participate in Day Two, which is dedicated to covering issues related to cyber security in the region.

The week will cover a range of other technology topics including Internet exchange points, cloud computing, mobile broadband and other critical Internet infrastructure.

But many participants are expecting the coffee breaks to be as transactional as the formal sessions, if not more so.

“People who are doing actual work on the networks in our region come here to collaborate and solve real-world problems together,” Lee said. “Caribnog 8, in particular, has several very important side meetings planned, out of which we are anticipating some quite significant outcomes.”

Junior Mc Intyre, Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) project coordinator for the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program (CARCIP), is among those looking forward to the networking that the week offers. For Mc Intyre, the big attraction of this high-profile event was not the sessions but simply the prospect of networking with like-minded technology professionals from across the region.

“We have been working in silos for far too long. A lot of good work is going on right here in the Caribbean but we lack opportunities to share insights with each other,” he said.

CARCIP project coordinators from three OECS countries—Grenada, Saint Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines—are also participating in the event.

The weeklong event, which runs from September 29 to October 3, is being held at the Hilton Curacao, Willemstad.

The meeting covers a range of technology topics including cyber security, Internet exchange points, cloud computing, mobile broadband and other critical Internet infrastructure.

More information is available on the official event websites: lacnic.net/web/eventos/caribbean6 and caribnog.org.

Networking for Caribbean development: Regional tech heavyweights gather for CaribNOG 8-LACNIC Caribbean 6

Caribbean people have an appetite for technology that rivals any other region of the world. But who is working behind the scenes to maintain and upgrade the Internet-based services on which we’ve come to depend?

On September 29, the answer to that question was to be found in Curacao, at one of the most highly anticipated gatherings of the region’s technology community.

Jointly hosted by the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CARIBNOG) and the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), this regional meeting bears one striking difference from many other ICT-themed meetings in the region. It is widely regarded as a solutions-oriented forum.

“This is a place where issues relevant to the future of the Internet at a regional and global level are being discussed. It is not a talk shop,” said Stephen Lee, Caribnog programme coordinator.

Lee was among a panel of experts to deliver the orientation and overview in the morning session. The panel included Shernon Osepa, manager for regional affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Internet Society, Bevil Wooding, founder and executive director of Caribnog, and Carlos Martínez, chief technology officer at Lacnic.

“Caribnog's partnership goes much deeper than co-hosting this event,” Wooding said. "Lacnic covers Latin America and the Caribbean, and Caribnog is a key part of this technical community. We focus on the Caribbean but our concerns and interests extend to Latin America and beyond."

Martinez echoed the sentiment.

“We found that working together with Caribnog, Lacnic can effectively reach audiences in the Caribbean, which is an important subset of our service region.”

The weeklong event, which runs from September 29 to October 3, is being held at the Hilton Curacao in Willemstad.

The meeting covers a range of technology topics including cyber security, Internet exchange points, cloud computing, mobile broadband and other critical Internet infrastructure.

More information is available on the official event websites: lacnic.net/web/eventos/caribbean6 and caribnog.org.