Konabos Alliance at ICT Week/CariNOG event in Grenada

foreign [Music] giving us insights local Services Global opportunities so let's welcome Dennis I am Dennis Augustine life is oddly circular in so many ways isn't it I've spent the last 26 years doing technology in Canada I am a prodigal son of the Caribbean I have never been so proud to be a Caribbean man and seeing the sorts of talent and possibility and energy that is here for change just makes me so inspired so I want to thank you for inspiring me yes give yourselves a hand for that and fast forward 26 years and I am now a three-time software entrepreneur and I've learned some lessons that I hope to share with you today let me tell you about Kona boss a little bit we believe in using the power of community to create the world's happiest and most effective digital teams and solutions at konobos although we are a team of just 50 people we build this company fully remotely and although we are only 50 people 10 of those are what we call sitecore MVPs I say that because we knew we were not going to be big but we wanted to be excellent I'm currently the only sitecore MVP in the Caribbean and if I have my way I shall not be the last because they started talking about something I know grenadians know a little bit about and our brother Belleville talked about Revolution this time the revolution will be different because the revolution will be digital in this revolution the altitude of your elevation will not be limited by the latitude of your location you can work from anywhere in this revolution over the last little while I have gone from frustration to inspiration I want to tell you a little bit about the opportunity why is it different this time it's different this time because things like konobos being built fully remote there are large Enterprise customers who will now deal with fully remote teams of experts and this time it's different and it is our time to act now to take advantage of that opportunity it's different because right now we are understanding that software development Outsourcing is a 284 billion dollar a year industry by 2030. that is more than the GDP of this entire region and although we are small we are batting way under our weight it's time that we do better there are challenges we're small but there's something else I think that we also have to get over as well and that's what you know the great Bob Marley would have called mental slavery to think that we're not good enough and we have to get over that happened to have been a applying to a certain project funded by the World Bank there's money sitting there since 2020 and I have since 2018 and this year for a whole year consistently been knocking on that door trying to get the money for things that check off every box of that transformation project and cannot get it done and when I check the criteria for that project and say well who can I talk to you know where they are it's outsourced to a gentleman in Europe knew who he hires a guy from Grenada a guy from Dominica and you know who makes the money him who does the work us it's been that way for far too long and it has to stop but we have certain advantages as well we are small but then as you just said we are small was a challenge it's also an advantage we can pivot much faster than any of those large Nations who are currently owning this stuff we have an inspiring message finally we have the political will and I'm so glad to see that in CARICOM and Eastern Caribbean we are finally United in purpose to get it done so we have advantages I've come here to promote to you something called the konobo software Alliance and that is a model comprised of four key components Community expertise plus experience world-class delivery and marketing and sales you need all of these things in order to succeed united we stand divided we fall so we're going to build a database of people like you of technologists of project managers of strategists and get that together so that when we get those projects with either a private sector or public sector that we know we can leverage the resources that we already have here to get those things done send the message to North American customers saying if you want the best Architects and solution developers in the world come here to the Caribbean that's the kind of attitude we have to have use that QR code and go to codables.com Alliance whether you are a developer or a higher ed partner we don't have a lot of time left now is the time to act I hope I impressed that upon you more than anything there was a wise very wise man who once said let us work while it is date because a night cometh when no man can work thank you [Applause]