The future of work and the digital readiness of Caribbean businesses is to take centre stage at this year’s staging of tTech’s tech conference scheduled to run April 12-13.

The event will feature key minsters of government and other local and international technology experts who will meet up to discuss the role of digital readiness in charting the region’s economic future. Other topics to be addressed are data protection and privacy, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, big data analytics and digital currencies.

According to Christopher Reckord, CEO of IT consultancy firm tTech Limited, while the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced many companies to pivot and adopt new and innovative ways to conduct their businesses, a full assessment of their true readiness must be done and this he said the conference will seek to do.

“The global financial crisis has driven companies to evolve at a rate that would have taken years in the past, but with the low rate of digitisation across multiple industries in Jamaica, there remains some technological hurdles to overcome.

“If we are to meet global work standards and demands, and compete internationally, this must be addressed promptly, because digital readiness is the key to unlocking regional growth on both a commercial and a broader economic scale,” Reckord said.

Through open conversations geared at assessing the region’s state of readiness and technological gaps in the workplace and business sector operations, speakers at the conference will seek to chart a position for the way forward especially at a time when most states have begun to ease COVID-19 restrictions, reopen economies and resume normal operations.

Speakers at the event will include Daryl Vaz, minister of science and technology, who will address the topic of ‘The Jamaican Digital Age: Emerging out of the Pandemic’ and Jay Ryerse, vice-president of security initiatives at ConnectWise, who will present alongside Reckord on the topic ‘Beyond Cyber Security: Advanced Security Solutions’. A panel discussion on digital readiness and the Data Protection Act is also scheduled to take place and will feature inputs from minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister Floyd Green and Senator Aubyn Hill. Local professionals including Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Richard Byles, Sheldon Powe and NCB’s Tesfa Rhodes are also expected to be among some of the other speakers on the line-up.

TechCon, touted as one of the Caribbean’s largest and most anticipated information technology (IT) conferences, aims to provide a forum for industry experts and thought leaders to explore emerging trends defining the global IT space. The event will also allow for information sharing, cross-sectoral integration and the presentation of research products and data insights.

“The conversations will also focus on critical needs for the Caribbean, such as the most in-demand skills, hiring, automation, earning and payments, and sophisticated collaboration platforms needed to keep employees engaged, incentivised, and informed,” the organisers also noted.

Now in its fifth year, the event being done in partnership with global IT giant Microsoft, is pushing to promote the use of technologies to enhance growth, efficiency and productivity as critical drivers of business growth in the pandemic’s aftermath. The online conference is organised under the theme: ‘INSPIRE: Accelerating your Digital Maturity’. A virtual exhibition is to also be a major feature of the conference.

“We’re pleased to host a completely virtual event, which will broaden our reach and influence even more. We are clearly on track to become the Caribbean’s most prominent technology conference experience by 2026,” Reckord also said in an earlier news release.