NCU shows the way once more

[Don1]

...can we get a concerted effort to start moving up the BPO (outsourcing) food chain from the current low level call centers.... to higher value added software development and maintenance?

Guess that's too much to ask from our political leaders....winning competitions may be enough for them.



Northern Caribbean University (NCU) wins 2009 Regional Microsoft Imagine Cup

Published: Sunday | May 10, 2009


WITHIN DAYS of being crowned national champions, after defeating the University of Technology team, Northern Caribbean University (NCU) has again commandeered the top spot in the regional leg of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Competition for university students held recently.
The NCU team of Shawn Mclean, Trevoir Williams, Derron Brown and Dwayne Samuels, under the guidance of coach Henry Osbourne, and department chair, Kenrie Hylton, outdesigned the University of the West Indies' (UWI) Team AgroNeTT from Trinidad and Tobago, and UNAPEC Team NF4Live from the Dominican Republic.

With an average score of 9.33, NCU outperformed the other regional universities in all categories, with not one of the 10 categories in which the team was graded, dropping below eight points out of 10. The UWI Trinidad and Tobago team's average score was 7.83, while the Dominican Republic team scored 8.07 points. The 10 categories in which the teams are evaluated and graded include problem definition, consistency, innovation, impact, effectiveness, user experience, extensibility, administration, functionality and presentation.
This year, Microsoft instructed the Imagine Cup teams to address one of the eight United Nations.

(UN) Millennium Goals. The NCU team is focusing on developing software which will help address UN Millennium Goal number one, which is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty. This year's theme is 'Imagine a World Where Technology Helps Solve The Toughest Problems Facing Us Today'. The mission of the competition is to research, brainstorm, design and develop potential solutions that address the world's toughest problems.

[Gamma]

hmmmmmm....i would love to know more about what the winning entry was or proposes to do...

[Muadib]

Political Leaders ???

What is your strategy here ?

[Don1]

Political Leaders ???

What is your strategy here ?

my strategy?
the politicians are the ones to set the enabling strategy through innovative industrial policy.

[Muadib]

Oh you mean youthful exhuberance...like announcing 40,000 jobs in a dead-end, low end, tenous outsourcing model ?

Course change.. keep up to date...

[Don1]

Oh you mean youthful exhuberance...like announcing 40,000 jobs in a dead-end, low end, tenous outsourcing model ?

Course change.. keep up to date...

stuck in the past...and clearly stuck in a rut.... going nowhere.

when will you grow up young fellow?

[Muadib]

I was simply trying to get clarity on your 'political leaders' angle..

Are you referring to the present or future when you speak of 'political leaders' ???

[Gamma]

i wonder if the once noble chiron formerly sagest of all centaurs saw this post.....

[Don1]

I was simply trying to get clarity on your 'political leaders' angle..

Are you referring to the present or future when you speak of 'political leaders' ???

I appreciate your good tempered response. You must have had an extraordinay weekend.

It's clear that we need higher value added sectors in our economy including in a real IT sector. Call centers are good for mass employment but the value added is low and the firms tend to be transient.... going to lower cost provider countries is easy... just like the garment industry in the 1980's ... this sector can collapse very easily.

I believe that Jamaica should start to develop clusters of software business incubators around our universities and/or at some strategic locations... Portmore/Mobay... maybe co-located with the call center industry. UTECH has such an incubator... or a version of it.

Maybe partner with some Indian software developers to enhance our skill sets and get this type of sector going... first on a small scale and hopefully as our skills develop we can develop some valuable software applications indigenously.... and create real value in intellectual property.

To do this unfortunately the government has to take the lead. Our private sector is generally myopic with a "margin gatherer" mentality... with some notable exceptions.. Butch Stewart, Issa and a few others.... don't look there for solutions.

Government should pick this sector as a winner and provide special incentives... tax breaks, office space, computer equipment, subsidized bandwidth, seed capital etc

In a few years we may be able to develop a valuable domestic software industry... we don't lack the smarts.... NCU shows that consistently.

[Assasin]

if the government can't maintain parish council road, you look to them fi build electronic superhiway?

How long it took them to build highway 2000 again

[Muadib]

Suh what yuh tink bout Patrick Casserley ?

I understand his biggest problem was office space..

Does the Caymanas project target the type of industry you are talking about ?

[Islandman]

I thought his biggest problem was getting trainable people, who had attained the skills one should have from a basic secondary education. I know it was certainly one of his problems.

I don't think Don1 realise what a small base of trained professionals we have.

[Assasin]

But we have a lot of trained IT professionals in the diaspora who would consider relocating back to Ja if given a good oppurtunity to compete.

[Muadib]

Actually it was the Heart people and 'training' that was woefully inadequate.. he addressed that problem creating his own feeder program using higher qualified people (jobs scare in JA).

The problem he ran into was available, reasonably priced office space on the scale he needed that could pass the 'freezone' criteria.

[Assasin]

HEART was never designed to train high tech workers.