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1 year ago
Can you guess where I’m working now?
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1 year ago
At the Microsoft #trinidad developer bootcamp in the hyatt regency
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2 years ago
Safe trip little brother. Here my big brother and I say farewell to my little brother Runcie as he returns to his duties in the US Navy.
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2 years ago
At the #ttcs pizza hut lime in Valsayn, #trinidad
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2 years ago
Courtesy of ICTS, Paula Richards of IBM took some time to educate Trinidad on Cloud Computing. Many solid facts that apply to cloud computing considerations for any platform’s offering were brought up, although product offerings such as Lotus Live, Cloudburst and Tivoli Services Automation Manager did have their appropriate mentions. Her own watchwords of ‘design and architecture’ when it came to applying the cloud computing paradigm to current systems were quite refreshing to hear. I thank ICTS executives of Fenwick Reid, David Green and Cindy Ramsook for making this event happen, as well as my friend Richard Lee at IBM for pointing me to such a pleasantly informative event.
Some takeaways and near-exact quotations from this seminar for those who want an idea of the pulse of the talk follow:
In a cloud world, QoS (Quality of Service) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) become uber-important.
“Cloud makes IT consumable” - The Apple App Store is a good example of a ‘cloud application’
“Cloud Services vs Cloud Platform” - IBM is working with open standards bodies to define the API for Cloud Services around the aspects applications, provisioning and metering. Websphere is an example of platform as a service.
Businesses are using cloud to “get control of IT” by bringing value to the business service itself.
IBM has an ROI tool to help businesses calculate the impact of undertaking Cloud initiatives, and the bottom line impact.
In IBM’s ROI analysis, going with cloud ‘liberated funding’
Cloud Services Delivered = Smart Business Services
Cloud in a box = Purpose-built infrastructure = Smart Business Systems
The low hanging fruit for cloud include Analytics, Collaboration, Development + Testing and Desktop services
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2 years ago
At TTLUG Meet’n’Greet demoing OpenSuse Linux development using ruby on rails and aptana radrails. We meet in J. Malones at Movietowne every month, come join us for a drink or to share your latest Linux hacks
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2 years ago
My last private job as a techie setting up a wireless router for a friend. Details will follow soon on my first purely non-techie role in Trinidad!! I’m very excited!
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2 years ago
Just off the west coast of Trinidad there are also several much smaller islands that are frequented by nature loving vacationers who don’t mind trading in the Hilton/Hyatt for a more rural, nature-trail experience. I was lucky enough to visit Gasparee Island and as the pictures tell, it was a very relaxing mini-vacation. Called collectively ‘Down The Islands’ by locals and frequent visitors, this type of ‘adventurer’s experience’ is definitely recommended.
Part of my perpetual professional ethic to work hard is that I often forget the ‘play hard’ part of the original saying that brings balance to this equation for a good, well-balanced life. For the last several weeks, between job hunting, re-associating with old business contacts, blogging about local events of interest to me and other geek-related activities I realised I was falling back into my workaholic habits, covering at least 6 days for the week without any leisure activities.
Thanks to my good friends, I’m reminded that this a habit I have no shortage of company to help break. Many birthday greetings to my friend Aaron, whose birthday bash led us to ‘Down The Islands’ in the first place, and to my carpooling buddies Marc, Ahmad, Matthew and Talya as well as the host of new friends I made who made for excellent company during this mini-vacation.
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2 years ago
The India-Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce launched yesterday to a packed room at the Centre of Excellence. Political officials were aplenty, with 3 Ministers, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and at least one other Member of Parliament present.
To me, there was not enough hard facts given about how exactly the organisation would be helpful that gave value to me as a technology entrepreneur being there. There was no general networking (or even bathroom break) time given in the almost 3 hour schedule. Other than the period between the advertised and subsequent late start, the face time I had was only with those at my table, which in itself was valuable enough to make the event worth it for me, given that I sat with persons I met at eTeck’s seminar the previous week.
This seemed more a room for the older heads, or those with already established businesses looking to collectively gather their resources as a lobbying force. Some interesting points of note came up though.
Dev Gosine, who seemed to be a driving force behind the formation of ITTCIC, promoted several factors as to why to become a member of ITTCIC. According to him, membership in ITTCIC would give the member:
- Access to Technical Awareness and Training resources
- An initial stepping stone if one was an entrepreneur in the making, creating a growth path for future captains of India/T+T industry
- fertile soil to grow the economy by bringing Asian resources here, helping stem the traditional ‘brain drain’ effect that happens
- an open invitation to break bread with other members, and forge linkages there
- an instrument for the creation of wealth in Trinidad
The devil *will* be in the details on these points and I’d love to pick his brain further on the actual implementation details of these points that he gave.
According to one presenter, Dr Tim Shaw, chambers of commerce are de-facto think tanks. I’d love to meet the new ITTCIC thought leaders and share further insight into what sort of real, concrete objectives they’ve targetted to build their credibility as this type of true think tank.
The Indian High Commissioner to Trindiad and Tobago, Shri Malay Misra, who I gained much respect for his having not read from a prepared text, (the last person whose speaking presentation I attended to have done this so elegantly was Kwame Ture), made several notable points as well.
- Mauritius is the biggest investor in today’s India, because of a Double Taxation Avoidance agreement between their two countries. Trinidad and Tobago is a similar size, and already has a similar agreement in place, so there is no reason we could not become the same.
- Trinidad has 3 frameworks signed already with India for trade, and he would like to see a Preferential Trade Agreement with CARICOM appear on the horizon of discussion someday.
- A major challenge is not just the 22 hour flying time (not including stopovers) between India and Trinidad and Tobago but also the cost of the flight. Talks are ongoing with regional carriers to provide cheaper flights between the two countries.
All in all, it was very informative for me in getting to know the players in the formation of this new not-for-profit, non-political, “purely commercial” entity. I hope they live up to their motto of “Our only business is your success” and keep the confidence, trust and support of their membership with their future actions.
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2 years ago
My notes from this Leo Laporte interview from Mashable
- Two pre-requisites for popular Internet media websites
- Have great content
- Make it easy to access
- We’ve trained our audience to sit down and shut up
- TWIT/Leo trains them to stand up and be heard
- People prefer to be active participants in the content!
- Leo’s foundation of popularity in Internet-media was based on mainstream media, but launching off this is getting harder and harder, and will in a few years be impossible
- Two pre-requisites for popular Internet media websites
Following
